An interesting weekend

Our turkish biker guests!

Well what a lot to tell! Our weekend has been a great mixture of meeting new people and interesting events. Our international clientele for Saturday night all conspired to be great guests! Dag & Karin from Göteborg turned out to be social workers so we had loads in common - they have said they will be out to see us again next year! The 2 guys from Turkey were bikers and had come all the way from Istanbul on a couple of BMWs - mostly in the rain! - and despite not getting here until gone midnight were up bright and early today to complete their journey to Innsbruck. Now we think we have to try the trip the other way - Istanbul or bust! Our Italian family are lovely, with 2 of the cutest little dark eyed girls who have stolen John's heart and our bikers from Grimsby? Well I will have to be careful what I say because Deb reads our blog regularly - but seriously she and David are great fun too. We are so blessed with our guests!















Today John, Deb and David went up to the bike blessing (see photos above) and although John was only a spectator, Deb and David went the whole hog and had their bike blessed by the Hungarian biker priest from Gmünd. Deb reckons she will take all the help they can get! Meanwhile Matt and I bit our nails through the best Wimbledon mens final for ages, while Achim and Monika enjoyed the Wimbledon atmosphere on our terrace in the best sunshine for weeks. We were particularly impressed by their dedication to the event in dressing to match the food!

Next excitement is the arrival of 25 guests from another district council in the north of Austria on Friday and then another bus group on Monday. Each day a new adventure! Hopefully the weather will be better for this lot than for the last!

A new staff member and more goodbyes!

Well the Irish bikers left us today having had weather which at times made them feel very at home. Nonetheless they have enjoyed their stay and left for pastures new (Garmisch Partenkirchen and then Lake Garda!) saying they hope to be back next year for a week's stay touring this area properly.

And we have a new staff member - our nephew Matt who arrived on Tuesday and within the first hour was in the kitchen compete with pinny! He is already making himself indispensible and proving to be a very worthwhile addition to our little gang.

This weekend is Wimbledon finals weekend - so don't expect too much communication from me! Hope to have some pictures of strawberries and cream on our terrace to show you next though!

Our latest guests

Another bus group has come and gone! And despite really very disappointing weather (apart from one day when proper Carinthian summer weather finally showed its face for them) they were a jolly lot who enjoyed everything and were very appreciative to us and the staff. A couple even said they were going straight back to book up for the September trip to see if the weather would be better for them then!

Our next arrivals are a group of Irish bikers who have travelled all the way from Dublin, including spending tonight on the car-rail service from Düsseldorf to Villach and so will be arriving for full English breakfast at 9.00a.m. tomorrow! The weather looks to be at least a little better for next week although the risk of thunderstorms continues across the whole of central Europe. Can't believe in Wimbledon fortnight the UK gets better weather than here!

I am definitely suffering Wimbledon withdrawal - this would be my year to go normally - so we are holding our own little event next weekend - showing both finals on the TV and offering guests strawberries and cream and champagne (or Guinness). If Andy Murray wins, we have agreed to give all those here at the time a free drink - will be worth it just to have a British winner after all these years!

Also next week the annual motorbike blessing at the dam. http://www.soisses.at/2009/06/27/motorradsegnung-auf-der-staumauer/#more-6235 We will have a couple from Grimsby here to represent the UK at that event. In fact Saturday night will be truly international with guests from Sweden, Turkey and Italy as well! That will be an interesting night.

Also looking forward to the arrival on Tuesday of our nephew Matt who is joining us for the summer. Hopefully plenty of work for him to do, plus a chance to experience a bit of a different environment before finally getting a proper job!

Sad Goodbyes

Our children have gone and our friends from Hungary have gone and the storms are back to reflect the mood! Its strange how you can become really good friends with people so quickly in this holiday atmosphere. The children were particularly touching, so many of them saying how they didn't want to go home. It appears they have been telling everyone they meet what a great place it is here and how much they like John's cooking and speaking English with us - much to the surprise of the locals according to the two teachers! The teachers, Inge & Traudee, also felt at home here, and we hope to meet up with them again later in the year.

John managed a short ride out with the 3 guys before the left this morning, which was a treat for him - they too have promised to recommend us to their friends and colleagues (especially the police motorbike clubs!) so we are really looking forward to meeting some more great fun people from Hungary and Spain.

We have a quiet weekend ahead we think - weather forecast is not favourable and the camping place is also not busy so not a lot of passing restaurant trade either. But Monday our next coach group arrives, so much preparation on the kitchen to keep us busy ahead. Sad about the weather as so many events are on this weekend in the region. Still we might get a chance to pop over to Mallnitz to see the newly arrived English residents, Katy & John - we hear they have brought some real ale with them!

Some great photos

But not ours! Still had to share with you some photos taken in the local area recently and posted to the web. Such clever stuff - all 360 Panoramas. Thanks to soisses.at for identifying the link.

http://www.panotopia.org/?m=200906

Had some great guests this week - 2 friends from the UK, a Dutch/Belgian couple who came to walk and climb, 3 Hungarian bikers (one of whom turned out to be Spanish - our first Spaniard!) and 17 delightful children (and their 2 equally delightful teachers) from a school in Salzburg who have just been a pleasure to have around. That's when this job is really good fun! Next week another bus group and then a group of bikers from Ireland. That should be a good craic!

John has had his bike tested to see if we can register it here finally. We have to change the headlight and - horror - he has to re-fit the standard exhaust. What will he do whe he can't make that noise when he pulls off? Turns out the cheapest way to get the European headlight is to have it imported from the UK. Seems they sell an awful lot to ex-pat bikers who can't afford mainland prices. Should arrive next week so hopefully on the road soon after!

Always nice to have a celebration!

One of our bikers had a birthday! Seemed a good excuse so we made a bit of a fuss and he seemed quite touched. We started out by having a free beer ready (and a rose in a glass) when they got back from their ride around 3 countries, but it turned out he didn't like beer and only drank wine. So we did it all again and put a candle in his Apple Strudel for good measure. The party went on till 2.00am!

Sadly they had to go home this morning (I hate that part!) but they all said they would be back soon and we have our Hungarian bikers to look forward to plus my friend Charlotte and her husband AND a Dutch couple later today and 18 schoolchildren and 2 teachers tomorrow! Other bookings coming in thick and fast from Booking.com (today Swedes and Belgians) as well PLUS its 30 degrees again. Much cheerier!

More and more bikes

Excellent barbie evening last night - 4 more bikers saw us and joined in and the weather stayed warm enough for the party to carry on outside until quite late. Except for the whisky tasters that is, who came inside to deal with the very serious issue of getting through a whistle stop tour of Scottish single malt production! This was all after they had introduced us to a little tradition in their club - when one of them needs to do some work on their bike the others have to sit and watch, offering both (occasionally) useful advice and other less helpful comments to their more industrious colleague! Hence for a short while there were more chairs on our car park than on our terrace! Today they have borrowed our Sat Nav and gone off on our 3 countries tour. Good job we tested that one a couple of weeks ago then!

After the group left this morning John and took advantage of another interesting activity - open morning at the local hairdressers. Free beer and prosecco plus nibbles, haircut for him and hand massage or eye make up for her - English hairdressers take note, the place was packed! But the staff did a good job on John's unruly mop and my hand massage was a welcome 10 minutes of relaxation. Plus they seemed genuinely happy to see us and I have €5 off my next appointment! The only downside was the 15 minute rant from the stylists's husband about all Italians being mafiosi - obviously someone from across the border had upset him somewhere but the generalisation is sadly all too typical. No wonder our Italian guests (and others) so often complain of a poor reception in this area. All the better for those of us who try hard to be nice to everyone then!