On Saturday, Joe and I met up with Claudia Haeusler to drive 2.5 hours over to Stuttgart for a day of training, talking, eating, and of course fun!

I am excited to be racing with Team Stuttgart next season in the Bundessleague Races in Germany. Olaf Janson, the team manager, arranged for us a day of training at a sports club (very nice because we could shower after our cold ride and warm up again!). And then we had our team meeting in a nice Italian restaurant, Ristorante Bootshaus. Olaf had a slide show of pictures from last season to show everyone, and then he had a very nice presentation for the new season introducing all the new riders (me being one of them!) and what to expect for next year. It was all very professional.

The girls were all very nice, and even though they are all German, they all understand English very well. I had a great time talking to them during our ride… we mostly talked in English because my German is so limited. Olaf and the girls are going to help me learn German. I am still teaching myself German, but it is difficult when you don’t practice speaking it a lot. I know next season I will have lots of practice at the races!

After the presentation we had dinner, then Claudia, Joe, and I hit the Autobahn back to Munich. We arrived back home around 10pm and we were exhausted! It was a fun day and I had a great ride with the Stuttgart girls.

I am happy to announce I will be racing with Elk Haus-NÖ for 2006. Elk Haus is a UCI team based out of Austria. I will have more details about my schedule for next season posted soon under my schedule page.

Elk Haus-Tirol Noe is a partner team of Team Stuttgart. I will be racing with Team Stuttgart in Bundesliga races in Germany.

I am very excited about working with Heribert and Olaf, and I know that next season will bring lots of success for both Elk Haus and Stuttgart!

We went to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial site on Sunday with my parents after the OstparkLauf. It was a cold and snowy day, I can only imagine what the prisioners had to endure in this type of winter weather.

The site was full of information. The museum was very well done with lots of pictures and information you could read. They organized them in timeline fashion so you could read one panel to the next. You literally spent hours reading all the information.

There was a 30 minute movie we watched while we were there. It was horrible seeing what happened in Dachau. There was not any background music or sound in some parts of the movie– the pictures literally spoke for themselves. I left the theater queezy.

I have a picture gallery of Dachau on my Germany page, but I left off the more disturbing images. I think that you must go to Dachau to experience and understand the meaning of it all. Remember that this is all a part of history, and the prisoners of Dachau wanted to be remembered… so that it may never happen again. “Nie Wieder”…

My dad, Joe, and I woke up early on Sunday morning after an evening out at the Hofbrauhaus to catch the Ubahn over to OstPark for the annual OstParkLauf. Dad and I ran the 10k while Joe ran the 5k. It was coooollllddd out, but we still had a great time. The 10k was the main event, with about 100 people starting it.

I was very surprised with my run. I ran 38 or 39 minutes, which without running a whole lot I was pretty happy with. I caught myself during the race running like I would ride during a race. I’d sit on someone’s “wheel”… just run the pace they were going at their shoulder… and then when they started to “open a gap” then I would jump around them and start running with the person in front of them. I made sure I was never alone, because if I had been caught running by myself I doubt I would have kept up a good pace. It just is funny how cycling has rubbed off on my mentality even during a running race. I never would have raced like that when I was a runner.

Winter has definitely arrived this week in Munich. I’ve managed to get two rides in outside, despite the colder weather. Yesterday the last 30 minutes of my ride I enjoyed some very pretty snow flurris. It’s much easier to enjoy snow in cold weather than it is rain.

This morning I woke up to help see my parents off to Salzburg from the Munich Hauptbahnhof. Snow started falling heavily around 6:45am… it was so pretty. It looked like the fake snow they use in movies because the flakes were so big. The snow fell for about 3 hours or so, and now it’s stopped.

I still feel like a kid every time I see snow. I don’t know why. It makes me feel like drinking hot chocolate curled up under a blanket with a good book. And it brings back all the memories of playing in the snow for hours upon hours when I was little, and coming inside to warm up by the woodstove. I’d have to take all my layers off and let them thaw out next to the fire before I could go back outside. Joe thinks I still have a lot of “kid” in me, so I spose that’s why. Hmm, maybe all the sulking for ice cream and cookies is a bit too much? Hey, you should always stay “young at heart,” right? So all that desert is important!

My parents came to visit me and Joe for a full week in Munich! We were really happy to see them. When we went to the airport we wore our traditional Bavarian costumes, Lederhosen and Dirndl. We had presents for both my mom and dad– including big gingerbread cookies!

Joe and I decided to spend our first wedding anniversary in Paris since we are already living in Munich… it’s so close, why not?! We had a great time.

We stayed in the Hotel St. Louis near the Chateau de Vincennes. The Parc Floral de Paris was right next to our hotel so I had access to plenty of dirt trails to run on while we were there. I even hopped in a 6,6km running race for women only while we were there… good workout and it was very well organized.

From our hotel we took the train and walked everywhere. We like walking around and touring on our own instead of doing organized tours most of the time- although we did do some group tours the last couple nights in Paris.

Since we only had 5 days in Paris, we saw the usual big things– the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, walked the Champs Elysees, and saw the Arc de Triomphe. Joe made reservations for us to have a boat tour and dinner in the Eiffel Tower one night, and on Halloween night we had a fancy French dinner then went to the Moulin Rouge for a late night show. It was a lot of fun!

My favorite part of the time we spent in Paris was just walking around and talking with Joe. One day we spent the afternoon sitting in a park outside the Louvre and just enjoyed each other’s company. It was really nice. I know that sounds very girly, but it’s those type moments that I enjoy the most with my husband.

Paris is a great city for couples. If you have the chance, I highly recommend taking a trip to Paris… even if it’s just for a weekend!