Frohes Neues Jahr!

Ja!
So I'm back from Austria, remember when I said I was going to Austria for New Year's? Yeah I'm back from that. So 2010 has just swooped down in front of my garden and taken a huge dump in my hedge, thanks a lot 2010 you big metaphorical nonce*. No, I didn't do as much work in Austria as I planned to but don't worry I won't go on about that.

Snow really is rubbish here isn't it? Maybe it's just compared to the ten inches of fresh powder I've got used to in Austria where you drop your skis and in ten minutes find them almost completely buried.

I picked up a Guardian in the services and there was this story about a pub in the Yorkshire Dales that was snowed in for over two days over the new year, everyone just had a non-stop party and got to know everybody. A student there said it was like the 'ultimate lock-in'. How great does that sound? They were mostly Leeds University students. If I don't end up in Leeds Uni I will be extremely sad. Having talked to somebody from Leeds I've started getting extremely excited about it, it sounds like the place to be. I'm also excited about my birthday even though it's four months away. But there will be an epic club crawl around Cardiff and most people I know would already be 18 by then so they can come with me.

Also I came home to find this story and assumed you must be worrying about me especially with the amount of FIREWORKS that were going off in the valley and echoing for miles.

So on New Year's Eve, the skiing folks (must have been at least 80 of us) went on a huge trek in the mist where we couldn't see a single firework. Some Austrian kids even attacked us with fireworks. (There is apparently no health and safety in all of Austria during New Years) and we ended up crashing a tiny empty Austrian bar and letting off hundreds of party poppers and singing Old Lang Zine. We felt a bit guilty afterwards and volunteered to clean up after some awkward miming to request a brush. The owners of the bar didn't seem to mind, they were busy setting fire to whole boxes of fireworks and spraying it with deodorant, almost killing us. It was a good night and I decided to get up late to go skiing the next day.
Prior to that there was some curling with the towel trolleys you get from hotel bathrooms, with a borrowed small child as the house. As well as a pub quiz and the odd bit of Scottish dancing.

So that was my New Year for you, gluhwein bingeing, makeshift winter sports, snowstorms, frantic ballistic attacks and some very bad dancing, I hope you enjoyed wasting your time to read about it, now excuse me while I go bury my head in the snow for the rest of the year.

Stay wunderlich!
x



*I have to stop using that word having only just discovered it means child molester.