Ladies and gentlemen - both, awsome and awful news have to be announced. Since somehow - and I can barely think of a good reason for that - one month has passed without a new note in here, there has consequently been a lot going on in the recent five weeks. First, and without any doubt most tragically, Jens has left this wonderful island of chilling, relaxing, free-sex and not-at-all-free but marvelous drinks about two weeks ago. Obviously he considered it more worth his while to spend the colder months of the year in sunny Germany to escape the ludacrious party-machinery that has kept us from real-life-issues for so long. Probably his brand-new girlfriend has given him a little too much excitement so that he really had to slow down a little in order not to suffer from severe testicle-bruises promptly. Ah, what the hell, I guess I’ll never quite understand why he left me here all alone.

Anyhow, recent weeks have also been pretty exciting from my point of view. There has been a neat little university course called “International Trade Law” that only made me work 3 or 4 hundred hours a week to finish the first half of our Memoranda. So I gotta say that I’m not the least bit of disappointed to spend the following three weeks in cosy Austria. Of course I will miss the nice evenings at home were I get beaten up by my room-mate Matjaz the fiftieth time 7:1 in Fifa-Soccer after freezing my butt off due to a lack of heating in our flat. But divine inspiration tells me I’m going to be able to handle the withdrawal-syndroms for a couple of weeks.

Furthermore our efforts in kicking spanish-asses on the soccer field have continued and - outstandingly - have been heard by the big soccer-god himself. The last two weeks we easily managed to teach the locals quite some lessons! Even though partying has not stopped yet! Wise Time-Management seems to be the key element.

But besides all these funny incidents that have shaped our poor lives so flowery somehow Erasmus-people grew less and less over the last few weeks. Obviously everybody finally has settled down a little and tries to focus a bit on university-issues. So somehow - even though partying has not completely stopped of course - things seem a bit more quiet around here. To be honest: I’m just saying that because I can’t remember what crazy freaking stuff happened over all last month since I’m already back in Austria for over a week by now!

On December 15th I started my journey by visiting Andi in Dublin. Flo was also coming, so we were expecting quite some entertainment as we were about to turn the Irish capital to an abandoned waste-land by scaring off all the students at Shanowen Square. Furthermore we had to celebrate Andi’s twentythird birthday (a few days in advance) to make sure he doesn’t get away without paying one or two drinks at his fiest. Birthday-boy and I embarked on the next adventurous ride as we travelled back to Vienna via Frankfurt and Bratislava on December 18th. We left Dublin at six in the morning and had to wait modest 10 hours for our connecting flight to Bratislava at Frankfurt Hahn. Since the ineffably big airport and international hub Frankfurt-Hahn is located just 120km east of Frankfurt itself it seemed quite obvious that we had to pay this financial metropolis a visit. Sadly all the lockers to leave the luggage at the airport were occupied - what seems pretty impossible regarding that the whole airport decrees over 14 lockers!! So we decided not to take the one-and-a-half-hour-bus-ride to Frankfurt but rented a car instead to have some place to put our suitcases. Needless to say we enjoyed the day-trip to the city, wandering around the Old Town, having lunch and cruising through the Martinstal. Honestly I did not foresee that we would need to take the ferry over the Rhein to come back to Frankfurt-Hahn in time, but things like that are the whipped cream on my caffee-latte of life.

Back in Austria most things went quite normal. I met some old pals, had a beer or two with Cruz and Joschi, played soccer against my not yet retired geography-teacher Robert and his cumpañeros and left the city to go to Waldviertel over Christmas. It was nice to see the family again and to slow down a little again, though I have to admit that it was not easy all of the time. I guess once you’ve really grown accustomed to independence and “freedom” it’s never going to be easy to come back any more. Odd…

Right now I’m sitting in my fairly comfortable room in my parent’s appartment in Vienna and enjoy to have a little me-time at a cosy me-space! I just came back from yesterday’s party-ride through the city on which Andi and I unsettled the very nice Tanzcafé Jenseits and the Café Eurpopa before getting a cab, going to Würstel-Leo again and having a great brunch today in the early afternoon. Over new-year’s eve I’m going to be in Graz, I guess. But right now I don’t have any clue… so all this will have to make due for now…