Mountain violation

My boss, who owns a degree in geography, calls it "mountain violation", I call it one of the best way to pass a winter day in Austria ;).
Today I had to get up early (7:00 AM) to get ready to drive to one of the closest skiing areas. This time we decided against Reit im Winkel because it's boring and has to many T-bar lifts *brrr*. Thus we went to Lofer in Austria a skiing area especially built for families. In general the slopes are manageable for beginners apart from some rather exhausting parts.
Here are some pictures from our snow event:

For tomorrow we have planed to watch Avatar in 3D. Unfortunately, we will have to go to Austria again because it's the closest cinema with 3D technology from Andrea's mother's home. This time we will drive to Braunau which was the birthplace of a rather unpopular German/Austrian celebrity. Well, at least the cinema is great.

The miracle of missing loved or handy objects

When we put together the new couch at my mothers house a few days ago I wanted to use an electrical screw driver to ease the effort. Unfortunately or as usual we didn’t find one in father’s well equipped “Werkstadt”. To enable us to put the couch together my mother bought a new one, and in memory of my father a good one of course.

I seriously know that we already own at least one good electrical screw driver but all of them seam to be on holiday at the moment.

Did you ever experience one of this situations? What I really would like to know is where is the stuff we are searching desperately for? I came up with this answers so far:

• gone, but nobody knows where
• well hidden
• a glitch in our brain we never had such a thing anyway
• happily living at a friends place because we lent it and forgot about it
• ran away in frustration because we didn’t used it
• somehow found the way in the trash can and was disposed

One might be an answer for the absence of one or two electrical screw drivers but for all of them? Apart from the screw driver I am missing my wool gismo and I am searching for it every time when I am at my mothers place. A wool gismo is a machine to make a wool ball and is very useful if you don’t want to do it by hand.

Until now (yes I tried it again also my mother told me that she hadn’t found it while cleaning the roof in summer) I haven’t found it.

The more I write the less I believe that this is normal, the house must be bewitched.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the couch but I took some while we put the other furniture together. I love the fireplace my mother got installed ;)

Take care of your belongings ;) and pet them from time to time.

Christmas in Berlin :)

Ok here is my confession, I went shopping on December the 20th. That does not sound odd at the first glance but it was the last Sunday before Christmas and I shopped at Berlin's biggest mall. Apart from the people, the Christmas decoration, the prices and the need to find the last gifts it was great ;).

My mom even tried Burger King which really is rare ;). At the end of the day I finally had all my presents ;).

As usual the mall was decorated with lots of lights, and trees. I tried to take some pictures but they didn't turn out that good. Here are some of the less horrible ones:

Ratatoui

Here's the story behind the dinner. We ate "Michey & Co" pasta which I got from my sister.

The pasta was quite ok but the wrapping was even more interesting. Being produced in Italy the information text was translated and the result is rather shocking.

I would have photographed the English text as well but it was more or less ok thus this is just a German text joke :(.

Anyway the pasta itself looked great. The package contained different Disney figures but I didn't find all of them :(.

And here is the final meal:

An Angel for Mom

As I wrote before Christmastime is a very bad time for blogging creative results. Luckily I send some of my creative stuff to my family as small gifts in the Advent calender. Here are some:

An Angel for my mom

Some small hearts.

Today we will eat "Ratatoui" as an evening meal cooked by Rolf :). I'll hang out close to the kitchen to take some pictures because we will use special pasta today ;).

Stay connected.

:( I definitively need to get Swedish right

As I wrote before, languages are very fascinating, at least for me. I always want to understand the people wherever I am. Well, sometimes it's good not to understand ;) but apart from these moments I prefer to understand what's written or spoken. Today I took a look at a multilingual system and got hooked up again. This language is just adorable and short: "Lahajapaperililaus"
It's the only language that can state even complicated issues in one word.
Unfortunately I restricted myself regarding the amount of languages I learn to the current ones (English, Spanish, and Swedish). Once I'm good enough in Swedish I will pick up Finnish.
Working in an international driven company I probably should rather learn Polish or, Russian but I haven't developed interest in this languages yet. Some weeks ago a colleague mentioned that I should learn Rumanian instead of other languages because it's such a nice languages and so easy to learn etc. That's more interesting than Russian or Polish because I already know someone to talk to. Here's my language wish-list for 2010:

1.) Conserve my English
2.) Taking the next step to fluency in Spanish
3.) Finish the Swedish textbook (finally, I'm stucked in the middle)
4.) If there is time left (which probably isn't) start learning Finnish

I guess my annual goal planing session for 2010 will be complicated the world just offers too many fascinating topics to learn about. Once I'm done with the goal settings I'll let you know :)

Take care.

Christmas calenders the second

I forgot to show one of my other Christmas calenders but that's probably because I forgot that I have it too.
It's a calender that has one tea per day. I thought that it would be fun to have something to pimp breakfast with. During the past days I either found myself gulping down something in hurry or leaving home without breakfast at all. My guess is that I will put the tea into the shelf so that it is surrounded by all the other teas we have at home.

Christmas :)

The days around Christmas are always complicated. There are so many loved ones who deserve a small and nice present. Unfortunately, it's also the time of secrets and so most of the preparation cannot be topic of my blog :(.

Never the less I have something I can show you: my Christmas calenders which are numerous this year:

From my sister Marion:

From my sister Birgit:

From Steffi who swapped calenders with me:

Our community calender:

I wish all of you a great pre-christmas-time with lots of gingerbread and hot spiced wine.