hola for the weekend

what's a short working week for except to morph from french back to german and into spanishimeancatalan? sorry, that's another silly question of course. the week was over in a flash, and off we were to sunny party city barcelona! actually, it was warmer, sunnier and drier in zürich than northern spain over the weekend, but that matters not. we stayed in an apartment-type place just west of the old city on gran via, which was perfectly located for journeying through gotic, ribera, barcalonetta and la rambla, but not too busy itself. that filled saturday.

sunday we spent our indoor time in the picasso museum. interesting perspective on his early work, which, as i had not realised, just shows he could have painted everything "perfectly" had he so chosen. after lunch at a very yum traditional catalan restaurant we headed south up onto montjuïc, to the site of the 1992 olympics and apparently a quite nice park area. actually it was mostly construction site, although the views over the industrial port were high. maybe we somehow just missed the best bits. after the long stroll back along gran via to our apartment, searching in vain for gelato, we had to siesta to recover.

monday was gaudiday. first stop - sagrada familia. quite a bent building. i like this gaudi chap "...the great book, always open and which we must make efforts to read, is the book of Nature; the other books are based on it and have the mistakes and interpretations of mankind ...". after touring the vertigous twirly towers off up the hill we were to park güell. the lizard is quite cute, the smooth curves of broken porcelin quite soothing, and the leaning towers perfectly disturbing. we finished off the afternoon with some successful camper shopping. they make shoe shopping feel like a nightclub. rarely is spending money such fun.

warm sunny afternoons, cosy cafes, small relaxed pubs, fresh croissants, tasty coffee. barcelona's not such a bad spot.

bonjour Frühjahr

easter long weekend. 4 full days of glorious spring weather. is there anything else to do but walk from lenk to montreaux? what a silly question!

it was, as always, touch and go getting ourselves out of warm bed early on friday morning, but again, as always, once up under the towering bernese oberland peaks, there was no doubt we'd made the right decision. we headed up west from lenk towards the trütlisbergpass, and it was almost hot walking! crazy spring. not to worry though, once above 1600m the snow kicked in. luckily we'd been planning and had our borrowed snowshoes to kick back. still it is remarkably hard work walking in snow, and it got up to 1m deep up towards the pass. exhausting, spectacular, quite perfect.

downhill towards lauenen was also quite fun. weeeee! all the way down. until the snow stopped at least, and then there were lots of pretty spring mountain flowers to keep us company. we popped briefly along the main street, before heading up shortly out of town to a lovely miniplateau overlooking back on our afternoon's pass. we could even see our tracks down from the pass to remind us of the fun! it got a wee bit chilly over night, but nothing too painful nor permanent, and we were all raring to go in the morning.

the best thing about walking in the swiss mountains is the sheer convenience. mountain pass, snowshoeing, then a short 1 hour downhill later we were in gsteig for fresh gipfeli, berliner and cappuccinos. quite ridiculous really. there was a bit too much snow on the next bit of our planned route, so we headed up the valley instead, over the col du pillon, loomed over by the les diableterts massif. quite an evil looking mountain, until we looked more closely and saw the spiderwebs of gondolas and skilifts covering the whole sheer face...

it really is strange to walk from german into french. all of a sudden people stop saying grüezi and start up the bonjours! but being switzerland the convenience of francs, perfect organisation and flawless english remains everywhere.

next morning, next cupofcino. it is tough. more lovely mountains, great weather. almost a bit boring really :) this night we found a superb spot to camp though. head of a valley with all the alps still closed for winter, fields of early spring flowers tentatively poking their heads up through last year's cowpats, and the limestone peaks shielding us and our small valley from the rest of the world.

long through walks are fantastic. we felt quite alien strolling into the early summer montreaux, filled with trendy french icecream lickers, wearing our mountain gear, carrying our snowshoes and smelling of 4 long mountain days. i like it.