Dron Blog

Israel - December 2011

2012-01-03T11:06:00.013+01:00

As I had to take my unused 2011 vacation days before 31st December 2011, we had a couple of weeks free at the end of the year. Looking for a location that was not too far away where we have never been before, we decided on Israel having had such an enjoyable time in other countries in the Middle East a few years ago - Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc...

Although not my favourite people, we were pleasantly surprised with the sights and history in Israel. We started in Jerusalem which is rich in culture. We visited Bethlehem in the Palestinian West Bank, then moved up the coast to Cesearea, Nazareth, Sea of Galilee, spending a few days in the seaside secular town of Haifa over Christmas to escape the religious nuts who flock to Jerusalem and Bethlehem then! Finally we had a few fun days in the modern city of Tel Aviv right on the Mediterranean Sea with trips to Megiddo, Bet She'an, Akko and the Negev Desert.

Here are a few sample photos:

Merry Christmas 2011!

2011-12-12T19:31:00.000+01:00

Wishing all of you a fabulous festive season, and hope you have a wonderful time.

Maybe try venison this year for a change??

Merry Christmas!

Brian and Sonja xx

Wimbledon and Cornwall

2011-06-27T21:19:00.029+01:00

After a great visit to the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris last year, we continued the tennis fever with a trip to Wimbledon in late June this year. With no tickets to be had in advance, we decided to go for the first day and queue for tickets. But thanks to some advice from an ex-colleague in the know we managed to get some on the Web the day before to avoid getting up before the crack of dawn. Saw some great tennis before rain stopped play on the hallowed lawns:

After the tennis we had a good day out to Brighton:

then headed to Dartmouth via Exeter:

From Dartmouth we headed to Cornwall, staying in St. Ives on the coast, but visiting Cothele, Lanhydrock on the way, then Mount St. Michael, Land's End, The Minack Theatre, Lizard Point and Tintagel from St. Ives. Again, neither of us had been to Cornwall before, and we can highly recommend it for great food, beautiful scenery and lovely weather - in England!!

Long weekend in Porto

2011-06-07T20:54:00.010+01:00

Taking advantage of the German national holidays, we decided to go to Oporto for a long weekend in early June as neither of us had ever been there before. A very pleasant city for a long weekend trip. Despite the people of Oporto being known as "tripe-eaters" we managed to find some excellent local restaurants and didn't eat any innards at all! Highlights were the old town, a trip on the Douro river, and of course the port wine:

Highlight of the year - Myanmar

2011-05-05T20:52:00.000+01:00

Without a doubt our major trip of the year was to Myanmar (better known as Burma) in April. A wonderful country full of tradition, colour, amazing sites and incredibly friendly people despite the horrendous political pressure that they live with.

Hard to select only a handful of photos to give a flavour of this marvellous land, but here goes:

Chicago - late January

2011-01-29T18:21:00.000+01:00

Business trip to Chicago at the end of January 2011 just to prove that it really is as cold as they say in winter! Temperatures of -22C kept us indoors most of the time, but some stunning scenes outdoors:

Skiing in Italy & a few days in Venice

2011-01-14T18:11:00.000+01:00

2011 got off to the usual start skiing in the Dolomites with some friends, this time staying in Lagacio Mountain Residence (http://www.lagacio.com/) which we can highly recommend.

We also had a few days in Venice before the skiing which was actually a great time to visit this unique city

Festive Greetings 2010!

2010-12-22T22:24:00.000+01:00

Well, another year almost over and it's time for silly Christmas and New Year messages. You can read all about our travels throughout the year below, and if you are really bored you can check out the other years at the links to the right.

Hope you all have a wonderful festive season, and a good start to 2011, with much health, happiness and success.

But remember, Santa will not be visiting this year...........

Winter Wonderland!

2010-12-01T18:14:00.009+01:00

The end of November and early December saw an incredibly early return to deep winter with a ton of snow falling over a few days and cold temperatures down to -11°C. Hopefully this will not be the trend for the next 4 months, otherwise it will be a very long winter. Here are a couple of pictures from our apartment window.

San Francisco Giants!

2010-10-18T17:40:00.036+01:00

We were also fortunate enough to be able to combine a business trip to San Francisco with some free time in October, and were lucky to hit one of the few heatwaves that San Francisco experiences with daytime temperatures of 28°C only dropping to 23°C in the evening. What a great tonic before returning to winter in Europe.

We visited all of our favourite haunts in the city, and also discovered some new places. A highlight of our trip was seeing Aimee Mann live at Yoshi's Jazz Club. We've seen her before in Munich, but never in California nor in such a great intimate setting. Needless to say, she was fantastic.

This year the city was buzzing with the potential of the baseball team, the Giants, winning the World Series for the first time since they moved from New York. We visited the Giants Ball Park which was not built when we lived in the city, but tickets were impossible to come by.

They did win the World Series 4-1 against the Texas Rangers. Go Giants!!

Summer in Nice .....again!

2010-08-12T14:44:00.002+01:00

We are so glad that once again we headed to Nice in the South of France for our summer holiday as this year in Munich the summer weather was awful. Not so in our favourite Meditarranean city which is always beautiful, warm and sunny at this time of the year.

Never disappointing!

Royal Stockholm

2010-06-24T14:04:00.028+01:00

The end of June found us in Stockholm, Sweden amidst a Royal Wedding. We had long planned a trip to this magnificent Scandinavian city, and we were not disappointed as we managed to arrange it to coincide with the wedding of Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling. The Swedes are a cool lot, but they turned out in their hordes to catch a glimpse of the Royal couple. We were in the thick of it, as their Royal barge circumnavigated the island where we were staying (Skeppsholmen) before dropping them off at the Palace. We even managed to see them give their first speech as a married couple from the balcony of the palace with thousands of others. You can just about make them out here....

Apart from the wedding, we had a great time in Stockholm which is such a beautiful city in the early summer:

Of course, we visited the Vasa Museum containing the ship which sunk in Stockholm's harbour in 1628 and which has been lovingly restored to almost its complete state back on that fateful day.

We thoroughly enjoyed exploring all parts of the city in the long summer daylight by foot and even better by boat. No trip to Scandinavia is complete without eating some excellent fish and seafood which we found particularly good at the Östermalms Saluhall.

Roland Garros

2010-06-07T00:02:00.005+01:00

Early June found us in Paris for the Roland Garros French Open tennis (this time no volcanic disruptions to our flights!). We had never been to a Grand Slam event before, but thanks to our friend Mary who lives in Paris this year we had tickets for the Mens' and Ladies' Semi-finals. Sonja was hoping to see Roger Federer as she is a huge fan, but unfortunately he was knocked out in the quarter-finals by Robin Soderling in what will be remembered as a tournament of upsets.

Nevertheless we did see Rafael Nadal playing and many of the top women's players including the Williams sisters in the ladies doubles final:

Barcelona - volcano again!

2010-05-10T23:38:00.012+01:00

Soon after arriving home from Thailand, we were off again on a business trip for the Symyx Annual European User meeting this year in Barcelona from 4th - 7th May. The hotel for the event was the amazing Hotel Arts (http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Barcelona/Default.htm) right on the water at Port Olimpic:

Although the weather was not as we would have liked/expected at this time of the year, the meeting was great, and it is always good to be in Barcelona. Since the meeting finished on Friday 7th May, we decided to stay on that evening and fly home on Saturday 8th May. Big mistake! On Saturday morning, our old friend the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland was up to its old tricks again, this time spewing an ash cloud across Spain! We received a text at midday saying that our evening flight had been cancelled and that Barcelona airport was closed, and the earliest we could return would be Monday. Unfortunately we had already checked out of our hotel, and when we tried to check in again were told that the same room we had paid €150/night for earlier was now €900/night since the Spanish Grand Prix was in Barcelona that weekend. Needless to say, we found another hotel close by, and tried to enjoy being stranded again. This time it was only for 2 days, and we did pick two amazing locations to be stranded - Bangkok and Barcelona. Nevertheless, some colleagues did vow never to travel with me again as we seemed to be jinxed around that time!

Stranded in Bangkok!

2010-04-27T22:10:00.001+01:00

After a long cold winter, it was wonderful to escape for a 2-week beach vacation in early April to Phuket in Thailand. We stayed in the wonderful Twin Palms resort (http://twinpalms-phuket.com/) on beautiful Surin beach, which was amazingly peaceful:

The weather was fantastic every day we were there, and all was going so well until we flew back to Bangkok for our connecting flight home to Munich. Unfortunately, we just missed the last flight out of Bangkok to Europe on 17th April due to the ash cloud over Europe caused by the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull which had erupted the days before and thrown a huge volcanic ash plume over Europe:

There was chaos at Bangkok airport with all flights to Europe cancelled, and people continuing to pour into Bangkok from locations all over Asia, as Bangkok is one of the major Asian hubs. After a couple of nights in an airport hotel, it became clear that the chaos was going to last a long time, but nobody knew just how long. We decided to check in to a hotel in the centre of Bangkok and try to enjoy it. We made a great choice in the Arun Residence (http://www.arunresidence.com/), a small boutique hotel right opposite the famous Bangkok landmark of Wat Arun:

Glen and his team at Arun Residence looked after us very well, and we managed to stay there for the remaining 6 nights while we were stranded! We were there in the middle of the most violent period of the Red Shirts protest too, so that added an extra element of excitement!

It took 9 days in total before we could fly back since European airspace was closed for 6 days, and the airlines had to deal with a massive backlog of travellers. We were the luck ones, as some people were stranded for even longer, and others who could not afford to stay in a hotel were forced to stay at the airport all that time! An interesting experience to say the least. We did make the most of it, and saw more of Bangkok than we had ever imagined, and also made a trip to Ayutthaya which was incredible:

All in all, we had a great vacation, and got more than we bargained for. The delay only gave us the chance to enjoy even more of the fantastic food, colours and culture of this friendly country.

Aetheists Come Out!

2010-02-26T14:25:00.000+01:00

Atheists are far more numerous than most people realize. COME OUT of the closet! You'll feel liberated, and your example will encourage others to COME OUT too. (Don't "out" anybody else, wait for them to OUT themselves when they are ready to do so).

Atheists have always been at the forefront of rational thinking and beacons of enlightenment, and now you can share your idealism by being part of the OUT Campaign.

Ask me anything

2010-02-24T10:25:00.003+01:00

Ask me any questions you like by clicking on this link:

http://formspring.me/bdron

New Year - New York!

2010-01-12T19:31:00.009+01:00

We started the year off with a visit to New York on our way to San Francisco for a business meeting. It was cold but amazingly clear....

Merry Christmas 2009

2009-12-13T17:06:00.009+01:00

2009 saw a new job start at Symyx which seriously impacted our travel plans this year! Photos of the 2009 highlights are posted at various times of the year below.

We are both very well, and hope that you will have a peaceful, fun and thoroughly enjoyable Christmas season.

Best wishes,

Brian & Sonja
Munich, December 2009

Morrissey in Paris.....album of the year!!

2009-11-13T14:53:00.003+01:00

The album we played most this year was Morrissey's "Years of Refusal", and we were fortunate enough to see him twice in November - once in Paris in a larger venue, and again in Munich in a smaller venue. Both concerts were great, and if you haven't heard the album, just go and get it!

Wedding of the year.....

2009-09-12T14:28:00.002+01:00

It's a long time since we had been to a wedding, and this year one of our friends from Oxford finally took the plunge after what seems like a lifetime of indecision.......here are the happy couple:

It was great to see so many old friends from my days in Oxford, and a chance to get the kilt swirling again.....

We also took the opportunity to visit some of the old sites of Oxford again which was looking amazing in the late summer sun:

Summer in Nice .....again!

2009-08-31T13:53:00.003+01:00

Well, we just can't stay away from the Côte d'Azur, and again made our way down among the masses for our summer holiday in Nice and St. Tropez in August. Beautiful weather as always, the usual stunning scenery, excellent food and wine, and special atmosphere:

We always look good in St. Tropez!

This year we also managed a short trip to Corsica which was stunning, but very hot on the day we visited:

Around Munich....

2009-04-29T13:36:00.004+01:00

Late April saw some of the best weather of the year 2009, and coincided with the visit of my aunt Jean and cousin Deirdre. We showed them around Munich and even enjoyed some summer beer garden weather sitting outside admiring the beautiful scenery around the special part of the world where we live, including the surfers in the English Garden in the middle of the city!!

Easter in the Pfalz

2009-04-14T13:16:00.001+01:00

April was a beautiful month in Germany, so we decided to travel to the Pfalz wine region in the west of Germany to sample some of the excellent food and wines on offer there.

We stayed in the classic Deidesheimer Hof hotel in Deidesheim pictured here, which has an excellent gourmet restaurant called the Schwarzer Hahn. Delicious!

We also travelled around the region and

particularly enjoyed the market town of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse.

Skiing a go-go!

2009-01-19T17:00:00.002+01:00

The snow keeps falling, and we keep skiing! This time our most recent trip saw us return to the Dolomites in N. Italy for some wonderful conditions, beautiful scenery, and the most amazing aprés ski activities you'll find anywhere.

Well, it is Italy after all........

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

2008-12-31T15:52:00.007+01:00

We finished 2008 as we began it, in the snowy mountains close to Munich. Here are a few pictures from our recent day trip to Wendelstein:

and a day skiing at the Wilder Kaiser in Austria about a one hour drive from Munich:

The new hot drink on the slopes in Austria at the moment is called "Obama in the Snow" and consists of a hot Tia Maria topped with cream:

I think Obama is going to need something stronger to sort out the US economy and the world's problems when he takes over in January!

Anyway, here's hoping that all of our friends will have much health, happiness and success in 2009.

Happy New Year!

Brian & Sonja.

Merry Christmas 2008!

2008-12-20T23:59:00.007+01:00

Here it comes......

Well, 2008 is almost over and it was an interesting one for us with an unusually high travel quotient being driven by my decision to seek a new job challenge and leave Ingenuity after 3.5 very successful years. You can read about our travel exploits below.

We are both very well, and hope that you will have a peaceful, fun and thoroughly enjoyable Christmas season.

Best wishes,

Brian & Sonja
Munich, December 2008

Turning Japanese

2008-12-15T18:32:00.001+01:00

With some unexpected time on our hands, we decided to accept an invitation from a friend to visit Tokyo, and also spend a week in Kyoto. We certainly didn't regret it in the slightest as Japan turned out to be an amazing place.

In Tokyo, from the traditional costumes at Meiji Shrine on a Sunday afternoon:

to the wacky creatures close by in Harajuku:

We also took a day trip to Kamakura and the wonderful Hasedera Temple where we were lucky enough to enjoy the turning of the autumn leaves:

On our way from Tokyo to Kyoto with the Shinkansen Bullet Train, we caught this glimpse of Mount Fuji photographed directly from the train as we hurtled past at 300km / hour:

Kyoto was quite a contrast to Tokyo with a slower pace, and hundreds of temples, shrines and
palaces to visit, and those omnipresent autumnal colours:

Kinkakuji Golden Pavillion Temple:

Of course, everywhere we went the food was truly delicious. Not only the amazing sushi and sashimi, but also the array of fresh vegetables, tofu, yakitori, hiqh quality beef, etc.....

and finally.....

how will we ever cope without the luxury of heated toilets seats and automatic flush now that we are back in the Third World!!!

Beyond the Axis of Evil....

2008-10-14T22:59:00.008+01:00

Syria and Jordan were next on the agenda, and turned out to be great to visit. Don't believe all that hype about Syria being a dangerous place harbouring terrorists. It's actually a wonderful place for tourists! Maybe that's what George W. meant since terrorists and tourists sound the same in his Texan drawl....

Starting out in Bosra with it's perfect amphitheatre (see above) to rival anything in Italy, we moved on for several days in the capital Damascus which was one of the most delightful cities we've ever visited:

Heading north we visited the amazing Roman cities of Palmyra and Apamea which are
exquisitely preserved:

Then on to Aleppo with its impressive Citadel:

and back to Damascus via Krak des Chevaliers, one of the greatest Crusader fortresses ever built, and today home of one of the best chicken and mezze restaurants in the world (Restaurant al-Qalaa):

Jordan was altogether a much more Western affair, with Amman simply a large unforgettable city, but it does host three of the most amazing places in the Middle East. The unforgettable ancient city of Petra:

the desert of Wadi Rum:

and the famous Dead Sea, where it truly is impossible to do anything other than float due to its incredibly high salt content:

Baltic Sea (Ostsee) - August 2008

2008-09-12T18:20:00.000+01:00

Summer holiday spent this year in Germany on the coast of the Baltic Sea in former East Germany. A magnificent part of the world which has very little international tourism, and hopefully will remain a secret for longer.

Places of interest on the mainland included Kühlungsborn with its magnificent beach and old seaside town feel:

The Fischland peninsula, with its thatched houses and quaint villages:

to the island of Rügen with the charming Binz and the magnificent pier at Sellin:

and everywhere, those uniquely wonderful beach seats to soak up the summer sun and protect from the wind:

Good morning Vietnam!

2008-04-21T17:44:00.002+01:00

Great time spent in early April visiting Vietnam from Hanoi in the North (including the magnificent Halong Bay seen here):

and then to Hoi An where we took a Vietnamese cooking class and enjoyed some relaxation:

before heading to Saigon for some city living and historical sight-seeing:

Happy New Year 2008!

2008-01-04T15:42:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

Hope you and your families will have a healthy, happy and successful 2008! We got ours off to a strenuous start with a 3-hour trek through the snow on New Year's Eve with snow-shoes on our way up to the Kreuzeckhaus close to the Zugspitze above Garmisch. You can see the house where we stayed above.

It was a glorious day on New Year's Day and what better way to shake off the hangover from the night before than wandering round the Alps in fresh powder snow with the snow shoes!

Happy 2008!

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-22T19:30:00.000+01:00

Well, it's that time of the year again. Peace on earth, goodwill to all men, and annoying Christmas songs! Here's my contribution:

Wishing all of you a peaceful Christmas, and rude health in the New Year, and check this out:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1619520065

or click on the "Elf Yourself" link at the right hand side.

Best wishes,

Brian.

Amy MacDonald

2007-12-14T21:18:00.000+01:00

I was in Scotland briefly earlier this week for a family funeral, and as I was driving around this song was being permanently played on the radio. A really great sound from new Scottish talent, Amy MacDonald. Enjoy in this link below:

England don't make it either......

2007-11-22T13:43:00.000+01:00

SCOTLAND DIES LAUGHING!

TRIBUTES are being paid to Scotland this morning after the entire
country laughed itself to death.
The alarm was first raised at around 10pm last night as thousands of
phone calls and text messages went unanswered.
Small groups of volunteers from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and Carlisle
ventured north just after midnight only to find houses full of dead
people gathered around still blaring television sets.
By dawn, as RAF helicopters flew over deserted city streets, it was
clear that the whole country had suffered a catastrophic abdominal
rupture. Most would have been dead within minutes

Wayne Hayes, a special constable from Northumberland, said: "We
went into one house in Dunbar and found three men sitting on the sofa
with huge smiles on their faces, still holding cans of 70 shilling. They
seemed to be at peace."
He added: "In a house near Edinburgh we found a man face down on the living room floor with his trousers and
pants round his knees.
"It seems he may have been showing his bare buttocks to the television when he keeled over."
Roy Hobbs, a civil engineer from Northampton, said: "I got a call from my friend Ian in Stirling at about 9.50pm.
"He was already laughing when I answered the phone, but after about 25 minutes of the most vigorous and
uncontrollable hilarity, everything suddenly went very quiet."
Moving tributes are already being placed along the Scotland-England border with many mourners opting to leave a
simple bag of chips or a deep fried bunch of flowers.

The Daily Mash - SCOTLAND DIES LAUGHING Page 1 of 1
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=549&pop=1&page=0... 22/11/2007

Egypt with Zara!

2007-10-19T21:47:00.000+01:00

During the first 2 weeks of October, we spent a magical time with our friend Zara in Egypt visiting all the cultural highlights from Cairo to Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel. We didn't fall for the tourist trap of taking a cruise down the Nile, but instead travelled by car and plane between the major destinations. Obviously the highlights were the Pyramids at Giza and the temple at Abu Simbel, but the whole trip was wonderful. None of us had any problems with the food, and the people were very friendly. Here are some of the highlights:

McFadden - Wondergoal

2007-09-13T22:10:00.000+01:00

France 0 - Scotland 1

After having beaten them at home, everyone feared that we would get a thrashing in Paris, but James McFadden's wondergoal turned the footballing world on its head with a famous victory and the best goal of the Euro 2008 qualifiers. We didn't make it to the finals, but this goal will live long in the memory:

Côte d'Azur - July 2007

2007-07-20T22:18:00.000+01:00

Can't seem to stay away from the Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez area. Can you guess why:

Barcelona -early June

2007-06-04T20:50:00.000+01:00

Much better weather here in the land of Gaudi, Tapas, fish and beaches.......

Cool shop window designs.....

and great restaurants.....

Scotland in May.....

2007-05-21T21:44:00.000+01:00

Should look like this, but when we were there in May this year it was more like this.........

Still, these guys don't care.......

April was a blur!

2007-05-11T21:46:00.000+01:00

Apologies for not posting for a while, but April came and went in a flash. It started beautifully with a 2-week vacation to the West coast of Florida. We stayed in Key Largo and visited some of the Keys as far as Marathon, then drove up through the Everglades to Naples. Wonderful scenery and wildlife on the way as you can see.

Continued up the West Coast to Sarasota, Sanibel, Captiva and St. Petersburg. The geography of this area is stunning and the beaches incredibly beautiful. The weather was gorgeous, but only slightly better than at home in Munich this April. Just our luck that we booked a winter holiday in the sun when winter in Europe was the warmest since records began!

Anyway, we finished off with a few days in South Beach, Miami which brought us slowly back to the real world (but only just!).

The day we arrived back to Munich on April 17th, I had the bad planning of having to dash home from the airport, have a quick shower, re-pack my bag and go straight back to the airport for a flight that afternoon for a business trip that week in UK. There was literally no time for jet lag, but I wouldn't recommend it, and I certainly won't do that again! The following week was travelling again to Switzerland for our first European User meeting which was a huge success. Another trip to UK the following week, completed a month in hotels, airports meeting rooms and beaches!

Happy Birthday Dick!

2007-03-06T23:35:00.000+01:00

Who doesn't know the name Fosbury? Synonymous with the famous high jumping style pioneered by US athlete Dick Fosbury who celebrates his 60th birthday today, 6th March 2007, Dick's is a great story of having the guts to try to do things differently. At first everyone laughed, but he revolutionised the high jump using his back-first technique, now known as the Fosbury Flop. His method was to sprint diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backwards over the bar.

Dick Fosbury, born in Portland, Oregon, first started experimenting with this new technique at age 16, while attending high school in Medford, Oregon. He found the variety of techniques used at the time—such as the "Eastern Cut Off", the "Straddle" and the "Scissors"—too complicated.

As a student at Oregon State University, he won the 1968 NCAA title using his new technique, as well as the US Olympic trials. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, which were held in Mexico City, he not only took the gold medal but set a new Olympic record (2.24 meters / 7 feet 4.25 inches), displaying the potential of the new technique.

Despite the initial skeptical reactions from the high jumping community, the new technique quickly gained popularity, and it is almost exclusively used by modern high jumpers.

What have you tried to do differently today?

2007-02-15T20:36:00.000+01:00

During a recent trip to Frankfurt, I had the chance to drive by one of my favourite German Wineries in Oppenheim (www.heydenwein-oppenheim.de/) and load up the car!
Was a great opportunity to meet again with Frank Heyden who runs the operation now and to try out some of his great wines. My favourite is still the Riesling Spätlese trocken which is currently sold out, but I already tasted the new 2006 which is not on sale yet, and it is a belter! Also highly recommend the Spätburgunder trocken »INNOVATION« which gives the French Pinot Noirs a run for their money. Keep up the good work Frank!

This was never a try.....

2007-02-04T19:25:00.000+01:00

OK, so England won fair and square, but this was never a try. The whole of his right leg was clearly in touch before grounding the ball, and clear for all to see including the TMO watching the video replay. How much were England paying Donal Courtenay to turn a blind eye?

Farcical.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

2007-01-25T21:27:00.000+01:00

Well, the end of January has been a hectic time. Last week we were in San Francisco for a kick-off meeting where the weather was chilly (by Californian standards) but not a cloud in the sky for the entire week. Views like this one sum it up. Clear blue skies, and stunning views. We then spent the weekend in Chicago, with Sonja staying on there for a few days visiting Zara and getting acclimatised to the shock to follow........

Now, contrast this with the scene that confronted me when I arrived back home in Munich where we had the first (long-awaited) winter snowfall:

At least it wasn't as bad as my colleague Adam, who returned from the San Francisco trip to find his car at the Heathrow airport long-term car park looking like this (his was the Volvo V70 on the right!). Apparently, the car parked next to his had an electrical fault and caught fire, with the exrteme winds whipping the flames over several cars next to it. It took 5 fire engines to put out the flames, and the result was this write-off:

Are you a nerd?

2007-01-07T21:45:00.000+01:00

So you've made it to my Blog which means you must already have some degree of nerdiness or geeky tendencies. A friend of mine recently sent me this Nerd test to see how technically proficient and otherwise socially deprived you are.

Do let me know your score.......

Happy New Year!

2006-12-30T22:47:00.000+01:00

Here's wishing everyone a Happy 2007! We are currently in Marseille on our way to spend New Year in Béziers with an ex-colleague of mine who celebrates his 40th birthday on 1st January! Marseille is not much of a city, (our major achievement was avoiding stepping into dogshit over the past couple of days!), but we did spend Friday in Aix-en-Provence and Avignon which we'd been to before and always worth a visit.

The weather has been great for this time of year, and sitting out for lunch in the sunshine is special in December. This is a view of the old port of Marseille which we took earlier today:

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-18T21:40:00.000+01:00

Well, this year no dancing Santas, reindeers, or snowflakes falling but a new format to allow you to add your own comments to my Christmas Blog! This is the first time I've tried blogging, so apologies if it's a little basic to begin with.

We are staying at home this Christmas, but going to the South of France to celebrate New Year with some friends there and then a trip to San Francisco in January to kick-off the year with my current company Ingenuity Systems (www.ingenuity.com) which is doing very well.

2006 was a big anniversary and birthday year for us, with our 10th Wedding Anniversary in March being followed later in the year by Sonja turning 40, and then me turning 45 a week ago! The photo above shows that we are not looking that old, although the sunglasses are necessary!!

So how did you enjoy the World Cup this year? Send me your stories! To be here in Germany in the thick of it all was amazing, and we even managed to see Brazil v. Australia live.

Lots of holiday travel as usual this year - San Francisco, Las Vegas (the old wedding venue!), Laos/Cambodia, Puglia in Italy, Cassis/St. Tropez in South of France, and Chicago were the highlights.

So, I won't bore you with any more for now, but I might add another post during the festive season. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and don't forget to check the charity links to the right of this message, and donate to a worthy cause at this giving time of the year.

Best wishes,

Brian.