r ellenberger

Another tardy update of the blog. What have we done? Lots! Highlights include: - Christmas celebrations at Eddie's with Yanan, Victor, Eddie and Jennah, which included a pork roast, vegetable bake, turkey, and other deliciousness. - Jackies yum cha birthday lunch with the above crew. Sam and Katy got Jackie tickets to Aladdin which we went to see in January. - Going to Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio in Watford which Jackie loved. Also had late night Five Guys burgers which was the only thing open in Watford on the 1st Jan. - Went to see fantastic beasts with Coco before she left. - Went to my first Arsenal win: Arsenal vs Stoke. Then went to a game with Eddie, against Watford, which we lost 2 - 1. Then got drenched cycling home. This was the night before leaving for Verona. - Had new housemates move in. Jackie managed to psyche out our old ones when she told the dude she had a problem with him. Next thing you know they knock on our door and say bye, we are moving out. ...

Day 3: Today we woke up ready to go to the ski slopes! We got up around 7.30am, ate brekky, then went outside. Car battery died. Overnight it had dipped to -30C. We walked next door to see if the neighbours had cables to help us JumpStart the car. Nope. Called the car company and they said they would send someone. Watched westworld in the meantime. Luckily the owner of the house was coming that day, so we emailed him and he rocked up at 11am with cables to help us. Finally around 12 we headed to Zwardon for the slopes - about 20 minutes drive south west. Alas, we get there and turns out you can't hire snow pants & jackets! So we just sat down with a hot chocolate and local smoked cheese with jam snack and watch others have fun on the slope. Then we drove around looking for places that might sell snow clothing, but it was a public holiday, so everything was closed and we couldn't find any thrift shops either. Defeated, we decided to call it a day and drove home. Spent the ar...

We flew in to Katowice and the snow was already coming down. The girl at the passport control said we were very lucky because it hadn't snowed in Katowice for 10 years. We grabbed our rental car and some snow chains and headed off for the drive to central Katowice. The scenery was so beautiful, cute little buildings and forests all dusted with snow. It was quite a stressful drive - the roads were quite heavily covered in snow and worse, the lane markings on the highway had no cats eyes so it was really hard to see where I was amongst the falling snow. After making it to the centre of town we parked the car and dragged out suitcases to the Novotel Hotel. The snow was really coming down and the view from our room was of a white world. After resting up for a bit we headed out for dinner. Jackie had found a restaurant serving Polish dumplings, so we walked for 25 minutes through the cold, found the place and grabbed a table. The owner spoke enough English so we managed to order wi...

Ryan has been bugging me to blog for a while now so here it is, about 1 month late. Oops. Since the last post my parents came, we met up with them for dinner and also took them for high tea in Sloane Square for mums birthday. They were travelling with a bunch of friends so while Ryan and Nugen were driving all the way to Wales to see a Chelsea match, I was a tour leader taking the parents and friends to eat curry in brick lane (got totally wroughted!) and to the flower markets. We also did a Buckingham Palace tour which was interesting. Meanwhile we had to move back to Whitechapel from jonnos and nugen slept on our floor and snored so loudly Ryan had to throw a shoe at him every night. Not long after I got a job at loreal, it's a 3 month contract, but the work isn't exactly stimulating so we'll see how it pans out. End of September saw us off to Munich for Oktoberfest with Ray and Sel. We wore costumes and everything. It was pretty cool seeing the huge tents and soa...