All called out

My day started with a call with the Australians at 8am. Which meant getting up at 6:30 to be in the office on time. Not a good time to get up AT ALL. Now that I've met at least some of them in Cape Town, it's much easier to identify their voices though and it's generally a more personal relationship, which is lovely.

Then the next call at 14:00, then 15:00, then 16:15. It only took 2.5 months to get my new hands-free phone set ordered - great day to trial it! It looks pretty cool and my colleagues at first thought I was talking to myself as they couldn't see it from the side. It is very practical and lets me type without a problem (which also means I can do some actual work, while listening to the conversation). There is just a bit of an issue with me being able to hear myself with a slight delay, like an echo. Not great, but you actually get used to it quite quickly. It also makes me think twice about saying anything at all.

Nearly bedtime and nearly the weekend! Where I'll also be able to catch up with blog entries for this week. I  clearly have such an amazing social life that it doesn't leave time for blogging anymore! ;-)

Good night x

Super cool swearing

A few weeks ago, I went to see Kathleen Turner in Bakersfield Mist - and it was great! I got my ticket from Time Out and had a great seat just three rows from the front. And every time I go to the theatre, I think to myself that I should go more often. It's such a special experience (for me) to be so clause to the live action.

It's a funny and sad and touching story and I thought that both Kathleen Turner and Ian McDiarmid were excellent. All the swearing was made super cool by Kathleen's raspy, dark voice.

The show is still running until the end of August!

At the Duchess Theatre

Annual dose of Henning

As always, Henning Wehn has been trialing this year's show 'Eins, Zwei, DIY' for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Betsey Trotwood, a small pub in Farringdon. Since I first found out about him, he's become much more famous and his list of gigs has become longer and longer. Together with Mark Watson, he was doing a special comedy series for Dave about the Football World Cup (Road to Rio). All well deserved!

The first (shorter) half of his show was old material, most of which I already knew but it's still funny.
The audience absolutely loved him! And the English guy with German parents from the audience really did not look like 40!!!

Bad choices

The only highlight of long-haul flights are the movies. It's a great opportunity to catch up with films I never got round to seeing at the cinema. On both flights to and from Cape Town, I managed to pick some crappy films though...

Well, starting with the good choices:
Frank - the quirky film with Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It really as good as the critics say!
The Muppets Most Wanted - had been on my list because of Rickie Gervais. And it didn't disappoint. Tina Fey was brilliant and so was Constantine - the evil Kermit. With loads of celebrity cameos. And who can blame them? Who wouldn't want to be in a movie with the Muppets?!

And then it went downhill...
The angriest man in Brooklyn - easy to see why this would appeal to me based on its title. But the story was hugely disappointing. Don't waste your time!
The face of love - with Annette Bening and Ed Harris. Equally bad. Robin Williams in a supporting role. Might be worth avoiding all Robin Williams' films...
A long way down - I had read Nick Hornby's book and seem to recall that it didn't blow me away. I couldn't remember the details of the story and as Pierce Brosnan is still nice to look at and I like Toni Collette, I gave it a go. Again, very predictable story and Jess (one of the main characters played by Imogen Poots) annoyed the hell out of me...

The Lego movie - now this wasn't as good as I had hoped and heard but not as bad as the above either. I think I took most pleasure from imagining Will Ferrell doing the voice over for the evil guy.

Hopeful

Last but not least, some photos from the Cape of Good Hope. Interestingly, this is not actually the most southern tip of Africa (wikipedia says that it is Cape Agulhas) and it's also not where the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean meet (which fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point).

But who cares? It's a beautiful place in any case.

Looking for hippos

Unfortunately, we didn't see any. No idea how these massive animals are able to hide - but they did!
But here are some more animal pictures:

before they ended up on my plate...

have you ever seen flamingos fly - it's incredible how the bright pink of their wings becomes visible; spotting a deer while bird-watching; a single seal in the harbour

the obligatory food photos

From left to right:
1. row:
- Ostrich - tasted like beef- steak to me. I thought I might as well give it a try.
- Incredibly chocolate-y dessert with a great dessert wine!
- Asparagus risotto in a Belgian restaurant at the V&A Waterfront. I've started to order fish and vegetarian dishes in restaurants to mix it up a bit. Still considering going vegetarian for a while. Not sure that will ever happen, but hopefully reducing the amount of meat I eat.
2. row:
- Delicious pork at the Two Oceans Restaurant at Cape Point. I have to admit that I never expect much in terms of quality at these touristy restaurants - but this was really great food!
- Celebrating our journal's birthday with a very creamy cake
- Tapas lunch at Camps Bay in the sun
3. row:
- Currywurst at Cafe Extrablatt - couldn't believe they had a branch of this German chain restaurant down the road from our (second) hotel. Just checked their website and they only have 4 branches abroad: in Turkey, the Netherlands, Marrocco - and South Africa. What are the chances?
- Apfelstrudel at the same place
- and the reason I put on weight: Amarula. A Baileys like cream liquor made of the fruit of the Marula tree. It tastes like a caramel-y Baileys.

Asara - wine estate in Stellenbosch

I don't even drink wine - but those views (which we enjoyed during lunch) were well worth the visit

pretty, pretty views

view from the boat going to Robben island

V&A Waterfront - A for Alfred and not Albert!

views/sunsets from my hotel room

bent trees, Green Point lighthouse, Cape Town stadium

Bronzed bodies

I have to say that I quite like the hop on hop off buses - and I am certainly adding the Cape Town bus to the list of recommended tourist 'attractions'. That day table mountain completely disappeared in the fog, so there was no point of going up, but instead we got off at Camps Bay and enjoyed lunch and cocktails in the sun.

As it was winter, we unfortunately didn't get to see any of the bronzed bodies the bus audio guide kept referring to...

Camps Bay in WINTER!!

Menu said it's a pink cocktail. So, I just had to have it.
More red than pink but yummy!

MONKEYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This probably has to be THE highlight of my trip. I don't quite understand why everyone keeps correcting me: I saw monkeys!!! Yes, they were baboons - but baboons are monkeys, right?!

At Cape Point

Foxy penguins

After the congress finished at lunch time on Friday, we had the weekend to explore! And my colleague and me were lucky enough to be chauffeured around by lovely P who also stayed until Monday and had hired a car.

So, on Saturday we first went to check out the penguins at Foxy Beach and Boulders Beach. I could have watched them waddle around forever - they are soooo cute and we got very close. Happy times!


difficult to pick from literally dozens of photos....

*seriously adorable*

This made me giggle: don't shake a penguin's hand???
I really would have loved to take one home....

Table Mountain

We arrived on a beautiful sunny day after having left a rainy London behind. We also had a few rainy and grey days but given that we spent most of the time inside the convention centre, I didn't really matter all that much.

I'm very happy that I managed to get up Table Mountain on one of the sunny mornings. We took the hop on hop off bus to the cable car that took us up to the peak. For some reason (partly as I had done no research at all for this trip...) I had expected just some café at the top of the mountain and hadn't realized that you can wander across quite a big area. The views are absolutely amazing and if you ever go to Cape Town, it really is a must see! The photos don't get anywhere near how beautiful it is - and different depending on which direction you are looking in. Take warm clothing though - it can get a little chilly...



Dassies - resembling rodents but more closely related to elephants: check out Wikipedia!

Beautiful people

I'm back!!!!

Not only is this my first blog entry on my brand-new laptop (still struggling a little with the new keyboard - which is pleasantly un-noisy) - I'm also back from 10 days in Cape Town. Mainly a work trip, it didn't feel much like work at all. I've simply had an amazing time!!! Who would have thought that Germany winning the World Cup and work winning our bid to host an international congress would not even feature in my top three list of these past 10 days?!

1) Spending time with beautiful people

2) Getting close to baboons and penguins

3) Incredible views from table mountain

 

More to follow. I've been using my new work iphone for taking photos and am hoping for a better quality than those taken with my own Samsung phone - fingers crossed.

 

For now: thanks to everyone who's been visiting my blog over the last 2-3 weeks when I didn't have much chance to update it. I have lots to catch up on and very much hope to get back on track with daily entries shortly.

 

Have a great day!

Bloody technology

Let's go back to writing on pieces of paper.

It looks as if something I included in an online system, just disappeared. I can of course just put the info back in again. But I am now really concerned that this is not the only time that stuff disappeared. And I cannot face cross-checking about 50 proposals...

And soon it will be another day

Sometimes things go wrong. And sometimes a lot of little things go wrong. But hey, even the annoying days come to an end!

Race me

I still don't have a new laptop... And it's starting to annoy me a little. But hey, my own fault for not having ordered one.

Anyhow, just a very quick note to say that as part of a team building day, we went Apache car racing yesterday. And it was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Never heard of this before and if you haven't either, google it to check out the cars which have very powerful motors, that can make them go up to 100 miles/hour. Needless to say we didn't go that fast, but pretty fast nevertheless. Us girls all got taken for a spin by one of the instructors at the end of the day, too: better than a rollercoaster and I definitely want to go again!