Last year's Christmas-NewYear break (the one last week, not 2011) saw public holidays on Monday-Wednesday of the Christmas-Eve, Christmas-Day, Boxing-Day, and on the Monday-Tuesday of the next week.

Which, what with the weekend, stuck us with 'official working days' on Thursday and Friday (Dec. 27 and 28). A lot of people took official holidays, and almost all of the rest just didn't bother to show up.. which left us with about 10-15 people in the whole of A.G Bock... including Mr and Mrs Bock themselves, three Iranians, three Chinese, a couple of Chileans and two Australians (heheheh).

Luckily, those who bothered to drag themselves into the institute (in my case, a whole 500 m from my Guesthouse), were treated with Theme Time Mahlzeit hour....

As a sidenote- the word Mahlzeit, one of the most commonly shouted words and thus one of the first I learnt in the institute is made up of Meal (Mahl) plus Time/hour (Zeit, as in Zeitgeist, which always struck me as a child as being a rather stupid word- NOW I get it)... so anyway, Mahlzeit hour is probably a little tautologous, but unfortunately, 'amusing people with unhealthy Bob Dylan obsessions' has become a bit of a thing for me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Time_Radio_Hour).

And the Themes were:
Day 1- Iranian cooking.

Day 2: Chinese



Such a good reason to go into work...