Cast Decorations!!
The weather has been beautiful - so Sandro and I headed out to the beergarden. We called our old school friends and figured out that its not really easy to get hold of them. But in the end we at least managed to get Thomas to join us. After a couple of beers, a good dinner - and lots of complaints about the real bad service in Klosterhof we went to my appartment where we started to color my cast. Here are some pics.

Thomas decided to use blue	Sandro picked red
Sandrfos full hand on the back	Thomas only colored his middle finger

My life with the cast
Living with a handicap is more challenging than I thought. Life is now a life with limitations - no sports - no salsa - no driving the car - ...
It teaches me a lesson to be more respectful with people that have "real" handicaps - not just an injured leg.
Besides my leg there is not much going on right now. The past days have been full of work and the past evenings have been spent with sitting at home - fortunatelly with visits of some of my friends. Sandro came by the other day with a case of beer :-) - I had to kick him out at midnight :-)
Today I realized that I actually have some readers in Belfast - got a tech-support case assigned containing the customer issue and a question about my ankle. Therefore: Greetings to Belfast!!!!!
Here is the latest picture of my cast - finally I got some signatures and a small Borland logo on it - cheers
<------ update ------>
We've been invited to Doris and Robert for dinner - it was Gulasch-Time - prepared on open fire - yummie!!

Always keep the leg in high position - even if it is a box of beer	Alex waiting for the Gulasch - finally we convinced her that a vegetarian life is not all there is :-)
Robert preparing the gulasch - with working gloves :-)

A different life
Its amazing - once you have a handicap you really start to value what it means to be healthy. Well - 6 more days - 6 more nights - 6 more needles :-) - yeah - needles. Each day I have to give myself an injection to prevent blood stocking. Anyway - last night was not that much fun. The main problem was that I didnt knew how to turn around and how to settle the leg in a way to prevent too much pressure on my ankle - and then - the worst thing of all - a mosquito in my bedroom. Imagine the picture: me standing on my bed with my cast chasing this small insect :-)
Thats it - cheers

Always keep the leg in high position - even if it is a box of beer	The hard side of this situation - needles

Soccer accidents
Unfortunatelly it was my bad luck this time - without enemy contact I managed to twist my ankle with the result that my ligaments (hope thats the correct word for "Baender") are a bit damaged. Now I have to wear a cast for at least a week and then I will hopefully get a splint that will at least allow me to walk. But right now it seems that my evenings this week wont be spent with sports or salsa - it will more likely look like what you see below :-)
Many thanks to HEI and UDO who were my taxis yesterday night and today in the morning!!

Couch-Sports	Nice work from the guy in the AKH

Birthday Celebrations!
Barbara and Klemens celebrated their birthdays - the 26th for Babsi and the 28th for Klemens. As we wanted to be at both parties we decided to start with Klemens and then later at night drive to Barbara. When Klemens sent out the invitations he added the note that we should bring outdoor-clothes. When we arrived he lifted the secret about why we need outside clothes. The problem was that he invited about 15 people. His grill was rather small - therefore we had to spli up in teams and the winning team after a series of games will be the first to put the meat on the grill :-). So - in the end we had about 5 disciplines - SitSoccer - Frisbee - Stonethrowing - ElephantRun - ...
As we had something like that in mind when we accepted the invitation we also prepared a small game for him. He had to describe 10 words pantomimic - and for each word that he couldnt explain within a minute he had to either eat raisins (he doesnt like them at all) - or drink schnaps out of a very unusual "glass".

SitSoccer on the grass	Frisbee
Elephant Run	Drinking schnaps :-)

Daily life
Whats going on right now in my daily life - hm - work of course - and - enjoying the great weather that we have right now - that also means - lots of biking. Besides that I try to fill the event-gaps for the road-trip to the US with my dad - starting in 4 weeks. We will be doing some whale-watching in Boston - then we will drive up to New Hampshire. I also want to see a FootBall Game - right now it looks like we watch a game in San Diego. Next thing on our list - a visit to one of the many film studios in Hollywood. Here are some pics from this week

FareWell Celebrations to David - he is from California and worked in Linz for the past 2 months	My usual morning view along the bike trail to work

Serbian Celebrations
Leo - one of my friends - is of serbian heritage. Each time I visit him its time to celebrate - this time it was his birthday. Leos official statement about his age is: "I am 28" - but his real age is somewhere near 38 (sorry for lifting that secret). Here are some pics from yesterday

Great cook and great lover :-)	Serbian Cuisine

I like Biking
Although we had a pretty tough ride yesterday at our Borland Bike Day I couldnt resist the beautiful weather today - so I took my bike again and started a tour. 55 minutes from the Linzer Hauptplatz to the Gisella Warte - not sure if thats a good or bad time - but based on my sweating it must at least be an OK time. After that trip we got a call from Klemens - invited us for BBQ at the old farm house of his grand-parents. And - they do have a pool where the water is still warm enough to take a bath - 26 degrees. Just before driving home from Gallneukirchen I made a quick stop at my parents where my Dad helped me to fix my car - cheers

The Gisella Warte (short: GIS)	Klemens in the pool - acting like a kid :-)
How many guys does it take to fire up a grill? 2 guys and some gas :-)	Yummie
Strange proportions	My car - the reason for the recently starting noises - a loose piece of metal - because of the rust

Multiple Updates
As you may have recognized - the update frequency of my diary has slowed down a little bit. There are multiple reasons for that - the best explaination would be: lazines :-)
But - the good thing about this is that I do now have many updates. Here is a quick summary of the pictures that you can see down there:
* Dart "Championship" in our old pub in Gallneukirchen
* Beergarden-Visit with Udo (aka. Prinzregent)
* Good Morning Caffee on our office-patio with Marcel (aka. The Swiss)
* Dinner at Flo and Anettes place (we had fondue - and a crazy cat)
* Borland BikeDay through parts of the muehlviertel
* Wine-Festival in Gallneukirchen (we had to work there)
I think thats it - busy week - cheers

My glorious victory against didi and berni	PROST!!
Hello Sunshine - we had this great view almost every day in the morning during last week	The Swiss and The Austrian - having coffee
Floh made my day - different wheat beers (incl. Koenig Ludwig)	The modern dish washer with a special pre-wash program
Bike Day Impression 1	Bike Day Impression 2
Falco (aka as Johannes Hoelzl) chasing me	For some of us it was a real hard day - good night Erich
Our NON-SMOKER Udo	Old friends from Gallneukirchen at the WineFestival
The working crew

Weekend
Its been a cool weekend so far - and its not yet over. Here a quick summary so that you know what the pictures are all about. Friday night - nothing really going on. Saturday - busy shopping day. Finally I got a new bike at hervis - I hope its worth the money - guess that my colleagues at next saturdays company-bikeday will tell me if it was a good deal or not. Besides the bike I got a new trolley, trekking shoes, sleeping bag, .... - and much more. On saturday night we've been invited to Mario - officially for BBQ. But - as he had so many left-overs from a party the night before - we had to get of the leftovers first. In the end we didnt even manage the leftovers. Today (Sunday) my brother invited his workers to a new cool sport - Swin Golf. Its a french invention from the eighties. Basically its golf for "normal people". There are similar rules - but you only have one club and the ball is bigger and elastic - lots of fun :-).
After that Alex and I went out to test our bikes. We took a 3 hours tour (including two stops to refuel our body) - from Linz to Asten - via Luftenberg to Engerwitzdorf - Treffling and back to Linz. Now its time to enjoy the remaining 2 or 3 hours of sun - probably in the beergarden - and then - at night - the classic Klangwolke in the Linzer Donaupark. Cheers

Picture from Friday morning: Breakfast at the K&K Hofbaeckerei	Schaumrollen made by Doris for the Saturday night BBQ
Scharade: Robert trying his best to describe the word that we gave him	Who Am I? Another game of Saturday Night
In Memorial Mr. Prinzregent!!	Thats not nice!!
Klemens and Robert fighting with the beer keg	No dress code at Swin Golf: he wears Birkenstock
Also - we used different T's	I tried to keep her behind me when riding through the Muehlviertel

STOMP!!
Yesterday night we saw an amazing performance of STOMP. They had several shows in the Linzer Intersport Arena. I expected a great show - but the even though my expectations have been high - I was amazed by their performance.
Today in the morning I then decided to switch my usual breakfast routine (coffee in the office) - with a good breakfast at the K&K Hofbaeckerei in Linz - with my Schatzl (Alex).
I figured out that I rarely talk about work - basically because this is a private web-site and I dont want to talk about work here. But there have been some cool changes recently. I've been assigned to lead a new group within Borland. New hires and existing colleagues will help me to achieve our goals - and as far as I can assess my new team I think we are on the right track - yahooo - PROST!!
As for pictures - I've been really lazy this week with new shots - therefore I have to reference to pictures from the past - which hopefully is not too boring (rather interesting). Here are some pics from last years &Warschenhoferfest" - unfortunatelly - this years party has been canceled.

Picture for Aug 25th
Roman sent me the picture that he took with his cell phone while we were sitting in the garden of Papa Joe's - eating Steaks and drinking beer out of "unusual" glasses. Here it is!

Roman and me with the beer

An eventfull weekend - wine, mountains, theatre, baptising, ...
On friday night Alex and I went to Steyr to watch the theatre in castle Lamberg - the same play that I've already seen a week ago. Got up early on saturday because we wanted to enjoy the great weather on one of our mountains in the Salzkammergut. So we jumped in the car - drove to Traunkirchen and hiked up the Sonnstein. After a day on the mountain and on lake Traunsee we finished the day at the wine festival in linz. Today - sunday - we had the baptising ceremoy of my niece Lisa. The ceremony took place in Castle Riedegg - after that we had lunch in a restaurant and we finished the culinary experience at my parents home. Thats it - here are some pics - cheers

Walking up the Sonnstein	View from the top of the Sonnstein down to the Traunsee and Traunstein
On the Top	View down to Traunstein
At the wine festival - who is tired :-)	Irene and Andrew
Irene, her brother with girlfriend	The worst sin ever - kebap after midnight :-)
Lisa in front of Castle Riedegg	The other kids were included in the ceremony
Another part of the ceremony	Maximilan fleshing his teeth - showing his "BIG MAN" face!!
The two daddy's walking home after lunch (the rest drove home)	A cross with fingerprints of each of us
Maximilian in our garden - chased by tante mitzi