A jaded Friday

Like always on a Friday I'm feeling well tired. And like all Friday's I can find an excuse for it - office Christmas Party last night. Which, by the by, was excellent fun. Drank, danced, ate and made merry, and no scandal resulted.

Survived all of the travels last week. Was well wasted by the end of the week though. In fact I'm convinced I'm still suffering from post-action sleep deprivation. But, in all seriousness, it was a very useful trip and Poland in particular was excellent. My last visit was a little timid compared to printer trips I've done before. I'm not complaining at all, and it was probably a good thing if I'm honest. This time was a bit more full-on and considerably messier. Which was also a good thing actually. It's difficult to find a highlight, but the night out on the Tuesday was pretty spectacular. Seven of us went out for a wondeful meal (3 servings of food cooked to order, 5 bottles of Chateaux Neuf du Pape, 2 bottles of Gavi di Gavi, far too many vodkas and coffee came to under £200!) and then on to this bar where we went to the private area out the back which was full of big beds. We lay on them and were served drinks from a private bar by some lovely bar staff. Both of these places were on the main square in Krakow which is apparently the biggest in Europe. It's beautiful by night, but I have yet to see it in daylight.
After 45 minutes sleep I then had 2 more full on days and very long evenings involving dinking and going out. I'm normally really grumpy when I'm tired (as many family, friends and associates will testify), so I was pretty pleased with myself that I was still conscious and with it by Friday. Then the run on Sunday went spectacularly well so I'm walking around with a nice big glow around me at the moment.

Am planning to go to Salzburg Christmas shopping this week-end. I've heard it's beautiful and it's only an hour away from Munich so should be fun. I just hope that it snows because that would be the icing on the cake.

I had a life-flash-before-your-eyes moment yesterday when flying into Munich. As we flew over the city there was really thick fog below. In fact it was so low that you couldn't see the ground, but could see the tops of a couple of the towers in town sticking out above the fog. As we approached it did cross my mind that the landing could be quite interesting because the white-out would be all the way to the ground. We duly headed towards the runway, but at the last second the pilot retracted the wheels, put full power on and climbed sharply. We went round again and it happened a second time. By this stage people were panicking in the cabin because we had no idea what was going on. I thought we'd had a near miss with another aircraft. The pilot came on as we were going around for the third time and said that we had had to abort the landings because he couldn't see the runway. And we were going to have one more go and if that didn't work out then we woul divert to Stuttgart. I (and I suspect the other 150 passengers) are thinking "let's just divert anyway", but we duly had another go at it and got down. I'm not scared of flying at all, but it did make my heart skip a beat though.