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....