Christmas 2007

The first thing that happened was a few hours before I left. I got home from the pub at 3am, having to get up at 9am to pack and get the train to see my parents in Seefeld in Austria.

I got home and looked at the toilet and it was flooded with water. There had been a drip before, but now it was just a major leak.

Stressed, I called the friend I shared a taxi with who had an Austrian girlfriend. She was a real life-saver, calming me down and giving me the phone number of an emergency plumber.

I rang him, he came and fixed it, and charged me €398.

I got to bed at 6am.

Good quality Austrian trains. On time (both me and the trains). Tired. Had good food on the restaurant car.

My mother does Ice Skating and they took a group holiday to the skiing village of Seefeld in Austria. The first part of my Christmas trip was to take the train from Vienna to Seefeld and join them. My Dad doesn't ice skate so we walked around the villague and the surrounding fields during the day.

This was the bar where Christina, my father and I sat outside drinking Glühweins. This year it was covered in snow!

This is the church in Seefeld

This is Hotel Kaldschmid where Christina and I stayed last year. I also stayed there on a company party in around 2002. It's a great hotel and has a swimming pool on the top floor. (This year I stayed in my parents' hotel, Hotel Post.)

Look what the cleaning woman did to the second duvet. She made it into a heart!