the spy in the rowing boat: May 2007

Bayern, Franken und die Erlanger Bergkirchweih 2007

Over the pentecost weekend, I took Jens and two friends of ours from Oslo, Jasna and Rune with me to Germany, to experience the real beer-culture and visit the Bergkirchweih (The principal is similar to Oktoberfest, it is just a smaller, less touristic, much cosier place, and of course the Franconian beer is a lot better :-))! Of course, I also showed them Munich and Nürnberg as well as the beautiful Franconian countryside (Fränkische Schweiz). According to their comments, Jasna and Rune really enjoyed it and I am very happy and proud that I was able to have won two new "Germany-fans" :-) Thanks a lot for joining you two!

Here are our experiences in pictures:
Munich:

In the English Garden in Munich, there is the beergarden "Chinesischer Turm":

Nuremberg:

Die Fränkische Schweiz:

And last but not least: The Bergkirchweih

Bang Bang

This weekend, we were visiting Jens' brother, his girlfriend and her son (Gjermund, Anne-Milrid and Andreas) in Stavanger. Unfortunately, the weather turned out to be quite negatively correlated to their hospitality (as it is most of the time in Vestlandet), so we had to substitute our plans of climbing up Kjerag with something else.
On saturday we went shooting in the rain and withstood the cold wind - well, some of us did better than others ;-) And even though I am not supposed to mention it, I will mention it anyway: I did better in the shooting competition than my better half!!!! Even though it was my first time! Wow, I'm so proud of myself :-D (Just as proud as I was when I cut Jens' hair and it didn't look that bad at all). Maybe I could have made a police career after all - I always thought my eyesight would be far too bad to hit anything... But quite the opposite, in this competition, the girls were the ruling party.
After this very tough and masculine part, we spent the rest of our stay playing family games, playing with the little puppy Balder, taking him for a walk- oh yes, this was actually a very funny thing. As little Balder is still very young and in the phase were he needs to be educated, Gjermund and Anne-Milrid tried to educate him to follow us and not run off. So we spent the whole walk hiding behind bushes and trees waiting for little Balder to realize that his family had disappeared and start looking for us. I was quite impressed. Even though it sometimes took him a long time to find out we were missing, he always came back for us. Wish I would have had that kind of patience when my dog used to be that little. After some point I always went for him. Although I still think he would not at all have bothered that it was not me he was following but just some random person, as long as this random person had food everything was fine for him...
Thanks Anne-Milrid and Gjermund and Andreas for the nice stay and we will for sure come back - hopefully in nicer weather :-)

17th of May

Again, a fantastic day with even more fantastic (and far too much) food, sparkling wine and a brunch that lastet until five in the afternoon. Thanks Jasna and Rune!

PALMA

Thanks to Jens' job, we were able to go for a long-weekend vacation to Palma de Mallorca. Strangely enough, I didn't come anywhere near the Ballermann 6 the whole time we were being there. I was anyway very surprised of how Palma not fulfilled my kind of negative expectations. I had heard so many bad stories before about drunken, deeply red and fried German tourists populating the beaches while hanging over Sangria buckets the whole day...But: I've seen none of this. Ok, everyone spoke German there, but after such a long time abroad I have to admit I liked it. It felt like home. Only a bit more Spanish and a bit warmer :-)

The other day, we went to have a children's day at Marineland :-) And yes, we were the only adult people without children in this park. It was fun anyway!