Let it snow, let it snow...

Well, no snow here in Germany for that Christmas. At least not outdoors.
This year is somehow strange. It is only three days to Christmas Eve, which is absolutely my favorite day of the year. Ok, maybe the favorite day is my birthday, I don't know. But I really, really love Christmas. Usually I have all the Christmas decoration up in early December, I am singing Christmas songs and even use some of my old music instruments to try and play the easy songs on them. I watch the Muppets Christmas Movies every week and really feel "christmasy". But this year is strange. Maybe it is because of the much too warm temperatures beginning of December. Maybe it is travelling so much on weekends, maybe it is working overtime almost every day....
Today was my last working day for this year and so tomorrow I can start to relax. Or better: prepare for Christmas. The tree is already in the house, but still green without any lights or ornaments. I cleaned a little bit, but still need to do a lot. And then I have to go groceries shopping tomorrow, which I hate. It will be crowded with long lines at the check out. But I have all the Christmas presents!!! And they are already wrapped!!! Hopefully tomorrow I will have some time to visit the Christmas market again. I did it three times this year. Once I've been to the market in Essen and two times to the market at the big shopping mall in Oberhausen. And the last one is what made me think of this blog's title: The whole mall is decorated very nicely, but the best thing happens in the middle dome. Every full hour they let it snow there. Indoors. Real snow. Wow, that is so amazing. I love it. Well, I would love to have some real snow covering my backyard and everything here as well, but the indoor stuff is better than nothing. I hope you all can enjoy a white Christmas. That might be at least true for the ones of you living in Alaska. To all my friends: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2007.

Nine days to Christmas

Sorry for not writing for such a long time. The problem with Christmas is it always comes as a surprise. One day you wake up, have a look at your calender and notice that you should at least start thinking of all the presents you need...
And then there are the different Christmas parties at work. One with the team, one dinner with whoever and then the Christmas party with our complete R&D team. This year this one took place in Dortmund in a brewery. It seems we always go to breweries when we want to celebrate something. Maybe this is a German thing.
We had very good food, good beer (this is what I was told, unfortunately I had to drive home that night) and good talks. All in all for engineers this means we had fun. The DJ was a little bit frustrated. He really tried hard with all different kinds of music, but nobody wanted to dance. Yeah, this is not untypical for engineers. And don't forget the high amount of women in our R&D: maybe 6%!
That all took place a week ago. And last weekend was an England weekend again. But this time it was more relaxing. The only activity was another trip to Cambridge for some Christmas shopping. It was a beautiful sunny day and we enjoyed it there. I attached some more pictures of Cambridge in the sun. We also finished the one geocache we already figured out the right coordinates, but didn't go there the last time. The trip ended with dinner in a nice Italian restaurant and when we came home we opened a bottle of red wine and lighted our gas fireplace.
On Sunday, before I had to go to the airport again, we put on some Christmas decoration. We decorated two windows and put some lights at the house. It looks nice. We spent the afternoon reading and then went to the airport. This time it was crazy. I expected us to have enough time for dinner there, but at the check in counter they told us to directly proceed to the security check. And the lines there were huge. I have no idea why it is good on some days and so bad on other days. Maybe it is holiday season and half the security personnel is already on vacation.
But I made it home in time and had a busy week up to now. This coming weekend I will spend in Germany.

Coal mine, cathedral and shopping London

I think I have to write a little bit today. Not that really much happened and you all might already be tired of reading my geocaching adventures. But yes, we did another one. "We" in that case means not Dave and I, but part of my hardware development team here at the office. As Christmas is approaching we decided to organize a team event. And since we are all engineers loving technology and within the multimedia industrie with the devices we develop I thought it might be a good idea to do this GPS based treasure hunt called geocaching also as one part of the team event. On the other hand I wanted to combine this with some cultural things from this area, the Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr valley) and so we decided to hunt for a cache at the "Zeche and Kokerei Zollverein" in Essen, an old and very well known coal mine and coking plant.
http://www.zollverein.de/index.php?f_categoryId=3&f_menu1=3&lang=en
And since there are two caches there we devided the bigh group of 14 into two teams. And what shall I say: both teams were successful! And as a reward we went to the "Dampfbierbrauerei" ( http://www.dampfe.de/ ) , a local brewery, to have dinner there.
I spent the weekend in England again. Flying becomes routine, like commuting home after a week of work. But because of a major car accident somewhere on the English motorways Dave stuck in the traffic and I had to wait for, well, maybe 1.5 hours until he finally picked me up at London-Stansted airport.
Though we came home late on Friday night we managed to get up early on Saturday morning and drove to Epping. Epping is the first stop of London's tube (central line). We left Dave's care there on a parking lot and entered the tube for some London sightseeing and Christmas shopping. The sightseeing part took place in St. Pauls cathedral. First we were a little bit reluctant to paying 9pounds just for visiting a church, but it was worth it. The church has the seconds largest dome after the Petersdome in Rome and we were able to climb to the top to have a fantastic view over London city. We also visited the crypt to see Nelson's gravesite.
By the way, this catherdral is used for all kind of official services like Queen mom's funeral or also Prince Charles' and Lady Di's wedding (long, long ago....)
After the church tour we visited Harrod's. It is a well known store, not only for the Christmas market and decoration. Well, for me it was very crowded and honestly, I think I can do better Christmas shopping in Essen, but this is just my opinion.
After some Sushi in Soho (no, not the restaurant where they found the radioactive material) we headed home again.
On Sunday all we did is sleep in, went to the DIY store and visited a Christmas tree sale in Elveden (a tiny little village between Thetford and Lakenheath). And then I had to fly home to Germany again....

Colleges

It was a long weekend. I took Thursday and Friday off to go to England for Thanksgiving. It was a very good weekend. On Thursday Dave prepared the turkey (actually it was a turkey breast, but still more than enough for the two of us) and while waiting for it we tried another geocache in Thetford. It was located near a Norman castle mound which is called castle hill. No castle, just the hills ;o) We didn't find the cache, but made it back home in time for the turkey, beans, potatos, stuffing, red cabbage.... Hmmm, it was so good.
On Friday we decided to go to Cambridge. Non of us had any idea what to expect there. We went there by car, but decided to park outside the city at a park and ride. That was a very good idea since the traffic is terrible. So we left the car at this parking lot and took the bus (2 Pounds return fare) to the center. Cambridge is fantastic. There are more than 25 colleges, all close to each other, most of them with their own chapel and all of them look like a little palace. And it is really amazing to imagine persons like Newton, Maxwell, Rayleigh etc. working there.
Cambridge was founded in the 1220s when members of the University in Oxford came to the river Cam during a conflict with the town's inhabitants. It was a conflict between "town and gown" and later took place in Cambridge too. The first college were built in 1270. They are best known for their engineering and science faculties. More than 100 Nobel prize winner came from there.
Again we did some geocaching to explore the town. And this time we were successful. After that we decided to have lunch in "The Eagle". This is a pub from 1600. During WW2 air force people signed the ceiling of room.
We didn't visit any museum, but since we are sure to come back again this will be on the agenda for the next visit.
I already flew back to Germany on Saturday. I had tickets for a Chris de Burgh concert on Saturday night in Dortmund, Germany. This was also great, especially the second half when almost everybody left their chairs and were standing in front of the stage. This concert is a kind of tradition. It takes place almost every second year and the first time I went there was back in 1987 or 1988. And this is really long ago....

Rainy weekend in Germany

I spent the weekend in Germany! So no flight to England, no security check and no coffee at Starbucks. But it was a very busy weekend.
On Friday I attended a school reunion. Well, it is not a very big deal. My school does this for everybody every third Friday of November each year. I didn't really want to go since I don't feel very close to my old high school. But for some reason I went there anyhow. From the 100 girls in my class (1988) only 5 showed up. Main reason was nobody really received an invitation. The lucky few who left their email address to the school got an email a month ago, all other had the chance to find it in the local newspaper two days in advance, which is not very much. So I guess most of them just forgot about this annual meeting. But we had fun and there are plans for a class reunion next year.
Saturday started with rain, which was not good, because I really had to go to the cemetery to clean up our family grave from fallen leaves and plant some typical winter plants. Fortunately it stopped raining in the morning and Dave and I were able to work on it. I am glad about it, this weekend was actually the last chance for doing it since I will be in England the next ones and after work it is too dark. We also tried to find our second geocache. We had a nice walk for I don't know how many hours, but didn't find the station 4 with the final hint to the final coordinates. So no success story this time. Maybe I try it again tomorrow.....
On a rainy Sunday we drove to Cologne and visited the cathedral. Somehow we found our way to the central railway station and parked our car. The station is very close to the "Koelner Dom". We spent some time looking at all the artwork there and finally climbed one of the two towers. Sorry, I don't remember how many steps, but believe me, I think it was enough. The attached pictures are taken inside this church, but it was very dark so they didn't turn out very nice.
After dinner in Cologne and getting lost on our way to the airport we somehow managed to get there right in time for Dave's flight to England.
Next Wednesday it will be my turn to travel again.

The first geocache

Another weekend in England! As usual (and I think I can say it after almost two months) I headed to the Duesseldorf airport after work. After checking in for the Air Berlin flight to London Stansted I decided to have something to drink at the Starbucks Coffee. From all the decoration I could tell that Christmas is not far. And the best thing about it is the Toffee Nut Latte! Here in Germany they sell it only during the Christmas time, but during my winter in Alaska earlier this year I had it on a very regular base. And I love it. Especially now that it reminds me on the wonderful time I had there in the Alaska winter. Hmmm, I wish I could go there again this January..... It is amazing how a smell, a taste or sound can bring back memories and makes you dream...

I arrived in Stansted on time and Dave picked me up. We got up early on Saturday (early for a weekend) and did all the planned shopping. This also included the GPS receiver I was talking about. We wanted to try our first geocache on Sunday. You don't know what a geocache is? Check out the following link: www.geocaching.com

Later on this Saturday we tried to find places for all the furniture. Somehow it seems like English houses are not designed for having furniture. And this is a new one! After some discussions and trials we found a compromise solution for the living room and a bed room. But now the dining room really looks like a mess after moving a lot of stuff there. And there is still no way to use the study for anything else than storing boxes with books. But eventually they will all go to shelves ;o) All in all I have to say that furniture help in making a house a home.

On Sunday we decided to explore Thetford a little bit more by searching for this first geocache. It was a nice walk that led us to some already known and some new places in town. The weather was fine, much drier than in Essen, and we had fun walking around with the GPS receiver, reading the hints and trying to find our way. The final coordinates led us directly into the shrubs, but we were not able to find any cache. After a while we decided to read some more hints from other people and found out that we didn't have to leave the path. So we went back and .... found the cache. We left a Starbucks card and took a yellow smiling face eraser. It was so much fun and both of us can't wait to explore more places on the hunt for geocaches. Unfortunately we didn't have time for another on during this weekend, because I had to go back to the airport at 17:00. The line at the security check was unusal short, the plane was unusual on time and I arrived home at 23:30. Now the normal working week started and it is grey and rainy in Essen. Typical weather for November...time for lighting a candle and having a tea...before getting out into the rain and walking Senta.

Hello, my friends.

Yes, it took some time. After "blogging" my Alaska Winter adventures for my German speaking friends in Germany I thought it might be a good idea to create a similar service for my English speaking friends. Especially since I spend so many weekends in England and also exploring new sites in Germany. I hope you enjoy it. I will post photos as well. So stay tuned, I am almost on my way to England and will update this blog on Monday. If everything goes as we planned it, Dave and I will buy a GPS receiver this weekend and start with our firt "geocaching" adventure. Geocaching is like a modern treasure hunt I used to play when I was a little kid. People all over the world have hidden little "caches". Depending on the size it might be a tupperware box with some stuff inside (no, no old food, other things like a coin, a little stuffed animal and a logbook and pen). The GPS coordinates are posted on a special internet page ( www.geocaching.com) and all we have to do is try and find the cache. Sometimes you have to solve a riddle before you get the correct coordinates and that will be even more fun.