Deutsch Lessons 21/2/2009

Today began my first “intensive” day of Deutsch. Sandra worked with me this morning for 30minutes. We went over numbers(1-10), feelings, questions, bike parts, and comments. It was very good. I forced myself to write the stuff down on paper with Sandra talking out loud. Helps me learn to spell correctly and eases the memory effort. We had a typical continental European breakfast as far as I can remember from my time in France and Belgium. Bread with jams, cheese, and nutella. I had a small bit of rice pudding and a touch of tropical fruit muesli as well b/c I only ate a small piece of bread. Marc took me to Activity b/c we had scheiswetter. I am very much looking forward to riding tomorrow and not doing training in the gym. I was eager to finish up my training in the gym before I left Boulder. Ohh well, its good that I am doing some maintenance on my core strength. On Monday I leave for Malle(Majorca) for just over two weeks. Weather should be 15-20C and sunny. Plan is to rack up the kms, do the races on the weekends. It should be spectacular.
Afer we trained at Activity, we went to a Shimano World Tour party at the Paul Lange Group headquarters. Paul Lange is celebrating 60years of being a bicycle parts distributor and Shimano is putting on a world tour to celebrate their new Dura Ace group and other component upgrades. The evening was filled with a happy hour of the whose who in German cycling. I saw the former Gerolsteiner boss, Max Holczer. He is much taller than I expected. I also saw the head of Shimano himself, an older Japanese man. He was signing autographs for people. I got a little bit of schwag. The evening was quite the event with many dancers and theater acts. Then came the dinner. It was a buffet style with many Schwäbian(area of Germany) eats. Spatzel and many types of meat, bread and vegetables. I tried to sample a little bit of everything but I didn’t make it through. Didn’t eat very much b/c I didn’t train much today. Don’t think that I am not eating, just understand that I am being careful. Desert was applesauce, fruit cocktail and a type of bread pudding? I think. I had 3 cappuccinos also. The capo is definitely my new favorite drink. I never treat myself to espresso drinks but they had a barista making whatever you wanted. So why not? They were very tasty. Near the end of the evening they served sake in a cedar box with Paul Lange and Shimano engravings. Quite impressive. Across from me sat Imka?. She is a pro triathlete from Germany and knows my former roommate and other American triathletes from Boulder. I said to everyone, “small world.” Sandra smiled b/c she knew the English phrase.
Tomorrow we have breakfast with Marc’s family to celebrate Kai(marc’s brudder’s birthday). Then we will go training afterwards.
Ciao,Matthew