A Bavarian Farmhouse

Snowboarding on the Nebelhorn We were on the Nebelhorn at the weekend and quite an impressive sight it is. Since you have to pay 31 Euros for the day ticket it meant it was a great opportunity to practice riding the stupid tow system. I have been reluctant to practice on the tow, because everytime you fall off you waste a credit. However since the Nebelhorn ticket covers all the chairlifts, gondolas and tows, this was the perfect opportunity to practice. It was also the perfect opportunity to watch worse tow riders than me fall off! I went up with Suse and managed to achieve seven tow rides without incident! Look Ma! No Hands More Pix

Leaning on a lampost at the centre of the universe Well it would be reasonably difficult to resist the temptation especially in a place like Brandenburg Gate ( Brandenburger Tor) where the Berliners, on November 9th 1989, seemed to follow Ronald Reagan's advice and tore down the wall. It has changed immensely since I watched those events live on televison and leaves one with the sensation that you have seen the Forum of present day Rome - the parliament building is just around the corner behind me in this photograph.( It is almost directly behind our dear friend Peter, who can be seen smoking possibly his 20th cigarette that morning in order to counter the high doses of vitamin C he swears keep him chipper. ) Well done Günter Schabowski who surely deserves some sort of award from The School of The Cock-Up Theory of History- he was the DDR minister who having just arrived back from a long holiday, lacked sufficient information about what the party line was on the checkpoints and ...

Dreaming of Snoqualmie Falls I was thinking about the tv series Twin Peaks the other day and just considering how difficult I find it to watch these days. I have the first two seasons on DVD and although I have started watching them, I never seem to find the time to complete that activity - despite the multi- faceted reasons I might profess to have, including Major Hammond searching for the Stargate and not to mention Dr Trey McDonald investigating the strange murder of Laura Palmer. Not that I ever have difficulty couch potatoing my way through other collections including Band of Brothers every Easter and the complete series of ER up to season 8 - after Mark Greene died it had descended too far into soap opera for me. Of course the strange thing about Twin Peaks is that it always reminds of two of my best friends from the 90's Dee Conroy and Emma Burt, I can't really remember a time when Fraser Dickson and me didn't spend at least one evening of the week drinking with the...

The Siemens Dishwasher model number SE24E236EU We ordered this machine from Amazon.de because we buy a lot from Amazon, an awful lot. It was a complete disaster. Firstly, We were promised a delivery period of up to ten days - this is just another way of saying not less than ten days. Then we called the customer service to tell them we had a holiday from the 9th day and they told us not to worry, the delivery company would be given our mobile number and they would call us. Off we went to Berlin for a week during which time we mysteriously received no phone call.... A dead machine Number? What number? When we returned, the delivery company were kind enough to have left us a card letting us know that they tried to deliver the machine on the 11th day and the 13th day. When we called, they knew nothing of a phone call or a number to call. However they could delivery it the next day before 1pm. Legged It The next day ten minutes before one, two scruffy delivery men who seemed unus...

The Siemens Dishwasher model number SE24E236EU I guess this industrial looking bash may appeal to some who admire spartan simplicity in their dishwasher but I am not one of those.

Prad in Süd Tirol Thanks to that marvellous German educational institution -The Excursionen Woche- when students go on trips apparently, we spent the first week of May in the small town of Prad, which is just 50 km outside Merano (called Meran in German). To get there we had to drive through miles of road tunnels and then over the Reschenpass a journey that is quite spectacular with peaks rising in the Ortlergebiet to a height of over 3800 metres which rather overshadows my local hill, Dumyat , back in Stirling which manages to tower over Forth Valley at 418 metres. We stayed in a fantastic little campsite called Sägemühle which still has an old mill although I have no idea whether it was operational. I did mention to Susi that it would make a great restaurant although I guess from the number of properties that are simply wasting away, the local economy might not be able to sustain a restaurant. It is always important to avoid applying a UK business model to the things you see in this...

The Scottish Elections My daughter, being the child of a Stirling CLP secretary, is not ignorant of the voting system in Scotland. However this morning she told me that the ballot paper was so complicated she thinks that she voted for the Labour Scottish MP but got the whole council section wrong and probably spoilt her paper. Along with 99,000 others says the BBC. And she only voted Labour out of loyalty to her father (Stirling Constituency Labour party Secretary 1987. I expect a plaque.) She wanted to vote for the Scottish Socialist Party who promised to reduce the council tax In future, always vote for lower taxes I told her. Even if that means Tommy Sheridan or his pals. So go to the top of the class, Jack. Great idea to have elections on the same day. Oh, and if the SNP kick your ass, that will probably have the same effect on Scottish Labour as Mrs Thatcher had on UK Labour after 18 years. Filtered out all of the dead wood and left behind only the lean, fit and competitive. So......

Bailing at the Grassgeheren in the Allgäu Grassgeherren: where everyone l earns to snowboard This is the off-piste element of the day, if you look carefully you can see that I am exhausted, eating Wurst and drinking coffee. Christian gave us the basics of snowboard training and then gradually took us higher and higher up the slope. This learning concept works well for people under the age of eighteen but perhaps needs some refinement for the elderly. We spent a week in the Allegäu snowboarding. Christian (my brother in law and professional Ski Instructor) is almost military in his training technique so it is appropriate that our Bad Lieutenant helmets are modelled on the military. I think I fell off the mountain eight times before the level of my exhaustion reached acetone production level. Fortunately we had a large supply of Rauchpeitschen, dried dates, pineapple and water available in Red October...

The Little Piste at Eschach Eschach is one of those little pistes that is sort of halfway between a practice slope and a... well just a wee totty slope. The tow was an effing nightmare and I managed to get up it once - the next two times I was totalled. From then on I went up with Susi as a clinging monkey. Susi and I had a long discussion on the subject of ski-slope production lines where I observed that if a single tin of beans pops out of the Heinz beans production line that's a problem. The farmer was just making as much money as fast as he could by pouring skiiers and boarders up the slope like pellet out of a paint ball gun. The point being that he doesn't have any costs if the tins are popped. In the UK he would have a major lawsuit. The slope though is pretty good, like Stuben, it has a long right hand side and this takes you on to great powder. There is a sudden crest and if you aren't aware of it, it will drop you on your face, however it is pretty cool going ov...

Boarding at Stuben Last time we went to Lech it was such a fantastic day that the whole resort was full to overflowing. However further down the mountain range there is a place called Stuben and the practice piste is absolutely top notch. The ski tow is well designed circle type and not the deadly knee-breaking hook that I have managed to get up about twice on my own. Stuben has a nice easy slope with lots of deep snow on the right providing lots of space for nice wide slow practice turns. We had the slope mostly to our selves and had a lunch break at the car for some rauchpeitschen, coffee and seelen (a type of chewy bread named soul!). The weather was superb all day and it cost us just 18 euros for the tow pass for 15 trips. So just nine euros each.

Breaking Snowboarding News almost We were in Lech in Austria on Saturday - No pictures, we left the camera in the car - and we spent four hours on the completely free practice slope! (while our friends paid 46 euro to go up the mountain and ski!) The piste was solid boiler-plate (fancy snowboarding term) and not at all powder, so when you fell over, some of those bails were bonecrushing. Susi says that I fall over very well and that I would make a good stunt man! It is top fun if incredibly exhausting and you get to wear all that cool snow boarding stuff like my Bad Lieutenant helmet (useful for when Susi tells me what I am doing wrong, I get to say "Sir! Yessir!") I have now successfully fallen off four mountains. My skiing score is better I have only fallen off one mountain - but what a fall - and proudly too, like lions!

What do Belgians wear underneath the kilt? I may have mentioned on occassion that I ended up in Ulm when I came here on a student exchange trip between Fife College (deceased) and the FOS BOS. It was indeed a nightmare but there were some rather hilarious moments, in particlar when Hugo Aerts our lecturer in German(!) did his "What is worn underneath the kilt" show. or alternatively: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dht62C5Xfks

Life's A Beach & Then You Fry! One of the best Christmas presents I ever received - besides an X-Box, was this Body Shop Towel that my kids gave me in 1992 or 1993. That towel is has travelled to almost as many places as Camera Teddy and if you look carefully in the photograph you may observe that Camera Teddy is in fact in my right pocket. I have searched the Internet for a replacement but no luck so far. Not that I lost the towel - in true H2G2T2 I left it behind in Scotland when I moved and our Jordan tells me a) she has it, and b) no she's not giving me it back!

Yes Picasa works now!

Blogger Beta doesn't work with Picasa. Are We There Yet? That's good. No honest. Perhaps you could have mentioned this minor inconvenience when you hard-sold the beta version to everyone. You could have said to us at the start of the message: This Does Not Work With Picasa! Seriously, how dumb is that?

Welcome to Bangkok This charming house is where Stevie and Katrin and their kids are resident in Bangkok. It is a quite remarkable place of quiet and sanctitude compared to the madding crowd just a few hundred metres away, on the main road where almost all of BKK's 48 million cars go past every day. It is surprising to experience the contrast that occurs when you leave your copy of The Nation on the porch table with your empty coffee cup and walk for just five minutes along the road to Rama IV Road and the Night Bazaar at Suan Lum. 

I think I have been to the Commando's Memorial four times and each time it has changed or at least I imagine it has. I am sure the last time I was here the pathways weren't so well constructed and a bit of landscaping has taken place. I guess it has had a bit of post neo-independence money. It looks good and the view all around is quite spectacular. My generation regarded it as old- fashioned or right wing to feel any sense of pride about our military, but I have re-habilitated my family's military history and have nothing but respect for the people this statue commemorates and the sacrifices they made. Of many favourite spots in the highlands this is one of them.The snow gate is another but I didn't take a photo of it - so hardly worth a mention!  

Now this is the summit.  

It's official. I can actually claim to have stood on top of a mountain. Well of course there are no real mountains in Scotland so this is bit of an achievement, me at the top of the Jenner in Berchtesgaden. This is not actually the summit it's a few metres before the summit. For an officials summit type picture see the other snaps. 

This little porcelain antique looks so 1930's.