20 July 2010
Berlin, Germany
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Stu's page 20 July 2010 Berlin, Germany |
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20 July 2010: A few months ago Jan (Antje's brother) convinced me to sign up for an olympic distance triathlon and a half-marathon in Leipzig. Jan is a sports canon whilst I am pretty much in the pea shooter class, so I really need to do some training to avoid embarassing myself this Sunday. Many athletes, hoping for elite status, resort to performance enhancing drugs. Fate has forced my to take performance enhancing pestilence. It all started in Dresden...
Cylcing along the Elbe river I ingested a large number of performance enhancing bugs which swarmed over the bike path in their millions. Some particularly nasty blood-sucking beetles also joined in with the mossies and took samples of my blood. Performance modified? I definitely rode slower. On the day I did my first long triathlon training (it lasted about 4hrs because I am quite slow) I had attenuated versions or measles, mumps and rubella viruses flooding through my system thanks to a booster shot I had that day. Performance enhanced. i.e. I managed to finish the trial tri even if I stumbled home at 11:15pm. Today I wanted to practice the 40km cycle leg in Berlin. At the 20km mark a wasp crawled down my t-shirt crawled down started stinging my belly repeatedly. Ouch! >_< the next 20km were insect poison modified, i.e. I didn't ride as far as I wanted to avoid a Steve-Irwin-like demise. So, if don't manage to finish the triathlon this Sunday it is likely I have been attacked by swarms of saxon, scrotum-stinging sea scorpions. 14 June 2010: Heckled by friends and colleagues although I never claimed Australia was particularly good at soccer. At least there will be more parties in Berlin if Germany wins more matched. The lamingtons Antje made were great though. TV installed in the office to screen matches and distract us - as if 22 Hungarians waiting for me in the carpark this morning wasn't enough. 13 June 2010: Sharing a boxy little room with eight friendly colleagues. The 30+ degree temperature, overheating laptops and Hungarian teams I am coordinating made for an interesting week. Dresden is my home away from home for a while. The Elbe has replaced the Spree. A hotel has replaced the apartment. Nothing has replaced Antje - and I look forward to my weekend visits to Berlin with relish. Despite what you are thinking, I am not a total computer nerd locked away in a hotel room only updating my webpage. I did manage a quick running tour of Dresden - the city looks VERY promising! |
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The honeymoon is over 'sniff'. But time is relative and the digital Stu & Antje are still in Cuba! The photos from the first 6 weeks of our honeymoon can be found here. The remaining photos, due to their quantity, are better seen through my picassaweb albums. |
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Jura Valley (France) Berlin is a great city but sometimes you just need to get out of the urban jungle and smell the earth, talk to the trees and watch the animals - even if some of the animals died in a fight or are made of concrete or chocolate. Antje and I headed south on the train to the very southern tip of Germany, hired a car and drove into France and then to Switzerland...and then back into France, and then back into Switzerland and then back into France and then back to Germany. |
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| A flat surface would have been more practical but logs are | Jono & Rima: I apologise for the jumping photo - I just can't help myself. Jonathon has shed some light on the subject of jumping photos. | Waterfall and lynx statue. Very zen...umm... | Picnic overlooking the valley. |
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| A friendly local beer. | A friendly, bearded local. | An even friendlier beardless woman. |
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| A lion immortalised in a perplexed, pavlovian pose (Dijon) | The turn of the shrew. Shrews are extremely savage fighters and perhaps this one came off second best in its last encounter. | Mercury scratches a mole on his heel. |
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| France is a country of inspiring food and mouth watering views. Combining the two is a treat, even if tractors run over your baguette. | Cafes are much safer, especially if you sneak a tart in with you. | An unconvincing french man. |
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| scenery | speaks | for itself. |
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Lussane (Switzerland) We visited Dani and Carlos in Lusanne (I always thought they lived in Lucern, but it turns out that they don't). Over Easter we celebrated with Dani's family, toured the city and partied at home. |
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Lorrach (Germany) Just to prove that Deutschland can not be outdone by the beauties of Frankreich und Der Schweiz...Loerrach tantalised us with its blossoms and vineyards. |
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