Sunday, August 10th 2003
Arriving at the "Karawanken Hof" in Austria......
There we go.... ready to play golf and sailing in Croatia !!! Today we left for a relatively short ride of 720km to Austria, we thought..... Just 10 minutes on our way and confronted with traffic jam over 25 km.....
GOOD ( !! ) we are supported these days from our friendly GPS navigation Lady, who worked around all these problems !!! We had several major traffic problems. Really great that this system "knows" where the traffic digestions are and calculates a work around.... So in no time we were driving in the great scenic Austrian Alps....
After a relaxed ride of less than 6 hours we arrived at the Karawanken Hof.... This is a special story, so sit back:
Rebecca Schorr, one of my colleagues working with our favorite supplier Intel, quit here job as Intel product manager, end of last year. Normally people go to competition or another suppler, so I asked who it was. She told me, that she bought an Hotel in Austria !! I admit, this was the last thing I would expect. As usual she gave me some brochures later and asked to stay if I was "around". Ofcourse I said "yes" and normally (be honest !) this is about it. Not this time.... The Karawanken Hof is in the middle of Karnten and this happens to be EXACTLY in the middle of the golf courts we wanted to play golf. So I remembered the "karawankenhof" and gave Rebecca a call. Well the rest is clear eh?
Why is it called the karawankenhof, well simply, because it is opposite the Karawanken Mountains !! My Sister Nel and here family (Paul, Anne, Robert Jan and Willemien) are exactly at the other side having their vacation in Slovenia by the way !!! What a coincidence.... We will join Friday for the sailing trip .... and as they stay only like 35 km away, we will most likely visit them for a BBQ. But the don't know yet... haha! We will invite ourselves ....
Ofcourse Erik and I installed immediately our Hotel Office, so we are able to connect to the outside world, play games and keep working.... We even set up a small network, so we have nothing to miss. Please no emails with addresses for PC addicted people and workaholics, we know it and realize our situation and for sure cannot be healed ! :-)
We got a good tip on a biergarten next door, so we took a refreshing stroll, enjoying the typical Austrian environment we are in....
Very busy, but we learned that Sunday evenings are special. Big Grill BBQ party with life music. As you can clearly tell we had a great meal with an unexpected large and tender Steak !!!
Astonishing how easy it is to adapt to the good things of vacation !!!!
We finalized a great start of our vacation at the "Stammtisch" with Rebecca and Robert, having a nice local beer, enjoying the day ends on a typical Austrian way......
Tomorrow, we will play Golf at the Millner See Golfclub. Relatively short course, so hopefully we play a nice score to make us feel good ..... Read tomorrow if we actually did, haha !!