So what’s been going on at the German Front over the last weeks? Well, Axel recovered nicely from the injury he suffered from after the accident. The Canadian physiotherapist might have helped a lot. Lifting liter-glasses of tasty German beer on a regular basis might too. At the end of November Axel had to park his motorcycle for the winter at his company’s parking garage. It’s off registration until 1st of March, which, everybody can imagine, will be a wonderful day for him. His mother feels he might be safer until that day.
Inge, Otto and Axel spent a quiet and calm Christmas season in Siegen. Jürgen did not bother to show up and decided he’d better stay in Böblingen with his wife Birgit. He’s going through lots of work right now and is promising to retire not long after turning 50. Let’s wait and see... However, it was a different Christmas, especially since we almost became used to having Jo-Anne and Roy with us for these times of the year. Something that even Delia, a very good friend of Axel’s who accompanied the Uhl trek on their Germany explorations a lot of the time, noticed.
New Year’s Eve, which is for unknown reasons called “Sylvester” (like Sly Stallone) in Germany, Tanja, Axel’s ex-girl-friend that he still has a good friendship with, visited the folks in Siegen. Tanja and Axel joined a nice little party with board games being played all night.
After Axel had to cross the water again for a conference in Monterey, CA, and another business visit in New Jersey, he decided to show up in Halifax on his way back. Actually, his frequent flyer miles would pay for most of that little detour. He would only have to make it to Boston somehow before 8:15pm that night. So he decided to take a cheap flight with Continental Airlines from Newark to Boston, leaving 5:35pm and bound to reach Boston around 6:30pm. That would have given him almost two hours to get to the other terminal and jump on the Air Canada plane. But things turned out differently. Though almost boarding on schedule, the Continental plane stood close to two hours on the apron, watching other planes take off and land. Friday night is a nightmare come true at Newark Airport. Arriving two hours late there was no way of making the connection, since Air Canada had of course left on time. Now this turned out to have been the last flight to Halifax that night. But other than expected, Continental would refuse to pay for a hotel stay, which caused Axel to spend $145 US for a night at a stupid Holiday Inn next to the airport. As it turns out, he could have saved half a day and hundreds of dollars by just driving his rental car to Boston and drop it there. However, Jo-Anne is going to write Continental a friendly but distinct letter about the incident, and she will, just by the way, mention that Axel works for a 220,000 employee company spread out over 140 countries, and that being friendly with their employees might be a good idea. But things turned out even worse. The Jägermeister-bottle Axel brought in duty-free from Frankfurt broke in his bag. All clothes, papers and magazines had a generous sip of it and got so soaked that anybody trying to read the paper stuff should not drive afterwards. Axel tried to overcome his being pissed off by driving down to the liquor-store and buying a spare one (for twice the money, but what the heck...).
So Roy, Jo-Anne and Axel spent a few days visiting in and around Halifax. The time flew by, as it always does when someone's having fun. Jo-Anne went to “Titanic” (third time for her) and took Axel as an excuse to watch the movie again. But she’s already looking forward to her next time. Axel returned to Germany safely and is now preparing the next steps on the “Germany educational trail” that Jo-Anne and Roy have started to wander down, as ambassadors of the Canada part of the family so-to-speak. There are a lot more photo albums to fill that have to be visited at the DiGer’s store counter!
Go to the Main Menu