sunday 1 – listening to radio 4 at breakfast time as usual, went to the bakery round the corner for the usual schnecke, a walnut bread and a carrot semmel
katie hands out her questionnaire about music and i collect in the responses and spend the afternoon summarising them in an excel file.
sabs reminded me of her true nature, as she was when she was a child, that cheeky smile as she was taking a biscuit glancing over to see if anyone was looking.

eve arrives back at around 3pm from her confirmation weekend at Chiemsee and i take the train back to goetheplatz to pick her up as she has no money for a ticket!

friday 6 – go to office:

saturday 7 – went down to lenggries to do some skiing, horrible journey waiting around but got a couple of hours in and was worthwhile to get back into the swing of it, ok on the child slopes, struggled on the piste itself near the top on the steep bits.

monday 9 – good suggestion for accommodation searching:
https://www.airbnb.com/

friday 13 – set off at 3pm for Goldegg in Austria for the skiing weekend with eve and hanna, with her parents. met up with elizabeth and thomas (a director on the Italian insurer Generali’s board); he made some interesting comments that it was the work of schroeder with agenda 2020 (check), which had led to some extent to a protection of workers on lower wages, some 10 years or more earlier.

saturday 14 – poor day just going up and down on the children’s slope then attempting to come down the mountain following eve and hanna but going way off course and into the deep snow, then walking down with the skis for part way until it got easier – a fact which the hikers going up the mountain teased me about – there was an event going on as part of the fasching/carnival weekend and there was much celebration in the evening.

sunday 15 – better day as I resolve to myself to simply confront fears by reminding myself of the following statements whenever I was thinking negatively:

ich habe keine Angst – ich habe die Kontrolle – ich kriege es hin – ich konzentriere mich.

worked, together with the comments from elizabeth (keep vision/hips/knees facing downhill) and thomas (simply push weight to downhill side to brake) – I was mainly coming down like a snowplough, but managed to get down safely and really enjoyed the long stretches where I could ski more parallel down the mountain, rather than across!

then we set off for “Kati Alm” which involved going down the steep bit near the slalom course then back higher on another lift and down another near-vertical bit, followed by a long stretch along a path through the woods – the skis kept getting stuck in the deep tracks and it was hard to control but got there.

We stayed a while, until dorothea and georg arrived, then a painstaking journey back not getting up enough speed to up the other side but it was ok, frustrated thomas, but i made it back in one piece!

monday 16 – returning from Goldegg in Austria on the chundering train back to munich, then a brief stay at home to change and pack, then get s-bahn train to airport for flight to manchester

tuesday 17, skipton – cleaned out the freezer, microwave and oven at mum’s flat at abbeyfield – this task really helped later on as the week progressed, as it would have run out of time otherwise.

thursday 19, skipton – had to work on this day, although had booked as time off.

friday 20, skipton – getting carpets cleaned by:
http://cravencarpetcleaning.co.uk/
the owner of the company did the work, we talked about running as he was keen on that and told a couple of good jokes:
“I employed a polish lady to clean all my carpets and before taking her on, I asked how long she thought it would take, half a day she said – in the end she needed 2 days, turned out she was a Slo-vak”
“which were the 2 worst British winters since 1945?” … “Mike and Bernie”.

saturday 21, skipton – went to abbeyfield and cleaned up rest of flat with josh for the last time; he did the door handles, i did the windows.

sunday 22, skipton – took over last set of clothes to summerfield for mum, jamie did a great job in sorting out her clothes, so we knew what to get rid of and what to keep; then the carers helped with a great suggestion to give more space to the room.

monday 23 – returning to munich

wednesday 25 – sabs sets off to south africa for school exchange