nineveh_uk

I had a great holiday. The scenery was beautiful, the weather was fantastic - sunny, but not over warm, with the occasional snow shower to keep things fresh and not too much wind - the sun was high and daylight hours long, the northern lights managed to be out on my last night at the same time as me*, the skiing facilities were brilliant, I was reasonably competent, my hotel room was very pleasant**, and I had some very nice food. The restorative powers of a large apple doughnut are remarkable. A week off work in which I haven’t even been able to do my unpacking is a small price to pay***.

Some random comments:

• Seldom have I seen such a large concentration of moustache-wearers. Finnish men appear to develop a compulsion aged c. 50 to go out and grow one.

• It is vital as a British skier in Finland to accept from the start that you will be comparatively rubbish. Then when you are overtaken by 7 year olds, 70 year olds, women with multiple babies in a sledge, and blind people (not joking), you will not be downhearted, and instead can enjoy overtaking 5 year olds, 75 year olds, and the rare Scandinavian who doesn’t like downhills.

• I am going to set up the Lapland Airport Coach Safari Company. On the way from the airport to my hotel I saw a fox (red) slinking in the edge of the wood (looking exactly like this print), and an arctic hare, and on the way back to the airport, two reindeer. They are paler in colour than I had anticipated. I also saw a second hare (from my hotel bedroom window) and a capercaillie. Birdlife was otherwise disappointing – magpies and great tits do not count, and the Siberian jays for which the reason is known must have been on holiday in Siberia.

• I was quite pleased with my skiing. I did c. 125km over 6 days, plus a day on the downhill pistes (advantage of an evening flight home). I wasn’t as fast on the flat as I’d have liked, but I definitely improved my XC downhill confidence and technique, which I'd set as a personal goal.

Some ( photographs! )

Is what I absolutely did not write on my Uzbekistan customs form. I successfully navigated Tashkent airport twice, and got home on Tuesday night. The house is now strewn with laundry, and I face the mammoth task of sorting and labelling my photographs.

I had a brilliant trip. It was blisteringly hot, but on the plus side that meant it was low season and the sites weren't crowded. Samarkand lives up to its billing, and some of the monuments are magnificent, one fantastic scene after another, but as well as the notable sites I had a lot of fun just walking around or people-watching from the window of a mini-bus. It was my first time not only in Central Asia, but in an ex-Soviet state** and the combination was fascinating, not least the clothing which was wildly different from that described in the guidebooks. The fashion, of course, is very different from the UK, with a lot more gold teeth, but the recommendations for conservative clothing and long sleeves (I'd ignored the latter anyway) were considerably off the mark; if I'd followed guidebook advice, I'd have been wearing more than all but two women I saw in the entire country***. Food and infrastructure were both better than I had expected (though my expectations were not high), but it is not a land that goes in for puddings: I think I've had my watermelon ration for the next ten years.

Have some photographs: ( Read more... )

Back from a delightful holiday in Austria, involving wine, food, the magnificent art and dubious translations* of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the company of the splendid azdak, who bore up nobly under questioning as to when we could next expect her to produce some Wimseyfic. The main event involved a three day point-to-point walk, with luggage transported separately, round the Ötscher, which is a mountain in Lower Austria that as far as I can make out from the guidebooks no-one in the English-speaking world has heard of. I certainly hadn’t. I was happy to be educated, for the walk around, and also over the top, is delightful, involving some impressive canyons, a lot of trees, and (optional) a very big ridge that was brilliant, notwithstanding that in going down rather than up it we technically did it in the wrong direction.

( Cut for pictures )