Back home again

Got home last night at stupid o'clock. The flight left from Berlin at 21:35, so it was definitely a late one. It was even weirder than when I was going, feeling that I should be somewhere else. The hotel booted me out at 11am, so I went and put my bag into a storage locker in the station and went and did things.

It was a good trip overall, spent lots of time hanging out with my brother and seeing the sights. The fleamarkets were a highlight this time as they are always interesting, and it's the first time in a while I've been there over the weekend. I also managed to make it up to the top of the Seigesaule, which has just been renovated. It's a climb up a narrow spiral staircase of 285 steps, but once at the top the views are pretty good. One random thing that I found out was that the new klein-profil trains on the U2 allow you to see through a tinted window into the driver's compartment. Not much use in the tunnels but outside you can see everything.

My brother did well in the half marathon and beat his time again, as well as the two friends he was running with. We celebrated by going to a new Asian bar near where his girlfriend lives, which was pretty special. It had a nice mixture of all the traditional Asian dishes..

The journey home from the airport wasn't uneventful last night unfortunately. I was driving along quite happily on the nearly empty roads, and saw that the Astra was just about to hit 246,000 miles. A mile after it did so, I heard the turbo being noisy, and before I could react, it made a VERY loud noise. Then there was much less power, and the car was making huge clouds of smoke. I carried on home and it made it but it was reluctant to rev and had no power at all, and continued to smoke. This combined with the existing work on the brakes that it needs and things mean it simply isn't worth fixing.

So I ended up using my last day off to go car shopping. To be honest the choice around here is limited for cheap cars and so I ended up with a Honda Accord. It's a biggish hatchback and is a proper old man's car, even automatic. Judging by the glowing reviews these cars get, not only should it never break down, it should also be able to cure cancer and smallpox, but knowing my luck with cars, we'll see. I hope it will be OK, if only for a short while. My main concern is fuel consumption though. It must have cost the original owner a fair bit though. It has leather, climate control, cruise control, electric seats, a full Bose sound system, electric windows all round, etc. So far, all of it seems to work too.

Back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting.