The Lion Eats Today

Saturday we went to the new KFC – in fact we went to a KFC for the first time!

Whereas at Burger King or – no matter which – McD you have to wait forever cause, well, the interpretation of fast in “Fast Food” isn´t really regulated, is it?
8 customers in one lane never is a surprise and, yes, the poor guys don´t have the best paid jobs. But that´s not entirely an excuse for being slow and unfriendly.

Really it´s the same in each shop, each one looks the same and has the same “service”. I have to add that “service” is not a German word, so maybe that might be an explanation.

KFC? Very, very clean, we had near to no chance to think of what to try cause it was our turn in a sec!
The girl was really friendly, with a genuine smile, and fast.
We had each ordered 6 pieces of chicken, a small portion of chips (they had to make, obviously a wish for small isn´t that common) and a coke. We got at least 9 pieces of chicken each!
And it was yummy!
And so well done in the interior design. And you knew exactly where you are, at KFC in Braunschweig, the Lion-City (see pic).
Sadly I had only my small cam with me, so I took but one pic. There are several posters of important places of our city, well done!

haha, I just love this..., this Lion Sleeps Tonight :-)

Winter is still around and seldom we have a sunny day like this one.
Usually most of the time it looks like this:

And today in the news I learned that we have the darkest winter since 43 years.
No wonder I feel unfit and tired.
Not even 100 hours of sunshine since start of December. Usually you have 160 in this time-period!

Best thing to do is, since you can´t change it: Go outside and hence we went, as almost every Monday.

And what did we find? A new grocery-store in the city.

Here you can see Henry the Lion and some of the known places and a sign saying “Braunschweig – our likeable major city”.
The director gave me a big smile when he saw me taking the pic :-)

And certainly they sell the right coffee as well:

It´s great to live in a city like that!

Despite the weather and me feeling unfit life is really nice to me.

When my Teamleader gets bored... he happily exclaimed: I framed this one for you :-)

My old Motto-Card is on the magnet-board now. It says "The early bird can try to get me".

Our identity cards needed an update, hence Teamleader went to the customer´s office, which is where the cars are build.
The queue time he went to Burger King. The woman working on the id-cards needed like forever, so Teamleader came back without them, a little frustrated, and told us what had happened.
I said, oh, great, now I´m hungry…

The woman called, Teamleader hopped into the car again.
I got my id-card back with a burger an impish smile and an added, so you´re not hungry anymore :-)

That happened after colleague T went to make a cuppa tea. He forgot to ask me if I like one, too. So he came back with the hot water :-)

I´m taken care of pretty well, no?

And the little bowls in the pic... Ingo (who´s home this week) surprised me with cheese and grapes in my bag.

Yesterday in the city Ingo saw this Cheesburger:

I placed it at Teamleader´s PC this morning as a thank you.

Do I mention we went to Schadt´s for a shared Currywurst for dinner?

Not the healthiest time food wise atm!
I do mention and when the project we´re at atm is done I´ll definitively change that!

Next post: Why Ingo is on holiday atm…

‘Tis An' ‘Tat

Winter is still here, thankfully just dang cold but near to no snow.

Life is floating by, nothing spectacular happened and mostly all I did was updating in FB.
Since I tend to not look back there in my timeline, I like to document the mini-highlights, the things that are worth being remembered – even if it´s just really the little things – here in the blog. After all those little things make my life, right?

The pic? Well, since I´m in the new office, my tea-consumption has kinda doubled, cause a) men don´t like the office warm and b) colleague T always asks me if I want a cuppa, too. If he didn´t go for coffee as well, I´d go into tea-shock! ;-)

Makes it legal to go for more tea-sorts, no?
So I couldn´t resist this stripey-tiger-tea!!!

Ingo once presented me with the big and small stripey-tiger-duck, the silver brooch is a pressie by my Mum, she engraved my name on the back, too. You say I´m too old for this? Ha, I don´t care ;-)
The Tiger and his stripey-tiger-duck belong to the main-figures of Janosch´s stories, also available in English and very cute, not only for young kids.

This is a last good-bye:

Not to my "chauffeur"! 3 years are up, I had to give my company car back.
Here´s the new one coming:

Yes, also a red Polo. This one is a Polo Match, though, was the same price as for the regular. Steering wheel and gear stick are leather, he´s got colored sport-seats, car-seat-heating (just what for???), the side-rear-mirrors come with a heating (hello?! Again, what for??) and a good radio - i can hear radio again and media is in the glovie-box!

Another good thing that´ll happen: Bro called me, he “found” the perfect glasses for me for cold, windy, dark days.
I have some sunglasses that keep the wind out, soon I´ll have the nasty-day-version and we can stick to our Monday-ritual (aka going into the city) no matter what!

On a not such good note: Little Niece is sick with three different issues, poor little one. Still she was happy to be on the phone (not more than "hello, yes, no and tschü-huess!" yet, but cute anyways :-)....) Such a brave kid!

A nice addition to the condo: Ingo got a Nano-Cube, looks really nice. He just has to work out how it runs best – so far there were two cases of cannibalism, the little fellas eat each other up, eek!

Can you now say we have “animals”? I´d say no. At least none that attract fleas!
I thought I got 4 mosquito-bites the other day. Yeah, sure, it warmed up to +1C, here they come, I thought.
Teamleader got bitten, too, so it´s no imagination... then they really swelled and three of them are kida near. Teamleader said that´s typical for fleas, by golly!!!

Work, btw is… in the job itself to one half kinda frustrating. The new system doesn´t work properly, errors, errors, errors, testing and more testing. And one of my colleagues makes me wanna scream a lot during the day. He giggles about just anything, comments all he does or hears, he drives me plain mad at times!
Still I can say: I work for a good company!

Pic: Graffiti on the way to the city.

Yesterday another (anonymous) employee-survey arrived via mail. Have the feeling I just filled out the last a moment ago...!

The cover letter starts with "Dear (aka "Liebe") colleagues and friends,...."
And ends with "Liebe Grüsse..." A nice feeling.
One of the questions btw is: do you have someone you call a friend in our company?" You can guess my positive answer!
Had a little side project with Teamleader yesterday. As Teamleader you have come stuff inbetween. I start early, he starts late, so at one point I asked if we wanna finish today or resume tomorrow? "As you like :-)"

Just as the boss wished me for my birthday, “fun at work”!

Boy, seems quite a lot happens after all, maybe I should blog more often after all…

Guess some enthralling pics are to come soon anyway!

Happy weekend!

No Masquerade

Winter is still here, see that drop of ice? Yikes. Sunday was the big carnival-parade in town.
We have the longest in Northern-Germany and in this cold with my eyes I couldn´t go, despite the fact it was super-sunny.

This really was the first time I wanted to go!
I live in this great town since 12 years and never went, shame on me.
Seems like all colleagues went - exept the ones who live in different cities, like colleague F.

He didn´t think at all it was funny when our team-leader repeated one main song over and over again:

"Braunschweig ist schöner als Hannover!" :-)
(BS is more beautiful than H)

Hahaha, so dang true!!
(Hannover is our "enemy". Due to a bad decision ages ago it was Hannover that became capital city, not us.)
Apart from all jealousy - it is true. Braunschweig is more beautiful than Hannover! :-)

So, instead of singing for our town we stayed home and Ingo made a proper dish: Cabbage roll - y.u.m.!

The making of in short:
You blanch the cabbage and prepare minced beef with half an old german breadroll and an egg as filling:

Before this or in the meantime you buy such a cool green casserole, place the roulades in it with some stock, the rest of the minced beef and the other half of the breadroll. Use an original bbq-tong you got in Perth on your last holiday.

Add caraway, simmer for a couple of hours, serve with cooked potatoes.
Feel warm and full after enjoying this winter-meal.

Use the rest of the cabbage to make some yummy soup:

And then you feel warm enough to pay George a short visit:

I still wish it got warmer...

Father and Sun

I love this ad of my customer - the old Käfer (the first car I was riding with, my Mum´s Käfer, I can´t remember, certainly) and the New Beetle Cabrio as "Father and Sun", sweet idea.

Well, winter is threatening on and off. Thick snowflakes here and there, luckily they melt away so far. Cold weekend expected, though...
Last week a lot came down -and we were in the plus-grades! Yay!

Life is just uneventful at the moment. Just the little things.

I didn´t get my own office when we moved.
At first I was really disappointed - but, hey, was the best thing that could happen to me!
I´m sitting in an office with my fav colleague and another helpful, sadly very talkactive one.
They´re both funny, yet "gentlemen", colleague T always asks me if I want a cuppa tea, too, and even makes it for me - cause I can´t carry a cup superfull, which he likes, I could never be a waitress ;-)
I have a question? No more e-mail, no more running, just ask!

Next office is my teamleader´s, he comes in several times a day, shares info and all. My colleague who got "my" office... she sits at the other end of the unit, all alone, without the fun parts and info we´re having.

The customer I hardly knew and thought he´s odd, turned out to be funny. The one who´s always very friendly to me... I now know his name, he moved in with us as well.
We still don´t have keys for the house, but there´s always someone there before me. Good to know.
Work itself is a tad frustrating atm, the new system doesn´t work properly, but with colleagues like that it´s still ok. I´m still sick, coughing away, feeling weak.
Hence no running but I discovered Navi CIS is just great, love it!
And I browsed through my pics.

Not Father and Sun, but same principle:

Niece and I at around two and a bit. Guess there are some similarities, no?
At least the clothing ;-)

Us on my b-day, taken by Bro with his new iPhone:

The little things.
Like the bedraggled-looking man at the grocery-store.
He was waiting in front of the recycling-center, which was out of order just yet again. I had more than 10 bottles with me.
I asked if he´d called for help already. He said, yes and asked me if I wanna go first - he has a lot to recycle! I said, me, too. He let me go first anyways.
I never expected this, sad how you make yourself a picture of people just by how they look like...

Yesterday was quite "warm" with 4-5C, sunny, so finally, finally we went into the city again.
Got some stuff for Niece for Easter and some pressies for P´s Advent-calendar (yes, I know it´s february...)

We had a shared Currywurst Pommes at Schadt´s - yep, so much for not running, huh? ;-)
On the way to the city it was a tad windy.
All day at the office my eyes did hurt, my sight is bad. Will this dang virus pass???

At Aldi I got the last 9 pieces of truffle-butter and put 8 in the freezer :-)

As said, nothing much happens. I feel like a bear in hibernation...