Jeremi's Office Christmas Party

Way back in mid-December I had my work Christmas party. We didn't know what activities were planned for us until a bus dropped us off in a small village close to Jena. We then found out we were going for a hike! We got split up in three groups and went a on a scavenger hunt (sort of). Each group had a GPS receiver with pre-loaded way points and we had to find little cards that said "Xceptance" on them (that's the name of the company I work for). At every way point we had a little game/team building exercise to do. Here are some of my co-workers walking trough the snow.

The hike was a slow ascent up a hill. Halfway in we had some tea that the game organizer had brought for us. At that point I brought out a bottle of Wiser's (rye whiskey) that we had brought back from Canada last summer, and everyone enjoyed the tea a little bit more.


We also had to carry an egg the whole way. When we got to our destination and met up with the other groups we had to build something to protect the egg from a 2 meter drop using only things found in the forest (natural things, not old rusted VW Beetles like you find in the woods in St-Ignace). Since there was snow on the ground we all wrapped our eggs in big snow balls and they all made it. The prize was a treasure chest full of chocolate. There was also archery...

and a big bonfire. And of course lots of Glühwein (mulled wine).

Up until this point, I really had no idea where we were exactly. Until we went to the restaurant next door and it was the Mt. Jenzig place where I had been a couple of times before but didn't recognize it in the dark.

There was a nice spread of hearty Thuringian food there and good beer.

When we left we still had to get to the bottom of this hill and given the icy condition and my gripless boots (they were resoled in Victoria, BC where ice comes from the freezer and snow is something you can see on the mountains far far away), I pretty much skied down the hill. Other than that it was a fun day.