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

BBQ Season opened

Yesterday evening we exchanged our weekly regular table at the Irish pub for a BBQ at my place. Luckily the predicted rain didn't show up and we had some nice steaks and salad.

Definitely a good start into a successfull and long BBQ season. Smoke on, Jolle!

Philippine Karaoke

After one of our consulting day evening dinners some of us decided to continue the night at the (in Camelot circles) well known Oldie bar, situated in the Mannheim underground near the station. It's a small spin-off from the neighbouring philippine karaoke bar.

After an hour waiting and drinking finally they played our songs, a very lot of them. Another great evening. :)

1st bier-patrickalon 2007

St. Patrick's Day - always a reason for party. So was yesterday. The famous All-Stars gathered together to celebrate this day with a special event: The Guiness-Patrickalon. A challenge to drink 6 Guinness in 6 Irish pubs in 2 cities in less than 6 hours. We didn't completely succeed, but it more an act of nature than our fault, so it was ok. See the full story...



PS: At the end the patrickalon included a visit to the ballet and a long museum night. Another adventurous Saturday is over.

The 2007 Camelot Ski-Event

Another year has passed. It is now my third Camelot ski event already. Wow, time is really running fast.

Everything was planned well. We had rented a nice old cottage for over 30 people. But unluckily many couldn't take part due to a project. Anyway, 9 of us made their way to the Salzburger Land.

But even if the house was far to big for us, it was a nice mix of people and we had a lot of fun skiing, snowboarding, karaoke-singing, preparing food on the wood stove, watching the horses, rabbits, guinea-pigs in the barn etc.

Also the weather was really nice on one day. Here are some impressions:


(Almost) all of us in front of the old barn


Julia and Wenke at Friday, our nice and sunny day



Steffen performing the dog dance


A 2 day old foal in our barn


The big monster rabbit in our barn

A nice holiday. Now we wait for next year. :)