Merry Christmas

It is hard to believe that Christmas is already over! I had a quiet traditional Christmas day with my family which was a nice change to the the usual madness of Christmas shopping, parties and rushing people in the city...







So I found myself back in my hometown with the wonderful Eder dam which is not as big as the Hoover dam (see previous post) but still much nicer in my biased opinion ;-)




But I wasn't there for sightseeing, I was there to see my parents and the place I grew up. Unfortunately without snow... Colorado had a white Christmas this year! Better luck next time.

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas yourself which leaves me wishing us all a Happy New Year! See you all in 2008!

Back home

It is funny how some things change while other things just remain the same. Take my hometown. While my life changed nearly every minute around me the last few years it stayed the same. Just a bit colder then I remembered it ;-)




This is the castle of Waldeck close to my home town (the place where our duke used to stay before he got a more comfy palace down the road). Unfortunately we don't have snow yet even though we have -10 C (14 F) at nighttime. At least everything is white colored by the frosty temperatures I guess. Fingers crossed for Christmas!



And some things are the same all around the world. Like a nice pint of Guinness with your friends. Don't ask me why Yvonne had to order 4 of them at once... no worries though. No pints were wasted for this picture ;-)

Goodbye Ireland

Well... I had a brilliant time back in Ireland. I enjoyed every pint as it was my first pint of Guinness, I felt home in my favorite Fair City pubs and enjoyed meeting all my friends. But all good thing has an end (German saying which doesn't translate that well I guess). So I said my goodbyes to Molly Malone and Ha'Penny Bridge.



And of course to all my colleagues who organized so many night outs and lunches while I was over there. Thank you very much everyone! I had a great time over there again! And I will be back... if you like it or not ;-)

See you all in Colorado!

Trip to Howth

When I was living in Ireland I had one favorite place close enough to Dublin where I could take visitors and friends to show them the beauty of Ireland: Howth. This is a little peninsula just a short tip down the road from Dublin with impressive cliffs and some nice trails to hike.



Ironically I am the visitor now and my friend Brian took me there on Sunday. Even though we had some rough weather it was a great trip and we had lots of fun. Especially having an Irish coffee after the freezing cold. Man, I really missed Ireland!

Back on the Emerald Island

Back in Ireland... finally! I was very happy to see all my friends over there again! And obviously they were missing me too... I found this fridge magnet in my former house where I used to stay. Okay, okay... I left the picture there but I wasn't expecting that it is still there ;-)






My friends were so delighted to see me that they took me out for lunch to a brand new place in Tallaght which is serving very traditional food... Captain America! After having a traditional burger we even went back that night for some pints there.


But I wasn't only for the burgers there! Lucky enough I was able to attend two Christmas parties! The first one of my former department back in Ireland... we had a great blast coming all together for Chinese food and pints downtown.

A cold welcome

It is winter in Germany! While everyone is sitting in beer gardens in the summertime, enjoying beers in the sunshine, at wintertime everything is more less the same. Just replace beer garden with Christmas market, beer with mulled wine and sunshine with snow. And the freezing temperatures in Germany did their bit to make it even more authentic.




So the first think I did arriving in Germany was to go to our local Christmas market and join my freezing friends warming ourselves up with some mulled wine and some proper German sausages. Sweet wintertime ;-)

Goodbye USA

Torstens last week over in the states was my last week too (for this year at least) . After traveling Nevada and New Mexico, seeing fantastic sides like the New Mexico dessert, the Hoover dam, Aliens in Roswell, shows in Casinos, bats in Carlsbad, snow on the Rockies, drunken girls in Vegas, it was time to say good bye.


But Torsten had a blast after all. He was amazed by the huge distances and about all the things you can see and do over here. A good example for the distances you can see on the left... a navigation system on the New Mexican highways is a bit OTT. Driving several hundred miles in one direction is not the exception over there :-)


Four days after this journey we found ourselves back in an airplane one more time but this time heading to the old world. No worries... I'll be back though ;-) And maybe Torsten sooner then you think too :-P

Carlsbad Caverns

After half a day of hunting aliens in Roswell we needed a change. What better way of leaving this world by going into the mythical underground... and New Mexico's south is a fantastic place of doing so with the Carlsbad Caverns at the border to Texas.



Like the mythical underground this cave is keeping a surprise ready for its visitor... in this case a much nicer one then a three headed dog or Medusas... one of the biggest public accessible stalactite and stalagmite stone cave in America.



After nearly 5 hours of wandering around in this maze of astonishing stone formations we met the park rancher who sold us the tickets and who was totally surprised that we were still there. But this pictures really doesn't do the breathtaking beauty any justice.



As you can see New Mexico is not only made of desserts, cowboys, Aliens and UFOs. They have really scenic places here which are well worth seeing! With this knowledge we jumped in the car and continued our road trip.

Roswell revealed

Our next trip took us to Roswell, New Mexico. As everybody knows there are still rumors lingering around that in 1947 an UFO crashed in this little dessert town, so 'Mulder' Ekki and 'Scully' Torsten started their investigations.
Interesting enough is the whole town alien mad and even the street lights have a familiar shape...



But we wanted some hard evidence instead so we drove 20 miles out of town to find the 'historic' crash side. As you can imagine after 60th years there is not much left, especially as everybody is claiming that the military did a fairly good job cleaning the mess up. So Torsten and I had to continue our investigation and finally we found the evidence we were looking for...



in the international UFO museum and research center! Here we found 'real' aliens... and some plastic copies of extraterrestrials. Torsten was not that easily convinced but after having a 'chocolate covered alien' in the 'not of this world' coffee we came to the conclusion that there is so much more then only one crashed UFO. Actually they have three crash sides and the latest scientific research shows that there were two UFOs crashing in mid air! I hope at least one of them had an insurance for earth ;-)