Wednesday, March 31, 2010

We are back home ...


ard to believe we are home already. We have been in Europe for 10 month and already back in Canada for 1 week. Now looking at this blog, we must have been busy as we did not update this since December. Well, this will change as I like to share so many ideas and new things I have seen and experienced.
Here is a short review of the last couple month. Starting with December. Like everyone else, we have been busy with Christmas and to start with the ski season. Skiing was amazing and we had most of the time very good conditions. The kids did very well on skies and started to snowboard (see attached video) as well. We did not bring our skies and run into some really good deals at one of the countless "Ski-Basars". Penny and I picked up a very good set of touring skies (binding, skins and crampons) for 100 Euro each. To get most our of the great skiing around the Allgaeu and Austria, we purchased a Season Pass (only 355 Euro) for about 20 ski resorts. Meaning we had had 580 km on downhill runs within a 45 minute drive from our home.
It even got better with the "Kindergarten" system we had the kids in. They spend 5 days a week from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in Kindergarten and had a blast, learned to speak a better Germany then I do and we could go skiing almost every day. 3 times a week Penny was going to school and took German lessons and the rest of the time we had a very good Penny & Max time. I still could work full steam as I worked most of the time during the evening hours (from 6:00 pm to midnight or 1:00 am, which is daytime in Canada) and a little bit during the day. Everything was perfect, maybe a little tiering with the full schedule, but for sure a lot of fun. The kids had a great time with all the local activities and the Grand-Parents. It was great as they lived just one apartment below. So they could go downstairs any time and if needed we had baby sitters very close by. 
In January we run into a pretty sweet deal with MEC. We did a 12 day Mediterian Cruise for 798 Euro (the whole family with outside/balcony room and food) Starting in Genua/Italy, to Barcelona/Spain, to Funchal, Madeira/Portugal, to Teneriffa, Canary Islands/Spain, to Arrecife, Lanzarote (Canary Islands) / Spain, to Malaga, Andalusien/Spain, to Civitavecchia (Rom)/Italy and back to Genua/Italien. What a great experience and fun we had while I was still able to work.
We did one more weekend trip to Praque (also a must see City) and the rest of the time we enjoyed the great skiing in the Alps with our area seasons passes. 
Now being back for a week, we had great weather and I already had 4 hikes up to Mt. Swansea with 2 great flights right up to Cloud-base (3100m and once at 2800m) and one day of skiing at Panorama. Now we are getting ready for our Easter Fly-in Meet next week.