Saturday

This Saturday past was a lovely day.

My five Swiss cousins all have busy lives, which means that it's not often that they spend a whole day all together in one place. However, to celebrate their dad's (and my uncle's) 75th birthday, they thought the best present they could give would be to go on walk with all the family. The date of 15 November had been arranged a while in advance, and I'd also been invited along.

Anyway, the plan was to go on the chair lift late on Saturday morning from Oberdorf in Canton Solothurn up to the Weissenstein mountain and then walk on from there. Unfortunately, the lift is currently undergoing maintenance work, so we reverted to Plan B and walked up the mountain instead. It wasn't too hard a walk, however. We made it to the top after an hour and a half, and the handful of relatives who'd made it up by car (yes, there's a road going up) had prepared a mini-barbecue for us. The photo below is the view from where we ate.

We then walked down the other side of the hill and finished the walk in Canton Berne and the French-speaking village of Corcelles, where we ended up at the "Restaurant de l'étrier d'argent" (The Silver Stirrup). The people there - who spoke both Swiss German and French - served us copious amounts of fillet of steak which we then fried ourselves in pans on the table. Simply delicious.

200th post

Hard to believe but this really is my 200th blog entry. If you consider that I launched this blog back in September 2006, 200 posts begins to sound somewhat less impressive. However, apart from a few prolific moments now and then, I've really never been one of those professional bloggers who feel inadequate if they don't blog at least once a day. The reason I started the blog in the first place was to amuse myself, provide my family back home with some news, and keep an archive of daily life. If I inadvertently amused other people in the process, then so much the better.

If I ever stopped enjoying writing my blog, then I'd pack it in immediately. Thankfully, this isn't the case yet, although some of you may have noticed my other blog about German wine which I tentatively started, then scrapped, and then started again. My intention recently has been to devote more energies to the wine blog, though I've been suffering from writer's block recently - plus I haven't been tasting too much wine either. Maybe I'll get a second wind though, as it were.

Over the past 12 months, I've undergone a number of upheavals in my professional life. At the end of 2007 I turned freelance and began working from home. However, by the end of August, I was getting tired of working from home and the isolation was sending me potty. So I then decided to rejoin the company I worked for from 2000 to 2006. Not the most original of choices, but hopefully familiarity will not breed contempt this time.

Go-karting

Went go-karting last night with friends in Lörrach-Brombach. The track was situated in an old tennis hall on the edge of Brombach. Was a bit of a trek from the Bahnhof to reach, but we all got there on time for our 8 p.m. Friday night slot.

I'd been go-karting briefly a few weeks ago at another venue in Haagen - my first ever time - and had been virtually the slowest. This time, I was ranked 7th out of 12, which is an improvement, I suppose.