Munster

This week is half term! Yay!  Although the half term has only been 5 weeks, it's been tiring (January has never been my favourite month), and we were ready for the break.  Just to make things even more hectic, Friday was the start of Karneval - this is a big thing only in our state, Northrhine Westphalia, and it is a 4 day celebration of the start of lent.  The English are happy with just pancake day, but the Northrhine Westphalians need 4 days of fancy dress and drinking vodka shots at 7am on the tram.  It;s horrendous, and really not my thing at all.  Last year, Matt and I went to a cottage in the middle of nowhere to avoid it all, and this year we had no plans to experience any of the mayhem.  

I went to Bochum, a nearby town with a couple of girlfriends from work for dinner (pizza and a white chocolate and banana filled waffle, yum!).  Matt had some people over to watch the start of the 6 Nations rugby.  They were still over by the time I got home, and it was nice to have a chat with everyone.  They all went out to the local pub at about 10, and Matt got home at 1am!  I'm not drinking alcohol until we go on holiday, and it's going very well so far as part of my healthy eating kick.  I'm continuing not drinking for lent, as well as giving up chocolate I think! Wish me luck!

On Monday we decided to go for a spontaneous trip to Munster, a nearby medieval town about an hour and a half on the train from Duisburg.  We decided to book a hotel and make a proper trip of it.  We arrived, and realised that it was Rosenmontag, ie, the biggest drinking and partying day of Karneval!  We didn't think that a small town like Munster would have a parade but apparently we were wrong!  There were people in fancy dress everywhere, and lots of drinking on the streets.  We had a coffee to take stock, and decided that we might as well embrace Karneval, only to discover that the parade had been cancelled due to the high winds!  Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!  I was actually disappointed!  We think that Munster may not be as bad as Cologne or Dusseldorf where the huge parades are, so may possible come back next year for the parade, just so that we can say we experienced Karneval while living in Germany.  We'll wear fancy dress next time too, so we don't stick out as much!

Having realised that the parade was cancelled, we decided to look around the town, except everything, even the cathederal was closed.  All the classy, nice restaurants were closed too because of the drunks.  We ended up having some drinks in the hotel and after a wander in the rain to find a restaurant, had a Dominos pizza (didn't think you could get them in Germany, so we were pretty happy to be honest!).  We saw a heron in a park too.

On Tuesday we decided to go to the Allweather Zoo - it has lots of covered walkways so you can get around in the rain.  Very useful as it turns out; the torrential rain started at about 2pm.  It's a really good zoo though, with lots on offer.  We even threw fish into the penguin area to feed them.  The animals have large areas, and all seem pretty happy.  It was a really nice day, and a highlight was the seal show.  They have a horse museum there, (not the most interesting place I've ever been), which had a small exhibition of the Natural History Museum in London's Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  It's my favourite exhibition, and I was thrilled to be able to see some of the fantastic photographs from this year.

I was really loving that big cats at the zoo. So many great photos of them. This next one is my favourite. I think the bars actually add to it.

A Relaxing Weekend

No pictures to show of this week, except these two of Toni the cat who came to visit on Friday night.

It's been an odd week really.  I was very busy on Monday and Tuesday, with three of the teachers out of six who went on the ski trip being ill.  I myself was off on Wednesday with whatever those teachers (and half the children in year 5) had.  Matt went to England on Wednesday evening for his Masters seminars, so I was left to my own devices.  I've just had a quiet couple of days really, not doing much at all.  Just watching films, making some cards, and doing some colouring in.  I went into Duisburg for a wander around the shops on Saturday, but it was raining, so I was in and out as quickly as I could be.  Matt is coming home this evening, (yay!), and we only have one more week of school until half term.  We don't really have any plans for half term, apart from slobbing about the flat together.  I am off to the zoo with a work pal one day, and Matt and I might do a day trip somewhere if we're up to it.  Just chilling out and saving money until the big holiday.  The count down is in the 40s now - 48 more sleeps until Miami!  Can't wait!

Skiing in Willingen

The last year has gone so quickly that I couldn't quite believe it was time to go on the Year 5 skiing trip to Willingen again.  Last year was really fun, so I was looking forward to going again.  The year group is quite a whingy one, but they weren't too bad, and if they were we just told them to go away!  We arrived on Wednesday lunch time, and were straight away off for our first afternoon of skiing lessons.  We had an instructor called Arno, who was really good.  Most of the teachers had been skiing once (like me) and we had one absolute beginner.  I quickly became top of the class, remembering all of the techniques I learnt a year ago.  It was actually snowing that day, so we always had a fresh layer of snow to ski on, which was wonderful.  The ski lessons were a bit dry, but at least we got our techniques quite well honed.  By the end of the day we were going on the conveyer belt to the middle of the mountain and free skiing down it in zig zags.

That evening we had 6 children with temperatures in the 40s, and one sick teacher.  Most of the evening was spent calling parents for permission to give out paracetamol, and getting up in the night to check on those who weren't very well.  We were staying in a house with two members of the public, which was horrible.  One was really nasty and kept shouting at the children for making too much noise.  They even had to eat their dinner in the same room as the kids.  Admittedly I would have hated it if I wasn't with the group, then again, can you pay peanuts to stay in a youth hostel and not expect it to be full of youths!  The woman ended up becoming a threat which the kids thought was hilarious, ie, 'if you don't go to bed, we will send the nasty old woman down to sort you out!' This was met with replies such as, 'we'll trap her in our very smelly toilet if she shouts at us.' - very amusing.

The food was interesting, and not in a good way.  We made our own packed lunches, which was fine, but our evening meals were spam loaf and mash, and bratwurst and cold pasta salad (not what you want after 7 hours in the cold).  We stay in the same place on the year 6 trip, and I will definitely be ordering vegetarian for that one!  We had a quiz night and a movie night planned, but somehow the coach driver on the way had put the bin with the quizzes and movies and the diaries that the children were meant to be writing, back onto the coach (along with a bin full of sick!).  i'm not quite sure how it happened, but we ended up writing a very quick quiz for the first night, and buying a dvd for the second, so it all worked out in the end.  We never saw the bucket of sick again!

The second day, the children had instructors for the morning, but we were left to free ski.  Two of the lads who were ill got picked up and taken home, and we had one trip to hospital for a boy who had hurt his knee at the top of the mountain.  He's fine and just twisted his knee, but it was a bit worrying.  I sat with him in the cafe for an hour at the end of the day once he was back from the hospital, to keep him company.  I also had a break in the middle of the day to take photos on my nice new camera.  I got some really great ones of the children!

It didn't snow on the second day, so it was a bit more slippery, and not as easy to control coming down from the conveyer belt.  I spent most of my time with Sean, who didn't make it up the conveyer belt last year, because he needed one-on-one lessons!  By the end of the day he was skiing down the hill like a pro, which was great.

On Friday, we left after breakfast, and went to an indoor playhouse in Dortmund.  The kids loved it, and we got a chance to relax and have a proper meal (and by proper, I mean pizza).  I took lots of photos of the kids having fun, and got some brilliant ones of the doing back flips on the trampolines.

We got back to school at 4pm, and I managed to leave by 5.  Everyone had been saying how much they ached on Friday, and I was smug about not aching at all - until Saturday morning, when I woke up with every muscle in my body hurting.  My stomach muscles still hurt!  And I've definitely caught the cold that the kids had. Lots of teachers were off during the week apparently, so I imagine i'll be very busy doing cover next week.

Yesterday, I went out for the day with a couple of friends to a wedding fair at a palace in Dusseldorf.  One of the friends is getting married in the summer, and has only just got engaged, so has lots to do!  It was nice to get some ideas for her to think about.  I'm taking her wedding photos, so I got some ideas too.  We went for lunch, and I had the evening to myself, as Matt was out playing poker with the lads from work.  He got in at 3am, but seems to have had a nice time!

Stuttgart

Last weekend, we went off to the German city of Stuttgart with 4 of our friends from work.  The train journey down was only 2 and a half hours, and it flew by in the company of good friends, beer and Linkee (which I won!).  We had decided that we were off 'dry January' and the diet just for this one weekend only, and we sure made the most of it!  We arrived at our hotel (a Park Inn - very nice) at 10pm, so just stayed in the hotel bar drinking wine and eating takeaway pizza.

On Saturday, we had a breakfast of pastries from the near by bakery, then went off to climb the tower at the main train station.  On the way, we passed the square above, where thousands of people were peacefully demonstrating about anything under the sun you could think of!

The top of the tower was covered in 'love padlocks'.

Then we went off to the world's largest pig museum!  Yes, you read that right!  It was a random collection of kitsch pig themed memorabilia, and I loved how random it was, although the 'pig erotica' section of interestingly positioned pig ornaments was slightly odd.

I loved the pig tram...

There were, of course lots of stops in pubs and breweries along the way, and a very nice German pub lunch, and Italian dinner.

It snowed overnight and we woke to this lovely view.

We went for brunch at a mexican restaurant, which had everything in a buffet style from a fried breakfast, to chilli, to cakes, to sandwiches.  We got our money's worth and then hopped on the tour bus.  Matt started feeling ill on the bus, so we decided to get off at the Mercedes Benz museum for a wander around while the rest of the group continued.  I'm glad we did, because the museum was fantastic!  Classic cars leading right up to modern day Formula 1 cars, and everything in between!

The 'celebrities' gallery had this World cup winning football tour bus, Princess Diana's Mercedes, Hitler's Mercedes, the Pope Mobile, and the Jurassic Park Lost World car!

These are all the Formula 1 safety cars, which Mercedes have made for many years.

The middle and bottom left cars were the ones that Lewis Hamilton won his Formula 1 world titles in, and the bottom right is the car Heikki Kovalainen won his title in.

These are Formula 1 cars through the ages...

... and this is the car that broke the world land speed record!

It was a great museum and a great weekend filled with laughter.  We didn't get back until 10.30pm on Sunday so we were very tired for Monday morning's work!