Yahoooo - its friday!!
Friday means weekend - and therefore its time to celebrate. Here is a very interesting link: Bounce-O-Meter. Not that you think that this is just something to get guys crazy - well - in fact it is - but anyway - I got this link from a girl - thanks for that. Its very interesting to see the difference between sports bras.
So - yesterday night we in fact made it out to town. 3 guys from Borland joined me. We started in the Irish Pub where the bartender remembered my because of my insistance of getting a Black - and - Weiss. For the background on that you have to check March 15th - 17th. Two of them left us at around 10PM as they had to catch the early flight to Frankfurt this morning. Vijay and I continued to Josef where we figured out that it is better to send a girl for the drinks as to get them on your own. Vijay doesnt like beer so we got him some whiskey. The whiskey that we got was more like 3 or 4 drops. Alex joined us for our 3rd round and she made it to the bar. When she came back with the glasses there was at least double the amound of whiskey in there compared to when we ordered it.
At around midnight we left Josefs. Vijay went back to the hotel - Alex went home to her place and I went home to my second living room - Marcelli to visit Alex (the bartender).
The program for the weekend sounds interesting. Now I am just waiting for my weekly 1.5hours of indoor soccer - after that some friends of mine go bowling. Tomorrow I will hopefully make it to Gallneukirchen to celebrate Stefans birthday. And sunday will hopefully be realxing to have a good start into the next week. thats it
cheers

Back at work
After a relaxing day at home I went back to work. A good decision as it turned out as otherwise I would have been bored at home - and also - I may organized a evening in Linz with some folks from Borland that are currently in town. Still waiting for them to get out of the meeting to get them and show them the pubs in town. thats it. cheers

Penumbral Solar Eclipse
Its been the event of the day and I nearly missed it. Well - based on the time information of our austrian news corporation the peak level of this spectacle took place at 12:44. Thats when I made it out of my sick bed to take a picture from the sun - of course with a special filter (sunglasses). Well - I am not really sure if the time information was correct - but Udo actually confirmed that they timing would have been correct - but I saw nothing special. So - I had to fake my picture a little bit :-)

Solar Eclipse from my balcony - seems that my sunglasses had a special filter effect :-)

Soccer, Maximilian and Calling in Sick
My strange feeling about getting sick finally became a real fact - I had to call in sick today. Its not too bad but it got worse compared to the last days - so - instead of waiting another day and realize that I am really sick I decided to stay home to work on my health (sleeping, relaxing, ...).
Yesterday evening I visited my parents - my dad and I had to do some research on the internet as he wants to sell one of his agricultural machines. The interesting thing here is that - if you google for combine harvester (germ: Maehdrescher) - you will get some good interesting results in the paid adds. Try "Maehdrescher inserieren"
After our cyberspace experiences I went to Alex and we had our first real hard decision to make: watching Champions League or not - hm - thats a tough one - but I think I managed the situation in my favor. We watched the game (at least partly) and I also had the chance to teach her some soccer basics, e.g.: Offside (passive and active).
Thats it - cheers

My mum and Maximilian	Me professionally teaching soccer rules

Ill
Unfortunatelly I had to cancel the run today. I already felt it yesterday night that there is something not 100% correct - waking up in the morning gave me the confirmation that its better to stay at home and stay warm.
Because of the Daylight Saving Time change we got up earlier today as we thought that we have to drive to St. Florian. As this has been canceled we have lots of time - probably to visit our parents - doing some work - and hopefully relaxing. cheers
---- (update 20:33) ----
Irene joined us for lunch in the Schlosscafe - the Steak was fantastic!!!! After that our gluttony (I hope thats the correct translation of "Schlemmerei") continued when we visited the parents of alex. After that we had some more food at my parents. Now I try to get to bed ASAP - I am still not feeling too well. Here are some pics from today and one from yesterday when we had our small JVP meeting in Gallneukirchen.

Andi tapping the beer that we won at a recent tournament	Instead of measuring my lap time - I measured my temperature
Alex with all my nephews and my niece	Maximilian and my mum

Headache
Well - I have a small headache today - why that? Because I made my first tour through Linz yesterday night. Everything started at Juergens appartment where we "tested" his Beertender. Then I joined Udo (aka Prinzregent) in the "Kasperkeller". After that I went to "Absolut" where I was supposed to meet Yoshi. I met him - but also met Kerstin and her two brothers. We had lots of memories and stories to share - so that took a while. On my way back home I checked out my "usual suspects" which is Walkers and Remembar. Without any money left I thought that it will just be a short round in the two pubs to check out who is still there. But - as I am already well known to some bartenders I got my Weizenbier for a very cheap price in Walkers - and in Remembar I met guys from Gallneukirchen who had a bachelor party going on. Getting home at 3:30 AM was pretty hard as I had to get up at 7:30 to make it to my breakfast date with Alex. Anyway - its been a cool night. Now I am heading to Gallneukirchen and after that to Neuhofen to visit some friends of Alex.
Tomorrow will be a big day - we participate in the Fruehlingslauf. Cheers

From wednesday night - we learned to dance salsa with two girls :-)	Juergen and his beertender

Sleeping
Wow - 9 hours of sleep!! After going to the gym at night I kind of felt tired - sitting in front of the TV didnt do any good in respect to my tiredness either - so I decided to go straight to bed - at 9PM. Well - right now there is not really much of interest going on - therefore you have to live with those "exciting" stories :-)
cheers

From Brown Bottles and Mojitos
Its been a full day in the office with lots of new challenging things to do. Unfortunatelly it seems that I wont be visiting Boston in April. The plan was that I will be there for one week (business) and then extend for some days - Alex would have come as well - but right now it seems that we have to wait for a little while.
At night we had another "Brown Bottle" Meeting. The company is finally switching from Edelweis to Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen. Therefore we started our mission "Get rid of Edelweis" in order to get the new brand.
At night it was time for some Salsa in Beluga Bar where Daniel (the salsa master) celebrated his birthday - thanks for the free Mojitos!!
Thats it for today

Nice Surprises!!
Its been a day of some nice surprises. First - I finally met Yoshi (Johann Fuchs and a former working collegue) again. He actually works in the same office complex but I've not seen him in a long while. Yesterday on my way home he just walked towards the bus and I offered him a ride - a good possibility to chat and catch up. The next surprise was that an old friend from Gallneukirchen (my hometown) who I went to secondary school with - contacted me. He told me that he is going out at night - at some Vernisage. So I asked him whether they also have something to drink and if so - that I will join him. He got a bit confused and it turned out that he ment a new Bar in Gallneukirchen that is called Vernisage. The next surprise here was that I got glooming eyes when I asked the waitress whether they have some wheat beer. She responded: quot;Luitpold light and dark". From that time on I loved this place!!
The last surprise of this evening/night was that my necklace finally broke. I woke up in a bed full of pearls. Thats it.

Spring is finally here!!
Seems that spring didnt only start on the calendar - it also started weather wise. We had about 10 degrees celcius - yeah!! This nice temperature and the shining sun made me put on my sneakers to go for a run along the danube. As we (Hubbo and me) have our first run this year on sunday - its definitly necessary to do some training. What else? As every monday - its salsa time. A little bit later than usual I started my dancing at around 10:30 PM - but as always - it only took about 1 or 2 dances to make me sweat like I just finished a marathon. And one thing finally changed: I order my drinks in Marcelli where Alex is in charge of the bar. Here are some pics. cheers

Alex and one of his bartenders	Alex and one of his disgustin customers :-)

WE FEED THE WORLD!!
Thats the name of the documentary that we've seen yesterday. Its an "Eye-Opener" for us food consumers that take everything for granted - to have access to every kind of food 24x7x365. The documentary was directed by an austrian and was first shown at the 2005 Toronto Filmfestival. If you have the chance - please check it out. Here are some links:
We Feed The World - Homepage
IMDB
For people living in the Linz Area - the movie is shown in Moviemento and City Cinema.
cheers
---- (update 08:00) ----
Linz is not always a safe city: Udo (alias Mr. Prinzregent and my announced mentor) checked out the Linzer Altstadt after our skiing trip. He and Martin (Hilli) got some food at the Hauptplatz when they just got attacked by a guy - out of the blue - without any reason. Outcome: bloody lip - hurting teeth. At least they got his name and lets hope that justice wins. So - thats the update - just wanted to announce this event.

Segue Skiing Day
Our anual company skiing day was this saturday. We went to Hochkoenig in Salzburg. Starting at 6:30 AM from Linz - some people where still sleepy or still a bit trashed from friday night - we had our first good morning drink at around 7:30 AM. The weather was pretty bad in the first 2 hours - lots of fog - bad visibility. So we had our first "technical" stop after about 30 mins of skiing - just to wait for better weather :-). And it turned out that it was a good decision - the sun came out and we had a beautiful afternoon with sun and wonderful snow - and some beer :-)
The day ended in the Liebenaualm. Here are some pics.

Starting the day with a round of Stigl	First technical stop - just waiting for better weather
We finally figured out for what to use our cent coins - for fixing the ski fixation	On the skilift
The austrian way to celebrate the outcoming sun	Taking a sunbath
A round of schnaps sponsored by Roli	The setting sun over the alps
Mr. Cool!!	Me and my mentor (at least udo claims to be my mentor)
In the bus - who is this guy?	Who doesnt want to have such a CTO?

St. Patricks Day
My story about the Half-N-Half or Black-N-Tan or Black-N-Blue brought me some emails from friends from abroad. Here are two links that should be checked out by our bartender in our local irish pub.
Black and Tan FAQs
How to make Black and Tan

The Black-N-Edelweiss that we ordered in our local irish pub

St. Patricks Day
Just a short entry. Not much going on today - I am just about to go for my indoor soccer - after that I have the meeting with Didi that I was supposed to have yesterday. Then I guess I will have an early sleep as we have our company ski day tomorrow. Here some pics from last year!

The day when I discovered Julius Echter!!	The local Irish Pub in Cambridge

Changes
Yesterday was a big milestone for our company - and there have been some surprises. Surprises that are positiv for our office here in Linz - but that are not too positiv for other parts of the company. Anyway - challenging times are waiting for us - looking forward to that.
So - after the announcement yesterday we had some brown bottles in the office. As I didnt want this to end there I went on to Marcelli where I met Markus. Alex - one of our friends - is the new bar chief at Marcellis and we paid our respect for him by ordering some beers :-)
Today I drove home over lunch - thats when I took those nice pictures of my nephew Maximilian. I took off earlier today - went to the gym to salve consciences when I will have some more beers tonight. The plan is that I first visit Didi as we have some "political" stuff to check - then I will meet with Clemens and maybe Martina and Alex.
thats it for today - cheers
----- update -----
Here is an update to yesterday evening. I met with Clemens in our local irish pub. After starting with some Edelweiss and then some Wieselburger I decided to go for a Half and Half or Black and Tan. For those of you who dont know or remember some diary entries while I was in Boston: its a Guinness mixed with a Lager. At Christhopers they also had a Black and Blue - which was a Guiness and a Blue Moon (Belgium Wheat Beer). So I tried to order it but got the response from our waiter that he cannot do it because it would be "disgraceful" to mix anything with Guiness. After some negotiations he told us that he wont do it - but one of the other bartenders is going to prepare it. Now - there is one more story to this kind of beer: you are not supposed to stir it up to mix the two beers - that was one mistake that I made back in Boston. Well - seems the bartender didnt know that rule either - he stired it up - but it was pretty good. Thats the story. Today would be St. Patricks Day celebrations - the national day in Ireland - but I guess I will miss it - cheers and prost

Maximilian - looks like he made his first dancing moves	Herbert (my brother and his dad) feeding Max

Dart Champion!!
Seems that I am nearly unbeatable in Darts - at least against Alex!! After checking out an appartment that Alex is interested in we went to the Cinema - but as we were not really interested in a movie we played Darts. The deal was that the looser of the first match had to pay the drinks. The looser of the second match had to turn off the alarm in the morning (which is on the far end of her bedroom). So I ended up with free drinks and I didnt need to turn off the alarm - strike!!
Thats the story about yesterday's events - cheers

Salsa Monday
As every Monday - its salsa time in the Remembar. But - with some slightly changes: a) Alex couldnt join me - she suffers at home in bed because she is ill and b) because there were not as many people as usual - which is actually really good as there is more space on the dancefloor.
Besides that there is not too much going on - but there are some upcoming things this week. We (Segue) get a visit from our new CEO. We are looking forward to that meeting as we should get some information about how our new company will look like in the future.
I also checked on my dads progress of learning english. I gave him some english learning audio CDs so that he at least knows some basics when we start our US Road Trip in October.
And - I witnessed the first "Opa" (=Grandpa) out of Maximilians (youngest nephew - he just turned 1 this saturday) mouth. Unfortunatelly - my dad hasnt heard it!
Now its time to go to bed - lots of fun support cases and other stuff is waiting for me in the morning - cheers

Getting Older!!
Its been a great weekend in Dorfgastein. We went down there to celebrate Sandro's 27th Birthday. Unfortunatelly - getting older means that things in life change. Like friday night - we hardly made it past midnight - everybody was too tired - so we went to bed at around 0:30 - but - getting up at 7:30 AM already. After a great skiing day we tried to get rid of all the beer that we brought. Juergen brought his Beertender - with kegs of Heinken - Goesser and Zipfer. We had dinner reservations for 8PM. After dinner we thought we wait till at least midnight to celebrate Sandros birthday - but believe it or not - Sandro, Claudia, Babsi and Juergen went to bed at aroun 10:30PM. Everybody was too tired for celebration. But at least Martin (aka Resl) and I made it down to "Downtown" Dorfgastein. But - after a beer and a game of dart we realized that we were too old for the party crowd in the Kuhbar.
Today we wanted to check out the Thermal Bath in Bad Hofgastein. But because of the bad weather - 1000 other tourists had the same idea - so we turned around after we entered the building - deciding that its better to chill out at home.
Resumee: We are getting old!!
2 nights - average sleep time: 11:30 PM.
Average beer consumption (only including the boys): 8 Halbe!!
Average wine consumption (including everybody): 0!!
Average prosecco consumption: hard to say - the girls each had one glass - i had the rest of the bottle.

Juergen's Beertender - what else needs a man: A beertender on the toilet :-)	Good morning beer with my Red Sox Shirt
Seems like some of my name relatives have a business up here	A round of Schnaps in the Skiglo
Snowy mountains	Martin and I tried some Deep Snow Skiing - wasnt the best idea - but it was a beautiful scene
Guck Guck	Stone Plate Dinner at Stoani's
no comment	Sandro's Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher

Back to Fitness!!
As my company supports the idea of a healthy life besides the job - I got myself a pass for a local fitness studio - the costs are subsidized by the company. Alex and I checked it out - doing some running on the treadmil. Hubbo (collegue in linz) told me about two upcoming events - a 10k run end of march and a half marathon in linz in april. I think I could already handle the 10k - but I definitly need more training for the half marathon - but I am on the way for that.
So - after the fitness studio we awarded ourself with a visit to Walkers - with a Burger and Wheat Beer :-)
Tonight - we (Sandro, Claudia, Juergen, Babsi, Martin and myself) - drive to Dorfgastein - celebrating Sandros birthday over the weekend. Hope to get lots of pictures. cheers

Winter Wonderland!!
As you can see from the pictures below - Austria is still covered in snow. For most of the austrian citizens its been enough of snow already for this year - everybody is waiting for the spring. But for me - as I havent really had a good winter in Boston - this situation is very welcome.
The next upcoming event is the skiing trip to Gastein on the weekend. We are going to celebrate Sandros birthday. Lets hope the weather god likes us more than last weekend where we couldnt go skiing in Hinterstoder. But again - there is always an alternative program :-)
As for tonight - I am still struggling with a decision between Salsa in Beluga or the Champions League match between Milan and Munich.

From our office towards Muehlviertel	From our office towards Poestlingberg

Happy Birthday!!
Today we have to celebrate two birthdays: My brother Herbert and Stephan!!
I just flipped back in time (well - in my diary) - to check what had happened exactly a year ago. And its fantastic to read all those things that happend and to see the pictures that I've taken. When I got back to Austria I thought that I might shut down this website as the initial purpose of it (keeping my friends at home updated while I am in the states) is no longer there. But - seeing the diary now as a cool medium to remember what happened - I am definitly going to keep it up.
So - down there you see the pictures from last year as I dont have any pictures for today. And here is the link to the diary entry of March 2005!
One more thing to say about today: THANKS TO THE PERSON WHO FOUND MY PASSPORT!!! Seems that somebody found it on the train where I forgot it and brought it to the Lost and Found office in Bayreuth (Bavaria). I should have the passport back in my hands in the next days. cheers

Celebrating Stephans Birthday	Our way to teach each other the other language

Traveling Home and Snow!!
Its been a crazy way home! The flight to Frankfurt was easy - everything was on-time. Arriving in Frankfurt - it started snowing. We had about 3 hours to the next flight. Half an hour before boarding we went to the gate where they announced that due to the snow our flight has been canceled. They could rebook us on the next - which was already overbooked. So - Didi and I decided to take the train home as the snow was getting more and more and we already had a feeling that there wont be any plane today leaving to Linz. So we got on the first train - went into the Train Cafe - and ole ole - they had Prinzregent Luitpold. After 3 hours we had to change trains in Nürnberg. Unfortunatelly I forgot my passport on the table in the dining car - I hope somebody will find it and returns it as I will need it very soon (I already have the next appointments in the states in April).
Anyway - after 6 hours on the train we finally arrived in Linz - of course - without luggage - but at least we made it home.
The weekend was supposed to be a skiing weekend. We drove to Hinterstoder where Doris and Robert let us stay with them in the house of her sister. Unfortunatelly snowing didnt stop - so we had to cancel skiing and just focused on food, drinks and games - which was really fine as it was very relaxing. Getting back to Linz on sunday afternoon I first got my car from Juergen (after digging into a big pile of snow) and then I got my luggage from the airport. At night we went to the movies. First we thought to check out Casanova - but we decided to see a german move - called Elementarteilchen. Right before we entered the movie - we met Martin (aka Mole) - he just came out of the movie and told us to better change the tickets to a different movie. But in the end I have to say that it was a good decision to see it. It was not really the movie that we expected but it was worth seeing it. Anyway. Todays program is tough. Trying to track down my passport - need new tires for the car (right now its nearly impossible to drive - tires are too old) - then I should visit my parents - and of course - salsa at night. cheers

On our way back in the Train. Enjoying a good beer	March made some taste experiments: Marshmallows with Nutella
Playin the Siedler of Catan	Clemens on top of a big snow pile
Somebody should clean up this roof	Klaus guided us through half of the "Liederberg"
Didi dug out our food that was cooled in the snow outside	Clemens had a strategy to prevent March from cheating at "Stand, Land, Fluss"
Finally together after 6 weeks of separation!!	Yes - it is a car!!

Brown Bottle Meeting
Its been the last full day in the office. I invited for a Farewell Brown Bottle meeting and about 20 to 30 people came bye. It was another proof that it is possible to get some "culture" in the regular office life. So - I of course brought some of my brown bottles and some of the guys brought their favorite beverages. Besides that - people brought snacks and - a surprise package for me. I got a nice Boston Red Sox Outfit. Now I am home - finishing my packing - hoping that I dont forget anything and hoping that everything fits into my two bags. Maybe - as I do have time - I will go to An Tua Nua for a short visit at the local salsa scene - who knows. Anyway - tomorrow will be a shorter day in the office before Didi and I head to the airport at around 1:30PM. So - this might be the last entry before I am back home in Austria - this time - I will be home for good. Cheers

Mary and Russel enjoying their drinks of choice	Vermont is not only a liberal state - they are also very liberal in their beer production
Alan and me - we were among the last to leave the party	My Red Sox Surprise Package - Thanks to girls/guys from Segue!!