Continuing on from the last post, I was telling you about Christmas in Ireland.  After we came back from the North, we settled in for an icy and snow-packed holiday.  I’ve never seen Ireland quite so icy before; driving to Dublin for example typically took over an hour instead of the usual forty five minutes I would expect.  A couple of times on the Trim road we were limited to about 30mph simply because the traction was so bad.  It was really interesting seeing the difference between a country that is prepared for ice and snow, and one that isn’t.  I’m not being snobbish here; the ice and snow in Ireland was extreme, and we usually only get a few days of mild ice or frost there.  Of course they aren’t prepared for it.  In Munich they get far much more snow and ice, and they have a three week stockpile of salt for the roads, and two months of grit for the paths.  They grit the footpaths!  Anyway, it was damn cold.  Anna’s parents came over too, so we picked them up from the airport. Slowly.

Speaking of snow, we’re going to Bayerischzell tomorrow.  We are going to spend a week snowboarding and skiing.  I promised James I’d take some pictures this time, particularly of me getting serious air… which means I have to charge the battery in my camera. This post had started out with the title “on piste in twenty four and counting”. Now its more like twelve to be honest.  Anyway, I’m really looking forward to this next week.  Last year I ended up in hospital with a severed ligament that had to be operated on two days before our skiing holiday, and didn’t get any snowboarding at all. Tomorrow that’s going to change.  Provided I don’t crash the car on the way there ;-)

What else?  Oh yes, there’s a reunion of old AOL heads coming up.  Really old timers too, not just folks who were in Fulham Road, but further back.  This is for those who were in the Fulham Broadway office, which I got invited to on a technicality: Although I wasn’t in that office originally, I moved there early on from Fulham Road when we re-located the Marketing department there.  I don’t really think I can justify the cost though, and there aren’t many there that I would actually pay money to see again.  A couple for sure, but they’ll wait until another time.  We’re already going to London in July, so those that I really want to see will be covered.  Sorry Scally.

I started another German course on Monday last.  This time its with the Deutsch Akademie, and the teacher seems to have has a relatively illustrious career having worked in directorial capacities for both the Goethe Instutite and Berlitz previously.  The course is far more what I need, I’m finding the pace just about right, and unlike the last one it seems more at my level.  I may stick with this group for a bit for a couple of reasons.  Firstly they have a higher quantity of narrower scoped bands (twelve as opposed to Berlitz’s ten), and secondly the class sizes are really nice.  There are ten people in my class at the moment, which is so far working out really well.  I’ve had two in a class at Berlitz, and twenty eight at the Volkshochschule, and ten is nice and comfortable.

Right, gotta go get packed and wax my snowboard…

What a fun weekend this is turning out to be. On Friday I was on my way to German class when I fell off my bike. It was a perfect "oh shit" moment... I had some good music playing on my MP3 player (it was U2, but I can't remember the track), and all of a sudden the bike just wasn't there anymore. The path through the park that I was cycling on had been heavily gritted from the snow over the last few weeks, and the snow had melted. It must have been bold enough to freeze water though, because I think I slipped on some. After falling onto my face I picked myself up and immediately checked to see how many teeth I had broken. There were none, but my hands came away covered in blood, and then I noticed my finger. That it was broken wasn't in doubt as it was hanging at a strange angle and wouldn't move for me. I had also cut deep into the knuckle (the first one from the tip).  The cut was deep enough that I could see bone, and a couple of pieces of gravel just to add flavour to the mix.  The other hand was lacerated to hell and back too, with most of the skin from the palm left on the ground.

I phoned Anna to let her know what had happened, and to ask her to get one of her parents to take me to the hospital.  Then I went home to try and get cleaned up as best I could.  Lest you think I’m exaggerating here, the trip home was eight to ten minutes long and I apparently still dripped blood on the floor at home.  I haven’t been home yet because they kept me in the hospital overnight for observation, and apparently they want me to stay until Monday.  Fuck that. They also cleaned and bandaged my chin, and stitched my upper lip.

Anyway, after getting cleaned up here, the doctor scheduled me for surgery on the finger to get it cleaned out and potentially repaired.  That was going to be done under local anaesthetic so as to keep things simple.  As is my wont in cases like this, I pestered the surgeon (apparently one of the best hand surgeons around) with questions about what was going on.  He wouldn’t let me watch when I asked, because the surgery was already underway and I wasn’t sterile.  Actually I was a fucking mess at that point, with bits of grit still in my hair.  There is now a piece of titanium wire holding my finger together, and you can see it looping out of and then back into the end of my finger.

So now its 14:30 and we’ve been waiting for the surgeon all day.  The other guy in the room with me had a skiing accident, and we were laughing that I never even made it as far as getting to the damn piste before ending up in hospital.

<later/> I can go home.  The doctors don’t entirely approve, but the environment at home is far more conducive to my sanity to be home instead of sitting in bed in a white hospital room for the next two days.  All that is going to happen is that they’re going to change my dressings anyway.  I’ll post more ad soon as I’ve got a few hours to type it all.

I'll be uploading the photos from Christmas and New Year later this week, but here's a small teaser...

Got back from Germany with no problems. All in all, I think Gatwick is the best airport in London for us - its only 45 minutes away, its not so busy, and we keep flying BA, which means the queues aren't so bad. We had a fantastic time in Munich. Did the Christmas thing in Bad Aibling, surrounded by snow, Anna's parents, and her grandparents. On the 25th, we ate a duck - almost a whole duck ;-) We went out to a nature park called Poing on the 26th, which turned out horribly. They have a small playground there, and I was playing on this ariel runway. At one point Anna hung on to me, and I dropped off the rope and fell on her. Unfortunately she banged her head on the ground, and then I hit her head with mind, and she was knocked unconscious :-( So we took her home, and got some rest the next day. After that, we went skiing, though the snow was crap that day and I couldn't get up to the top of the hill as there was a root exposed that kept catching on my snowboard. So we didn't do much that day. Next day we went back on the snow, and did some snowtubeing. Snowtubeing is where you sit inside a large inner tire, and hurtle down the side of a mountain, and let me tell you; it ROCKS. However, I did manage to find the fastest inner tire in the world, so I knocked some kids down on the way. Anna knocked someone down too, and he ended up with a bloody nose ;-) We finally got some great snowboarding & skiing done though... it had snowed overnight, and the pistes were great. It takes me about half a day to get my confidence back on a board after a year of abstinence, but when I do get it, it is completely brilliant :-)

I can't believe it was March 1st when I last updated this. Lots of stuff has happened since then. We were in Germany for a week, ate some good foord, drank some good beer, and got to do some snowboarding. We got back and the place was a building site. Some work was being done, and it isn't finished yet, in fact it will take another week, which makes the amount of time it took almost exactly triple what it should have. ::sigh:: More tomorrow.

Yesterday we played in the snow :-) We went to Sudelfeld, rented a snowboard (new bindings this time, and they were amazing to use) and played all day. I was a bit nervous when I got in the snow at first, thinking that I'd fall off the lift again and cause it to stop... but I didn't :-) In fact, I was brilliant (if I say so myself). After the first run down the shallow hill, I got my balance sorted out and was confident enough to go fast and hard. It was such a rush, I even managed to successfully pull off some pretty good jumps on this little hill at the bottom of one of the pistes. I did manage to fall a couple of times though, and two of them were fairly hard... the second one felt as if I had cracked my rib. Still, if was a very successful trip on the snow, and I'm looking forward to getting out there soon again. Anna and I decided that we have to go on a snow holiday sometime, so we can get out on the snow for several days at a time :-)
Today we just chilled out for the day, and went to Sibel and Michi's place for dinner. They've done a wonderful job on their new appartment, it looks really nice. Thats about it so far. Can't type anymore, this keyboard is driving me mad ;-)

Snow... Gluhwine... Snowboarding... Beer... Holidays. Am I making you jealous already? Tomorrow we're flying to Germany for the holidays. Going to chill and take it easy for a while, get some snowboarding and skiing done, eat good food, drink good alcohol, and do Christmas stuff :-) The timing is good too... we've got decorators coming in from Wednesday to re-paint the appartment. I'll post updates while there if I get the chance.

We're sitting in an airplane on the way back to London from München.It has been an exhausting couple of weeks, and I feel like I need a holiday. Unfortunately there's a seriously busy time in work ; beginning tomorrow. Probably the one thing which contributed most to our current state of shagged was going skiing (Anna) and snowboarding (me) yesterday. We had a brilliant time, but it does wreck you ;-) My snowboarding was a lot better than it was the last time - I didn't fall as much, got the hang of the ski-lifts, was able to stop, steer and control speed better :-) Anna was the usual brilliant skier, though she had some problems at the start of the day - she went up to the very top of the steepest part of the mountain, and discovered that it was a lot steeper looking down than it was looking up ;-) The night before we had been to a cool night club called Babylon, where I was dancing for the first time in ages. Katherin was there with her new Italien boyfriend (Katherin's boyfriends are always Italien) but he didn't speak either English or German, so I have no idea what he is like! There's a shop outside the night club which probably has the best Kebabs on the planet, which we munched for a while earlier in the night. Babylon is in a place called the 'Kuntspark Ost', which is basically an industrial estate where there are only clubs and bars. The music was really good in Babylon, loads of rock and pop, not much techno :-) New Years Eve was pretty cool too - we had a party in Anna's parents house, and at midnight went out to see a HUGE fireworks show in Ismaning. We were standing about 50 meters from the launch site for the major fireworks, and it was so loud that we could feel the mortar launches through our whole bodies. Went home and then looked at the fireworks in London on th TV, which were pretty spectacular too :-) My god, it really is the year 2000!!! Haven't been online much since before Christmas, so I don't know what happened with the Y2K rollover globally. I do know that at about 5 past midnight on Jan 1st, Deutsche Telekom's D1 network wasn't working. It wasn't overloaded, just didn't work ;-) We're on the Stansted Express now, on the way back into London, and I think we're getting off to get a tube in a few minutes, so I'll finish this later..

Home. God what a fantastic week I've just had. I've put on about a stone in weight, gotten a slight tan and I'm completely relaxed :-) We did a lot over the week, some touristy things, some serious drinking and eating and some playing in the snow. That was one of the high points for me - I got to go snowboarding for the first time! There's a little ski resort about an hour and a half drive from Munich, called Sudelfeld. It's in the Alps, several thousand meters up, and it's a small valley with runs around two of the valley walls. When we got there, Anna put on her skis and went down to the base of the valley and got some information about renting a snowboard for me… which we did. She's a brilliant skiier actually :-) After getting the board I spent about an hour falling over… to the point where I damaged my wrist from repeated falling on it. Eventually I got it together though, and I was able to get around with no major problems. We did some runs on the more advanced slopes too which was fucking incredible - you can go SOOOO fast on a snowboard :-))) Of course, just to spoil the whole thing, there was a power cut and the lifts stopped working, so we had to call it a day at that stage :-(

Got to see some of Anna's friends again, Kerstin and the gang, Katherine and (eventually) Siebel. We all went out on Monday to a Mexican restaurant, ate and got completely pissed on coctails and Tequila, and then did the usual getting sick on the train home ;-) Tuesday we did some shopping and went for a swim in the oldest swimming pool in Europe. That night we went to a local restaurant for what has to be the best steak I've had since leaving Ireland. Has anyone else noticed that Engligh meat sucks??? Anyway, on Wednesday we went to this huge park in Munich called the English Garden. There's a lake in the center where we rented a pedal boat and we did the usual beering in the Beer Garden (of course). I seem to have done nothing except drink beer for the last 8 days - including having beer with breakfast!!! That night we played some games. There is a funky game they have in Germany called "Settlers", which is the board-based forerunner of games like C&C/RedAlert and Warhammer… and it kicks ass big time :-) Anna's parents are getting better at shithead, but they're still pretty easy to beat (although Andreas did win a couple of times).

Finally got the database doing what it should, the holiday pictures are now working as I want, all I need is the DSN updated by the nice people in Tentex…

Thanks very much guys… I think someone was supposed to be actually cleaning the kitchen last week??? I just did the whole fucking thing AGAIN, and discovered that some of the rubbish I left there before I went on holidays was still there. Lovely.