All over the place

Our life has changed big time since Markus starte working again. For Jakob and Kerstin the new job meant that they are on their own throughout the week while Markus spends time in the office in Prague or London or is back to travelling all over Europe to see his clients again. Every now and then - ideally at the beginning or the end of the week - he also visits his clients in Vienna and thus can prolongue the weekends with family.

While we can not spend time together during tge week and only can see each other on video calls thanks to Facetime and the iPhone 4 weekends are now dedicated fully to family. It is interestig to see that when time is scarce preferences are shifted and the most important thing is to be happy together. Suddenly bad news are not seen as so bad news such as the theft of Markus' scooter or small accidents. The amount of time spent abroad and on the road will remain large in the short run, however there is light at the end of the tunnel and markus can spend more time during the week again with his loved ones.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

A new chapter

On Tuesday evening a wonderful time has come to an end when Jakob and Kerstin drove Markus to the airport. It was the last day of his gardening leave and in order to get to his new workplace on time he had to board a the OS711 to Prague. His new employer - Wood & Co - is a dedicated regional investment bank and the boutique-type brokerage house Markus used to be working for in the past.

While the new job and new challenge is something positive for all of us, there is though a quite high price we have to pay for the time being: Markus will be away most of the upcoming months as he will be based in Prague for now and also spend a lot of time in London again. Not seeing Jakob every day is very tough and does hurt. The weekends and days with the family will be intensely used and enjoyed and hopefully it wont be long until he will be able to sleep at home most of the nights again.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

No pain - no gain!

Thursday evening we left Vienna for a long and active weekend in Vorarlberg as on Sunday the Sparkasse Marathon took place which by now has become a traditional event for Markus run the half-marathon distance. Anna, Lini & Peter visited the Laendle as well (arriving Friday afternoon) even though Peter decided last minute to not take the challenge of the 21,0975 km race as he was suffering from a cold and therefore they used the days to visit Peter's sister in Vaduz, some friends and to watch the race. While it was raining when we arrived Friday night the weather improved throughout Friday and peaked in a gorgeous early spring weekend with sunshine and more than 20 degrees.

Ready to take on the challenge.

Markus' birthday on Saturday was declared a "no-celebration-day" in order to not jeopardize the performance on Sunday and so it was an easy going day on which Markus just picked up his number in Lindau, we had a walk through Lindau together with Sandra & Flo and in the evening had a big portion of pasta prepared by Heidi. Sunday morning the sky was blue and cloudless and when Markus boarded the ship in Bregenz to reach the start area in Lindau it was already quite warm. By the time the race was started - at exactly 11:11 by both the mayor of Lindau and Marathon due to the celebrations "2500 years of marathon" - the temperature in the sun has already reached more than 20 degrees again.

Jakob was the first one to congratulate - and took the medal.

Given the warm weather and the fact that Markus' preparations were not ideal - even though he had loads of time during his gardening leave he did not stick to his training plan but rather did odd training runs with a maximum length of 75 minutes - he started into the race rather slow and tried to keep the pace for a finishing time of 1:45 minutes. After km 11 the fact that there were no long runs in the preparations he had to reduce his pace in order to make it to the finishing line and was only able to speed up again for the last three kilometers of the race. In the end he reached the finish in the Casino Stadium Bregenz after 1:49:23 which left him not surprised but definitely a bit frustrated. The obvious lesson from that is: No pain - No gain. Clearly there is a lot to make up for next year! Irrespective of the finishing time during the afternoon and evening Markus' birthday was celebrated with banana & yoghurt/blueberry cakes and Heidi's delicious Kaesepaetzle before falling dead tired into bed.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus