Good Times

The Bridal Couple

Fortunately not everything is going badly. We also had a lot of time to enjoy and celebrate these months. First of all Inés and I got married in November. To this occasion some of my freinds and my sister from Austria came to visit us. So I had the great chance to pass some time with good old friends from home, aspirating a little home spirit, having good conversations in mother tongue and showing them something of my new home. We climbed the volcano, rafted the river, went to hot springs, watched the Pacific Ocean (for bathing over there it still had been too cold), hiked in national parks in between ancient monkey puzzle tree forests and let us enchant of Valparaísos magical spirit. It was a great time which highlight was the wedding party on the pool, with lamb on a spit and lots of pisco (and for sure other drinks). The next day we have had quite a hangover but two days later cured the rest of it cooling down in the floods of Trancura River just to climbe the volcano the next day. Like always these good times always pass by much too fast and soon everybody had to go back to Austria and daily routine came back to my life. Sweetend by the arrival of Bernie, a rafting comrade from Austria who is visiting Chile right now. With him the Austrian spirit keeps on blowing through Pucón. Sadly he soon will go on travelling more south but the weeks with him were brilliant and today we will celebrating Christmas together with my family here. Having said this I wish you all a Merry Christmas! May it be blessed and unhurried!

Tough Times

While I was working during the winter the sauna and cafeteria were growing. As we step by step discovered unfortunately not in the way we had wished to. We had to argue a lot with the architect, some days nobody came to work, things were not done as we had decided it and so on. Finally we realized - unfortunately too late - that the whole construction was not worth the money. It was not well made, we had problems with rain water entering the construction, things from the original plan were missing, doors and frames badly installed and many more things unprofessionally done. Highlight of all that mess was that the roof of the sauna set on fire when we used it the second time. Inés had been in then with all the kids while I had been working. It was quite a shock. For Inés realizing that the roof burned being in there with all the kids and for me getting the phone call of Inés at work that the sauna burns. At least we had been lucky and could extinct the fire ourselves before it caused severe damage. As it turned out, the chimney of the oven had been installed wrong. So it came that the architect never terminated the construction because for sure after the incident with the fire we did not want him to go on with it. Instead we demanded him. During the investigations we found out that he not even had signed the contract with his real name. He was a professional cheater. That was a hard shock. In the following weeks we had been like paralyzed and did not know what to do next. I had invested a lot of money in the project and did not want to risk the rest of what I had in repairing the sauna not knowing if anyone would do it seriously. On the other hand we needed to finish the construction to get some money out of the business. At least I had my job over the winter months to earn my livings. Meanwhile we are trying to fix the sauna searching for someone confidential who will do this. Summer season is slowly beginning and so at least comes a good time of nice weather, sun, lots of work and asados. All the rest we will see soon….