everything's not lost.

a few days late but now i can pull myself together to write about the great people i got to meet during the weekend/last days.

it started with saturday, wenn Kathrin, a local couchsurfing.com user who i met about a month ago, invited me over to my favourite pub to a surprise birthday party for her husband Charles. when charles walked in with kathrin he thought i’d just be there because i’m a regular at the Claddagh, but then he saw a few other people that were there :) the whole evening was great fun (also the drinking games, which i don’t do usually :D) and we really had a great bunch of people from all over: Charles from New Zealand, Jeff from Ohio, Erika and Boštjan from Ljubljana and the guy who’s name i forgot from Albania. the carinthians were almost outnumbered if you include Julian, the Claddagh owner. Erika and Boštjan are couchsurfers from Ljubljana and Boštjan was making a few pictures during the evening, unfortunately i look the other way or have my eyes closed (usually i do better, i promise), but here they are:

images (c) by Boštjan.
then, sunday evening, Josh from Germany arrived.

he was the first person to be hosted by me and he was a great guy and we had a lot of fun. i had to explain a bit about carinthia and why it is in no way comparable with the rest of austria, incl. a little history lesson and a few lessons in speaking the carinthian dialect. josh was here to get a first impression of Klagenfurt, because he will be here as a volunteer during the EURO2008. he stayed for two nights and then i dropped him at the gas station between Klagenfurt and Villach on my way to work. he hitchhiked back to Germany.

during his stay, the weather was quite bad, so we did not find time to take photos or anything, which he was looking forward to do. instead, we went to the Claddagh on monday and met up with another couchsurfing.com user from Klagenfurt: Maria who is a student here and a Russian native. Georg joined us as well and it was a nice evening and a lot of fun taking pictures and posing in videos for Georg. actually, posing for Georg wasn’t fun. damn.

when we got home we made a few pictures for a specific use. see, Josh is from Wiesbaden and the town twinning of Klagenfurt and Wiesbaden is supposed to be the world’s oldest town twinning since 1930. now the “Wiesbadener Kurier” gave Josh a soccer jersey for us to pose together so they can make a story about Klagenfurt, Wiesbaden and the EURO2008.

this is, what we made:

this is the actual inside of the stadium in Klagenfurt. and this is actually josh and me. looks good enough i guess :D

couchsurfing.eloquentin.net

then i launched a small site, couchsurfing.eloquentin.net, where i provide a bit of information for travellers interested in klagenfurt. the site will grow a bit and i made a google map with points of interests. also, there’s a more detailed description on how to find my flat for future guests.

so couchsurfing has been great fun so far - staying in london, meeting couchsurfers, hosting someone - i really like it and want to use couchsurfing.com more, travel more, meet people and so on. maybe do a regular’s table (in the Claddagh of course) and maybe i’ll become the city ambassador for Klagenfurt, sounds like fun :)