Of Krauts and Kats

So it's been a lot longer than I realized since I last made a post here. Partly been quite busy and partly settled into a bit of a routine over here. Winter is coming into force (i.e. sunrise at 8, sunset at 4.30, ice cold temps, etc.), lax practice continues and work has been taking up more of my time. That's not to say I haven't been enjoying the surroundings (all work and no play make Seabass something something...), just nothing particularly post worthy. I've been dabbling in the restaurant scene, making Norwegian and Danish friends, going to more opera and even some travel for work.

So first off, we had our first snow here last week (October 21 to be exact).

This was from when I got out of Marriage of Figaro last thursday, a beautiful and pleasant surprise out on the stone walkways surrounding the operahouse.

More importantly, there is a new member to the family, my cat Clementine :)

I rescued her from a dude who's allergic girlfriend is moving in and if they couldn't find someone to take care of the cat they were going to kill it! I mean what the fuck?! Chick gets the sniffles and the cat has to die for it because they don't want to deal? I wasn't about to let that happen so I adopted her and that's that.

She's adorable and super friendly. Her coat is nice tiger stripes but she also has orange splotches all over her like someone spilled orange juice all over her. Hence Clementine instead of her old stupid name, Rosita. What is she, a Mexican housekeeper?

Now some random pictures from my business trip to Germany. In 3 days we hit up 4 cities and 5 companies including 3 of the 4 largest utility firms in the country. In my mind I thought that added up to 19 of awesomeness, but in reality it was just a ton of meetings and travelling. Didn't get a chance to really see any of the cities but here are some random pictures I collected.

I know that's kind of a jumble but let's just call it a stream of conscious replication of my trip experience. Yeah I'm gonna run with that.

Next on the schedule is our first lax tournament this weekend. I think we're gonna be in good shape and all the boys seem stoked. Pictures from that will definitely be up on here. Also I'm heading back to the states next week for another business trip and will be palling it up with all my old friends in NYC as well as visiting the family for a bit. Again pictures. Ok then that's all, I'm out.

Krakow

Had a great weekend in Krakow with family and friends, always great to see some friendly faces in a foreign land! This story is best told through pictures, so I will start it up.

Outside Wawel

A memorial to Katyn

The old town square Cloth Hall

The famous church, Kościół Mariacki

Another view of the church, well known for it's hourly trumpeting

Then there was the farm in the hills outside of Krakow that we visited for a day. Lots of food was grilled and eaten, sleeping in the car followed.

That was a truly awesome day. I even got the chance to pick wild mushrooms in the forest, which we then grilled fried up.

Lastly, a couple shots from a nice restaurant we went to called Gruby Ryby, literally translated into "fat fish". Tasty to say the least.

I also learned the old Polish recipe for moonshine, 1410 based off of the Battle of Grunwald, 1kg of sugar, 4 liters of water, 10 deciliters of yeast. Yeah baby, time to start some home brewing! That recipe will give me about 2 liters of Spiritus (190 proof) which I can mix with honey and some other stuff to get some old fashioned Mioldowka!

Lax is also going really well, the team has progressed remarkably over the past 3 weeks. We have our first tourney in Kristiansund last weekend of October, so we're gonna have a sweet road trip with the team and our cheerleaders. Also in second week of October I'm going on a business trip to Germany visiting Hamburg, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Essen, and Dusseldorf. Lastly, I started up my Norwegian language tutoring, hopefully that starts paying dividends soon. God dag alle sammen!