h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It was my company Christmas party on Friday. We all went up to Winterberg (in the Sauerland, a hilly ski resort). Fantastic, because it snowed on Friday and it looked just fantastic. Party on Friday night was not bad - despite me somehow ending up (with the hubs twice and with my team once) ending up singing on the Karaoke!! eek.

But I won a EUR 30 voucher to spend in a department store (basically, that was for hubs, because nobody would get up and sing so it was getting a bit embarassing and up he got, dragging me behind him)

But we're still infested. The gruesomes were allowed (by the doc) to attend the party as long as we put their hair up and were a bit careful about where we put their hats/scarves/coats etc.

Yesterday (we stayed overnight) we took them iceskating. First time was 3 years ago and they hated it and just watched. Yesterday they both learned how to do it - #1 slowly and very precicely as usual, #2 was cruising around like an ice-hockey player.

Because it was part of the company party, the tab is picked up by employers, as is lunch and dinner when we got back to Düsseldorf.

We met up with two of my (much younger) girly colleagues at the ice-rink and they stayed with us for the rest of the day, which was lovely because I really like them, and they and the Gruesome Twosome get on well.

But now back to normal and nit combing and washing for Europe.
sigh.

forgot to mention that it is the first time the Gruesome Twosome have seen so much snow. It was nearly up to their knees, and for the first time in their lives they managed to make a decent sized snowman (forgot to take a photo) and we had a most excellent >snowball> fight and make some snow angels.

Snow - lovely when it falls when and where you want it!

When I lived in Germany we went ice-skating on the local lake and the kids could sometime skate down the river to school!!

Jules

Snow is not one of the things I miss.

Snow and kids is a great combination, but greyish slush sprayed onto the pavement by passing trucks as one slogs to work is something I will never get nostalgic about.

It sounds like Germany does winter 'properly', which is always nice to know. It's chilly here - some days the temperature barely struggles above 70.

*packs bags to join Mr. Gradient and family for Christmas*

Germany does winter properly in the parts where they get a proper winter (and, therefore, people pay good money to go there and ski and other winter stuff). Where I live we get the grey slush affair.

Which sounds political


Jules, which part of Germany did you live in? When I were a wee lass, I well remember the first birthday I had in Detmold - I must have turned 6 that year - or was it 5? Possibly 4... actually, I think it must have been 4 because it was ... ah, nineteensixtyweird... let's leave it at that.

Anyway, 7th December, no snow. 8th December, when I got up, about a foot of snow and it was still falling heavily. No school, and I got a sledge for my birthday. I built a snowman, and my dad and his mate Del, fresh from a Sergeants Mess meeting (ie, tanked up) rode my sledge down the hill and bashed up my snowman and broke my sledge.

Gits.

'The Grey Slush Affair' sounds like one of those 20's consulting detective books...maybe a Miss Marple or a Lord Peter Whimsey thing.

I was near Tuebingen, South-West Germany.

Slush - when I lived in Russia there was a lot of that Excellent memories though, wouldn't have missed it

Wish I'd got the chance to live in Russia. I went there once in Summer in 1979 and once in winter in 1982. Brrrr it was very very cold (-25° the day we arrived, but that was a heatwave, apparently, it had been as low as -40° before that) but fantastic place.

Of course that was back in the time of... well, it would have been Brezhnev and probably Chernenko? Can't remember these days. I had a fab time there, considering when it was the people there were fab, especially in '82 in Leningrad when they found out we were weeks away from our Russian A-level and were studying the Bronze Horseman. They took us on a tour of that poem, and it helped a lot.

Ooh, yes, I saw that. It was called St Petersburg by then, 1993. We had Yeltsin - and everything state-owned was collapsing, ie old people from care homes were turfed out on the street as the social security system had just gone overnight Literally on the street.

I know the collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to be a good thing and all that...but it worried me lots and made me quite sad.

I think things were done very quickly and without planning...hence the old folk on the streets. I guess in general terms the change was a good thing, or at least it was supposed to be...then Putin turned up.

The suddenness of the change is what was bad - although I'm sure they are less than happy (the old, mostly) at what has replaced the system they grew up with.

It was the same with the 1917 revolution though, replacing one tyrant with another, with amazing speed. I read once (probably in a book by Robert Conquest) that the Russian psyche is so that they have to be oppressed by someone. They are never happier than when they are being crushed under an iron boot. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but he does have a point.

And living where I do and seeing the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet regime first hand (and being taxed to the hilt to pay for it) I am also somewhat cross that the politicians did it fast to make sure they went down in history as "the ones who brought freedom and democracy to the Soviet peoples"

ha!

freedom to live on the streets and without the benefit of a decent pension or healthcare, more like.

OOPS! I'm reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and it's showing.

You're right, though.