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Welcome, welcome, welcome ...

Why are you here?

Well, I don't know what brought you here but now that you are, take a look around anyway. By the time you reach the end, you will be looking forward to them 'loaded' websites with plenty of pictures or flash movies and as little text as possible.

What's this site?

It's my home page, that's right! I started it in the mid 90s and it's seen a few revamps. Though the last one was probably around four or five years back.

I wrote this in 2013. Two years later, not much has changed here again but at least it is still current. It is actually scary to think how little changed in the past two years. Need to get myself a life again before I start feeling old!

Who am I?

Well, you should know! After all, you didn't come here by accident, did you?

Ok, for those among you who did in fact not know what they were looking for, here are some facts.

• Born in 1971 in Germany.
• Completed my MSc in Geology in Germany in 1995.
• Went to New Zealand in 1998 to study some volcanoes. To finance this endeavour, I worked part time at the University of Waikato as IT technician.
• Left NZ for UK (London) in 2004 to replenish my very depleted bank account. Research is expensive, you know! Changed the field of operation from Geology to IT full time. Started out as customer support and moved up to manager of customer support after about a year in the company.
• Left London to work in Geneva, Switzerland) in 2009. Relegated myself back to customer support in order to get a foothold in a global company (Thomson Reuters).
• Took on post of Technical Account Manager at Thomson Reuters in 2011.
• Restructuring within TR saw my area of operation move from being based out of Geneva to Vienna, Austria.
• Left Geneva in 2012 to take up the post in Vienna, Austria.
• ... still there.
• You can talk to me in many different languages, just don't necessarily expect me to understand you. I did learn German, English, Russian and Latin at school, and taught myself some Italian during travels and French while I lived in France. However, if you want a fluent conversation with me, we will have to stick to the first two, which are both at native level.

My passions?

They have changed considerably over the decades. Sports was always very high on the list, from football and handball to gymnastics and athletics and cycling of various flavours. Not much has remained of those, I am afraid. I still love to go mountain biking on occasion. The only time I really LOVE running is when I should actually be hiking the trails, as more sensible people would do. So here we go.

• My number one passion has to be exploring the world. As you may have seen in the above list, I tend to move around a lot. While it is also somehwat scary each time and again, I love to start from scratch over and over again. This is the one time when you really need to get your act together and can't make excuses. The moment you got on that plane to a new country, that's it. While you could say this is getting easier each time you do it, one can always add challenges. When I moved to Geneva, I actually lived in France. Nothing odd with that except that I only spoke about five words of French. Ok, I did pay the bill for it by the real estate scr...ing me over with the electricity bill in the first year. So well, just stay clear of Eurimo and you should be safe. So yes, the added challenge helps occasionally to prevent complacency.
• Number two passion has changed over the years. I used to be an outdoors person but oddly, in New Zealand of all places, I turned into an indoors person by taking up dancing. Me being me, 'I take it all' was my middle name. Started out with Tango Argentino, then added Ballroom and Latin American, then added Ceroc/Modern Jive, then Rock'n'Roll, then Salsa and a little bit of Lambada and then for a very long time nothing. Eventually, in Geneva, due to the lack of Modern Jive, I tackled West Coast Swing. To give myself a new challenge, I started Zouk in Vienna. While I am not as crazy about it anymore as I used to be in NZ, dancing nowadays acts as a counter weight to work stress. So there is no more teaching involved and all is just for fun.
• As I don't want to leave it at two, I'll add my previous number two passion: rock climbing. Not sure if I can still count it as current passion. I would love to engage a bit more in it again but haven't done much in many years. Favourite areas are Meteora in Greece and Setesdalen in Norway. So far, I have not been in any other places that had the same appeal as those two. Yes, I have been to Yosemite. ;)