The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 27 trips to carry that many people.
It’s Friday!!!
Finally.
We got another heat wave this week in Germany and it is no fun if you are not allowed to go swimming. Argh. I wanted to update you all on what was going on the past days but I have a hell of a headache today and I am lucky if I survive work until 12.
So here comes something light for you that I saw over on Stephany’s Blog.
My next holiday is coming up.
On Friday at 11 o’clock I will be in a plane with my Dad to Lisbon, Portugal for our annual father-daughter trip.
We did our first trip just the two of us in 2013 when I gave him a 4-day trip to Rome for Christmas and his Birthday. Last year he naturally asked: where do we go to this year? 😉
Right, it looked like I had myself gotten into trouble.
So after some discussions we decided to go to Budapest in 2014. And for 2015 we decided on Lisbon.
I haven’t been there and I haven’t been in Portugal so I am not sure what to expect. Hubby and I are in general more the northern-country-people. We love Scotland and England for example.
Our trip to Italy last year was great and we enjoyed it but we will not go there anytime soon, that’s for sure.
So I hope Lisbon will be great and we will have a good time.
We are going for 4 days again, our plane touches down in Lisbon at 1 o’clock and we hired a private taxi to bring us to the hotel so we should be there quite quickly. We have the whole Saturday and Sunday and only fly back Monday at 7 in the evening which should give us plenty of time on Monday too.
My plan on Monday is to drive out to the Palácio Nacional de Queluz to see the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art.
You can watch the training in the mornings every Monday to Friday and I really want to see it.
Has anybody of you been to Lisbon before?
Any tips for me? Maybe a great restaurant or a nice not too touristy place we need to see?
On Friday we both had the day off (Hubby had to take leave though) and we left Steyr at 8 to drive to Linz. It’s only about half an hour’s drive and we drove directly to a Tack Shop. 🙂
I know, I know, crazy horse people. But we wanted to have a look what they offer. And yes, we bought something as well. Hubby got a fly-cap for Wotan and I bought myself new breeches. I love them!!!
After the successful start to the day we drove into town and parked at a big shopping mall where we had a fantastic Italian breakfast in a café/ restaurant. It was relay yummy. Mozzarella and tomato, Parma-ham, Ciabatta, tee, coffee and fresh orange juice and I had some eggs as well.
After that we left the mall and walk down the road and over the river into the city center. We strolled around the main roads, had a look in some of the shops and just enjoyed seeing a new city.
Sadly the weather was not as good as promised, it was chilly with wind and a lot of clouds on the sky.
But we enjoyed it to wander around and had a yummy late lunch around half past one.
We decided to not drive anywhere else in Linz that day but start our drive back home and as we had time we drove along the Danube River instead of the Autobahn.
On the way:
We ended up right in Passau and drove through Passau and finally the sun was out as well and I could snap at least one good picture with sunshine out of the car.
It was only a short “trip” but very nice to get out and see something new again. We definitely need to do that again.
Last week I took Thursday off to go with hubby to Steyr.
He had to work Thursday but took Friday off (yes, Good Friday is not a public Holiday in Austria).
And as he worked Thursday I decided I will go to the hair dresser. I usually only have the time to go on a Saturday and I just can’t relax enough to enjoy it as I am always thinking of my wasted Saturday.
So he asked two colleagues about a good hair dresser and I made an appointment and went.
I love them!! I love them so much. They are so nice and the salon is pretty and I simply adore my new hair. Especially the color, but the cut too even if is not that much different to before.
She styled my hair with a straightening iron into curls and I loved it so much. They still looked fantastic on the next day.
I already ordered a really good straightening iron as the one I have is old, too big and not suitable for making curls. 😉
And I definitely will go there again. I already checked, in 8 weeks is a public holiday on a Thursday. I took Friday off and will go to Steyr once again with hubby to get my hair done while he works. He he.
What do you think?
The color sheme: 
In the evening we went to a Restaurant at the Cinema – a Steak House – and the food was amazing. I love Steak and I love it when I can combine it with different sides such as baked potato, fries, steak house fries, salad, corn on the cob, friend onion ring,… heaven!
I don’t have a food picture, sorry. But that’s the restaurant: Ox Pasta & Grill
If you are ever going to be in Steyr, check it out!! But please make a Reservation!
I haven’t given an update on anything going on around here for way too long again. I don’t want to bore you to death with a lot of details and I don’t want to write several posts with different topics, so you get a little summary what’s been going on around here.
1. Health
I had my appointment with the “Heilpraktikerin” – nonmedical practitioner – on the 29th of January and I quite liked her. We talked for over an hour and discussed everything and at the end came up with plan. It involves different things that at the end should all have a positive effect on my HPV problem.
– I stopped talking the pill after I ran out of them the end of January anyway.
– I bought “Rosenzäpfchen” which should help to clean, stabilize and strengthen my mucous membrane where all the problems lie apparently
– and I started a “Mikroimmuntherapie”. Which means I am taking Globuli.
It’s a bit more complex, but I spare you the details (if anybody is interested or has/ had a similar problem and wants some more info, let me know) I comes down to me ordering some very expensive mixtures of different Globuli which I have to take every day.
It’s two different kinds, one is 2LPAPI and the other one is 2LCL1.
The 2LPAPI is especially against HPV, the 2LCL1 is used against cancer. As from HPV you can get cancer we decided to go with it as well to first boost up my immune system and second tell my body cells that cancer is a no-go.
The first month I had to take two of each per day, before 2 o’clock and preferably not eat half an hour before and after taking them. The best time to take them is right before you get up. There should be at least 20 minutes in-between taking the two different mixtures so it was a bit of a challenge the first month.
Since month two I am down to only one of each. I take the first one before I get up and the second before I am leaving for work. As I am having breakfast at work that woks quite well for me. If they really do anything and help, we will only know by the end of May when I am having my next doctor’s appointment to check. I have a good feeling. I wasn’t ill at all since I am taking them and everybody around me got a very bad case of the flue (hubby, my Dad, my Mom), I even visited people in hospital several times and I was fine. So maybe they do what they should do, boost my immune system to fight the HPV down.
Another side effect is that I am feeling so much better since I am no longer on the Pill. I can’t explain it, but I am less stressed, I am less anxious and overall just a whole lot more relaxed. It’s amazing. If I would have known that some years ago I would have done it sooner I think. I don’t have any problem so far, everything is going as it should. I never had big issues with PMS, I had two to four days where I felt a bit off, my beasts have been sensitive during that time but that’s it. Since no longer taking the pill, I have not one symptom! I feel great all the time. It’s amazing.
2. Horses
The horses are all well and happy. I have been training more again and went to my first show in March. Escania did well, we had two little mistakes that cost us some points but I was happy with her performance.
Last weekend I went to a three day jumping seminar. The first one in ages as I didn’t jumped that much with her since her injury. And it was so, so great! And so much fun! And she is just the best horse ever. 🙂
I have a dressage seminar coming up on the 11th and 12th of April but the next show is only on the 09th of May. In March we also went to a hoof-seminar. Which was amazing. We learned all the theory about the hoof, horse legs, shooing, ect. and we had to shoo and un-shoo a horse ourselves. That was fun. So now we are able to put a lost shoo back on without calling the farrier. We already did that with Wotan as he lost a shoe right the day we had that seminar. So funny.
3. Work
I don’t know if I mentioned it or not but my hubby asked me if I would be interested in reducing my working hours until he is back from his 2 years Austria contract.
I never thought about that. I always told people that one day I would like to work reduced hours, but I never thought it would be now. So we thought about it somre more, talked about the pros and cons, did the math regarding salary ect. and 3 weeks ago I applied to reduce my working hours from 100% to 80% which would 32 hours instead of 40. Ma boss said yes, my boss-boss said yes, the personnel officer said yes and now I am waiting for an answer from the government.
They told me they don’t have a problem if my boss and the personnel officer here say yes, but I haven’t an official answer yet. If it goes though I will only work 32 hours from July on for the duration of one year. It will be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 6 hours a day and Thursday 8 hours. Doesn’t that sound amazing?
I can leave work at 1 o’clock every day and have the whole afternoon for the horses, to do the shopping, washing, cleaning. And I will finally have a weekend and free evenings again. I hopefully can manage to start running and maybe go swimming once or twice a week during summer. I so hope it will go well and they say yes.
4. Holidays
Tomorrow I took off work and hubby and I will drive to Steyr for a short getaway. He has to work until three and in the meantime I will have a hair dresser appointment and walk through town until he is finished. In the evening we have reservations at a great Restaurant in Steyr. Friday is a working day in Austria but hubby took leave so after breakfast we will drive to Linz and look at the town, do some (window-) shopping and have lunch at a restaurant that a colleague recommended. We will be back home Friday night.
In May I am going on my annual father-daughter trip to Lisbon.
We leave Friday morning and will be back Monday night. I am really looking forward to see Lisbon and I hope we will have as good a time as we had in Rome and Budapest the years ago.
We also promised hubby’s parents a weekend trip to Prague in summer, but we haven’t booked anything yet. We have to see who that will play out.
AND: our big holiday for the year will be to,…. South Africa. Again. I know. 😉
But we miss it and we want to see friends. We made a compromise to see knew things as well so we will fly down to Cape Town (we have been there) and after two days there travel along the coast (the garden rout) up until Knysna (that would be the new part of the holiday). From Knysna we will spend one day driving more than 1.000 km up to Pretoria.
We will have 4 days in Pretoria to see friends, visit places we miss, go to our favorite restaurant and shopping centers. And we want to drive further up nearly until Louis Trichardt to visit friends on their farm for 3 days.
They are both in their 70thies and we don’t know how often we will be able to see each other so we will definitely visit them this time!
I CAN’T WAIT!
So you see, we have been busy over here and a lot has happened – and will happen.
Hope you are all well and happy!! I will try to update more often this time.
Bitter Sweet Life 