Balloon Festival

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Things are running fairly smoothly over here in Bavaria. I finally decided it would be my new year’s resolution to get my arse in gear and sort out a few things to keep me from going completely insane .... I have enrolled onto a German language course (which is three mornings a week but doesn't start until 22 Feb). I have joined a gym and was glad to see that most gyms are pretty much the same worldwide which means I can just about understand most of the machines and how they start (although some of the seat adjustments are still beyond me so I just try and choose the machines that matches my height). And last Friday I organised a two hour ski lesson to boost my skiing confidence ... and it was well worth the money because it was really, really useful (and I'm sure Ian is more thankful of that than anyone as it means he gets to go skiing a little more often)!?

We had snow over Christmas and while it has remained on the ground, it's not snowed too much since. In fact on Sunday it actually rained (while Ian and I were trying to ski). So this means a lot of the snow has melted ..... at least the roads are all clear so I managed to get out for a run this morning which was the first time in about three weeks. We're praying for snow again this week as we have family coming to visit who are very keen to get their skis on and ski three days away.

Over Christmas we spent an afternoon/evening with our neighbours who told us all about the local delights of living in the country. One of the main things they told us about was where to get our milk, fresh from the dairy farmers (which are about 50 yards from our door). In the evening I can just go into the cattle shed with my bottle and help myself to some lovely fresh milk ..... Luckily I don't have to milk the cows myself as that has already been done (and the milk has been filtered so there are no big black or white cow hairs in my cereal in the mornings)!!?

Last week there was a Hot Air Balloon Festival in one of the nearby villages, when I looked out of the window each morning (between 11-12am) I could see about 20 hot air balloons in the sky over the Alps. Now as I'm fairly fascinated by hot air balloons I convinced Ian that we had to go and watch the last day of the festival. So on Saturday morning off we trekked to Bad Hindlelang to see the balloons set off. It was such a lovely clear, cold day, perfect conditions for the balloons .... see the pics attached.

When we arrived we had just missed the teddy bear shaped balloon take off, but after we had left the festival we encountered the balloon having a bit of trouble .... as the pics show this balloon was very low (check out those trees), so low in fact it looked like it was going to crash into the houses! We followed it in the car for a little while (I wanted to get some close up photos) and luckily enough it managed to find a field to come down in….phew!

Unfortunately I don't have any pics of the train engine or the bottle of Jagermeister shaped hot air balloons, but believe me …... they were as equally as fascinating!?

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