together again !!

Since December 21st Jana and Tilo are together in Germany ... huhu !

We wish u all a Happy New Year !!!


See u soon!

Jana and Tilo

French-German Friendship ...

My good old friend Mathieu came to Lyon for la fête des lumières ! Vive le Nord ;-)!

That's 11 years of french-german friendship!

Welcome to the city of lights!!! La fête des Lumières 2006!

During 4 days the city of Lyon was a huge festival! More than 4 Million (!!!) visitors came to Lyon during these for days (7th to the 10th of December) to watch the fascinating light shows projected on the main sights of Lyon.
Actually this "fête des lumières" is a tradition since 1852 to thank the holy Maria. Lyon build her a statue up the hill of fourvière and every Lyonnais lightened candles in the windows and on the streets for the inauguration of this statue.

Today it became this huge light festival, which is really impressing ! Have a look (also under http://www.lyon.fr/lumieres/):




For all of you also a very nice Advent season ! Lovely greetings from the lightened city of Lyon ...

Weekend in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne

Kindly a friend from university, the famous Vincent!, invited me to go on the weekend to his parents who are living in Chamalières near Clermont-Ferrand. All this is located in the wonderfull landscape of the region of the Auvergne. These are mainly mountains of the centre of France (massif central) which are old volcanos - just sleeping ones! In this famous region of France ou can find all kinds of volcanos which exist in the world. Isn't this amazing?
It's also the region were the well known Mineral Water comes from (Volvic) and Vichy is also very close. The city of Clermont is dominated by the volcano Puy de Dôme (1465m) which u can see nearly from everywhere in the city.
During the weekend we did mainly two things: having wonderfull dinners and watching rugby. The parents of Vincent prepared really great french meals (oyster, champagne, foie gras, roast, Bourgondy wines etc.) ... I couldn't believe it.
On Saturday we went to a live Rugby match in the Michelin Stadium of Clermont. ASM vs Biarriz, this is first class rugby !!! (1st divison; the 2nd vs the 3rd!). Rugby is very important (more than soccer) in Clermont and that's why the team is traditionally sponsored by Michelin. Who did not know that Michelin comes from Clermont in the Auvergne? Now u know!
Okay, this was a really cool weekend ! I will definetly go back to this interesting region to discover these volcanos ...

welcome to volcano land

Vincent + Cathedral

all houses are build out of the dark Volvic-Stone

Vercingetorix, who defeted Cesar (but couldn't stop him after all)

le Puy de Dôme

champagne time

un vrai regal !

Rugby ASM vs Biarriz

"Les Michelin" fighting - they won against Biarriz

It's done - The GIANT de la Provence ! Le Ventoux !

After my Papa went back to Lunzenau, my friend Tim and I drove down to Carpentras. Tim is a Erasmus student from Stuttgart and likes cycling ! Actually he is doing triathlon.
The grandmother of my friend Mathieu from Boulogne was so kind to host us in her house in the south of France (in the well known Provence!). She had her Sister around and so Tim and I had really good care of two lovely grannies!
We wanted to relax from the stress of a big city like Lyon and cycle in this wonderful region! A "friend", named Mistral was also around who made the weather surprisingly chilly but also very sunny. Anyway for cycling this wind (Mistral) is not the best condition. Never mind we had a great time ... Our big goal was the famous giant of the Provence, the Mount Ventoux (1909 m). The challenge is to drive up from 300 m altitude to 1909 m on only 22 km ... This pass is one of the most respected ones in the world of Jan, Lence, Richard, Ivan ... (eventhought its not their world anymore ;-)) . On our last day we tried to beat this guy! With success ... Tim (1:34:00) and Tilo (1:45:00).
Back to our base lovely meals were always waiting for us!!! Thanx again, dear mamie Denise and dear mamie Janette !! You were the best.
To thank our "deux mamies" we did some quite cool gardening !

time to relax!

le Ventoux
cycling in wonderful landscape of les Dentelles de Montmireille

lovely Provence

some intellectual stuff ;-)

à l'attaque 1

à l'attaque 2

we did it!

view from the top

fancy Mistral-BBQ with Antoine and his doughter Marie

time for food - with Laurence and little Gregoire

exhausting gardening
avec Mamie Denise et Mamie Janette ;-)

Lyon still grooves !! Watch the news !

Dear friends, sorry for this really long pause ... but now it's time for some cool news again !

After only 5 weeks of studies, we had allready one week of off to rest a bit. The first part of theis week my Papa came around to see me and to visit this wonderful city of Lyon. Unfortunatly my mum could be here with us, because of my granny (god bless her).
Never the less we had a great time and my father so all, what I had disvovered in over one month before! And a very good thing was, that he brought my my real bike ... thanx again, Papa! We were so lucky with the weather it was nearly summer, incredible!
Here some impressions from our trips:

le petit déjeuner

la Saone

Lyon by bike

our lovely "bouchon"

father and son tours in the Lyon Mountains

orchestra on the passerelle

oysters with view to my appartment

Beaujolais nouveau before the 16thof November !!!! In the Beaujolais region near Lyon!

sparkling nights ...

Again some of my nice night impressions of Lyon ... nighty night ;-).

old Lyon in the middle of the night

moon over Vieux Lyon

no comment

a lovely automne day in the Lyon Mountains

I took me a while to send out some news, but here we go again ...

So far I have been really lucky with the weather here in Lyon. Since I arrived, it has been mainly sunny nice weather (I think as well in the rest of Europe ...). So it was time to discover "les Monts Lyonnais" ...
The best way to do so, is by bike of course! Actually I didn't do so many bike tours untill now, because I just have my lovely little "bicyclette rouge" (MIFA Klappi) here. It's very handy in the city centre, but my motivation got down, when I just failed to drive up the hill behind my house ... by now I realized, that it's a really steep hill up to the cathedral "La fourvière" and that it's nearly impossible to suceed with such a bike ...
But after a new attemp driving to some other hills up the Saône Valley, I got confident again and I could proudly right my "Klappi" again ;-) !
Lyon souroundings are really pictoresque landscapes: le Beaujolais and les Monts du Lyonnais
This Saturday I drove to the Lyon Mountains and got my first altidutes with "Klappi" ... In France cycling is taken quite serious and everybody is really well equiped. That's why I was sort of an "attraction touristique", driving on the little red thing. Some were laughing, some were cheering me up ... it was kind of fun. And of course everybody tried to overtake me as fast as possible ... But I did it, to little mountains (col de la Luère 712m and col de Malval 732).

l'attaque des montagnes

col de la Luère et col de Malval

The reward was to enjoy the nice views and the lovely countryside. From here you can see the Mont Blanc and this is really impressive! Unfortunatly not on the picture ...

on the left you can see Lyon and in the background the Mont Blanc
(best click on it!)

As you can see it's more of a rural region ... only wood and farms.
Autumne is time of collecting chestnuts - those you can eat! When I saw everybody collecting them, I took lots back home, as well as some really tasty wall-nuts for my "coloc" (flatmates).

Still life - "Chestnut"

Yzeron is a good place to have break and to relax à la francaise - with a little glas of rosé ....

"le rosé rosé" (picture taken actually a 2 weeks before)