The long way home

Well, this is the last of the "wedding" blog entries and it covers the trip back to Blighty. Actually it'll probably stop just before we get on the plane as there is nothing remotely polite or interesting about plane travel these days - especially not in a flying cattle truck. Anyway, you left us at 3am crawling into bed following the reception and not long after we crawled out again for the final breakfast. I should say that the breakfasts were great, fresh rolls, cheese and meats with freshly made scrambled eggs too. Yum. So we said our goodbyes and set off back across the Alps to Germany (which didn't take long) and then back across to Lake Konstanz. The plan was to wander about the town and have some lunch before we were packed away in our cattle truck for the trip home. We stopped in Fredericks-half-a-town (although it looked pretty complete to me), which is unbelievably pretty and very clean. The town has old buildings and gardens all along the lake front with tables outside all the restaurants. We ate fantastic food and wandered through the quiet streets admiring the architecture (or not as the case may be) and enjoying the Autumn sunshine. Near the town hall was a seriously fantastic and weird fountain with some of the best public sculptures I'd ever seen. There were alot more too all over the town. I recall hearing someone say that the level of civilisation a place has can be gauged by the amount of public art and public spaces it has. If that is the case then Ferdericks-half-an-artwork is up there with the best. We strolled along the prom along with the good citizens and sat a while looking at the lake. It was both peaceful and beautiful. If only the weekend could have ended there and then. Instead we had to go to the airport, hand back the car and have the mood spoilt by the rubbish that goes with air travel these days. That said, even the air trip didn't dent the sense of well being I had from the weekend. I shall leave you with more examples of old Freddie's public artwork. Enjoy, I know I did.

Ding Dang go the wedding bells

It's wedding day and Inga is up early to have her hair done and put of the layers of war paint that seem to be required for an event of this magnitude. I, on the other hand, shower, shave and sling on a suit. Damn, there are times it is really good to be a bloke :-) Ok, so we had breakfast first before getting ready but if I relate every little detail we'll be here forever! The wedding was scheduled for early afternoon so we had plenty of time to get ready. Eventually everyone started to emerge and hang out the front of the guest house waiting for the off. I felt a bit out of place as everyone else seemed to be in different sorts of traditional costume. This is Thomas (the groom), Inga and Florian, under starters orders and all looking very smart. Eventually we all set off for the small Alpine church on the edge of the village and an hour of wedding of which I was going to be unable to understand a word. Never mind, I'd been promised beer when it was all over. The church was lovely and they couldn't have picked a finer spot to take their vows before God (they'd already signed the paperwork the year before, remember?). The guests congregated, milled about and generally did what guests do which is chat, gossip and get in the way of each other and alot of the girl's wore Drindls. This is a traditional dress and apron combo that makes them look like they're all about to start serving beer at a festival somewhere. the best thing about them though is the fact that an awful lot of very nice cleavage is on display - nice. In time we were bodily shoved into the church and forced into our seats for the big moment. The ceremony was great and would have no doubt been better if I'd known what was being said by everyone - note to self, I really must learn more German - but it was still very enjoyable. There were speeches, songs and the usual boring bits and the vicar did quite alot of singing in Latin, which was different for me.
We gathered outside and took loads of photo's - I wasn't the only one going snap happy that day but, after all, you only get married once, maybe twice if you're a bad evil person destined for hell (I've already accepted the fact that I'm going to fry). Pictures taken, we set off for the reception. Ok, I'll show you some pictures - you're so soppy at times! This is Inga and Antje (the bride). She's a big girl and very lovely and this is Antje and Thomas realising that they were about to miss the fleet of taxi's taking everyone to the reception. Mind you, we were still stood by the church but did have the advantage of a car. . The reception was in a moutaintop restaurant so we had to ditch the car and hitch a lift in one of the taxi's. Ordinary people aren't allowed to drive up the mountain road and I can well understand why! It was a rocky switchback that went up and up and up, crossing streams (luckily they were dry) before the restaurant emerged from the clouds. Yep, our friendly cloud from yesterday had decided to come and visit again so the view was blotted from sight. We drank drinks and went inside where it was a damn sight warmer to lay out our wedding cards on the tables along with some pens for people to write with. Everyone had come up with different ways to mark the occasion; we'd nicked the wedding message idea from Jason and Dani's wedding (cheers mate), there was an empty wine rack and everyone had prepared a bottle with a personal label on, a cut up picture that was recreated by people in crayon and then framed (that was great fun) and the normal gifts and stuff. There was also food. Lots of food. Too much food. And a free bar. We ate, drank, rested, ate, rested, ate, went for a walk, rested and almost exploded. How do people eat that much? At one point the cloud went off to look at another mountain top and we were all rushed outside to have some photo's taken with a glorious mountain backdrop. It didn't last long, the cloud thought we'd come out to say how much we were missing him, so he came back again but not before the group photo's were done. There was dancing too, lots of dancing with the vicar as the DJ - He was so cool and, I'll confess, if all vicars were like him (sinking the beers, dancing and rocking out) then I would seriously consider taking up religion. Eventually we managed to catch a taxi at 3am and headed back to bed. Oh, there was one other thing that I suppose I ought to mention. The Bouquet. Inga was under strict instructions not to catch it and she didn't, the first time. It was caught by a bloke. So Antje threw it again and it fell short. Now it's bad luck for the thrown bouquet to land on the ground so Inga flung herself forwards and caught it. Somewhere there is a picture of the look on her face as she realised what she'd done. The girl was in big trouble and she knew it! If you come back tomorrow I might even tell you what happened afterwards. Maybe.

Weeeeee!!!!!

The title says it all but for more details, read on! We came back down from the mountain, raided the food store for essential supplied of chocolate and water plus a strange hot sausage in a bun type thingy (cos I was hungry and Inga knows how much I moan when I'm hungry) from a nice woman with a name tag that said "CMOT's better looking sister" - I refrained from looking too closely at the meat.

Now, Austria has lots of big steep slopes that make a mint when they're covered in snow but not so much when they're covered in grass (touring cows are notorious for not paying to graze). So what to do? In the case of one chair lift, they have added a slide - and not just any slide. A massive 1.3km long slide that goes from the top of the chair lift to the bottom again. 1.3km!! 40 corners, a jump and a tunnel included at no extra cost. ALot of us met at the bottom of the hill and set off on a leisurly trip upwards (this is some of us going up). As we went up, there were people coming down on their slides. It looked so cool and I couldn't wait! . the view was pretty too apart from something called the Cube Hotel which squatted on the hillside like a piece of modern art that had crossed over to the dark side - raging hordes couldn't have despoiled the countryside any more than that thing did. No matter, cos the end of the lift arrived and the slide beckoned! There were seven of us going down and I elected to go last so everyone could have their photo taken as they set off. Inga looked eager and ready for action but that didn't last much beyond the first couple of corners! I hopped on my little sledge and examined the sophiticated control (note the singular). Forward = go, backwards = brake. Simple, effective and, let's be honest here, at times bloody scary. What a rush!!! The sledge flew round corners and before you knew it the end of the slide loomed and you had to brake to avoid a collision with the wall. Fantastic! Another set of tickets had been purchased so off alot of us went again. Up the chair lift, grab a sledge and off we went, picking up speed as we went through the first bend. I followed Marko, with Florian and then Inga behind me. Round a bend, full speed, Argghhh!!!! Traffic jam!!!!! Brakes slammed on and coming to a halt. The problem was Steffi who had led off and been given quite a long lead. Thomas had caught her up and stopped to give her another lead, so we had all caught him up too. A rumbling sound preceded Florian, no, it was Inga. Huh? We set off again and got to the jump before we had to stop again. The last few corners were done almost nose to tail (supposedly not allowed), with everyone leaping out at the end so no one hit each other. But Florian was missing. We saw him walking down the hill carrying his sledge. It had veered out of control and he'd flipped out on a corner and damaged himself - it wasn't pretty. Marko and I took the last two tickets and headed back up for the last run of the day - no one in front of me, no one to hold me up. I flew, hammering round bends and taking off over the jump before slamming into the tyre at the end. Such a laugh and such an adrenalin rush! We walked back in good moods to face dinner and an evening of chilling. I finish with a picture of Steffi on her sledge, holder of the most sedate trip down the mountain award :-) Tune in tomorrow (I'm managing one blog entry every lunchtime at the moment) for the wedding (which will probably be in 2 parts!)

Up, up and away!

I last left you contemplating the fact that we were about to scale the mountains between Germany and Austria with the aid of a cable car (it was too nice a day for serious exercise). We started in the local town and soon collected a poor starving waif called Florian who decided to join us in our assault upon the sky. We pottered off in the little hire car through the houses and up through the forested slopes until we arrived at the cable car station (with attached hotel, play park and other things designed to separate you from your money as quickly and as painlessly as possible). Suffice to say, we parted with money and waited for the cable car. The cables stretched off up towards the mountain and disappeared into the clouds a long long long way up. There's something about cable cars that makes me uneasy and I think it's all the Bond films I've seen where the car gets stuck and they end up fighting on top of it before someone falls to a horribly messy death. But this was a modern car with big strapping cables (oo-er missus) so I ceased to worry about Jaws biting through them. We boarded and set off. The cable car was huge and there weren't many of us so we had loads of room to move about and take photos. Guess what? I did! We had a space at the back so I was going to be able to take lots of pics of the valley and the mountains as we climbed ever upwards. It started off calm enough but pretty soon the ground was a loooooonnnnnggggg way down. Gulp! Luckily the view was more than enough to keep me occupied. I must say that the most un-nerving part is when the car gets to a tower junction, everything judders and the car sways for a while. I'm not sure I'd like to ride one in a stiff wind where it sways back and forth like a swing! We went up and up and up until we started to see snow on the mountain and clouds beneath us! Now that's a weird sight, to be travelling above the clouds in something that isn't a plane! There was a huge lake to one side (no idea what is was called) and on the other was the remains of the original cable car run. There were huge concrete blocks set deep into the mountain side and, eventually we saw the original cable car station - made of wood!! It looked really really dodgy, clinging to the side of the mountain and looking like it was going to slide off at any moment . I was damn glad we weren't in a cable car that was as old as the station! There was also snow! My first real snow of the year, up close and personal. We drifted into the clouds and arrived at the station. Today, or rather, when we arrived, a cloud had decided to take up residence and enjoy the view across two countries. Nice for the cloud, rubbish for us. It was also cold. Bloody cold. We're closer to the sun, shouldn't it be warmer? We wandered about and I did what I normally do - took more photo's. The complex sits between the Bayern region and the Tyrol and there are nice signs to tell you so.
. What we could see was very pretty. You can come up the Austrian side and then ski down the German side. Fantastic or what? We, well, I, bought postcards and sent them from the postbox on top of the mountain so that people would be jealous of where I was. They wouldn't be jealous of the temperature so we had soup and hot chocolates as we gazed at the white clouds that surrounded us. The cloud did clear briefly and I managed to get a pic or two of the view back down the valley before we set off again for the ground and the afternoons planned adventure - slides! I'll finish this entry with more pics of Austria from the sky. Tune in tomorrow to see people in action on the coolest slide I've ever been upon.

Lost in Austria

Well, come on, it's not like I speak the language or anything (although I am learning - again)

You left us soundly asleep having arrived at our destination in Austria. Curiously enough, we awoke. I've noticed that happens every day and I'm not sure, some days, if I approve. Anyway, we awoke, pulled back the curtains and Fuck me! (acceptances to the usual e-mail address) there were HUGE mountains. Not small mountains or medium sized mountains but HUGE mountains. Look - it's massive! Everywhere you looked there were these mountains soaring up into the sky. (I should point out that my experience with HUGE mountains isn't that vast). It was amazing. And the air was crisp, clear and clean. Today was going to be a day we had a chance to play at being tourists but first we had breakfast (ok, we got up and showered and dressed. Do I have to tell you everything?) and then went for a walk with the dog. We even took some people too but they were well behaved so we allowed them to stay off the lead. There was alot to see and take pictures of, so I did. Hey, you know me, snap happy :-) This is the local stream (for local people) and the dog. We had to make him go in the water because he was smelly. A smelly dog. A very smelly dog who likes to sit on anyone called Antje and she wasn't impressed when people said "phew, you smell" to her. We walked on and saw, can you guess? Mountains! I took more postcard style pictures, drifted into artistic pictures and then got told off for not keeping up! Have these women got no soul?
I could fill this blog just with photographs of the walk. Austria is a very picturesque place to be - a dangerous place to be if you're armed with a camera and have some time on your hands. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take my time and instead had to hurry up. I refused to sulk though for two reasons; firstly it was a glorious day and the scenery was wonderful and secondly because I spotted some of the coolest scaffolding ever down a side street - wooden! I suppose it makes sense when you're surrounded by trees but you don't expect to see it.
We ambled back to the guesthouse where everyone was trying to decide what to do for the day; shopping, sight seeing and in our case, going to scale a mountain! We chose to undertake this herculean task not with climbing gear and ropes but with the aid of a cable car. We decided to scale the mountain that squats between Austria and Germany. In fact, the border is the top of the mountain and we had a cunning plan; we were going to infiltrate from one country to the other without telling anyone! We'd be criminals, illegal immigrants on the run from the law and forced to live a rough and ready existence in the Alps before we died in a blaze of televised gunfire when they finally hunted us down. Unfortunately both Austria and Germany are in the EU so there are no border controls :-( Our crossing would not be very exciting at all. But the trip is another story (which will have to wait for later as I have used up my lunch hour - I also ate some food which has a tendancy to put a dent in how fast I type. Sorry). Tune in for another exciting blog entry soon, playing at a browser near you!

It's been a while...

My last blog entry was back at the end of September (when I started my German course) and it's now November so I've actually missed an entire month! The worst thing is that quite alot has happened during that month so this is going to be either (a) a very long blog entry, or (b) very short on details. Just to confuse you (which isn't hard, let's be honest) you need to read these next few blogs from the top to the bottom and not in the usual bottom to top order. If you don't I take no responsibility for them not making sense!

The shock news of the month is that I'm back working for a living! Yep, with the tent business winding down for winter and the writing business as random as ever, i've had to face the music and go back to contracting (it was French Accordian music for those who want to know what sort of music I had to face and the accordian player was accompanied by an entire troupe of white faced mime artists who kept forgetting their actions - one of them even spoke which just goes to show that even mime artists can forget their lines. So, the question is; is the mark of a bad mime one who has to explain what he's doing in words?). Anyway, I'm back to contracting for a few weeks (8 to be exact) for a company doing a data migration. It's very dull but it earns money and I am forced to get an awful lot of exercise in the process as I have to walk to and from the train station every day. I'm hoping that the hour and a half's walking every day will have had an effect on my waistline by Christmas (thus giving me an excuse to eat and drink too much - hee hee, what a cunning plan!). I've been here almost a week now and the dry atmosphere coupled with it being too hot is doing my head in!

Going back slightly to the last major event brings us to Thomas and Antje's wedding in Austria. This was an entire weekend devoted to them getting married again (ok, maybe I'd better explain. They got married in a civil ceremony last year and this was the full church wedding ceremony in a small Austrian church that the friends and family were allowed to attend. Oh, and Inga was allowed to bring that "bloody brit" as well. I'm pretty certain that's me). We flew into Fredricks-half-an-airport (or something like that) stuffed in to the usual flying cattle truck with the incredibly cool added detail that we landed right next to the place they build Zeppelins! How cool is that? I love airships and when I finally decide to grow up (or I'm reincarnated) I want to be an airship pilot (or an airship - reincarnation can be a strange thing at times). For people who have only ever seen them in films or burning, this is a modern airship: They are awesome (and I don't use that word lightly, let me tell you!). Modern airships are extremely elegant (let's be honest, you can't get any more inelegant than a bloody great jumbo jet forcing its way through the skies causing massive environmental damage. If only they weren't so damn convenient!). So we landed in Fredericks-half-a-van (or something like that) and found our little rental car, an underpowerd Hyundai Accent (great for pottering around town, lousy for scaling mountains and trying to overtake huge lorries) and set off. First we went across Lake Konstanz on the ferry. I wasn't feeling at all well much to Inga's disgust so she stole the camera and took some nice shots as we crossed the lake . We visited Tortuga and had a nice little chat (ok, Inga chatted alot and I just smiled and nodded) before heading back across the lake and made a run for the hills. Now, when I say hills, what I mean are real hills. Mountainous foothills, not pathetic molehills. These hills soon changed into mountains and we made our way up winding switchbacks and across massive plateaus before Inga grudgingly agreed to stop and feed me food (she gets in these "driving moods" when all she wants to do is get there and nothing is allowed to get in the way of that including me starving to death or in this case illness). She then proceeded to eat my food (what can I say?) and we made our merry way into Austria.

Now, being a man, I was map reading. I say map reading but we didn't actually have a real map. What we had was a dozen pages of google map directions and an address to aim for. Unfortunately, whilst I had the map I didn't fully understand where we were going so we promptly drove past our turning and headed deeper into the Austrian Alps. It's dark out there and full of scary trees and nasty switchback roads. Luckily Inga spotted my mistake and we performed a high speed handbrake turn in the face of an oncoming lorry and raced off the other way (yeah, right, in a Hyundai Accent?) and took the right turn to get us to a lovely mountain village called Biberwier. We even found the guest house! In the dark! Unfortunately it failed to hold any guests as they had all buggered off to a restaurant in the nearby town. We dumped our stuff in our guest room and set off in hot pursuit. I say hot but what I really mean is slow and sedate due to the darkness and windy roads. Suffice to say we parked the car, made phone calls and eventually found them all, stuffed with fine food and just about ready to leave. I didn't get fed. I would have liked to, but Inga was tired and I decided in a fit of heroic barvado that her needs were far greater than mine. If I'd known we were going to go back and drink Austrian rocket fuel (aka schnapps) I would have lined my stomach with food to try and absorb the onslaught of alcohol flavoured with a vague taste of something that i think was alcohol. As the rest of the guests settled in to play "let's kill our livers", Inga and I beat a hasty and undignified retreat. In our defense, we had been travelling all day and they had been playing toursist. We stood on the balcony and gazed at the mountains with their hat of stars; strung out across the night sky like sparkling diamonds forever out of reach yet tempting you to try and grasp them. We decided not to and instead fell into an exhausted sleep. I would like to say the sleep of the just, but even my literary skills don't stretch that far!