Utrecht

I'll be in Utrecht for the weekend visiting friends and will be back by Sunday. Next week my parents will make a visit in Mannheim. That's for now. Have a nice weekend.

Help the Burmese People...

...and virtually cycle with others along the Myanmar border.

It is a website of some German filmmakers and cyclists, that cycle down the borders visiting refugee camps, child care institutions and hospitals of a charity organization named help without frontiers.

Supporting them is easy and fun. Simply register at the website, donate something and virtually cycle with other donators. 100% of all donations go into charity, all people are volunteers and administrative costs is covered by the members of the charity. Exemplary!

Maxdorf triathlon

I just came home from today's triathlon in Maxdorf, a middle distance with 2 km swimming, 85 km mountaineous cycling and 20 km running. I achieved a time under 6 hours, as I hoped beforehand. 5:51 h was on the clock after finishing under very hot and sunny conditions, not easy. A perfect training sunday for this year's Ostseeman. And I need a lot more of them, as I could feel the lack of training in this season.

Swimming and cycling was good and fun, but the final running part really exhausted me. I definitely have to increase running and cycling in the remaining 8 weeks, or it will be a torture in Gluecksburg. :(

I'll try my very best. See you, Jolle!
PS: The winner needed 3:45 hours, it was Norman Stadler, the current Ironman World-Champion. It's hard to imagine, how anyone can go that fast.

Sorry for the long absence..

What happened in the meantime:

I finished the skyscraper run in a record time.
I finished the Mannheim Marathon in over 4 hours, very bad.
And I finished sleeping the whole last weekend in a perfect shape. :)

Next weekend will be the first triathlon for this season, the half distance in Maxdorf.

More later...

My weekend activity...

Look here. :)

This run is part of the Frankfurt skyscaper festival. It'll be fun, hopefully...

Four summer days spent outdoors...

May first is a national holiday in Germany, so I made it a long weekend. The current summer weather with around 25°C during they day is simply too tempting.

Saturday I went to Alsbach to receive my "new used" race bike which I bought from protrainingtours.de. It's a nice black one and I immediately tried it out on a 70 km mountain tour back to Mannheim.

Sunday some collegues and friends participated in a Neckar valley cycling tour from Eberbach to Heidelberg. Not too hard and not too easy, a good mixture of exercise and rest.

Monday I spent time at home, planting some summer flowers on my balcony among other things. It was a funny trip buying flowers with my bike in a garden discount market out of town. :)



In some hours I will join a hiking tour in the Palantine woods with some friends to finalize this short break from work. It won't be the last for May, luckily.

A long way to Holland...

Wow, this was quite a strenuous weekend - but a nice one. On Friday I drove to Lichtenwald near Stuttgart to meet friends, with which I ran the Lichtenwald half marathon on Saturday afternoon. It's already my third one there, and I will definitely come back. It's really a nice and mountaneous track through the woods.

Directly after the run I again hit the road and drove to Utrecht to participate in Basti's 30 year birthday party. I arrived early enough to get the best of it, I hope. :)

Anyway, it was nice to see them after such a long time. And moreover we had a splendid summer day at (and in) the Northern Sea on sunday before returning to Mannheim.

Mannheim - Germany's hockey record champion

They did it again, the Mannheim Adler (Eagles) won their 6th championship over Nuremberg on 17th April. And we have been in the stadium experiencing this magic moment. Great.


The 3rd match in the play-off finals - and the last one


Finally - they won...


...and got the trophy again




Later that night at Mannheim's central place - the water tower

Visiting home

I had a week off from work during the Easter holidays, which I used relaxing at home and visiting my familly in Mecklenburg. I enjoyed a city guiding tour by my sister...


My sister and me in front of the city tour bus she works in

...starting in front of the famous Schwerin castle.


Schwerin Castle

By the way, in 2009 Schwerin will host the national garden exhibition, for which a lot of parks are re-modeled or created and the castle will be shown without any scaffolding for the first time in years. You better visit us then! :)

What else I did? For sure we had an Easter fire, like every year.



And I had a walk at the Baltic Sea with my mom and grandparents, where we saw this cute seal sleeping at the beach for some hours, before returning to the see. Cute, cute, cute!!

Hamburg

During my stay at home I also visited Hamburg with a friend. We went into the miniature world, a phantastic model train project > check out the website www.miniatur-wunderland.com. Below see some photos of this. But you have to see it on your own to really get the dimensions and details of it.


A fire scene with moving cars etc.


A fair


A part of the skiing mountains


The Hamburg football stadion, the AOL arena...


...and everything that goes with it, like fan riots :)

And once you are in Hamburg, you are obliged to take a harbour tour as well. Especially, if you have sunshine and a clear view.


A sailing ship - nowadays a museum ship


One of the biggest container ships


Blohm + Voss - a traditional shipyard