What a year 2011 was! For me it was full of proud achievements and great friends (new and old). First and foremost the thing I'm most proud of is getting through what is probably the most stressful period of my life; the first 4 months of living in Munich.
Moving abroad is an incredibly large step and not one that should be taken lightly, or with any doubt in your ability to achieve what is necessary to stay. Of this, I think, I can speak from experience. When I moved I had neither the financial security to guarantee safety or the confidence in my ability to confidently assume my new position at Sony Ericsson. Throw in the requirement to pass a driving test in Germany within a very short time-frame or I would lose the job, and you have a melting pot of stress, anxiety and sleepless nights that even looking back on it now curdles my gut.
Well; all's well that ends well. For that my first mention is
Mara Börger, my driving instructor, who was instrumental in me fulfilling this requirement. She's one of the only people that knew the stress I was under, and could tell when I was so uncharacteristically nervous when she picked me up for my test! I got a bit of good fortune that day, because unknown to me, we booked my test on her birthday. The examiner knew this and, as a present to her, made my test relatively short.
After this things were really looking up. I'd made a good impression at work, made a lot of friends and was enjoying literally every hour of my days. This is thanks in a large part to everyone's favourite "Stammtisch", Dienstag Drinks, organised by
Magda Dubiel and
Erin Beaton.
In addition to the new friends I've made, what made me happiest I think was that I hadn't lost my friends from England, I would see them when I went home and my closest friends have all visited me! So a special thanks go out to
Erik Orrgarde and
Sarah Nicholson for the most mental of all
visits and to
Holly Adams,
Chris Morrison, for being visiting TWICE! I guess
Mike Fearon also deserves a special mention, but most of the
events from that tip can't be told because we might go to jail!
So here are my favourite events:
This picture has not made it on my blog yet, mostly because it happened before I started the blog. The guy on the left is Erik at the bongo club. The other guy desperately wanted his picture taken with us. Erik is like
WTF...
Thanks to my GPS tracker I can tell you how far I've cycled and ran this year. I've ran 267 miles (the equivalent of running from Munich to Bern in Switzerland) and I've cycled 609 miles (in total like cycling from Munich back to London!)
What a fun year, thanks a lot to all those that made it special :)
Viel Spaß homies
