FranceBlog in English

School holidays, Vacation, Friends visiting, Family visiting, weekend is close. How fast time goes by is crazy. Last year, November 1st 2007 we started the „adventure“ France. Getting used to the new job, colleagues, finding new friends, school, french, english. Amazing how it worked out so far. One year in the south of france. Of course with some ups and downs but overall a great experience.

Our friends Beate & Alex with Kids were visiting us for a week. The weather was nice with 24C and sun at the beach and bad with wind and rain and only 10C. But much better than snow and icecold temperatures. Dagmar’s sister Kerstin & Family was also visiting us. They stayed in Narbonne-Plage and stopped by one day. We also visited them. It was nice for the kids to meet friends and family again. We all together enjoyed it. Now we go to the final weeks of the year. Beaujolais Primeur vine will come soon and christmas is close. 2008 will finish and let’s see what 2009 brings. The adventure continues. While I am writing I am listening to the new ACDC – Black Ice CD. Fantastic Rock…

A bientot mes amis – The Engelkahles

Wow, how time goes by. My first year in france is almost over. October…

The Kids are feeling very comfortable and happy now in france and in the school. Daggie and I enjoy the weekends with the kids. Last weekend we had some fun at a fun playground for kids and adults. It was a area where lots of trees are connected together with ropes, nets, logs… You wear a harness and connect carabiners to safety ropes and climb up in the trees. At the beginning Jonathan was not very happy. But after he finished the beginner trial he was not going away 🙂
Fabian was also busy climbing in the trees, he also climbed higher than I did. It was very exhausting but also a lot of fun, we will definitely go back there.

Today was a normal working day. Well, that changed at noon. It started to rain a lot. It was pooring down. October is usually the wet month here in Montpellier. The first weeks in October were pretty dry,

so it had to start one day. That was today. It was raining a lot. After work we said goodbye to Clive and Karen. Clive is a colleague from the UK and he helped and tought me a lot. After that I tried to go home as fast as possible. Unfortunately it was busy everywhere. Highway was blocked and small roads had also huge traffic jams. All because of the rain. It was flooding the small river beds and also the big ones. Small creeks or rivers turned to huge rivers and little lakes. The Roads where flooded at some places at blocked by the police. My little road from Maugio to Baillargues was also flooded and some cars have missed the road and dropped down the small shoulders on the roads. After one hour (usually 20 minutes) I was back home. In Stuttgart it usually does not rain that heavy, but the results of snow in Stuttgart and heavy rain in Montpellier are similar. Accidents, blocked roads and long travel time.
The Kids took some pictures of the heavy rain. Take a look and enjoy

A Bientot

– The Engelkahles

Hola. Together with my little family we drove in the little Renault Clio from Baillargues to Montmelo in Spain. Circiut de Catalunya. Famous Race  Track. 30km / 20 miles east of Barcelona. This weeken was the DTM Race ( www.dtm.de ) , this is the German Touring Car Championship. Since Fabian wanted to go to the race itself this year, not the qualifying, I bought tickets for the best seats and Paddock entry.
Well, the weatherforecast was bad since days. Rain, Thunder… 80 percent probability of rain. But today we had lots of luck. The clouds were blown away and the rain was coming down at the pyrenees. The trip to the race track was beautiful. Blue sky, sunny weather, beautiful sightseeing. The first time for us to drive to Spain. The little Clio was very economic again. Only 5.5L / 100km, 42.7MPG. The gasprices in spain are also low. Only 1.16 Euro for a liter. In France it is between 1.35 and 1.51 Euro.

Thanks to some earplugs, the kids, Dagmar and I enjoyed the race. We went to the pit with our tickets, saw some livebands and smelled the tires and gas. Our seating was directly at the Finishing line, so we had a very good view to the track and the pit.Paul di Resta (Mercedes) won , second was Timo Scheider (Audi) and third was Bernd Schneider (Mercedes).
Dagmar enjoyed her first carrace and Fabi and Jona enjoyed it as well. They already went to some races 🙂

Pictures are here: http://bigmek.de/dtm2008/DTMcc2008.swf 
Video from the race (54MB , 768×576 Pixel): http://bigmek.de/dtm2008/DTM_Circuit2008med.wmv

Video is coming soon. A bientot

Playing with cars is fun. Thats why we took some diecast models from the CARS Movie and a Hoodz car to shoot some pics. Enjoy

and a little movie (14MB,320×288 Pixel) or (32MB,768×576 Pixel) with pictures from August/September and music from Christophe Maé

Since Jonathan has his new bicycle and he rides it like a rocket we made a little bicycle tour in windy but mild weather. About 6 miles along the fields and wineyards. Last week we saw a white horse and we wanted to meet it again a feed some apples. So we bought some apples and a mudguard for Jonathans bike. After a nice rain on thursday he drove through all puddles he found and looked very dirty. Now with the new feature installed it doesn’t matter anymore.
Fabian and Dagmar were the first at the horse and gave the first apple. The horse liked it a lot. So Jonathan gave the second. I gave some leftovers. Even with the strong winds the kids drove very good and it was a lot of fun, see the pictures 🙂 

We had another reason to do a BBQ. Lots of friends and colleagues from germany were in Montpellier this week. To meet everyone we invited them. Since many people went shopping with an empty stomach we had lots of meat to put on the BBQ Grill. Nobody went home hungry 🙂 We also celebrated a birthday and we had lots of fun…. See the pictures 

The first week of september was full of nice and funny things. Several colleagues from all around Europe were there and also some friends from Fabian‘ s school were here to visit us.  Since the first day at school was on tuesday and wednesdays is off, the kids enjoyed it a lot to play together. Sigrun and Olaf took care also of Fabian and Jonathan. So Dagmar and I were able to meet the colleagues in Montpellier to go to a Fondue Restaurant. That was delicious. It is hot as well in the restaurant with all the pots filled with hot oil…But nice. Hans and Heidi also visited us several times . So we went together with Sigrun, Olaf, Yannik and Gregor to the „Le Galion“ Restaurant in historic Aigues-Mortes. You can have your food cooked on a hot stone there, directly at your table. Fish or meat.

The first part of the weekend was cloudy. After a really strong Thunderstorm on Thursday night with humid, warm temperatures we used the time to update the webpages of Fabian and Jonathan with Pictures from 2007. 2008 will come soon. Check out the pictures:

Fabian’s homepage: http://fabian.bigmek.de or pics directly at: http://bigmek.de/fabian/FabiAlbum2007.swf

Jonathan’s homepage: http://jonathan.bigmek.de or pics directly at: http://bigmek.de/jonathan/JonaAlbum2007.swf 

Today we used the sunny and mild weather to make a little bicycle tour. Jonathans’s first one with his new little bike. We made a 9km trip through the close, quiet neighbourhood and the wineyards. He managed it very good. Was his first trip with real traffic. See you soon

Today it was a normal day, but with just 30C with lots of clouds. So we decided to make a trip to Micropolis. That is not a little french town, but a intersting educational world. Insect world. You can see, feel the world of insects. There is a outside area where the insects have your size, or the size of a labrador retriever dog and you can imagine how it’s like to be a insect or the inside world where thousands of insects, alive or dead can be seen. The webpage is available at: http://www.micropolis.biz
To get there we had to drive through wonderful areas north of Montpellier. from 20m(60ft) above sealevel to more than 800m (2400ft). Across the Viaduct de Millau. All together that was a wonderful sunday with the family. At home we finished with a little bycicle tour near our home with Jonathan and Fabian. Jonathan now also drives Bycicle like a maniac. He got a new little kids Moutainbike and drives great. Helmet and gloves, he is doing fine. A bientot

That’s it. Three weeks of vacation are over now. That was really fast. After this weekend the normal way of life is back again. School, work… The weeks were nice. We visited our families in germany, drove more than 2000 miles in those 3 weeks. I admit that driving on the german Autobahn with more than 120 MPH is nice, but it is too crowded in germany on the Autobahn. Driving with 80PMH is relaxing and easy on the french highways. Since there is a toll to pay the Highways are not that crowded.
In germany we went to the baptism of Juliane Mia (from Dagmars sister Kerstin), we had several BBQs with friends and family and we did our yearly Family Photo on the steps of our house. Since we moved into our house in 2004 we take pictures each August/September. It is not always easy, because the Kids sometimes do not do what we expect but that makes it really funny.

Here is the latest 2008 Family Picture:

This is a collage of the past pictures:

Here in france, the weather is nice as usual. Hot, sunny and we can really enjoy. Several friends already visited us here and this will continue. The little Clio is also running great with the same good mileage of 37MPG. More pictures from the last weeks can be found on my Webpage: http://bigmek.de/digital.htm

Have fun and a bientot The Engelkahles

I just uploaded some new videos on Youtube and I splitted the SchwobaCup Video into two parts that can be watched on Youtube now. I don’t care if many people watch it, they are just for fun 🙂

Schwobacup Part 1 and 2:

Part 1: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=O7XecEICI1w

Part 2: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=gPXIfkt6ns4

Aquarium Mare Nostrum Montpellier: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=u2A0SBPRskc

OCC Orange County Choppers & V-Force Customs: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=xyjutMwLJZU