Jan´s Blog Spot

…when you’re having fun and also when you’re just plain busy. So much for the excuse for almost two weeks without any update in here, but there have been plenty of things going on, so here you go:

The weekend before the last saw a very good start since Christian had organized a surprise birthday party for Tina Turner (the 2nd person from the right in the picture below – and yes, that is her real name ). A very fun night all in all.

In case you’re wondering about the drinks in two of the ladies’ hands: the poison of choice for that evening was Pisco sour that we all got to know and love two years ago in Peru.


My friends Anna and Norbert had invited a few friends an me for dinner on their terrace the following day, one day before the elections in here in France. The food was delicious, but since I went there by motorbike I had to leave the wine to the other guys but still enjoyed the ride home afterwards, even though the Champs-Elysées were even more packed than ususal (yes, even 1 am and 2am) since the team bus of the French Rugby Team “Stade français” was there and they had just won the French championship, as I learned from my colleagues two days later.

The following work week was quite the ordinary except for a little mutual getting used to each other between my new somehow-yes-but-in-the-end-not-quite-but-almost boss (it’s complicated…). Anyway – Friday night I was invited to the farewell party of my old boss Antoine, which I think was the first time since I came to France that I was the only German person at a party I went to. On the other hand there were plenty of nice French people and more than enough champagne (about everybody brought a bottle), so I had a lot of fun that night and a remarkable headache the next day. Speaking of which: the next evening Vicky had invited to a dinner at her place with friends of hers and her flat mates, which also turned out to be a very good crowd and since the headache was gone by that time my resolution “no alcohol today” was quickly forgotten about… …and judging from the mix of languages spoken that evening, I really do have to learn more Spanish.

Sunday went by pretty quickly and yet another work week week started, with mainly two remarkable things, on the one hand a visitor from the Munich offces as Laetitia was here for two days and then Tuesday which finally was Antoine’s last day at Pangora before he was off to the US to start his new job. By chance I saw this ad for voyages-sncf.fr on the way home:


…and now guess where in the yoo-ess-and-ay Antoine is

As I’m off to bed now: more on last week, e.g. la fête de la musique, will have to wait until sometime the next couple of days…

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Or colors, for those of you who live rather west than north of here. Anyway I finally got around to adding at least a hint of design to the two main pages, in German and English. In case you have a minute to spare please feel free go have a look and leave a comment to let me know which of the two colo(u)r schemes you like better (though I do of course reserve the right to overrule any of the votes ).

Other than that there has been some partying, a good weekend, plenty of work, and too little sleep over the last few days. That combined with the inevitable after work beers we had tonight since my friend-colleague-boss Harald is in town, is why I’ll just drop into bed now and any further details will have to wait until the weekend, sorry…

Just one more thing, to prevent future accidents: the sorry excuse for a mug on the left in this picture is the standard size for beer glasses in Paris. If you want a serious one, be sure to order a “pint” (and try to pronounce it French):

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And once again it has been quite a busy week since the last update, this time busy means a bit of travel (hence the title). First I went to Munich for another long weekend which was quite enjoyable since I got to see some of my friends over there. Other than that I finally got around to installing the DSL line in my Mom’s home and all of a sudden surfing the web has become so much more fun. I really don’t know how we did it back then when ISDN was the fastest you can get. Before flying back to Paris on Monday evening I went to see a doctor (that appointment was the main reason for the whole trip) for a general check up and do now have the official confirmation that I’m in good health, so quite a good weekend, I’d say…

The “over there” was a business trip to Karlsruhe with my colleagues Emilie and Malik, for a day’s worth of meetings with the “new” colleages from Mentasys which turned out to very productive, thanks again the team in Karlsruhe for the warm welcome & great work. A more personal thing I was reminded of when we went out to have drinks yesterday night (this was mandatory after a train ride of almost six hours) was that while I really absolutely love the food here in France there are two small things I really miss, one is having a good selection of decent beers and good bread, but then, there are more than enough things to make up for this when you’re living here. As I found again today one of them certainly is having the quays along the Seine as jogging route – even on an ordinary Wednesday there are plenty of people out and about e.g. taking Salsa lessons or having a picknick on the Pont des Arts and the Eiffel Tower with the sparkling lights in the background.

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