Skiing vacation

I had the opportunity of joining a group of friends, acquaintances and strangers on a skiing vacation in the Austrian Alps south of Salzburg. We booked a house for a week, and people rotated in and out. I arrived on a Wednesday evening and stayed until Saturday.

I was looking forward to this, if only to see snow and feel like I really am in the right season, namely winter. Unfortunately, I arrived after dark, so saw almost nothing the first evening. However, when I woke up the next morning, I thre open my curtains to take in a great sight: snow AND sun!

We got ready and hit the slopes mid-morning. Having not skied in over 10 years, I wisely headed straight for the ski school to book a lesson. Since I could only get one at 3 PM, two of my friends kindly sacrificed their morning to stay with me on the nummy hill and teach me a few things. The first thing I discovered is that I didn't suck! Turns out the advances in technology and equipment more than made up for my absence from the hills, and I was now a better skier than I ever had been! :-)

A few hours later, we went to a chalet at the top of one peak for lunch. Even more fabulous view from there! And as the temperature was around +3, we sat outdoors for lunch.

After a late lunch, I took a chairlift back down (because I wasn't ready to attack that intermediate slope!) and went to take my lesson.  All in all, it was a fantastic day in the snow and sun. By the time I got home, I figure I'd been outdoors about 7 1/2 hours, and skiing 4-5 hours. Can you anticipate the problem?  After sitting around a few hours that evening, I got up to find out... I could barely walk! Problem! Oh well, nothing to do for it, so I went to bed and hoped for better the next day.

Next morning comes around, and I drag myself out of bed. Hmmm, I can see I won't be pushing it today. But I figured I could work some of the kinks out after a few runs. So off we went to a different peak, me ready to attack the first blue (beginner) hill.

First off, remember these slopes are much, much longer than anything I'd ever skied on. Secondly, there are two things that could interfere with my enjoyment of skiing (well, other than my horrible muscle pain):
1- I dislike going fast in general, I don't even like to toboggan.
2- I have a slight fear of heights.
OK, neither one of these is debilitating and I usually work around them relatively easily (hell, I even went paragliding once). But it turns out standing at the top of a steep hill with a couple of sticks attached to my feet and a couple more in my hands results in these two problems being magnified. A lot.
While I could manage those tolerably well on the blue slope, I wasn't having fun and stopped after 1.5 runs to wait for the rest of the group at our lunchtime meeting point. that was fine, I like to people watch, but I also watched the weather turn progressively uglier: grey, humid, cold, threatening skies.

After lunch, the weather was definitely not cooperating, and that on top of everything else made my decision easy: time to leave. I had been told by my friends that the chairlift that took us to the top of that hill would take me back down. This was good, as the slope leading to the bottom was a red (intermediate) run. Turns out they were wrong! So I thought, OK, you CAN actually ski, so just take it nice and slow and you can make it down. So I tried to go down the red, an unhappy, STEEP, icy-and-powdery-at-the-same-time run. Oh yeah, I was also completely alone on this run, not a skier in sight. And then uh oh, little fear of heights and speed suddenly turned into a dragon! It took me 30-45 minutes to get off the damn mountain, at times with real tears in my eyes.

Conclusion: vacation was fun, bunny hills were fun, actual skiing SUCKS!!! But I didn,t injure myself amd I can tick off "ski in the Alps" from my bucket list, so I consider the whole thing a success.

Mais la prochaine fois, je fais exclusivement du chalet!  ;-)

My musical soul has been soothed...

The best thing about living in Vienna is not the architecture (which is impressive), or even the incessant offering of culture in the forms of plays, concerts, operas, etc. Don't get me wrong, they are great, and never to be taken for granted. But the best thing for musicophiles like me is that you can unexpectedly find yourself exposed to fantastic music, without fanfare, without trappings like concert halls, lights and organized seating.

Until today, my favourite moment in Vienna had been early one Saturday morning in summer, when two men, dressed in very formal suits and obviously still up since the previous night, came to sit at a little table in front of the restaurant below my apartment.  One of the men then pulled his saxophone out of its case and started to play the most amazing jazz I have ever heard. I simply sat in my windowsill, soaking in the morning sun and the beautiful music bouncing off the walls of my narrow little street, and nodding to some of my neighbours doing exactly the same thing. Pure and unadulterated joy in the music and the moment.

Tonight I can add a second unexpected and marvellous musical interlude. On my way back from the supermarket, I took a shortcut through the House of Music, a sort of museum / sound experience. The ground floor consists of an atrium of sorts, with a glass ceiling 3 stories above, a little canteen, a seating area with bistro tables, chairs and plants, and a grand piano to one side. Usually, this piano is unmanned, and the space is often used in the evenings for concerts of all kinds, and for receptions and other events. However, this evening as I passed by, there sat an unassuming man of a certain age, dressed in a casual sports coat. Unremarkable in any way, except for the music: the man was playing classical pieces with fluid ease and a completely relaxed manner. He flowed from one piece to another without a second of interruption, everything from memory of course. It had a feeling of someone who just sat down to play for himself, for the joy of it. Well, I stopped in my tracks, sat down at one of the tables, closed my eyes and just listened. I sat there, alone but for the pianist, for about 20 minutes. While the rendition was not note-perfect, this did not matter at all: imagine sitting in a room with fabulous acoustics, listening to a great musician playing from his heart, just the two of you.

No matter how good a recording, nothing makes as great an impression as live music. For me, piano is the perfect instrument, and I can listen to it for hours on any day. But in this situation, everything came together for the ultimate musical moment:  there was no other sound, no awareness of my surroundings, no time, no thought, everything except the music dropped away, just... stopped. Twenty minutes of pure feeling, of soaring and plunging along with the music.

The music surrounds me, flows within me. I am the music.

Mini-vacation in Turkey

This weekend was almost a long weekend - that is, we had Tuesday off so we logically took the Monday off and made it a 4-day weekend. What to do with so much free time?  I know: last minute trip!  My friends Brad and Rachel and I found a great deal for an all-inclusive trip to the western coast of Turkey.  The location was chosen both for its proximity to a great archeological site, and because it was bound to be warmer and sunnier than Vienna!!

We flew off Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. Yawn! The upside of travelling so early is that we arrived at our hotel early afternoon, so we didn't waste a day travelling.  Upon arrival, we threw our stuff into our room and went to look around the place a little. Then we wanted to go into Kusadasi, a nice town just down the coast a little. We walked out to the main road to wait for the minibus that supposedly ran every 30 minutes.  After about 25 minutes wait (because of course we had just missed the previous one), a minibus came our way. Hooray? Not so much: the bus is quite full. The three of us are standing there, and the driver asks us if one or two people want to get on. Ummm, no.  So he drives off. OK, now what?  Conveniently, a taxi drives by and stops to pick us up. 

In Kuşadasi, we wandered around the beach a bit, and then made our way to one of the bazaars.  We looked at touristy crap, nice things too, lovely ceramics, etc.  Some shop owners helpfully and laughingly told us they would like to take our money. Kind of nice to be so direct. We ended up in a carpet store, with the full attention of Mike the salesman.  

We spent about 90 minutes in that shop, looking at a thousand variations on carpets.  Mike was very nice, chatting with us while at the same time asking questions to figure out which carpets to show us.  We were served hot apple tea - twice, and only after such a long time did the haggling really begin. The trick is to seem rather uninterested, and start your offer at about 50% of their price.  But it's usually done quite amicably, without too much pressure, so it's all good.  Brad and Rachel left with two rough wool carpets in geometric patterns.  I splurged a bit and took with me a small (really small) 100% silk carpet.  I plan of using it as a wall hanging, it's too beautiful to walk on!

We got back to the hotel just in time to sit on the beach and watch the sunset.

We then went in to dinner. The food was buffet style of course, with plenty of options so that we were quite happy with every meal.  I think I had olives and some sort of creamy white cheese at every meal - so good!  After dinner, we sat ourselves in the lounge area with some drinks. We chatted and played cards while listening to the... music-making person in the corner.  Not sure what to call him: he had an electronic keyboard, which he was tolerable at, but he also proceeded to sing butcher crooner (a.k.a. lounge lizard) songs. The one thing he was pretty decent at was traditional turkish songs, which everyone seemed to enjoy, but he only sang a few of those. Too bad.

The next morning, we headed off to Ephesus.  It is the ruins of an entire city, including baths, library, houses etc., though only part of the city has been excavated.  Legend has it the Amazons first founded the city, but who knows?  In its heyday as a major port, it had about 200,000 citizens, the 2nd largest city anywhere.  We walked around the site with our guidebook, soaking in the history and the atmosphere.  It was fabulous, very impressive. There was one covered area, designed to protect the fragile frescoes and mosaics of the rich people's houses that had been excavated.  We were some of the few tourists who paid to go into that area, and boy was it worth it!

We then headed to the closest town, Selçuk.  There we first visited the Epehsus museum, containing some of the finds from 50 years of excavation on the site. 

After that, we wandered a bit until we found the Basilica of St John (the Apostle) at the top of a hill.  Selçuk is where St. John and the Virgin Mary came in about 50 A.D. to escape persecution.  The basilica is where St John is purported to have written his Gospel. The Basilica is in complete ruin, but enough remains to give an idea of the size and importance of this site.  It is also where the tomb of St John is located.

Just before we left the Basilica, as we were looking at the Isa Bey mosque, the call to prayer began.  It was a strange, peaceful yet impressive feeling to be at a site of such Christian religious import while listening to the song of the muezzin.  By the way, I really do love that sound!

We got back to the hotel early, and ended up in our room after dinner to watch some TV and just relax.  That was half the purpose of this vacation anyways. :-P

For Monday, we had been thinking of hopping on a ferry to the island of Samos, but we would have had to leave the hotel waaay too early in the morning, so we nixed that idea.  Instead, we slept in a litte, and then went back to Kuşadasi.  We found a nice hamam and had a turkish bath.  This is really what it sounds like: the purpose is to get clean.  First you sit in a sauna and sweat out some of your toxins.  Then you move to a comfortably warm room and lie down on a marble slab.  After a few minutes of cooling down, a swarthy Turkish man come to rub you with a kind of oversize exfoliating mitten and some soap.  Rinse off, then back on the slab. Next up, the man uses very soapy water which he foams up using a kind of linen pillowcase that he blows up with air.  This produces incredible amounts of foam, which he spreads around you and give you a brief and bracing massage along the way. Then you rinse off again and off you go. After this treatment, your skin is super soft, and apparently also tans extra well (but who cares about tanning). How relaxing!

We then went in search of a restaurant for lunch. We ended up right next to the harbour, where we chose a variety of fish and seafood dishes.  I'm not much of a seafood fan usually, but most of these dishes were fantastic! Especially these little fishies (anchovies? sardines? one of them, anyways) that were fried to a crisp - so they were fish fries, really. Yummy!

We strolled away the afternoon around Kusadasi and Pigeon Island, and returned to the hotel for another beach sunset watch.  For some reason, all three of us were exhausted at this point, so after dinner we went right back to our room.  We were all asleep quite early.  Now, this was a very good thing, because we had to get up at the unholy hour of 3 A.M. to catch the bus to the airport.

All in all, a wonderful little break!

And to wrap up this blog post, here are a few non standard pictures I took along the way:

Banana flower

Ancient scribble (translated) on a wall in Ephesus

Beware of falling woman?

The barman insisted on making me a drink. It's got 3 kinds of alcohol, about a kilo of sugar and every possible decoration... Undrinkable!

My favourite store sign of the weekend:

Ham chips, one of the greatest snack foods ever!

Token pretty flower

Every tourist took a picture of themselves in between these columns, touching them with arms outstretched as though holding them apart. I couldn't reach, so I improvised...

Stray cats EVERYWHERE, from the hotel to the ruins of Ephesus. And all of them little and fluffy!

Smile!

Adventure in Hungary

On the last day of September, most of the staff in my Terrestrial Environment Laboratory section took the afternoon off to go on a "team building activity". Well, ok, we just wanted to play hooky and have some fun, but the title gives a nice ring to it.

So we piled into a few cars and off we went, bound for far off Hungary, a whole... 40 kilometres away! :-P

Just outside the town of Sopron, there is a nice forested area. In the forest, there is an "adventure park". What's that, you ask?  It's a kind of athletic course high up in the trees, where you have to walk tightropes, balance on beams, use ladders and ziplines etc.  For those of you in the Ottawa/Gatineau area, there are 2 such parks nearby, one at Camp Fortune and one at Cavernes Laflèche.

OK, so we get there. get harnessed up, and then play around in the trees for a couple of hours.  However, they don't beat the two I just mentioned above: the Hungarian one was a little too reliant on sheer upper body strength (which I don't have at all), and the zip lines were low and short.  But still, we had a great time. I love these things!  It was also fun to see my colleagues looking silly hanging on for dear life. :-)

Once we were done, we went on a short walk on a "path" in the forest. OK look, the forest was lovely, very similar to ones back home, but a path should not be 10 feet wide and paved!

We ended up at a tower with a view of Sopron, Neusiedler Lake and Austria beyond the lake. It was some kind of historical site, although not too sure what because almost all the signs were in Hungarian. The only translated sign was quite hilarious, full of amusing mistakes:

By then we were starving, so we went bak into town to some restaurant with an unpronounceable name. The sign had a depressed-looking fox on it, so we nicknamed it the "Sad Fox restaurant".
A nice end to a lovely day!

IT Alzheimer's

OK, long time no post again. I really need to remind myself to do this more!  I have no idea what I did all September, so you'll pardon me if I skip most of that month.

The only really memorable event of the month was the sudden mental illness of my laptop.  The poor thing was about 6 years old, and had been repaired/wiped twice already. Nevertheless, it was working just fine when I decided to back up most of my files on a Friday evening.  Luck? Karma? In any case, by Saturday morning, my computer got sick. No, not a virus: some nasty malfunction caused it to forget everything.  All of my files disappeared, even my profile, and every time the computer turned itself on, it asked to register new software and whether I wanted a tour of my new computer. Even just logging out ant back in caused it to forget whatever I had just done.  And yet all the software ran just fine... This was my fist case of IT Alzheimer's. No fun!

OK, so basically the laptop is dead. Now I need to buy a new one. That's fine, I was planning on getting one at Christmas, so a few months early is not a big deal.  But wait, problem: in Austria, all the computers have German keyboards, which I definitely don't want.  I ask around, and discover there are only 2 options if I want an international keyboard: order from Dell (UK) and wait about 3 weeks, or order from Apple, pay double my budget but get the computer in a week.  Hmmm, not liking those options.

And then, inspiration strikes: an ex-coworker of mine from the CNSC is coming to Vienna next week for a meeting. Maybe I can convince my good friend Hemendra to purchase a laptop cand bring it to me.  And, being the nice guy he is, he of course does so.

So now I have a nice new laptop (which I just discovered has a touchscreen. Why is that?), and also confirmation that you really should backup your files regularly, you never know when your computer will lose it!

Friends, food and the zoo

This weekend was mostly another success, even though the weather mostly did not cooperate.

On Thursday, we had the Seibersdorf summer party out at the IAEA labs (in Seibersdorf, of course) where I work. We had a wonderful 30 degrees, and lots of sun. The party took place in the lunch "area" next to the cafeteria,  little outdoor area with tables, chairs and parasols. At lunchtime, a few hours before the party, we had new visitors: swarms of dragonflies (seriously, swarms!). It was quite funny to sit at the  tables and watch the insect specialists come around the corner and stop dead at the sight of the swarms. These are people that if you tell them there's a bug on their shirt, they will carefully pluck it off and examine it, then discuss. But none of them ventured an explanation for the swarming dragonflies, in fact the lunchtime conversation was relatively bug-free. Curious.

The party was not bad, although the food was medirocre. But it was nice to relax and chat with everyone. Little did we know we'd just jinxed ourselves, and that was the last bit of summer. The next day, things turned cloudy, rainy and 15 degrees cooler. Yuck!

On Friday evening, I had a nice quiet dinner with Tony and Owen at Da Capo.  The restaurant is quite nice, both indoors and out.  What I found funny is the name of the restaurant next door to it: The Gulash Museum. Wonder what's on the menu... I will definitely have to eat there one day!

Saturday started dull and dreary once again. But I wasn't that bothered by it.  Every September when the weather changes, I get into "fall cleaning" mode. I like to go through my stuff, reorganise, clean, declutter, etc. So that's what I did for a good chunk of the weekend.  On Saturday afternoon, though, I joined Owen, Jérôme and his two daughters Iris and Wilma (I kid you not) at Schönbrunn zoo. I hadn't been there yet and heard it was one of the best zoos in Europe so even with the crappy I was looking rather forward to it. 

We had a nice time, spent about 3 hours there.  We didn't cover the whole zoo, mostly because progress with a 3- and 6-year old can be kind of slow. We did see lots of animals, and watched the sea lions getting fed, with much jumping, splashing and hilarity. 

(see below for more pictures)

I also found myself wrangling two monkeys of the human race. I can't help it, I love to play with kids and they seem to love me. And the zoo is the perfect place to do it, I can act like a 5-year-old and not get strange looks from other grown-ups.  6-year-old Iris reminded me a bit of my niece Annabelle. She has curly blond hair, is stick thin, and talks. A lot. Basically, she took about a half hour to decide I was nice and that I could speak French (her first language), and then she took my hand and started talking and didn't shut up for 2 1/2 hours. She was still talking when I stepped off the U-Bahn and they were continuing on! And Wilma was a sweet, tired little girl. I had a great time.
(Iris and Wilma)

After the zoo, Owen and I went to Figlmüller's for face schnitzel. God, I love that place! We of course went to our favourite ice cream place for dessert. (Owen is my usual partner in crime for evening walks/ice cream). Then we parted ways and I went home and read an entire book. Lovely!

Sunday morning was, you guessed it, grey and rainy. I peacefully puttered around my apartment until about mid-afternoon. Then the sun made an appearane, so I felt the need to go out. Mark came into town and we went for a bike ride.  Not knowing our way around Vienna too well, we rode up the ring, along the Danube canal, and then started in a new direction by basically stopping at intersections and saying: "Let's go... thataway."  Only, we ended up in a sketchy part of town. On top of this, apparently every road there goes uphill. Then we spotted a landmark we recognized, aimed for it and got the hell out of Dodge.

We ended up at the Rathausplatz (city hall plaza). All summer, the plaza in front of City Hall has been taken over by various festivals, mainly the music film festival. At night, they play music-themed movies, concerts, documentaries, etc. During the daytime, the booths are also open, offering a variety of food and drinks. There are cute patio-style seating areas and nice music.  We were supposed to meet Owen and Ludo for dinner at 7 PM.  Since it was only about 5:45, we sat ourselves down and had some drinks, mojitos for Mark and very thick strawberry daiquiris for me.  We left just as the weather was turing cold and drizzly again. Met up with the guys at a nice Vietnamese restaurant for dinner, and even coaxed Mark into having ice cream for dessert.

What a wonderful weekend! Only one bad thing happened...

On Saturday morning, my computer imploded and/or was possessed by the devil.  It ate just about all my files, and continues to do so every time I turn it off and sometimes when I log off too.  It insists on thinking it's new, resetting itself to factory settings, welcoming me and offering tours of my "new" software, and reinintializing software.  Considering this computer is about 6 years old, has been wiped and reformatted 3 times, has been updated, its usb ports are wobbly and its touchpad is over-sensitive, I think this the last straw.  I was hoping it would survive until Christmas so that I could buy a new one in Canada. But I backed up some of my files on Friday evening (thankfully); it must have felt threatened and broke down before I could get rid of it, just to get the last word. Stupid piece of ...

The thing is, it is extremely difficult to get a laptop with international or English keyboard here, they are all German keyboard. The only options are ordering from the Apple store or going through Dell.at (Austria). But Macbooks are much more expensive than what I was looking to spend, and I'd still have to wait for some weeks for the order to come in. As for Dell, the Austrian website doesn't allow me to select the type of keyboard.  I would have to call their service centre (in Ireland, I'm told!) and then again wait weeks for delivery.  And none of the other providers (Dell.com, Tigerdirect, stores, etc.) deliver here.  So I had a problem.

But now a potential solution has come up: I have a colleague from the CNSC who is coming to Vienna this weekend for meetings next week.  He kindly accepted to go buy me a computer in Ottawa and carry it here for me. What a nice guy, I really hope we can pull this off. Otherwise I need to go to plan B, except I don't know what that is yet.  Cross your fingers!

OK, some zoo pictures for you:

Fish in space!

Disapproving bird

There are actually 2 elephants in this picture - you can just about see one foot of the second one.

Happy polar bear!

Albino peacock!

Itchy king penguins

Weekend fun

Well, August is over, and the summer weather seems to have gone with it.  Sigh!
Luckily, I had 2 great weekends in a row, with fun outdoor activities, so I don't feel like I wasted nice weather.

A couple of weeks ago, Ludo, Owen and I decided to go for a bike ride in the countryside.  We went to Neusiedler See (Lake Neusiedl), the biggest lake in the area, straddling the Austro-Hungarian border.  It's a very strange lake, really.  On average, it's less than 2 metres deep; it actually disappeared on a few occasions in history!  Most of the lake is surrounded by reeds. Not just a few, I'm talking vast expanses here!

OK, so I met Ludo and Owen at their place, and watched - patiently - as they figured out how to set up their new bike rack on their car.  About 45 minutes late, we were on our way! I gotta say, for all that is was a BMW brand rack (to fit with their BMW car), it felt like the bikes were not that secure. But all was well, me made it safely to our destination, a cute town called Rust.

Rust is wonderful!  Very charming little town, old and colourful, with a pretty church and lovely sights. The best thing, though, is that it is the "city of storks". There are storks everywhere, real ones.  It made my day to see that they really do make nests on top of chimneys, it's the kind of thing I've only ever seen in drawings in books, not even in photographs!

Upon arrival, and after I made like a tourist and took a zillion pictures, we decided that we had already expended enough energy, and found a little restaurant to have lunch. Much yumminess, and great local wine too.

Once we were re-energised, I rented  bicycle and Ludo and Owen took theirs off the car.  We set off towards the next town on the lake.  I'm told the path went along the lake. I myself wouldn't know, as the reeds were over 2 metres high and many many metres deep, so I never saw the actual lake!  It was a beautiful ride, just perfect weather with sun and mild temperature.  We rode about 10 kilometres, and then we got to the border. We stopped to go up onto a lookout of sorts, where I had a view of fields on one side, and on the other... reeds, with little sailboats in the distance.  I couldn't see water, so it looked like the boates were floating on the reeds.  Our cycling path then took us a little ways along the border. In this picture, Hungary is on the left of the road, and Austria on the right.

We went up a short but very steep hill, and got to an old border crossing, which we crossed.  We got off our bikes and considered which way to go.  Looking into Hungary, we saw hills - going up; back the other way was nice, flat Austria. Guess which way we went? 

On the way back, we detoured to a summer beach-like area to have popsicles.  This was a tropical summer fun spot: you must pay to enter, and line up for things like the snack bar etc.  And hundreds of people everywhere. Not appealing, no matter how hot it could get, but the Austrians seem to like it.

We got back on our bikes and rode some more.  The area is really gorgeous.  It's full of vineyards, producing yummy (mostly white) wines. 

When we got back to Rust, we packed he bikes up and started for home, driving on nice smaller roads rather than the highway.  On the way, we at a wine dealer, tasted half a dozen wines in 10 minutes, bought a few, and drove on.

What a lovely Sunday afternoon! Thanks guys!

Ludo and me at the lookout (Hungary behind us):

Owen and Ludo at the lookout (Austria behind them, Hungary on the right)