who am i?

Bonn, Germany, is where I was born in 1972 and where I have spent most of my life until the turn of the century. More or less brief interludes away include a couple of school exchanges with Toulouse/France, Oxford/UK, and Regina, Saskatchewan/Canada, as well as year at the University of Keele/UK. After finishing my studies at Bonn University I took a year off to pursue postgrad research. During that year I spent some time in the US and the UK again.

To pursue my favourite sport, surfing, I travel a lot, mostly to southern France, where I've been working as a surfing instructor in the summer ever since 1988; to the UK, where some of my best friends live, or to the States, to see my brother who's living there. Future destinations include the African continent and South America.

The travelling fits in nicely with my other hobby, Land Rovers. Currently I own a 300Tdi Defender 110 which is constantly prepared for the next trip - with 'preparation' usually meaning the odd replacement of broken bits and pieces and topping up the various reservoirs, which seem to be drinking their respective liquids. Until the summer of 2005 I owned a 1960 Series 2 SWB (short wheel base) model as a restauration project. This was a fairly rare vehicle, as the Series 2 version had only been produced for a few years, in-between the Series 1 and the 2a, which is quite a bit different. As a consequence it was not always easy to get parts. Due to my work load, my other hobbies and a limited amount of spare time I decided to sell the S2 on in the summer of 2005. I hope it went into good hands. For the future I would like to own a 90 Defender in addition to the 110.

From their very infancy I have always been interested in computers (and wasted a tremendous chunk of my youth in front of them) and during university I became quite involved in web-based programming and homepage design. The result is netfaktor, a little 'company' for Internet-based programming that I run with a very good friend. It's more of a hobby though as there's not really much time my real job, teaching, leaves me.

I did my teacher training at St. Michael Gymnasium in Bad Münstereifel, a lovely school dating back to the 17th century and set in one of the most beautiful little towns in Germany.

Currently, I am teaching English, History, History in English, and occasionally Philosophy at Kopernikus Gymnasium in Duisburg Walsum, on the northern fringe of the Ruhr area.

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