The English Queen sometimes has her Annus Horribilis, then we most certainly have had our Annus Hecticus in 2004.

We started the year in the South Pacific, with Christmas Eve 2003 scuba diving on Moorea, sleeping on airport benches all night and waking up Christmas Day on Rarotonga, having a Christmas brunch at the Paradise Inn in shorts and T-shirt, all-in-all not the typical white Christmas, but an experience we´ll never forget.

New Year´s was danced into at a dirt floor open-air restaurant on Aitutaki, ending with a drink on our bungalow terrace overlooking the most beautiful lagoon in the South Seas and with fireworks from the luxury hotel across the water lighting up the night sky. This must be the definition of Romantic!

End of January winter finally arrived to us in Munich, with tons of snow in the mountains. Our first ski trip for the year was a new place for us, Livigno, a resort hidden away in the Italian Alps and with access from our side only via a narrow, one-way tunnel. COLD sunny weather, great skiing and an interesting run-in with local mafia (also called the police) made it an eventful long weekend.

February was started off with John´s 50^th birthday in Woodstock (England, not US of A), a short visit to Adrian in Swindon and Sunday lunch in Sally and Jon´s (latest) project, a fantastically restored and renovated old house. Good to be back in England if only for a short weekend, VERY beautiful just driving around the countryside and stopping at roadside pubs.

We spent our (what has become) annual ski trip with Dave and Nadine in Champery (Switzerland), which is at one end of the Portes de Soleil ski system, one of the largest connected ski areas in the world. I have spent many great ski days here in my younger days, starting in 1983 with the Flupp Ski team (don´t ask) and been back to visit Paul in his Choucas and The Place bars several times. So it felt great to be back, reliving memories in the piste and creating new ones with good friends. The (also ritual) picnic in the piste can simply not be improved on - wine, cheese, salami, bread outside a small hut, in fantastic sunshine and with a bit of adventure in getting there behind us…

Another first for Monica and me was staying overnight in a piste hotel/hut. We did this in Kitzbuhel, parked the car, packed jeans and toothbrush into the small backpack, shoes in a plastic bag and looked like gypsies coming down the slope to our hotel. Having the after-ski Jägertee on the ice-cold terrace, under the starry skies, after all other skiers have left the slopes - you feel nature all around you and it puts life into perspective!

In March I happened to buy a good book at Heathrow called Pompeii by Richard Harris, a political thriller set the six days before the eruption of Vesuvio in 79AD. Monica read it straight away, said “Oh, I have never seen Pompeii” and a week later we flew to Neapel! Pompeii, Amalfi coast, Neapel and Capri were visited in a cold, grey but special weekend. Capri especially fascinated us, as beautiful as history will have it (except the touristy Grotta Azzurra blue cave). There is quite a lot of Swedish modern history tied to the island as the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe restored and lived in the famous Villa San Michele on the island and wrote a widely-published book on his life and love with the island.

Winter was rounded off by a super off-pist ski weekend to Stuben with Jackie and Gerhard, followed by Easter in Nice for me and in Filipstad for Monica. Spring was kick-started in a tough way by us deciding to take a German boat driver´s license (Sportbootfuehrerschein-See & -Binnen). Even though I grew up by the sea in Sweden, much had been lost in the past 20 years, and to do it in a very formal version of German language that we normally do not use clearly did not help. We spent a weekend (Fri eve, 9 hours Sat and Sun) on the official course, then many an evening and weekend preparing for the test. It sometimes felt like knowing the correct flag and sound signals for meeting a ship carrying nuclear waste on the NordOstSee-Kanal according to the SeeSchiffahrtsStrassenOrdnung and the SeeSchiffahrtsOrdnung Emsmuendung (!!) was not what we had in mind for a nice boating vacation, but it had to be learnt. The result: 100% correct answers on the test for the both of us, we felt very proud afterwards.

On a much more fun note, May 1 was the date for us having spent 15 years in Munich! Who would have thought we would stay so long?! When we moved here in 1989, East Germany still existed, Sweden was not part of the EU – and German beer had not yet done its damage to my waistline…

This had to be celebrated – we had a big garden party, it was great to see 60+ of old and new friends and re-capturing the years in Munich. And too all our foreign friends who are spread out all over the world and could not come, rest assured that we raised a glass (or two) with you in mind!

Filipstad (Monica´s home town in Värmland, more info on this later in this letter…) got a visit in May, where we celebrated her father Rune´s 80^th birthday, surrounded by all his kids and grandkids.

And a week later we visited Barb and Eriks in Riga, which impressed us both as a beautiful city with loads of history. Can be recommended to all! Barb and Eriks have an incredible house in the better part of town, and their American barbequeing roots did not deny themselves (or us) a mixture of city dining and BBQ cuisine in the garden. We spent the weekend in their dacha(…)  in Livland on the coast, something which inspires (also more on this later).

The Bootsschein project had all been for a reason - we bought a boat together with my brother Klas in Sweden, which would have to be navigated into the perilous seas of the Stockholm Archipelago. The Fronleichnam (Happy Cadaver Day…) weekend in June was our first trip on the boat, and I can only assume that a wet christening (dop, Taufe) is a good omen – it poured with rain all of our first day and we regretted not having packed ski gloves, it was COLD. But in Vaxholm harbour on our 2^nd day morning – sun from a clear sky, warm weather – and we had a fantastic boating weekend (with only a few navigation errors and one small “propeller-touching-rock” incident).

The summer was late in coming to Munich this year, so we had our first swim in early July. One week rainy July vacation in Sweden, a couple of days with my mum and dad in Norrköping and with Monica´s family in Filipstad. And lucky we were – the weather cleared up to a perfect Swedish summer on the evening we boarded the boat, and we had some great days on the boat in the southern Skärgården, where Karin, Kent and Nicolas joined us one day and Marita, Rickard, Malin and Fredrik for the weekend.

Benny & Åsa and family came to see us in early August, Monica and I had a weekend in Nice and in September I did my motorcycle trip to Corsica with Peter and Andi for the 5^th year, poor Frank had to skip this year. A weekend later, Charlotte, Per and their young daughter Sara came to visit us in Munich.

So, after the boat driver´s license, my other big project for the year was running a marathon! I practised all year more or less, did Munich half-marathon in June and the Tegernsee half-marathon in September, all building up to the Athens marathon in November. Classic ground, you run from Marathon to Athens, and especially this Olympic year it was interesting to watch on TV where I would be running just a few months later. I made it in 5 hours 20 minutes, which was my planned time, considering that it is 20 km uphill out of the 42192 meters! Monica was along to cheer me on, and entering the Panathinaikos Stadium (first built in 330BC)  and crossing the goal line with someone cheering your name was a very special moment!

This year had many special dates – 3 years married, 15 years in Munich, and 20 years for Monica and me together ! We celebrated our 20 years of bliss by visiting Frank and Barbara in Fellbach for the Weinfest (until 4am) and the Saturday evening was spent at a starry restaurant in Freiburg, reminiscing about our journey through life together.

We had some more time to ourselves in November, when we flew to Dubai for two days (and seven countries/emirates) and Mauritius. In Dubai we were royally treated by Mona and Wolfgang, saw the city from the Creek and from the Burg-al-Arab hotel bar, had a short desert tour in a jeep, smoked a double-apple water pipe and still had time to see Erik Foconi, if only for an hour or two.

Mauritius is as nice as advertised, long beaches, sun all day, good creole food, simply relaxing. We rented a scooter for 3 days, a car for 2, played golf (my birthday present from Monica) at the Isle aux Cerfs / Touessrok club (truly a golf memory to remember, especially the 15 balls offered to the golf gods in all the water hazards), saw a giant turtle whilst diving and ended the vacation with a catamaran cruise to neighbouring islands for a beach lobster/fish BBQ and some (actually a lot) of rum punch.

And in between the Marathon and Mauritius trips, we actually closed a project which has been on and off for over 20 years – we bought a vacation home in Sweden. Located only 6 km south of Monica´s home town Filipstad, we now have 3500 sq.m. right on the lake (called Daglösen), which is connected via Bergslagskanalen canals and locks to several other lakes all the way south to Karlskoga (closest major town, home of Alfred Nobel). The real estate agent´s pictures of the house and garden are on our Web site, they do give a too-nice a view of the house, it will be a bit of a project to get this looking and feeling  like we would want it – so the vacation time for 2005 is clearly earmarked already!

This has focused on private life – on a business side all is well and both Monica and I are enjoying our jobs. Monica celebrated(!, time flies) 10 years at National Semiconductor. I switched roles in May and took on all sales and marketing for Nordic region. I had many more trips to Sweden than ever before, which had the nice side benefit of getting to see Klas and Anna very often and to see my little niece Emma grow up and learn to say “Håkan”.

So – a long trip through our 2004 –many memorable and fun moments spent with many of you during this intense year.

We hope that your year was as good as ours, that 2005 will be as good for us all and that perhaps we get to see you in Munich, Nice, Daglösen or on the boat,

GOD JUL och ETT GOTT NYTT ÅR,

Håkan and Monica