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11/4/2007 12:00:00 PM
Egypt
hurghada

Egypt

A week family vacation soaking up some sun, beach, wind and sea - wonderful!

A wonderful day to you all!

Hard to believe that the year 2007 is almost over and we've been in Austria for A year already!!!!

Robert's project with Activision in London ended mid October. Everything went well and even though there were a few, small "hick-ups" in-between he managed to finalize it successfully. Directly afterwards he took off for 2 weeks to the US, to check out new possibilities and meet with a few people to discuss further perspectives. There are no concrete plans yet and I think at the moment he is evaluating whether he will stay as a contractor with his own company or maybe go back to a settled firm. As everything in live it got it's ups and downs and has to be thought about very carefully. When we will have more news and definitive answers about the "how, where and what" we will certainly let you know.

One of the good sides about being your own contractor is the flexibility between projects. Therefore we all enjoyed having him around for a few weeks, even tough he also worked quite a bit and had meetings for potential new projects, he also had time to do things you can't afford during a "normal" work day - like building small hobby airplanes, play x-box in the morning, have late breakfast with me, join the boys for soccer,...

When Robert got back at the end of October from the US he had exactly 24 hours before we took off to Hurghada/Egypt... We did not have a "real" family vacation this summer, since he could not leave the project and we were busy with all our visitors. So therefore we decided to take the fall break and charge up on sun and beach, a perfect time of the year since it starts to get cool and rainy then here in Austria.

We basically spent a week "only" at the hotel and relaxed. One of the reasons we chose Hurghada was the ideal wind condition there for wind surfing. During our sailing trip Robert did not have as many chances as he had hoped for (to be exact 4!) and therefore we booked a hotel with an attached surf center (by Tommy Friedl, a German guy who's been living there for 20 years!). It was an ideal place for all of us - some wind shaded places for me to "bake" in the sun, a small lake for the kids to play and swim if it was too windy at the beachfront, directly at the hotel, excellent surf equipment - but it wasn't meant to be for Robert to surf... Out of our 8 days only 1 1/2 had wind! For Sebastian, who took 10 surf lessons it was perfect (he started at the lake) and on his last day he could even surf off the beach to the open sea since the wind was just right! He really did great and even though he did not want to do it in the beginning (as often... ;o) he was very happy and proud of himself. Benjamin wanted nothing to do with it and watched from the land... A few years and he'll be on the board too!

Sebastian had a 7-year old boy in his course also from Vienna! We have a saying here in Austria "The world is a small village!" - because Jakob not only was from Vienna and the 9th district (Vienna has 23 and the boys' school is also in the 9th, where most of the class mates live) he also lives just across from a family we know well from both kids classes and are also friends with the parents just like Jakob's parents (Werner and Katharina)! Benjamin came running up to me when he saw him saying "Mama, I know this boy from Marisa's playground...!" Very funny how small the world is! They lived at another hotel down town but since Werner is also a big kite surfer they spent their days at the Tommy Friedl surf beach. On their last evening we went out to the Hard Rock Café in Hurghada - perfect for the evening's occasion "Halloween"! The restaurant was decorated with carved pumpkins, spooky decorations and waiters - yet the burgers were definitely a treat and not a trick!

On our last couple of days we took a snorkel and dive trip, and spent a day at a big slide/water park just across from our hotel. It was obvious that Hurghada is a huge tourist mekka (a lot of Russians!), since there were about 20 other boats at each reef site and often one could not see the fish between all the divers.... We were fortunate to have seen one of the most beautiful marine life spots during our time in the South Pacific, but the Red Sea is also very famous for it and I was amazed that even though there were a lot of people (every year!) we could see so many fish and corrals. We certainly could recognize a lot and enjoyed this outing very much, specially being on a boat again!

As mentioned Hurghada is a popular vacation city and grew over the last 25 years from about 20.000 people to approx. 800.000! Then there were only a few hotels while now the whole 70km long coast is covered with hundred of hotels and they are still building. They've got quite a weird construction attitude tough, because you can hardly see any workers and every site looks like a bomb had just hit it... Not a pretty site and even though there is an old part of Hurghada there are no major sightseeing points, it is totally geared towards beach vacation. That was no problem for us since we only wanted to relax anyhow. We had never really done such a hotel vacation, and a week was a perfect duration - Robert probably could have stayed longer would the winds have been better... Funny enough, but we got tired of the buffet style meals as much as we all love it... We were amazed by the locals friendliness specially with children - always a smile and a joke. The hotel also had a game room that we loved to end our early nights with a game of pool or table soccer - the boys usually went ahead and enjoyed a few with the room's assistant Michael, who was always happy to have company!

Back in Vienna we were quickly wrapped up in our daily routine again and the first snow! Today it's been snowing again and maybe we are lucky and will have a white Christmas this year...?! Robert is coming back form another 2 week trip to San Diego, where he helped out Tommy (our friend he worked with when we lived there) with a major computer problem. Well we only have a week left, with a few parties and things to do. We'll take advantage of Robert being off right now and the snow situation and will spend the vacation off in Salzburg and Tyrol skiing, which we all are very much looking forward to!

In the meantime we wish you a peaceful Advent, joy during the holiday season - we'll sure send separate x-mas greetings.

Many hugs for now The4Schmids  Niki, Robert, Sebastian, Benjamin und Matey

PS While we were in Egypt a new family member arrived and the boys are proud cousins of baby "Jakob". We are all very excited and happy for Elli and Werner and very happy to be in Austria for this big event! Pics on the web!

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