Down by the river

Hi, sorry for the lack of updates. I have been quite busy the last couple of days, busy and lazy.
And just to let you know: Comments are highly appreciated! So just leave a note and write some words, there is a link at the end of each post.
The weather is bad again. Well it's not raining but it got really cold. At the beginning of the week it was snowing a little bit and it was very windy, so I haven't spend too much time outside.
But here are still some pics from the beginning of the month when I went down to the river where the atmosphere is really nice when the weather is good. The pictures are from the weekend when Kathi and Sophie were here to visit. On Saturday before we went to the Camden market we took a walk along the Thames, had some coffee in the sun and listened to the many street musicians.
I think we listened to the strings for half an hour or even longer, but they did play very nice classical music. They even played my favorite, Pachelbel's Canon in D.
The south bank of the river used to be a rather dodgy area. But the city did a great job in it and it is now a great place to spend the afternoon or the evening.


The reason why I have been busy the last couple of days is a trade fair where I have been working since Sunday. Yes, I had to work on Sunday but I get extra money for it (for all the 4 days of the fair) which is without doubt much needed here in London! Right now there is the IFE (International Food Exhibition) in London. It is a large fair about food from the UK and all over the world. I was working at the Austrian stand which was located in the "walk the world" section. It kind of looked like a huuuuge "Global Village" (for all those who know these) . I represented an Austrian winery which couldn't send someone there ("Kaisergarten" in case you might know them). So I was offering different wines for tasting and pretended I actually knew anything about them. I totally acted like a wine expert, when all wines I usually drink don't cost more then 2 euros a bottle. But I don't think people really bought it.
Though it was exhausting to stand there the whole day and it took me 1h30min to get there, since the fair was located at the other end of London, it was a nice exprience. I had a nice diversion from the usual office work, met some people from other stands and other parts of the world and of course ate lots and lots of food. For lunch I and Ines (the other intern) used to walk through the exhibition and tried some samples from everywhere. We tasted sushi, Swiss cheese, bread, American cookies and doughnuts, bagels, ice-cream, Greek olives and antipasti and much much more.
Oh and in case you might think that now ... no, I wasn't drunk each day from drinking loads of wine. Just on the first evening, since I had to try everything ;-) . I had to know what I should tell the people about the wines and which ones I can recommend.
I brought two bags with food home, so I guess I won't have to go shopping for some time. However, this is nothing compared to what other people took home today. There were so many people who took everything they could get from every stand. Especially in the last hours the visitors went crazy. Everything which was left unattended was gone in a few seconds. Some couldn't even carry their bags anymore but it didn't keep them from taking more and more. Sure, I like to take some goodies from fairs back home and I always stuff my bags with nice things before I leave ... but this was a completely different level.