Italy

Some pictures from different trips to Italy. Such a great country! Especially for cyclists. If you ever have the chance to go there, do it.

HAPPY EASTER!

I said last week that I need more days of riding my bike in the morning and watching TV (i.e. bike races) in the afternoon. Today was such a day. Yes, I know it is Easter and yes, I know that days like that should be spent with the family. But what should one do if the family in question is on vacation? At least most of them are.

So I spent some hours on the bike this morning. Beautiful weather and great landscape. My form isn’t too bad for this time of the year, a fact that I noticed while riding up some of the hills in this area.


I love it when the first new grass of the year appears on the fields! Look at this green!



In the afternoon I watched Paris-Roubaix, one of the most exciting and important spring classics in professional cycling. Great race again by Quickstep and Tom Boonen!

Childhood memories

When I look back on my childhood, a lot of memories come up. One special thing is my "afternoon meal“ which was my mother’s solution to dealing with a hungry kid (= me) in a time-saving way.

My mother worked part-time, so she didn’t have much time (or energy) to cook a meal when I came home from school in the afternoon. My school didn’t have a cafeteria, which meant that I was always very hungry when I got home. My father used to come home at 7 or 8 pm, so our family dinner didn’t take place before 8:30pm or so.

So my mom thought about little meals that didn’t take much time and that satisfied my hunger in a way that I could still eat dinner with my parents in the evening.

Most of these recipes were easy to cook, cheap, and consisted of ingredients most people have at home.
When I left home to live on my own, I rediscovered many of them, changed some of them, came up with new ideas, got better and better in cooking, tried other (more difficult) recipes...

Spring fun

What a great day today. I need more of this, definitively. I was so sick of remodeling that I got on my bike this morning and rode about two hours in wonderful spring weather. Ok, it wasn’t warm enough to ride in short sleeves (as I had hoped) but at least the sun was out and it didn’t rain. I always enjoy riding early in the morning because there are very few people/cars on the roads, at least on Sundays.
The afternoon was spent in front of the TV – watching the Tour of Flanders. Despite the recent decline of interest in procycling in Germany , we’re lucky that a lot of races are still shown live on TV. One of the good things about living here! The race itself was not as interesting and exciting as some of the previous editions, Quickstep was simply too strong (having Boonen, Devolder and Chavanel there). Devolder's attack on the Muur was perfect. Then he just hammered and kept the legs turning until the finish. Great attack by him and a worthy winner, followed by Haussler and Gilbert on second and third.

Being busy

Well, some time has passed since my last entry. I didn’t have much time during the last weeks as I am moving back to my old hometown after having spent the last 15 months working in another part of Germany. So the last weeks were filled with packing things and at the moment I’m still busy remodeling the apartment where I’m living now.
Not much has changed here since I moved away last year. It will be great to ride my bike on “old” roads and see some friends from school and university days again.
Looking forward to ride my bike again – maybe tomorrow if the weather stays as warm and sunny as it was today!