Born April 9th, 1953 in Bochum, a town with a very big coal mining history in the Ruhr valley in Germany; however, the last pit has been closed in the sixties and also Opel, the German sub company of General Motors, has closed its factory like has Nokia, too. English twin town of Bochum is Sheffield. Witten's twin towon is Barking-Dagenham, borough of London.

Since 1979 I have been working for Germany's biggest chain of petrol stations, called Aral. However, after spending all my holidays in Britain for more than 20 years it then happened to me that I suddenly worked for a British company. My firm and me had been bought by BP (that's a rhyme). I still hope this will not impact my view of my favourite holiday country (but I have to admit there was a different feeling developing ...
;-). Luckily I could escape to early retirement before too late.

l am not a member of a running club as I am not a member of any club. Once or twice a week I join a small group of fellow runners to visit the local woods. But I enjoy to run on my own as well. I don't need a CD player to carry with me on long runs and I can't understand people asking me what I think about when running alone for hours (what do they think when driving on the motorway for hours?). Anyway, when registering for a race I like to invent crazy names of clubs whose only member is me.

My favourite destinations in Britain are the Lake District where I have been on every top (*proud*) of the 165 fells higher than 2000 feet (just Pillar Rock is still  waiting for a short but tough climb), Snowdonia (70 peaks ticked off) and the west coast of Scotland, especially the islands. Countless Munros are waiting now since BP has sent me home.