Merry Christmas!

I know - a little bit late but nevermind! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

I decided quite a while ago that  I wasn't going to go back to Germany for Christmas this year but until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't decided what else to do either. Many thanks to S, T and J for inviting me to spend Xmas with them/their respective families - it really touched me.

In the end, I opted to finally visit my sister in her new place in Salisbury. The storm on Monday night had caused a lot of chaos, which meant that most trains were cancelled. I spent the morning updating the nationalrails website about every 5 minutes. And things were getting worse rather than better. They over-optimistically had assumed that services would be back to normal around lunch time. But instead, more and more trains got cancelled...

Eventually, I decided to just head to Waterloo to try to get on a train that would at least get me closer to Salisbury. S kindly offered to pick me up somewhere south of London and drive me over. But, that wasn't necessary in the end, as I arrived just in time to get onto one of the very few trains that went to Basingstoke from where my sister and T picked me up. I was equally lucky on my way back to London: despite another heavy storm last night, we managed to get onto a train, got a seat and arrived with only minor delays.

I had a lovely and very relaxing time. And it was great to be looked after and basically not having to lift a finger! I could definitely get used to that! And their house is really nice and very homely. Their kitchen alone is about the size of my whole flat... And with lots of storage space, it's so tidy, too! It seems that both my sister and brother have grown out of their teenager messiness, while I seem to have gotten worse with age... So, one of my resolutions for the new year is to keep my flat tidier. I have already started clearing out my kitchen cupboards. Getting rid of all the expired stuff (2009???!), has already created more space :-)