And I'm back from a snowboarding holiday in Fiss in Austria. A great wintersport area, connecting Fiss, Ladis and Serfaus. We had great weather, first sun and later snow, resulting in fresh powder for the last few days. Snowboarding in fresh powder is really great. I got some much needed rest too.
Terug van vakantie! Korte samenvatting: we zijn met de trein naar Berlijn gereden en we zijn terug naar huis gefietst op de ligfietsen.Een heerlijke vakantie. Veel dingen gezien. Berlijn is imposant, enorm veel geschiedenis overal in de stad. We hebben een beetje de muur-geschiedenis gezocht met een bezoek aan Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie wat al vanaf 1962 de geschiedenis van de muur volgt en de ontsnappingen uit Oost-Berlijn. We hebben een stukje van de Berliner Mauerweg gefietst. Indrukwekkend om het eens te zien. Ik heb in de jaren 80 wel het nieuws over West-Duitsland en Oost-Duitsland meegekregen en de Wende, maar ter plekke de streep door de stad te zien is toch wel anders. Vooral het stuk aan de Bernauer Straße waar ook een tentoonstelling is en nog een stuk muur te bezichtigen. Het blijft een totaal absurd gegeven hoe sterk gescheiden de stad was en hoeveel rare gevolgen daar van waren.
Het fietsen terug ging prima. Perfect weer, veel zon, twee keer een heel klein beetje regen. Wel een paar stevige buien op momenten dat wij lekker binnen zaten. Fietsen in Duitsland lijkt net op fietsen in Denemarken: soms moet je op de doorgaande weg fietsen (Landesstraße) en dat is dan gewoon geaccepteerd, auto's halen netjes in of blijven er even achter hangen als inhalen niet kan. Binnen 2 kilometer in Nederland waren we al ingehaald door iemand die dan 0.5 seconde eerder een erf kon opdraaien. Verder zijn er in Duitsland veel fietspaden en fietsroutes, in voormalig Oost-Duitsland minder, maar wel met een duidelijke groei. Ik had soms wel het idee dat het labeltje fietspad (Radweg) ook aan paden geplakt werd die alleen te fietsen zijn met een goeie mountainbike.
Ook onderweg bezocht: Bunker Kossa wat een oude bunker was van de Nationale Volks Armee, het leger van de DDR. Veel teksten in het russisch, maar eigenlijk viel het ons wel op dat in vergelijking met het Langelandsfort in Denemarken wat we vorig jaar bezocht hebben er een hoop overeenkomsten zijn tussen hoe de Navo-landen en de Warschaupact-landen dingen ingericht hadden.
In totaal 1246 kilometer gefietst deze vakantie, in 14 fietsdagen.
We hebben in Duitsland voor het bellen van onderdak wel gelijk een prepaid-sim gehaald van Klarmobil. Ooit was bellen met Vodafone in het land waar je was aardig goedkoop maar sinds het allemaal goedkoper moet met roaming en simpeler betaal je voor bellen naar Duitsland vanuit Duitsland gewoon het 'Passport' roaming tarief van EUR 0.79/gesprek en EUR 0.25/minuut. De Klarmobil Sim kostte EUR 9.95, gaf 10 euro tegoed en die rekenen EUR 0.09/minuut binnen Duitsland. Op vakantie neem ik zowiezo mijn oudere Nokia 6310i mee omdat die nu nogsteeds een betere batterij levensduur heeft dan mijn huidige toestel, een Nokia 6300.
Back from a week in ... Egypt. A gift from Mirjam's parents. We saw Cairo, the pyramids, El Fayoum and Alexandria. It's an amazing feeling to visit 5000 year old man-made constructions. At the same time Egypt now is a very chaotic country with noise everywhere. For the first time I found Dutch traffic calm compared to what I had seen. Especially in Alexandria you constantly hear car horns.Lots of security theatre ofcourse, but seeing 3 man militairy police (Koninklijke Marrechaussee) on Schiphol airport with automatic weapons was more shocking than seeing truckloads of police and soldiers with automatic weapons in Egypt. I sort-of expect it in Egypt (although the travel brochures downplay it a bit). The Egyptian 'tourist police' is everywhere and most places where tourists come are guarded. Metal detectors everywhere beeping but most of the time the beeping is ignored by the guards.
I could have done with less adventure: first one of our bags went missing on the flight to Egypt. Nothing really important in the bag but irritating. Then on Sunday evening we went walking in Cairo and found a police cordon in the area we wanted to visit. We had dinner in a restaurant near the cordon but it had moved a few streets back when we left the restaurant so all the international press was gathered and tried to get a statement from the obviously European tourists leaving the area. But we had no idea at that time what happened. Some of the group asked the reporters what happened and got a bit of idea: a bomb attack. Friends back in the Netherlands alerted us to the fact that we were on TV tuesday morning. I looked quite lost, which was exactly what I felt like at that time. And only when we arrived home and browsed the newspapers we noticed that an airplane had crashed near Schiphol during the week.
Back from snowboarding holiday in .. Samoëns, France. Yes, the same village as last year. The village, the Grand Massif ski area and especially the Viking Lodge apartment were so good we had to get back. I had fun snowboarding although I bruised a few ribs in a fall I had Wednesday on the Cascade piste: it turned icy and I lost balance and fell on my frontside.
And we're back from vacation! We cycled around Denmark for almost three weeks. A total of 1080 Kilometers on our recumbents from København to Århus along a number of the Danish islands and Jylland. We used trains from Utrecht to København and from Århus to København back to Utrecht. The intercitynightline is nice for getting from Utrecht to København in one go. It just takes a big detour of Germany. The intercitynightline and the Danish trains have no problems at all with recumbents. We saw a lot in Denmark, including a visit to Legoland in Billund and the Elmuseet. The weather was ok although we had a number of rainy days. We stayed in hostels, bed and breakfast and a few hotels.
Back from the snow! We went for a week of snowboarding in Samoëns, France. Great snow, good weather and no broken bones. We stayed at the Viking Lodge, a very nice and luxurious apartment. Besides snowboarding for real I also played with Amped3 on the xbox 360 in the apartment ;)
I really enjoy The Alaska PodShow Podcast. I visited Alaska myself in 2002 and really enjoyed it over there, which makes the alaska podshow a joy to listen to. Recognizable stuff, and things I would like to see on a next visit to Alaska (although I already saw both highways..). I'd like to go back some day (preferably when the US treats visiting tourists less like suspects) because Alaska is beautiful to visit.
Back from vacation! We rented recumbent bikes and biked around the Netherlands for three weeks, camping and visiting some friends. The weather cooperated mostly, just some minor rainy days and a few rainshowers.
We zijn vandaag bij ligfietser.nl geweest om ligfietsen uit te zoeken voor onze vakantie.
Back from snowboard holiday in Morzine, France... didn't break anything, not too much muscle pains and we had a great time! And yes, there was enough snow on the pistes, thanks to the hard work of the people of the Portes du Soleil piste services.
I did some hacking today on Snowcam, whacking the stylesheet to differentiate in the order of elements in the html source versus the order of elements on the page, and adding a bunch of webcams at wintersport resorts all over the world, because I'm in the mood for the upcoming wintersport holiday in Morzine. Now looking at snowreports and Morzine webcams daily. I found out that the site looks awful in IE6 and fiddled with the stylesheet until it worked.
Wardriving results 9 - 24 October: 1033 new networks with GPS locations. We stayed in a cottage in Schotland last week. Northern England / Schotland has a lot less wireless networks than the Netherlands: On the last part in England of the return trip (area of Edinburg to Newcastle upon Tyne) I saw 86 networks in 3 hours, and in the first half hour in the Netherlands (Ijmuiden to Koog a/d Zaan) I saw 94 networks. Schotland was very nice, we had some nice walks, gazed at the stars (it's a lot darker over there!) and visited several whisky distilleries including a very nice tour of Tomintoul distillery. Tomintoul also has The Whisky Castle where one can spend a fortune on very nice whiskies.
We're back home after a great holiday / honeymoon in Iceland! Took a load of pictures, we'll have to make selections before we can put an archive on-line. Coolest thing we did was whale watching where a humpback whale decided to jump near to the boat.
Doing some updates to Camp Wireless, finding campsites that advertise as having wireless Internet in the Woodall's guide... just added campsite number 400(!), Hot Springs National Park KOA in Arkansas, USA. It is funny to see the growth in campsites with wireless Internet access.
Back from a snowboarding holiday in Tignes, France. No snowboarding accidents. I just slipped on the sidewalk at the last minute and scratched my right hand in a few places. Great snowboarding in Tignes, great weather. I had time to read too, and I decided to reread some books I read ages ago, and review them (again): The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton, In the beginning.. was the command line by Neal Stephenson and At Large: the strange case of the world's biggest internet invasion by David Freedman, Charles Mann. All great books to reread.
I made some pictures of my snowboard now it's all put together and waiting for the upcoming trip.
And our luggage got delivered too (late yesterday evening). The baggage-handling company at Schiphol seemed to think it was a regular issue with all airlines that luggage got delayed. We thought it was a result of our very short transfer at Toronto Pearson airport: run from airplane, bus to infield terminal, board other airplane, less than 15 minutes left before take-off. Luggage handling at Schiphol seems to like to use the same cryptic codes as everything else in airtraffic, the note attached to the luggage says: CT01 GY01 .CT02 GN08 .CT03 GN29 .CT04 GN64 .DD 09sep.
I'm back from a camper holiday in Canada. It was great. Pictures and reports to follow, but first we need our suitcases, because Air Canada did not bring those to Schiphol today.
Back from a week of snowboarding in Les Deux Alpes. Had fun, had enough snow and my snowboarding got better. And it was a good holiday.
Memories of my Alaska holiday... since then, the FAA has added webcams with the purpose of seeing the current weather state at many airports in Alaska (to aid in planning visual flight rule flights). Nice to get an updated view of the weather when (limited) daylight permits. I see places on those images I visited (ok, if a road is visible and it's in a town I visited, I have been on that road. There aren't that many.)
