It's Christmas tomorrow. Now the birth of some dude two thousand years ago doesn't mean much to me, but I have to admit that the kickbacks of that advent are pretty cool. We've had a work Christmas event in Klagenfurt, another one in Zürich, and now I'm on Christmas holidays. Hallelujah.

First, the work event. Just like last year we were flown to Ljubliana and a taxi drove is across the Sloveian border to Klagenfurt. This time it was on Thursday night, and with a developer meeting planned for Friday morning we (the Swiss guys) sensibly and defiantly hit town. Naturally Friday morning was terrible. Nothing new there. After the dev meeting we went bowling (see below), and then went back to the flat to sleep a bit. Friday night was the planned event, this time hosted in the cellar of the brewery across the road. Well you can guess the theme. Still strung out from the night before, I didn't have as much interest in drink as the other guys and, incredibly, escaped the double-hangover that befell the rest of the group. It was well catered with great service and good company.

Saturday we recovered. We ate re-heated pizza from the previous day's lunch, and hung out until the taxi took us back to the airport. Flight was uneventful, though I was just as exhausted as last time. Arrived in Zürich, played some computer games, and slept. Bliss.

The Switzerland work event was also quite cool. The event was in a restaurant atop Uetliberg, which is the nearest, highest point from Altstetten. Food was Raclette, a traditional Swiss meal of melted cheese on potatoes, gurkens, pickled onions, different meats, and other various selectables. It'd snowed at that altitude so everything was white and Christmassy, though a touch chilly.

So Christmas
Standing by the fire, drinking glühwein, and eating bread-on-a-stick.	Uetliberg Lookout Tower

So Chrstmas Event No. 2 was cool too. Last weekend Thomas, Jürgen and I went to Austria to go skiing. We spent the first day in a thermal resort, which I must say was fantastic. They had pools, steam rooms, and saunas. We spent the whole day slowly cooking ourselves, rinsing off, and doing it again. Afterwards we met one of Jürgen's uni mates Gandalf in Klagenfurt. We hit town and found my favorite rock bar in Klagenfurt, though it was a little too packed and its music was a little too contemporary for my liking that night.

Rose early the next morning and went skiing. My feet are odd-shaped and don't fit ski boots very well, so I tried snowboarding. Big mistake. I fell on my knees, my ass, my wrists, and my back. Twice I fell downhill, backwards, and thwacked my head on the snow. Second time I broke my beloved sunglasses. Went home with a mild concussion and the solemn determination never to snowboard again. Ha! That'll teach the stupid sport...

And that's all. It's Christmas eve. This morning I went with Emil, Sonya and Claudia to a restaurant called Tanenbaum. Just like last year we sat outside, ate military chow, drank glühwein and froze our collective asses off. Last year there was gourkermusik (a big loud freaking brass band), but this year was an Alp Horn trio. I snapped a shot.

You know, something I like about Switzerland is that the perceived culture actually exists. You really find people who eat lots of cheese, yodel and play Alp Horns. I feel that New Zealand has been somehow misrepresented by an image of strong Maori culture, kiwis, and super-friendly locals. The truth, whether in my opinion or in fact, is that the Maori only one ethnic minority of many intermingled cultures, kiwis are nearly extinct, and New Zealanders are as closeted as any humans you'd find on this planet. Well it's interesting to draw comparison at least.

Tomorrow I have lunch with the Grossi (grantparents) and my cousin Ursula and her family, then head back to Zürich in the evening to catch a special Christmas rock event at the Alpen Rock House. Looking forwards to it. I'll be skiing from Thursday till the 3rd of Jan in Belalp again. There's a big group of us going so it'll be a blast. I'll write all about it sometime.

My two-week holiday is almost over. It's been great. I read a lot, drew, played guitar, wrote, played a lot of computer games, and slept even more. Most days I wake up just in time for lunch. If I wake up early enough I have time to have a shower first. It's been great. Yes, I'm a big lazy sloth. Well that's evolution for you. And you know what? I don't feel the slightest big guilty. It's the first holidays I've taken since I started over a year ago. Earned.

Thomas (my co-worker) had a stressful time doing support at work while I was away. I was in the same position for three weeks when my old project leader Maik did his military service. I feel his pain, and yet I gotta have time off sometime. I stayed in touch and popped in a couple of times to help with techy stuff. Stopped in again today to have coffee with the guys. Maybe I'm a workaholic..? Naah, I don't think so.

Went to Vienna last weekend. Jürgen and I took the night train Friday night from Zürich. We slept overnight in a tiny four-bunk compartment of a sleeper carriage. It was pretty cramped. One guy boarded at around midnight, and someone got up and left at 5am. I woke up both times. The carriage shook and rumbled and I had some trouble sleeping, but for all its inconveniences we went to bed on Friday night in Zürich and awoke Saturday morning in Vienna. That in itself is somewhat of a novelty. Breakfast was unsensational, falling short of even airplane standards, but I drank my tea without milk and enjoyed it.

It had snowed in Vienna and the countryside was completely white. In fact, it had snowed a few centimeters in Fulenbach too (left), but oddly not in Zürich, 100km away.

Jürgen's old student friend and host for the weekend Manu met us at the train station. We grabbed a coffee in a nearby cafe, headed back to her apartment briefly to drop our stuff off, and began to explore Vienna. We checked out the Danube Tower and visited the revolving cafe at the top, drinking coffee at 160m altitude while the Vienna cityscape slowly scrolls past. Nice.

Stefan, another old uni-buddy, joined us and we ate lunch at an Asian buffet restaurant. We hit the streets and over the weekend explored several attractions: museums, Christmas festivals, statues, old buildings, cafes, restaurants, and the old city centre itself with cobblestones horse-drawn coaches.


Saturday night was spent getting hammered on Glühwein, and hammered we got. We consumed eight bottles of red wine, emptying bottle-after-bottle into a pot, adding juice, cinnamon, a special tea, and sugar to offset the dryness of the wine, then heating it and serving it in mugs. Two of Manu's friends visited and partook in our merriment but departed before the merriment contorted into drunkenness like it did to the rest of us. For me it was reminiscent of old uni-student parties in Christchurch with all the foreigners. Just getting plastered on cheap alcohol with good friends. Man, those were the days. We have 'social evenings' with work guys in Zürich too, but somehow the atmosphere's not the same. Perhaps it's too... I don't know, professional? Could it be the absence of cheap beer, the moderation of drinking, or maybe I just don't connect with them as well as I do with students. I still can't figure it.

Next morning we groaned and got up, weary but not hungover. We checked out the natural history museum and with full heads and empty stomachs, had lunch at a typically Austrian restaurant. They specialised in various pancakes, crepes and such. It was great, particularly the desert which was a quark-filled crepe with chocolate sauce, cream and fruit.

We checked out the war museum and eventually, jaded and tired, returned to the flat. We farewelled Stefan and while Manu brought him to the train station we packed our stuff and prepared the final bottle of glühwein.

The trip back was great. Jürgen and I had a two-bunk room, and I was fatigued. I dropped into a heavy slumber and awoke on Monday morning awake and alive. Jürgen posted the full set of pics here.

In general terms, things are okay. Next week I'll be back at work and back to a normal routine. I need to go back to training. The next few months will be eventful. I'm looking forward to it. And of course March is my big homecoming holiday. I've been making plans and sending emails and booking tickets and getting all worked up about it. It'll have been almost two years since I've seen everyone. Including my parents. It'll be a blast.

I just cleaned out the photos from my cellphone. Every so often I snap something. It's nice to put them together.

Until next time,

-Marco

Sunflower Fields Blooming (outside my house)

Clouds through the Corn	In der Ewigkeit

BeerCam

Today's New Year's Day, and I haven't posted since November, so I've got some catching up to do. The answer to what I've been doing for the last three months isn't that exciting - Work. On Monday morning I wake up at 6am, bus to Olten, and take the train to my place of work in Zürich. I bring clothes with me, and sleep for one or two nights in the company flat which usually has a free bed, go to Kung-Fu after work, and return home once or twice a week for fresh clothes. I don't think it would have exactly made an enthralling blog, hence I haven't posted for a while.

Work itself is going okay, though I've really got a lot to learn still, and in a few weeks the project leader Maik will be away for three weeks in the military, and I get to do support all on my lonesome. Should be interesting I think.

Speaking of military, I did attend a military information day, and I won't be doing military service in Switzerland. I don't speak enough Swiss-German, and I'm getting too old (the cut-off age being 25, and kids usually do it at 20), so I have been certified 'Untauglich'. It means I'll have to pay an extra 3% tax, but so be it.

But surely something has happened in the last three months that is worthy of writing home about. Well, in actual fact, several events have transpired which I will report in the next several thousand words (or the equivalent word count value in pictures).

13/12/2006: i-logs Christmas Event, Austria
Once a year my firm hosts a Christmas event in Klagenfurt, Austria. It's thinly veiled as a 'business activity', and there is a meeting on the Friday, but it spans across the weekend, which leaves plenty of opportunity for festivities. Airfare and accommodation is taken care of by the company, so how could I refuse?
We (Maik, Oli and I) flew in on Thursday night, dropped our bags off at the hotel, and Oli led the way directly to an empty bar where over the next half hour we pretty much just got hammered. I thought it was stupid, and said so, but hey - when you've got four empty glasses and four full ones, what else is there to do but drink?
So the meeting on Friday morning was a bit of a challenge, and I almost dozed off a couple of times, but nobody really minds dis attentiveness if you've got a good reason (such as being hungover). Towards evening we migrated from the office to the pub across the road, then out to the Klagenfurt nightlife. 'Twas a pretty crazy night, with the expected drunken antics, but little else to report.

Bowling: Spot the beef	Roland's hand wasn't on my shoulder a moment ago...

Saturday afternoon we went bowling. If I should ever have to bowl to save my life, it'd be a sad funeral. That evening there was a function hosted in a local castle, which was really cool. I hadn't eaten anything all day, and to my delight it was buffet, and I chowed down until I could chow no more. With the exception of Rib Night™, I don't think I have ever enjoyed a meal as much. A few of us were keen and headed back into town, but didn't amount to much.

Sunday was crap. We got back to the hotel around 4am, and had to check out by 11am, so we weren't exactly well rested. Klagenfurt on Sunday morning was cold, and closed. There was a wee market in the town centre that we had a look at, but eventually just ended up shooting some pool until our taxi took us to the Ljubljana airport in Slovenia, where we flew home.

17/12/2006: 70's Theme Party
Sonja's son Rene, who I suppose is technically my step-cousin, was I think turning 30 along with some friends of his, and had a joint birthday party. The theme was 70's dress. The picture (above right) is of Jannick (left), Claudia (right), and myself (center). Jannick did a frighteningly good job of drag, and I dubbed her 'Lola' for the evening.

The party itself was held in a nearby castle, and was a well organised affair with food, drink and entertainment provided. Costumes were many and varied, with most people putting on a decent show. Some of the guests got keen and did stand-up comedy routines, such as this one (right) which started as a two-girl retinue and ended in full-blown line dancing. These crazy Swiss.

The following events including the ski trip and the New Year's eve hippy party will have to be concluded in the next post so stay, er... posted.

And so my time in Austria comes to a close. I’ve stayed in Klagenfurt this weekend, and will fly back Wednesday evening. Gah… flying. I wonder what the chances are my flight will be delayed, cancelled, rescheduled, or otherwise rendered incompetent. Of the five flights I’ve made to and from Austria, only one has actually gone according to the original plan. The worst was going home last Friday, where my flight from Klagenfurt to Vienne was delayed by an hour, which meant I missed the last connecting flight to Zurich. I managed to get on a flight to Basel, take a taxi from Basel airport to the train station (CHF40, halved with someone else) and take the train to Olten. On the plus side my flight was upgraded to business class, and my seat number was A1. Of course by the time I got to Olten it was past midnight and there were no more trains to Murgenthal (my stop), so Claudia came to my rescue and met me in Olten. And it was Emil’s birthday. Thanks Austrian Airlines!

I’ve had a touch of a cold or something since Friday, but it hasn’t slowed me down much. You can’t keep a good man down, as they say. And you can’t keep me down either. Nonetheless I’m quietly spending my Sunday reading Dilbert, watching a German overdubbing of Angels in the Outfield, and updating the blog. Was a really nice day so I went to the Zentrum for lunch and took some pictures.

Yesterday I went walking on the Slovenian border with some guys from work. Actually we parked on the Austrian side, showed our passports to the dude in the checkpoint, and walked up the valley on the Slovenian side. The border is just a 3-foot with a stick-figure sign saying you shouldn’t jump over it. Some rules just beg to be broken. There was a duty free shop too (the border actually runs through the shop), but Austrians and Slovenians aren’t allowed to buy from it, unless someone with a foreign passport buys it for them. Not that I did or anything.
From next Monday I will work in Zurich on a real project. A colleague here at work says he knows someone in Zurich who has a room for rent. I’m quite happy staying in Fulenbach for the moment, but the 90min transit to work and back might change that. I’ll try commuting for the first week and see what happens. I’m looking forward to having a regular lifestyle.

Phew! My first week at work has gone swiftly and remarkably painlessly. What can I say? Austrians speak a funny version of German, which is actually better understood by the Swiss than the Germans. The country is similar to Switzerland in many ways, though they don't eat as much cheese, and have dark beer.

Sunday 01/10:
Posted off my application form for my General Abonument (GA, pronounced gee-haa), which is a pass that will allow me to travel the entire Swiss trains, bus, boat, tram and gondola network for free (or in some cases a reduced fare).
Took the train to Zurich and stayed with my cousin Andrea and her husband Marcell who had kindly agreed to put me up for the night. Thanks guys.

Monday 02/10:
Woke at 5am, showered, had breakfast, and Marcell drove me to the Zurich airport at 6am. This gave me sufficent time to catch my 8am flight, as the earliest train would have arrived at 7:15am, and I didn't want to even consider the posibility of missing the plane on my first day at work.
I borded the plane with no major problems. My surname had been misspelled, but the check-in chick said it would only be a problem if I were travelling to the US. Flew to Vienne, then on to Klagenfurt arriving at 11:10am where my boss Kurt met me there. We drove to my hotel, checked in, and then on to the office. I met the few people who were actually there (seems everyone was away on various business that week), was introduced to my laptop for the time being, and spent the day installing stuff and tinkering with the laptop. By the time 6pm rolled around, I was literally struggling to keep my eyes open. I went to my hotel, drank my first dark beer in four months, ate, and hit the hay.
The hotel is a middle-range hotel with all the necessities and none of the frills. The staff are friendly, I was well fed, and the room was comfortable enough so I can't complain. Given the chance, however, I would suggest to the broadcasting authorities to put on more English shows. Channel 22 was CNN, and channel 27 was German MTV. CNN was stuck on repeat, and as for MTV, watching 'date my mom' quickly lost its charm, which was followed by the gay version of 'date my mom'... I stopped there.

Tuesday 03/10 - Wednesday 04/10:
Spent two days reading technical documentation on the system I will be working with. User manual for entre and technical docs for the main course. API javadoc was for desert but I was full and only picked at it. With all the @enterprise experts out of the office (that's the name of the system I'm working with) I had little else to do.
Back at the batcave... our hero makes a shocking discovery. Swiss power plugs have three prongs, but Austrian power sockets have only two holes, and the home-made New Zealand/Swiss power adapter won't fit any of the ten sockets (I counted) in his room! What will he do??? Without a second's hesitation, using his watch wrist band as a screwdriver, he opens the converter and removes the middle prong. Voilla! Yes, I was pleased with myself, and as a bonus I even got to recharge my cellphone and electric toothbrush.

Thursday 05/10:
Started to get my (clean) teeth into Java which I will admit, was kind of nostalgic. Tinkered mostly. Got stuck on a problem that I'd need to ask someone about, but someone wasn't there, so I went home early.
Went for a stroll into the Zentrum (city centre). Was around a 20-30min walk, and was a nice evening. I would say that Klagenfurt has many similarities to Christchurch, NZ. It has a hospital, an airport, and a university within the city limits. A river runs through Klagenfurt and next to the university (it's bigger and deeper than the Avon though). At the centre of Klagenfurt is a square with a statue and market stalls. Although it's not in the square, there is also a large church. To my amusement I noticed a brothel operating opposite from the church, and pondered breifly to myself the order in which patrons visit the two establishments (sinning, and then repenting, or vice versa). I stopped by nearby bar for a beer (not the brothel), and then tasked myself with the difficulty of getting home again.
Finding my way into town was easy - just walk towards the church spire. At the uni I asked some people which way to the Zentrum and was told to go "Uber der brucke, links, und immer gerade aus" (over the bridge, left, and then keep going). Getting home, however, was slightly more difficult. Yes, I have to walk away from the spires, but in which direction, and I can't exactly ask the way to my hotel now can I? So how to get home? Easy. It's a ranger class-skill called intuit direction. Obviously. I take a bearing of what I sense to be north, and away I go. After ten minutes walking having still not recognised anything I make an executive decision and take a left turn, which leads me to the Hospital. Twenty minutes after cutting through the hospital in search of a backtrack (or a taxi by this stage) I find Feldkirkner Strasse (which I wrote down on my way in). I momentarily revel in my victory over maps, taxis and other common sense approaches, and head for my hotel with a healthy appetite.

Friday 06/10:
Check out at 7:30am. Head to work, and pass the day on the mini-project I've been toying with. At 5pm Kurt drops me to the airport. The flight is delayed, and my connecting flight is brought forward by half an hour, which means that my flight to Zurich boards at one end fo the airport as I land at the other. Fantastic. Well at least I wasn't the only one running to the terminal.
Land in Zurich, take the train to Murgenthal, walk home to Fulenbach, and get home just on midnight. Find my clothes washed and my bed made. Thanks Sonya. :)

So, that was my eventful week. Tomorrow (Sunday) I'll go to Roger's birthday party, and then on Monday morning I get to repeat it all again. Chances are I'll be spending most of October in Klagenfurt... what a shame... :)