Throwing ourselves down steep cliffs for fun

As is becoming a slight habit now (well definitely for Adrian!), once winter arrived, it was straight online to book our ski trip.  Having gone with the absolutely brilliant UCPA last time (kind of like the YMCA for France – ensuring that expensive sports like skiing or diving are available for those with less generous means), there was no question about who we’d choose this year. 

Adrian was keen for a bigger challenge than La Plagne, so we decided to go with Val d’Isere from 1-8 Jan.  There’s lots of back country area and it had a specialist ‘off-piste’ group which Adrian could join (think lots of hiking up mountains with a shovel strapped to your back).  I went with snowboarding again, and as usual with the UCPA, everything was thrown into the price (accommodation, four meals/day, gear, lift pass and full-time instruction).

This time we also learnt from our mistakes and flew over rather than submitting ourselves to the torture of the bus ride.  And thank goodness we did – we learned on arrival that something had gone wrong with the buses and they took nearly 40 hours to get there!  Yikes...  Although we didn’t do amazingly well either – a slight miscalculation of the tube times meant an incredibly stressful sprint to the train which we made with literally 90 seconds to spare!  It was a bit of a hectic start to 2011 that’s for sure.

We went with Bryony, a friend from Oxford, and Frances, a friend from Adrian’s work.  It was good having four because we got our own little (very little) room and could all compare notes from when we got back from our respective group sessions.  The snow was pretty icy for the first few days, but luckily we got a big dump on the Wednesday night and so everyone got some excellent powder runs in.

One of the crazy things about Val d'Isere is this bar called 'La Folie Douce' which is located right in the middle of all the runs and only accessible either on skis (or snowboard!) or via a telecabine.  It was crazy to come over the crest of the hill and see it with all the music pumping away.  This is what it looked like in the middle of the madness:

At the UCPA they didn’t supply helmets with the gear so I ended up buying one (just about as cheap as renting one).  Thank goodness I did because I took two big falls in the first couple of days (one completely my own fault, the other when someone ran over my board) and broke my helmet!!  Better than breaking my head...  Luckily I’d remembered to keep the receipt so now have a brand new one nestled in the cupboards at home.

It was awesome snowboarding down the glacier right at the very top of the ski area – I think it’s about 3600m above sea level.  I loved the off-piste powder too – makes you remember why you pay all that money to go!

As usual, lots of photos uploaded here – enjoy!

Brumal Budapest!

When we found out that both of our offices were closing down over the Christmas period, there was a mad scramble to the internet to see what cheap, last-minute deal we could get for a quick holiday between Christmas and NYE.  Of the places we had down on our respective ‘want-to-visit’ lists and which had good deals on offer, Budapest came out tops!  (Or ‘top-best’ as our guide in Turkey a few years back would always say).

So early on Boxing Day it was off to the airport for a quick hop on Malev Hungarian Airlines (no cheap airline for us my friend!) over to freeeeeeeeeeeeeezing (there aren’t enough e’s in the world to explain to you the coldness) Budapest.  But luckily, as we were living it up in style, our hotel room was nice and warm (although not cosy – we got the wheelchair friendly room so it was massive!) and we were well rugged up against the cold wearing an interesting and fashionable selection of thermals, gloves, scarves, jackets and hats.

We spent the first day exploring the Buda side of the river, including the usual suspects of the castle, St Mattias church, the Fisherman’s Bastion and Gellert Hill.  It was all covered in snow and any refuge indoors we could find was most welcome, but the walk up Gellert Hill was nice and warming as well so a good choice of activity to round off the day.  We also got into the local culinary scene by trying some paprika flavoured chips!  Dinner was at the Christmas market in the middle of town on the Pest side.  We got a fried potato pancake kind of thing smothered in sour cream (Hungarian cuisine is most definitely not calorie-conscious) and a kürtös kalács which is a kind of twisted Hungarian doughnut.  Delicious!  The Christmas market was smaller than the ones we had seen in Munich, but it was nice to be able to catch them for a few days after Christmas anyway.

Day two was spent looking at things on the Pest side, including the Synagogue, food market, Parliament, and Heroes’ Square.  The highlight though was definitely the baths – we went to the Szechenyi baths which were the big ones at the top of the hill (painted yellow).  It was dark while we were there, and snowing, so with the heat coming up off the 38 degree water it made it all foggy and very cool.  Such a strange feeling to have the snow coming down while you were heated from the bottom!  They had three outdoor pools, then lots of indoor ones – and we tried them all!  The saunas were a bit too hot for me to stay in for too long, but the whirly jet pool outside which propelled you around in a circle was ridiculously fun.

I should mention here the joy of our hotel breakfast.  It was a buffet in the Hungarian style – so lots of eggs, meat, bread etc. Basically perfect lunch food!  There was a small sign asking not to take things for lunch, but it was ignored by almost everyone there.  We tried to be subtle about it, but some families had almost chain-gang style lunch making going on with piles of ham and cheese rolls ending up at the end of each table!  It was great though to have some boiled eggs and rolls to get us through the day between our massive breakfast and dinners...

Day three we went out into the Budapest ‘burbs to Memento Park.  It’s basically a big patch of land where they put all the statues from the Communist era together.  Because they were mostly intended to be seen from a fair distance, having them right on the ground looks crazy!  The scale is all skewy.  It was a bit of an adventure getting the trams and buses out there and thank goodness I knew about how long it should take because it felt like we were seeing the entire suburban landscape on the way!  Unfortunately again, it was freeeeeezing so while they had a really interesting film on (an original ‘how-to’ guide for communist spies), it was far too cold to sit there watching it for long.  We also saw the cathedral that day before heading to an all you can eat and drink restaurant for dinner.  While this wouldn’t normally be top of our list of places to eat, it was actually really good – lots of Hungarian things like goulash and the quality was pretty good.  The red wine servings were rather enormous though which led to a bit of a headache the next day...

Our last day was spent visiting the cathedral and some other random bits of pieces around the city like a great sculpture made up of little shoes along the banks of the Danube.  It was kind of a shame it was so freezing that we couldn’t stroll around the city at a leisurely pace, but at the same time the snow was very pretty and it was always a great excuse to pop into a coffee shop for a piece of cake to warm up!

The photos are here – enjoy!

Merry Christmas!!

A very merry Christmas to everyone from us over here in cold old London - I hope that you have a wonderful day wherever you are and hopefully have enjoyed reading about our travels in 2010.  Here's to lots more in 2011!

Here are a couple of links to things which have either made me smile, or laugh so much I cried (I know I shouldn't but it's so funny), in the last couple of days:

Merry Christmas!

Marvellous Munich

A whole big group of us descended on Munich early in December to check out the Christmas markets, beer halls and other delights Germany has to offer.  It was heaps of fun going with a big group, and remarkably easy to corral everyone over the city.

Adrian and I went earlier than the others and spent a day out at Daschau which was absolutely heartbreaking.  Not something you want to see but something you feel you should.  The others turned up later on Friday night and then the next day was spent sightseeing, marketing, drinking lots of mulled wine and beer and generally having a blast!  Sunday was a bit more low-key, but still involved lots of food and beer (an inescapable past-time it seems in Munich...).

Check out the photos here!

Saying hi to my mate Borat

So as some of you know, I’ve now got a new job (yay!), but what not all of you may know is that it was the craziest start to a job EVER. I turn up, have a day at work on the Friday, then on Saturday morning get on a plane and fly to Kazakhstan for nine days. No, that’s not a typo. I literally went to Kazakhstan on day two of my job!

It was to look at a reservoir/hydropower complex in a small town called Shardara in the very south-western corner of Kazakhstan, right by the Uzbekistan border. There were a whole group of us from different organisations and it was fascinating to hear some of the stories from Soviet times from those who’d been working in Central Asia for a long time. Shardara itself was very dry (but lovely and hot, nearly 30 degrees) and had been pretty much desert before they’d constructed the reservoir in the 1960s. We stayed in a pretty basic guest house, but it had the most amazing views right out over the reservoir and was a bit of a stunning vista to look out at in the mornings.

It was so interesting going right inside the hydropower plant and seeing the massive turbines and all the water gushing out through the turbines and back into the river(technical term: tail water – I’m going to be such a pro soon). We had all sorts of interesting food too – it was heavily based around bread and meat, but sadly despite horse being a local delicacy we never seemed to see it on the menu (actually, only sadly for Adrian who wanted me to try it, not for me...). Every meal always included a version of a delicious, but very basic tomato and cucumber salad – the tomatoes were just amazing, so flavourful and not at all like the perfect yet tasteless ones you get in the supermarkets in the UK. I’m determined to go to the farmers’ markets now and replicate it!

Shishlek was another popular dish (basically, skewers of different meats covered in raw sliced onions) and we tried lamb, beef and catfish versions. I actually preferred the catfish version the most – it was pretty tasty! Other things included various salads (all with lots of mayonnaise), a specially prepared pasta and meat dish, and the ubiquitous ‘piva’ (beer).

After staying in Shardara for three days it was time for a three hour drive back to Shymkent – the major town of the province. Sadly, I’ve got little to nothing to report on from Shymkent as I was struck down by an evil bout of food poisoning which confined me to my hotel room for two days. All I can say is that thank goodness I had my own (and western-style) toilet as if it had been back at Shardara with a hole-in-the-floor toilet shared between a dozen people life would have been very, very miserable indeed...

But once I recovered I managed to eat a bit more of the local food – and got to try ‘plov’ which was the one thing I’d read about before the trip. Apparently there are heaps of different kinds of plov (it's a dish based around rice), but the one I had was beef with roast garlic...mmm... Totally too rich for the delicate state of my stomach, and I definitely paid for it the next day, but worth trying nonetheless!!

Things got even more farcical as we arrived at Shymkent airport to fly to Almaty – the biggest city and previous capital of Kazakhstan. I totally didn’t see the tiniest, 10cm tall step and completely bailed as we entered the airport. Searing pain = twisted ankle = not good. Luckily one of our translators had sprained her wrist the previous week and had a bandage on her which I wrapped around my ankle and which actually made the world of difference. It was basically healed within a week which was great. I had also taken some ibuprofen immediately, but in the confusion and subsequent rush to get to the ticket office and check in, I forgot to re-zip my suitcase up after getting it out and when a colleague picked it up to take it to the check-in desk for me every single person in Shymkent airport got a close-up view of the innards of my bag... Thank goodness I’d put all my dirty washing in an interior bag! It was honestly like a scene out of a slapstick comedy...you’ve just got to laugh about these things though!

It had been getting steadily colder as we got further and further away from Shardara, but the air hostess telling us that the local temperature was zero degrees as we landed in Almaty at midday was a bit of a shock, as was the fact that the entire city was covered in a thick blanket of snow! Luckily I’m used to layering being a good NZer, so I put on everything I owned and went for a small (hobbling) explore. The city is surrounded by mountains which means that the clouds stick around for a long time and winter is basically one long grey cloud. But, in its defence the snow was very pretty!

And then that was that, back in the air to Heathrow and home. It was a really interesting, eventful trip and I learned so much about my new job by jumping in at the deep end which was great. I can tell you that Kazakh vodka is pretty full on, that it’s a country of huge extremes (hot/cold, dry/wet, rich/poor) and that you can still order cigarettes from a restaurant menu! The influence of the USSR era is still enormous and it will be interesting to see how it continues to develop. There’s pretty much no tourism infrastructure (as we are used to it) that I could see, and it probably wouldn’t be somewhere I’d recommend for holidays, but an excellent experience nonetheless.

And I didn’t say one word about Borat the whole time I was there...

Here are the photos - enjoy!