so christmas day was rather a peculiar one; i went skiing after opening all of my presents, well, my present. but the skiing made up for the initial period of disatisfaction with christmas... skiing from 3330m back down to 1800m over some twelve kilometres of trail is unlike anything i have skied before. the weather was perfect, the snow was soft and powdery and my oh my did i enjoy skiing after four years of not being on the snow. to access one part of the mountain you ride with 160 other people in a giant cable car to a 2800m summit with only one trail down. the highlight though is skiing from the 3330m summit, complete with a view of innumerable glaciers, through a tunnel and emerging amidst huge cliffs and a steep piste that leads you rapidly bach down fro, whence you came... worth a days skiing to do this run only once, but of course, it beckoned me back for more.
a traditional, well, so they said, french dinner followed; escargot, confit de canard, pomme au l'ail (leg of duck with some garlic potatoes), some french red wine and a little frambois liqueur as a nightcap. not bad... not bad.
plans from here are uncertain, of course, but involve flying to london on the 8th of january, and then...? we will see...
finally, a real life white christmas... just like in the movies. i have come a long way from sarajevo and am now in alpe d'huez ski town, some 63 kilometres out of grenoble in the south of france. we have had loads of snow in the last two days and it is so incredibly beautiful up here. just a shame that the internet is fifteen dollars an hour.
ps. my english mobile will accept txts, but not calls, here in france... +447792020710, but my austrian mobile will not send nor receive... drat that t-mobile company...
it's mighty difficult to leave sarajevo. it's getting to the point where i walk down the street and say zdravo to all the people i know now. very odd. everyone here thinks it's rather comical that i'm back, and that i'm not leaving. i am leaving... i'm just not sure when. so long as i have time to get across to fracne for christmas, that'll be fine. vienna, munich, ulm, and freiburg are on the agenda... and maybe lyon in france. isn't it interesting that ulm is a city in germany, and also the name of my street? apparently it is where einstein was born. this cafe is smokey.
so i went into a shop the other day because i saw piano accordians in the window. you have to admit that you'd probably do the same, they're piano accordians afterall. so i had a quick glance at the pricing structure and was horrified to discover that a piano accordian costs some several thousand euros. now don't get me wrong, i'm sure they're worth every cent, but my question is this: in most cities around the world, on various streets and trams and metros and malls, homeless people, who, i might add, can't afford to buy a sandwich for lunch, are standing around playing on piano accordians; piano accordians worth several thousand euros, according to the shop i went in to. How, i must ask, is this possible? i wonder if perhaps there is some special international aid fund to supply any musically inclined homeless character with their own special piano accordian so they too can wreck havoc on the ears of passer-bys on the streets of the world. should you find the perpetrators of this aid fund, beat them, kill them and make them pay. thankyou.
it's like groundhog day, only worse. again, a new country, a new language, and a new script. well, not completely new, sort of the same as in greece, but with a few swaps and switches just to annoy my english speaking self. an r is a p, and a p is an r, and an x is an h, and a little circle thingy with a line through it is an f or something. but, well, to be honest, even knowing that isn't really doing me any good, for once you have deciphered the script - you still have no clues as to what the funny combination of letters before you means. but, admittedly, the extremely cheap cost of living here kind of sort of makes up for it. we were dancing in italy when we found internet for three times this price. my eyes lit up at the concept of buying souvlaki for twice this price, and to top it all off, the sun is shining. but, alas, that isn't all. the next part of this tale has thoughts twofold; some would see it as paradise, some as utter hell. i'm verging more to the latter, for, the deal is this: i, alone, make up sofias entire tourist population today. it's rather odd. every one of the three hostels in town is empty of backpackers; there's not even a little backpacker, not even one with ginger hair. none.
i think i'll go eat some more. but i daren't step upon the scales whence i arrive home, i'm certain all that weight i lost has climbed back on, and then some. best i do some more walking...
no, not anywhere near kansas. nor italy. but kate is, well, in italy i mean. So, we caught the train. yes. however, upon waking in the morning we were not so pleasantly surprised to find kates satchel missing. That, of course, included her passport, travellors cheques, money in various currencies, camera (after already having lost her digital camera two weeks prior) and well, everything important. So, after hours of dealing with italian police, we got her a free ticket back to rome to the embassy so she could get sorted. I, however, decided that it wasn't neccessary for me to accompany her back to rome, so caught the boat on to greece. Not sure how things are going with her now.
and greece is hardly kansas either. a new language, and a new written lanuguage too. Mind you, i finally found out a great reason for having learned all those alphas and gammas and thetas in high school now; at least i can semi understand a few words here and there. Most importantly of course, (imagine funny little greek symbols here, cos i can't make them work proper). (gyros, stuff in a pita). However, i must admit that greek food in new zealand is infinantly better than anything I have had here. Sad really. Will try something else tonight, just to check.
so, having landed at igounemitsa, i caught a bus to ionnina, hoping to go hiking in the renowned vikos gorge. After two hours of searching, i discovered that there was no bus to vikos until wednesday. I decided to leave it til next time and head straight on to kalambaka. There i found the incredible meteora, twenty four huge basalt columns climbing into the sky. at one stage, each was topped with a monastary, now only six remain and tourists flock to them year round. Onwards from there i arrived yesterday in Lotohoro, at the foot of the tallest mountain in greece; mt olympos. soaring to three thousand metres just twenty kilometres from the sea, it's somewhat of an abrupt climb, or so i thought. Today i walked for four hours up the side of the huge epipea canyon and only reached 1100 before having to turn around and head back down before the light gave way. on my descent however, i took a different trail and ended up climbing probably higher than where i had been before, in a shorter time. how odd. the views were astounding, looking one way to the mitikos (not sure on spelling) the ancient pantheon; meeting place of the twelve greek gods, at 2917m, and the other way out to the sea stretching out towards turkey. Tonight i stumbled across three young guys climbing in a small indoor wall so went in to say hi. ended up staying for an hour climbing with them and having a laugh at our broken communications. The highlight of the meeting? climbing partners for a trip up olympos in the summer, whenever i want. perfect. my faith was restored in the greek people today after a few days of awkwardness and glaring eyes as if i was intruding their country out of tourist season. The tourist season enver ends in my eyes. never... it just gets, difficult. hmmph.
so tomorrow, on to thessalaniki for a couple of nights before departing greece for bulgaria. My journey may well be nearing it's end... or is it...?
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