vorab pign thing

amazed myself by getting up when i needed to in order to make it up my favourite mountain for the day. (very early for a sunday morning, vorab pign). i slept most of the train trip through chur to ilanz, stocked up on suncream and water, and began my assault. up past the fabulous little villiage of ruschein (they speak romansch!), further up through awesome forest, and then up into the alpine pastures. whoever named the minor peaks on this ridge must have been having a bad day, since i went past 'tegia crap', 'crap masgen' and 'crap ner'. or maybe it's a romansch thing. i was accosted by a herd of adventerous, friendly and very cute cows, but managed to escape without anything being eaten. i was feeling pretty good, and so was running a few of the flatter bits, which was especially fun when i overtook some mountain bikers :). the last bit up to the top of vorab pign was actually quite exciting, and i decided against going for the 3000er vorab, since it looked much more so. coming back down was fantastic. great views back down towards the rhein valley, and across westward to some very funky looking glaciated peaks... it was firetrail most of the way though, so i had to run to keep myself entertained. this made me rather tired by the time i was back in ilanz, and i think people were looking at me like they weren't sure if they should be worried about or scared of me :). at least i made the train which got me back to zurich before dusk (kind of handy, since i'd forgotten my bike light for the ride back home to hongg). there are some pictures here, most of which are of cows.

Random bits of news

be nice to the turtles (www.plasticbagfamine.com)
go beer bear! (www.abc.net.au/news)
and my favourite, the latest news from the intrepid african adventures of leanne.

olympics

olympics are so much fun!
my favourite bits lately:
more thorpe
mick rogers in the individual time trial cycling
a swiss actually winning something :)

go thorpie!

paris

overnight trains are the best. i was amazed at how well i slept, given that there were 6 people crammed into the very small room, lined with bunks. but i was out for pretty much all 6 hours from zurich to paris, and the same on the return. in the interim, we managed to tour many of the places one should go as a first-time tourist in paris.

saturday was filled with notre dame, with its crucifixes and stained glass; followed by the louvre, where i found this great renaissance statue of john butler (from the john butler trio); and then finally by a trek up to montmartre and the sacre-couer cathedral.

after battling with the other tourists in the latin quarter on saturday night, sunday was just as full-on. we powered through the champs elysee (past $10 cappuccinos), to the arc de triumph, and down to the tour eiffel. climbing up was fun, and the views were interesting. and pretty cool in other directions as well.

nice weekend. busy, but full of all those great tourist oppurtunities. now i can feel free to find the more interesting spots on my next visit.

zurichberg

pouring rain, clear blue. it alternated all day long in zurich today. luckily i was inside for all the wet bits, except for on my way home, which just made the riding even more fun! found some more awesome single track in zurichberg, although it gets a bit tricky when the nobbly tree-roots are slick from the rain. since it was a bit cooler i could try out my snazzy new cycling top for the first time as well, and it made me feel so much faster! and it's got much more cred now that it's a bit mud-splattered.

oh clare you got us.

in the last week of june, hiren, fredrik and i went to see, hear and admire laura imbruglia at the fabulous vanguard in newtown. being a very small venue, the only seats we could get were in the very front row centre. how awesome was that - a bit of neck craning is a small price to be so close to an acoustic performance! laura was cute and full of folk punk as usual (and hiren was rather smitten).

we'd never heard of the main act, clare bowditch, but it was obvious from her very first song that she was something special. songs so longing, honest and simply beautiful we could only sit, stare, and try to keep from both crying and smiling in wonder. fredrik got himself a signed cd after the show, and was assured by clare that she had appreciated the friendly faces in the front row! so we were both head over heels in love, that was that.

only now clare's published an open letter on her site, and we're not sure which way to take it (if we should take it any way at all).

i think we both still love her though :)

sleep not 3000m

i was planning on getting up super-early and heading south to climb my first 3000m swiss mountain. but sleep seemed like much the better option at 6:30am. it was a scorcher of a day too, so lazing around at home was a sensible choice i think. got a fair bit closer to having the few manuscripts i'm writing from my work at proteome systems finished as well. will be great when they're actually finished! a very nice run through honggerberg and kaferberg forests saved me from a completely lazy day as well. i'm most impressed that someone's already left a comment about my blog too. go hiren!

streetparade

streetparade

street parade (www.streetparade.com) is the biggest party zurich sees every year, and was definitely worth checking out. there was some funky music on offer, but it felt like it would have been more suited to 3am than 3pm. good to see everyone out having a fun, friendly, and tolerant party-time!

swiss national day

the swiss sure now how to have a low-key national day. even the australia day-style bbqs were missing, although it's a perfect season for it (midsummer, and long, warm evenings). the concessions to celebration were some performances of the swiss national anthem and plenty of fireworks (the week leading up to august 1 is the only time it's legal to buy and sell fireworks in switzerland, so everyone makes the most of it!). impressive fireworks late in the evening made for a fun ending to the day, but i think the swiss dogs were as unimpressed as any by all the loud noises.

swiss cheese

i had a bit of an adventure with swiss alpine cheese friday night. i've been making it my small mission to get through as many different kinds of swiss chocolate and cheese as i can, and so was trying out the swiss speciality - super tasty cheese made fresh from unpasteurised milk up in the alpine pastures where the cows spend their very pleasent summers. only i think it was the 'unpasteurised' which was the problem. the cheese itself was very tasty indeed, but i think there was too much of it topping my tomato, tofu, and vegie sauce, and whatever nasties that were along for the ride, were too much for my stomach to cope with. so friday night was not so fun. i suppose i only have myself to blame though, since the cheese was 'reduced for quick-sale' at the supermarket...