Cocktails cocktails cocktails!!!

February got off to a flying start: the sad fact that Susanne has now left the Office was tempered somewhat by our boozy evening together at Christine's house. We bought fruit and loads of drink and spent the evening mixing our own cocktails. The strawberry margarita got better each time, and then we did a sort of touchdown using peach juice which turned out very well.

Tine had cooked a chili the night before, and it was splendiferous warmed up again that evening - the dear even went to the trouble of buying cheese for me & Susi, even though she can't stand the stuff herself! The trouble was, it tasted SO good that we ate far too much, and then spent the rest of the evening lying around on sofas and the floor, groaning! I was sorely tempted to be spontaneously bulimic in the bathroom, but then my phone rang and the moment passed.

At the weekend I joined Michaela on a ski day trip organised by the EPO. Lorna came with too (we smuggled her in as my girlfriend), but as she was a complete beginner she didn't spend the day with us on the slopes. Instead we skied with Diane & her son Robert, and Lass & Alastair from the translation service at the Office.

The trip down was hard work: leaving at 7am, we reached the turnoff to the Zillertal at 8.30, which was good going. But then our bus was stuck in a queue of cars that were all trying to leave the motorway at that point too. For half an hour we didn't even have the engine running! Eventually we made it to Hochfügen, only to discover that half of Central Europe got there before us. Crowds!! And there was only one ski hire shop, and it had only one table for adjusting skis, so the queuing was obscene.

We finally made it up to the mountain at 11am - fully FOUR HOURS after leaving Munich. But in a funny way it was okay, because the weather was foul all morning: clouds wafting along valleys, obscuring the view totally and swaddling us in icy fog. Not even the obligatory two schnapses (one for each leg) before our first run could keep the cold away.

We finally turned in for lunch at one o'clock, and just then the weather turned. All of a sudden there was blazing sunshine. The vistas were majestic: slope upon slope of crisp white snow, specks of colour where skiers were making their way down the hill, and a sky that was all different shades of blue, from your classic "sky blue" paleness over the horizon through to an intense cobalt up above us.

And, to top it all, the food at the Hütte was amazing! Home-made pizzas that a Roman would be proud of, and a monster Germknödel (a big tit-shaped yeast-dough dumpling stuffed with thick plum jam, swimming in a bowl of melted butter and smothered in a mix of icing sugar and ground poppy seeds - one of my faves on any mountain) to make sure I was full.

Back in Munich that evening, I met up with Lorna again and we went to the Buena Vista Club, where Susanne had gathered a few friends to celebrate her upcoming birthday. The music was great, and the food was good, but the cocktails were a bit hit-and-miss and the service was DIRE! It took over an hour to get the bill, which meant we didn't leave there until midnight. No wonder the place was rammed; half the people were probably just waiting to pay.

We moved on to the nearby Schrannenhalle and into the nightclub in the basement there. The music was a bit ropey, to be honest, but the bottle of vodka the six of us split went some way to making up for any deficiency on the musical front. We finally left there at 3.30, after an hour spent up on the podium by the DJ's area strutting our stuff, and went our separate ways.

On Sunday I met Ferdinand for brunch, and then headed over to Sue & Gordon's for Kaffee und Kuchen (oh how German!) with Michaela & Steen from the Office. It was a gorgeous day, and I was happy to spend loads of time walking from one side of Munich to the other. The sun was actually hot on my skin. I'm already looking forward to the summer!