Friday, May 30, 2008

Lotus Cars and Play By Web

 
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Well the weather here is really hot, 32C, and has been for a few days. Lots of tourists now although my Austrian friends tell me it gets worst in July and August. Last week there was a Lotus Car rally in the town centre. Lots of very flashy sports cars that I could never afford or would want to.


Lotus Sports Cars looking very....well, sporty

There is a hotel in St. Wolfgang called the Scaleria which has won the award for the best Event Hotel in all of Austria. They are always having conventions and promotions there and to celebrate their award they had a Red Bull bi-plane doing acrobatics over the lake.

Having a severe dearth of live opponents here I have been looking at other ways to scratch the boardgame itch and have found a couple of sites where I can play boardgames by web. These are Michael Schacht's site at

http://www.michaelschacht.net/pbm/index.php

and MabiWeb which is at

http://www.mabiweb.com/index.php

At Michael's site there are two games, Patrician and Hansa, and at MabiWeb there is a bigger selection, including Samurai, Shadow of the Emperor, Mykerinos and Kreta.
I have enjoyed playing there, even had a game with Michael Schacht himself and he was very friendly and helpful. If you fancy going there for a game look me up, my user name is 'dogger' on the Michael Schacht site and 'coljen' on MabiWeb, I would be happy to play you. I know the biggest online boardgame playing site is BSW, but the interface is a bit daunting and the games are realtime and I don't think the wife will relish me sitting in front of the computer playing boardgames all day. I think I will take the plunge for the odd game, I really like Notre Dame and they have that on there. Anyway I hope you are all getting plenty of gaming in.

Happy Gaming!!

Monday, May 19, 2008

Picnic by the Lake

 
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Last week the weather here was lovely, sunshine all the way. The place is starting to wake up after the winter season, the flowers are all in bloom in the meadows, the ferry boats have started cruising around the lake and the little train that wends its way up the Schafberg mountain is chuffing once again.
Last wednesday it was a lovely day so we decided to take a picnic across to the nature reserve on the other side of the lake. Boarding the ferry boat which is just a few minutes walk from our apartment it takes only 15 minutes to get to the other side. Then a lovely 30 minute walk through meadows filled with spring flowers brings us to the nature reserve. This is an area with picnic tables, pedalos on the lake, swimming and water skiing all available. We spent a lovely hour or so having a leisurely lunch, with local cheese and fruit and of course some cold beer!
Then another pleasant hours stroll along to the end of the lake and the village of Strobl. This is a lazy village with lovely restaurants and bars and of course all the watersports available here as well. We caught the ferry back to St. Wolfgang to round off our day....very pleasant indeed. No boardgames in sight for the day but there's always another one!!!

Happy Gaming!!


Looking back to St. Wolfgang from the Nature Reserve