The night of blue-white!

It looks like we reached the end of a very long and cold winter here in Vienna as at the end of last week spring finally broke and so we immediately ventured out - like many others as well - to exploit the warm evening on Friday together with Lini & Peter in Do-An's outdoor garden at the Naschmarkt. The weekend even felt like early summer with temperatures of up to 25 degrees in the shadow. We prepared our terrace, adjusted all our plants and spent a lot of quality time relaxing in the sun. Given we were still quite tired from the past weekend in Barcelona this was just the right thing to do.

Out of the trough - ready for take-off?

Monday night was all about sports, to be more precise basketball. First, Markus' team in the Austrian Basketball League, the Oberwart Gunners, have managed to put an end to a so far unseen drought and cut their 9-game loosing streak with a mentally very important 64-54 home-win over the Traiskirchen Lions. After several very tight games in which the luck was not on their side in the crunch-time this victory was a big relief and just in time to get momentum back before the start of the play-offs in a bit more than 2 weeks time. Hopefully they can find their rhythm again and roll on through the post-season and maybe straight into the finals.

Hi-Flyers all season long already - living up to expectations

Later that night, precisely at 0315 Vienna time, March Madness reached its climax and the the NCAA Championship game tipped off in which the North Carolina Tar Heels were challenged by the Michigan State Spartans in snow-covered Detroit in front of stunning 72922 (!!) spectators. UNC, already traded as championship favorite at the beginning of the season, was not at all bothered by the fact that MSU in fact "owned" the arena (the East Lansing campus is only 92 miles away from the Ford Field) and played from the very first minute of the game like champions and raced to an undisputed 89-72 victory and crowned themselves for the 5th time in school history NCAA Champions! Even though Ty Lawson played outstanding, accounting for 21 points, 6 assists, 8 steals and 4 rebounds, it really was the whole team that made the difference. Congratulations to North Carolina!

Kerstin & Markus