just john

I had assumed early on that this blog might be a short term effort at best but here I am at over 150 entries to date. All drivel, mostl drivel about Germany. At least it is mine and I do pay the rent on the space for it. I think this is my longest lapse so far with keeping track of what's going on here. SO much for regularity. Fortunately, I have not broken or spilled anything in a while and there have been no crisis of the spirit with regard to settling in to Germany. Politics, as well, seem to be on a short hiatus with the notable exception of Fred Thompson. He is apparently willing to nuke foreign countries if they do not cooperate. Aside from that, I'm relatively happy to report nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

I went skiing with Frank in Switzerland this weekend which, I now realize, is not terribly extraordinary. It was three and a half hours drive to the slope we stayed at, though there's also a good one two hours drive away which we will probably visit for a day trip. We had two choices on the way home; one through Austria and another just straight through the Swiss/erman border. Probably 5km difference between the two but Austria requires an additional tax sticker so we didn't. We looked into Lichtenstein on our right as we passed by it. Right about then it dawned on me that I never thought I would live driving distance to the Alps.

So here we were:

Skiing was pretty good for early December. We skied a glacier hill just to be on the safe side. "Where, where? Where did we go?" We stayed in a little ski village called Laax which is a trio of ski towns that are at the base of this particular mountain. The name of the mountain? You wouldn't believe me without a picture and a movie:

http://12claws.com/blog/MOV00753.3GP