Page last Changed 28 Oktober 2009 17:13

Life never stops so……

December 2005
Guess what?  Just for a change we went skiing! We were able to get into our apartment on the 1st of December so we loaded up the car and got ourselves settled in. There is no ski bus until the 8th so we were on the normal bus each day. St. Anton was much busier than last weekend. We met up with Heinz, Annette and Thea, three very familiar St. Anton faces.  We spent the middle week of December in St. Anton, a great week for snow, 1 m new snow, unfortunately a lot of wind too, up to 85 kmh (about 50 mph for the old folks)  We meet up with Peter (from Canada) and Ilse and Olaf (from Germany) too.  St. Anton is like one big happy extended Family. It is good to see Alois back on skis too, we managed to ski with him and Doris for a couple of runs.  We were back in St. Anton for Christmas and New Year. We skied with Joshy, he is skiing really well for someone who had a knee replacement in May 2005.  We Had fantastic snow, but also some very cold days of -27C. For New Years Eve we went to........(see January 2006)

November 2005
Duncan's Mum is doing well on the computer, she is even doing a computer course. Duncan's Father got the hang of it too, once he had recovered from a very nasty fall down the stairs.  We are really proud of them both. As Michelle had to work on her Birthday we went up the Niesen on the Sunday before.  We had been saying for ages we wanted to watch the sun set reflection on the mountains. It was beautiful but very cold.  Well the skiing bug bit, we lasted a whole 2 weeks before going back to Pitztal, just long enough to forget the aching muscles. We spent the middle of November back up on the Pitztal Glacier, at 3440 m we met up with an Instructor we know from St. Anton. Floiran recognised us first, he was in disguise as a snowboarder (never mind we hope he recovers soon). We stopped of again in St. Anton as we are still hoping to find an Apartment.  The last weekend in November was the Season opening in St. Anton, we had good snow and we had the pistes to ourselves. We also managed to look at and agree on an apartment. We are renting for the whole year, so who knows we may just get to go motor biking in the Arlberg in Summer instead of just talking about it.

October 2005
October was a month filled with lots of short events. We started  the month by christening our Home Cinema System, we can now what the films over the Beamer on a Screen, no more sheet hanging of the rafters.  Helen came up from Lutrey and we watched several movies one after the other until the wee hours of the morning.  We then did our final Motorbike tour of the season up over the Moosegg and around the Emmental. After the wet September the October weekends have been glorious. Its always sad to put the bikes away, but it is just too chilly to go out again :-( Duncan had a congress in Bonn, he used the opportunity to meet up with Christine. She took him on a tour of Bonn by night.  Duncan mentioned a very interesting evening meal. The last weekend in the month saw the time going back, and as it has become traditional we started the Skiing season. We went to Pitztal.  Duncan met up with some people he knew from work. Its a small world sometimes.

September 2005
Well another month almost over, and the official start of autumn. Winter is getting closer all the time. September was another busy month. We met up with Thelma and Alan in Basel, when they were on their Rhine tour.  The weeks before that were spent getting the Laptops ready for Thelma and Bev. We made a "how to" video, which involved lots of editing and voice over's.  Michelle was getting really perfectionist about it, adding titles and new voice over's.  We heard then Steven Spielberg is starting to get worried! Duncan spent hours making the videos and installing and testing everything. We are looking forward to emails from them.  The screen for our indoor cinema arrived after a long wait, so we spent one weekend on as a movie marathon.  A great highlight of  the month was seeing a live production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Zürich with Rosi.  We took along all the props and had a great time.  The live rendition was great, the actors and actresses had great voices, and encouraged the public to join in.  We went back to Rosi's for dinner and had a lazy brunch on Sunday before coming home.

August 2005
Swiss National Day, and we spent it going to Austria and back. We are still hoping to find an apartment in St. Anton for the winter, this one sounded so promising we had to go and have a look. On the 2nd we went on a Motorbike tour with Silvia and Rudi and a couple of there friends. We went over the Glaubenbergpass and the Brünig pass then along the north side of the Lake of Thun. On the 20th of August it was the annual Hospital Motorbike trip. The turn out was good surprising because the weather forecast wasn't good. We were really luck y with the weather as most of Switzerland was very wet.   We changed the route we had planned to take, and headed off to the Jura (French speaking north west)  We had lunch in a small ski resort, we wanted to go on the summer toboggan run, but due to rain showers they were not running.  Behind the restaurant was a "Schwingenfest" a special type of Swiss wrestling. Thun Bern and the central parts of Switzerland are  severely affected by flooding the last full week in August.  It has been  generally a wet summer this year, lets hope for a nice autumn.

July 2005
We tried to start the month with an Open-air Cinema visit on the Bluesee, a lovely lake nestled in the mountains with Jack and Karin.  Unfortunately the weather was against us. We went but decided the chance of a thunder storm was too large so we went out for dinner up to Kandersteg instead.  The weather improved over the weekend so on Sunday we took the chair lift up to Oschensee, we ended up witnessing a spectacular helicopter rescue of some poor German Tourist (a combination of Heart problems, heat and a steep walk).  We spent time reassuring his wife and missed the last chair down, so we walked down.  The middle of July saw us out on the Motorbikes with Rosi (her 1st time ever!), Duncan had to break in his new leather jacket.  We had a great day out, cruising around the Emmental and the area this side of Luzern. It kept threatening to rain but never did.  We did the trip from Lützelflüh up over Moosegg, down through Zäziwil onto Marbach for a nice Lunch break, then up to the Panaoramastrasse, where we made the decision not  to continue on. We headed back to our house for a BBQ and a late night.  Duncan and I went up to the top of Marbachegg on Sunday for lunch and a nice walk along the top of the  mountain.  It was too warm for anything too strenuous.  We ended the month as we started, Jack and Karin came over for dinner and a night of watching DVD's the weather wasn't to great to do anything else.

June 2005
Major motorbike time, on the weekend we did our first big tour, 250 km.  We did our usual trip down to Thun, up along the northern lake edge through Sigriswil, Jusitztal Interlaken, the north side of the Breizenersee, before the Bruinig Pass then Panoramastrasse. The home to rest our poor sitting leather. Our trip to France to watch the Le Mans 24 Hour race was great but exhausting. We took the night train from Basel to Paris on Friday night then the watched the Race from Saturday afternoon through to Sunday afternoon, with just 2 short naps.  Duncan has seen this race live before, but it was Michelle's first time.  It was great, we each picked a car from the 4 different categories, so there was lots of cheering to do as they went past, and nail biting when they were not spotted for several laps. On Sunday night we caught the train back to Switzerland, Michelle went straight to work.  Unfortunately Duncan hat to work on Solette ( a festival in Burgdorf), Michelle spent the day with Rudi and Silvia on a hot  Motorbike tour over the Jaun Pass and the Gurnigel Pass, with temperatures reaching 34 C.

May 2005
Another wedding anniversary goes by. Boy time flies. That was number 12.  We enjoyed spoiling ourselves with a partner massage course. Dietmar taught  us some great techniques.  It was a very intense weekend. Now we need to find the time to practice. We stayed an a small alpine resort called Aeschi above Lake Thun. We had some great views of the mountains, and an even better view of the Thunder storm.   We dusted off the motorbikes and went for our first small tour of the season.

April 2005
The beginning of April saw us in Mystery Park with Rosi.  We picked the perfect day for it, cold and wet! As we were inside it didn't matter.  Some of the displays were really interesting, such as Magic Stones about Stonehenge and other mysterious stone arrangements, or the Lines visible from the sky in Peru.  Others about the aliens were disappointing.  It took a whole day so see all the exhibits, we were all tired at the end of the day. The skiing has come to an end.  We decided not to go to the Weisse Rausch ski race in St. Anton. The 70's have returned. We had a great concert in Bern with 3 great bands from the 70's and early 80's. We were treated to a 3 hour spectacle from Uriah Heep, Manfred Mann's earth band and Procol Harum. Boy our arms were tired from waving and clapping. It was nice to have Barbara with us

March 2005

March was filled with skiing, unfortunately still not with Alois, he is healing quickly though. We had a fun night with him up in his hunting lodge, lots of fun, schnapps and dancing. We skied with Roman this  time, but the good powder snow remained elusive. We bought back some walking wounded again.  This time Harold from South Africa.  Rather than him being stuck in St. Anton not being able to ski, we bought him to Switzerland.  The Sunday was spent on lake Thun. We did the complete trip to Interlaken and back, enjoying great weather fantastic views and a great lunch on board the Boat. On the Monday he spent time exploring Burgdorf before returing home on Tuesday. Easter was spent skiing with Joshy

February 2005
We are back at work and counting the days till the next ski holiday.  We can't believe the news. The Alpine Drum network has sent us news of Alois's accident. Our ever impressive ski instructor and friend has torn his cruicate ligaments. We couldn't imaging not skiing with him.  We were lucky though we skied with Ali a great young local guy. Four days of continuous snowfall followed by 2 days of blue skies and sun and some fantastic powder  slopes.  Alexandra managed to ski for 5 days without any injuries this time (thank goodness).  Duncan managed to sprain his thumb on the last day.  On the Thursday we even managed a record 7990 metres of powder snow skiing, boy were we tired at the end of that.

January 2005
We didn't see in the new year, we had a great New Years Menu at the Hax'n Stub'n after a great day in the powder. We were both so tired we kept dosing off after dinner so we went to bed. We did get woken at midnight with all the fireworks going off, but not for long zzzzzzz. What a way to start the year, skiing once again in our favourite place St. Anton, we didn't find the best snow but we still had a great day.   Then back into ski school with Joshy who found some great snow, but unfortunately a lot of rocks too which caused some spectacular wipe-outs. 2 weeks of work and then we were back skiing. We caught up with loads of familiar faces on both trips. It was great to catch up with everyone again (sorry too many to list all)