Up to Alaska!

It is a beautiful blue sky day here in England. And it is warm. So why am I sitting here and update all my blogs? Well, the answer is easy: I won't be able to do so for the next three weeks again. I am going to Alaska! Without my laptop ;o)

Tomorrow I will take the ferry from England to Germany and on Tuesday I will fly to Anchorage. Having the car in Germany will give us the change to move more of my stuff to England on the way back. But right now I am just looking forward to the Alaska trip. I am a little bit sad that Dave can't come with me, but we plan on going to Scotland later this summer. So what are my plans for two weeks up north?
Well, first of all I have to activate my visa. The next thing is picking up the title of Dave's Mustang at the DMV in Palmer and while I am there I will also try to register our two cars from England there, too. I'm not sure whether it will work, but at least I can give it a try.
I also want to go and have a look at our lot at Tigger Lake in Talkeetna. We haven't seen it without snow and we never took a picture of it. I hope it is not a big swamp.
Beside all these things I plan to spend a good amount of time in Healy and the Denali National Park. It will be very different from the last times when I was able to spend the time at Evalyn's house, which was home to me, but I hope I will enjoy it anyway. I also plan on going to Fairbanks and visit some friends there. And maybe I can go on a boat trip out of Seward or Valdez. We will see.
I will write a detailed report after I come home. And hopefully you can expect some nice pictures then too.

More moving boxes...

... are filling our garage here in England. Almost all my stuff is here now. All, except of maybe 3 boxes, my diving gear, roller blades and running shoes. That's it. Wow. My brother and I rented a moving van couple of weeks ago and within 3 days I flew to Germany, we packed the van on the same day, drove to my brother's house, spend a night there, took the ferry to England and unloaded everything the next day. It was kind of busy, but now the first move is done and we are waiting for the second one this year.

The whole moving procedure went well. I was a little bit worried about my brother driving that van here in England, but he did very well. When we arrived the weather turned into what everybody considers a typical English one: grey sky, light rain and fog. We arrived late in the evening and it was almost dark outside. The bad thing was that our exit of the main roundabout at the ferry terminal was closed and the police men standing there didn't tell us where to go. But eventually we found our way and made it to Thetford. Unloading everything went very well and fast. We also had a chance to use the big van to bring some of Dave's old furniture to the recycling center. As a thank you my brother got a real American steak for dinner on that day. And he loved it. If it is not for the English weather it is for the steak that he wants to come back in July. And I am so much looking forward to all the people visiting us this summer.

Medieval Fayre

From my German blog I got the first complaints about not writing for more than 10 days. So I asked myself what to tell you. It is not that so many exciting things happened here during the last weeks. I walked Amber, but that is not really something to write about. What else? Well, I finished my B&B management class with a 100% score. Yeah! I was really happy about that and it was fun to study again. Now that I am done with this class I need to think about the next project. But this won't fill pages and pages here.
Well, okay. Maybe I will take you with us on a quick trip into the past. Let's go to an Medieval Fair in Snailwell (and I hope the snails are doing well). This fair takes place once a year. The set up all kind of tents around an open place for shows. You can find all kind of different people dressed in medieval costumes, music and a big pig grilling over an open fire (no, the poor creature didn't die from swine flu, I guess).
So if you want to you can join us now. And the best thing is, you don't have to pay the 5 pounds entrance fee...


As soon as we arrive this knight jumped into our way: "Stop! You are looking not like people from here? Where are you from and why are you dressed in that funny way?".
Well, yes, he was right. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt was not what most people were wearing. But I was able to convince him about our good intentions and he let us pass.




For a long time we could still hear the people whispering and pointing with their fingers at us.
But as soon as we went a little bit further the knight started practice fighting with one of his friends and they didn't pay any attention to us anymore.






Can you smell it? Oh, we were so hungry. There were open fire places with stuff cooking in pots everywhere. But we learnt prett y fast that those delicious things were not for stranges. We had to line up in a long queue for the above mentioned pig. And I forgot to take a picture of it, but it was really good.
So we walked a little bit further. We didn't plan on buying anything. Oh, can you hear it.... what a lovely sound...


Aren't that... the who...ehm, who are they? Oh wait, maybe their names are Peter, Paul and Mary. No, that's wrong. But they are travelling a lot, so maybe they are the Wilburys. Or are there mor than just three?
Well, whoever they were, we enjoyed their music and slowly moved on.





And then we met this nice gentleman. Dave almost immediately thought of potential new patients. But we were not here for business, just for pleasure....







But who was that? I think we should try to get away from here as fast and careful as possible. This guy really looked very skinny...and pale....and cold... and not really alive....scary.





Oh, thank god, the tournament starts. Let's get there as quick as possible and leave this guy behind.

May I introduce you: The Red Knight and the White Knight. What unique names. The didn't really fight against each other. All they did is picking up rings and fight agains sime white cabbage with their axes. But it was fun anyhow. And the White Knight won... and he was a she.

But someone was missing on this whole event and we had to wait until the end before we finally saw him: the jester. Well, Dave tried to be one all the time, but it wasn't really the same. But then, just when we were ready to leave, we saw him standing right by the exit:


I had a hard time pulling Dave away from him. He was just fascinated ;o)
But there is an end to everything and finally we took our Mustnag for the right home.




Oh, by the way. It was a really big event and as you can imagine there are a lot of possible hazards there. Especially with all the open fire places. But we felt pretty save after we've seen the three buckets a the fire point. Especially since all of them were filled with water.

Have a great week!

Time is flying...

Hi, I am still alive ;o) April was a great and very busy month. But today (ehm, yes, it is already May) I decided to take some time and give you a quick review.
First of all:
I want to leave this cake without a comment. You know what it means.... but I am still happy:

But that great event took place in the middle of the months. Before that very good friends of mine from Germany came visiting. Frank, Tine and their two sons Rainer and Manfred stayed with us for almost a week and we explored the area here. And you know what: I never took my camera with me. Don't ask me why. Mainly because the weather wasn't sunny. No, it didn't rain, but while in Germany my friends were able to use the pool, in England it was cloudy and not very warm.But we enjoyed the time together anyway. On the first day there was a miniture steam engine rally going on in Thetford. Almost 30 functional steam engine models made their way through town. We had fun watching them and exploring Thetford after that.
We also went on day trips to Cambridge (yes, we do this with everyone), Lavenham, Norwich, we visited the flint mines at Grime's Grave, the Anglo Saxon Village and of course the base. In the evening the boys had fun finishing my Madagasca Wii game (I only got to 6%) while the rest of us tried different wines and talked, talked, talked. I love having guests here!
They also stayed over my birthday. And it was a very fun day. Dave had a present for me almost every two hours. It went like "honey, it is noon, time for the next present!" I loved it, we had fun. We went out for dinner and this is where I got my last present (handed to me by the waiter) and a candle on my desert. All in all I can say that turning 40 isn't as bad as I expected.

My birthday was on a Thursday and I took the ferry to Germany on Friday. My friends in Germany organized a birthday party for me on Saturday, so Dave and I wanted to be there ;o) It was only a small party since we will have a really big one as a farewell party in September. But we had fun. Everybody brought some food, Marcus made some music and we just enjoyed our time.

While Dave had to leave on Sunday I stayed for another week. Most of the time I spent with sorting out things I want to bring to the US and those things that can go to the garbage. It was kind of living the last 40 years again. I found old journals, photos, letters and postcards, packed all my books (I won't leave one of them in Germany, I love books.... as much as I love stuffed animals) and cleaned out some paper work. Now almost everything is ready to go to England first before it will be shipped to Maryland. The plan is to rent a little truck and move the stuff mid of May. My brother will help me with it.

I also had some non packing times. For example I had coffee with Marcus' parents, lunch with two of my former colleagues and a day in the zoo with a friend of mine. And Dave flew in again for the next weekend. We finally did some shopping. The main thing we wanted to buy was the silverware (well, not real silver, but very, very nice) that Dave's parents got us for our wedding.
We spend the Saturday moring downtown Essen for all these shopping activities, in the afternoon we did a looooong geocache in my neighborhood and finally we had sushi for dinner with Marcus and Eva before the four of us watched "Into the wild".

Sunday we went to Juergen and Ingrid's place. It was Ingrid's birthday and we were invited for a brunch. Yammy.
Dave flew home on that evening and I took the ferry on Monday.

Now I am back to England, the weather is beautful, Amber is waiting for going for a walk in the woods and we are planning our summer. We are really looking forward to our trip to Scotland (with Amber) and all the people who plan on visiting us before we'll leave. Only 5 months left...