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 worked as a surfing instructor in the summer from 1988 to 2005; to the UK, where some of my best friends live, or to the States, to see my brother who's living there. Sometime soon I'll be taking my son to northern Africa for an men-only off-roading trip.

The travelling fits in nicely with my other hobby, Land Rovers. Currently I own a 1964 88 inch Series 2a Landrover and a Tdci Defender 110. Both of which are constantly prepared for the next trip - with 'preparation' usually meaning the odd replacement of broken bits and pieces and topping up the various reservoirs. I've owned various other models of the Series/Defender range which you can read more about in the Rover-section. I'd like to own a Series 1 V8 sometime in the future.

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 Duisburg Walsum, on the northern fringe of the Ruhr area. I'm married with three beautiful kids. If time allows I'm still working on my Landrovers.

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