This post was actually written about a week ago. Unfortunately between the hotel internet being crap, the office i'm working at not allowing me to upload photos and Google itself playing up, I haven't had a chance to put it up. So tonight I'm doing it!
Gday from Paris guys, I'm working here for the next month or so. Things here are totally disorganised and the French have a very peculiar way of doing things which I'm having to become accustomed to. Basically they do stuff all and complain a lot about the amount of work they still have to do! (ok, that's a bit of a generalisation). Sometimes it is a bit difficult to get information and things out of them, but we're starting to get somewhere.
I did manage to get mostly over my cold towards the end of Brussels, enough to be able to take a walk around the town on the last day and see some of the sights. It turned out we'd actually seen most of the things located in the old town area, so that was quite good. The only really touristy thing I saw was the pissing boy statue... It was so... underwhelming. Seriously, it's about 30cm tall and it's a little fountain of a boy pissing... so what?? Maybe that sums up Brussels. It was actually a decent city, with lots of museums and good food, but it's not exactly party central.
So back to London and some kind of semi-normal life. I had taken the coming weekend off to go snowboarding with Kath in Salzburg, so I got a few days to organise some things in London and catch up with people. I did make sure I got at least a night or two of good sleep so I wasn't stuffed for snowboarding.
That Friday I landed at Mozart airport and met up with Kath and Walter. We jumped straight in the car and headed off to Walter's house in a town called Attersea (I think) about 40 mins out of Salzburg. The house itself is really nice with polished wood everywhere, but the view from the windows over the massive alpine lake is just amazing. As the heating takes a while to kick in, we had to sit around with blankets on for a few hours that night until things warmed up. Fortunately there was beer to help us along.
The next morning we roused ourselves and headed towards the mountains. We stopped for supplies and gear on the way, and the drive took around 30 mins, so we didn't hit the slopes till almost 12. There hasn't been good snow in Austria this year but we had a small fall earlier that week, so there was stuff to board on. However, it was also very warm and so it quickly turned the snow to slush with ice underneath. Once we got up to the top of the mountain, things were pretty good.
Unfortunately I was finally 'unlucky' on my board and i had a little accident. I jumped over a bit of a hill, and although I landed a bit off balance (not unusual, usually I can recover) the board hit a pile of slush and I wiped out (also not and unusual incident, most of the time it's all good). Somehow my arm got caught/lodged in the snow behind me as I fell. This basically made the arm try to bend the wrong way for a little bit till everything shifted enough to allow me to bend the elbow which then allowed the arm to slide underneath me to the front again. I still can't remember exactly how it happened, but it hurt pretty bad straight away but I could still move it and stuff so I was sure it wasn't broken. I managed to board out the rest of the day but I was careful not to try anything too tricky making sure I stayed off it.
On the way back to the house Walter took us to see a sweet waterfall just minutes from his house. You have climb along a rock ledge about a meter wide for 50m or so to get to it. It was worth the effort though and totally hidden. On the path to the waterfall is an outdoor church, it's quite weird to see but apparently it is stull used. Once we had returned to the house I took off my kit and checked my elbow out. It had badly swollen so we got some improvised ice packs (wet tea towels left outside to freeze) and tried to treat it. I was ok after a beer or two and we played some boardgames to pass the night away.
The next day the arm was still big, so we went to a doctors surgery, but it was closed. Walter had some bandages in his car first aid kit so we strapped up the arm and headed off. It was a fine, clear day so I just took it easy again and only did small jumps. Anything dodgy I just took slowly and basically didn't fall over all day (except a small one near the end which was ok). One thing I did discover with boarding that confidence plays a major part. With the arm stuffed my confidence was shot and I rode really really badly for the first few hours. After a while I realised I'd be ok if I just didn't get too nuts and felt fine speeding down the mountain. The afternoon had a few nice long runs in it where we boarded down trails through trees with the sun shining - very nice.
Again we stopped on the way home at another small village on the way. This village is amazingly beautiful with the lake etc, but the thing to see is the church graveyard. Because there is such little land between the moutain and the lake, the locals only have a few large graves. Instead they have a tradition where the skull of the person is decorated with paint etc and placed in a special chapel. It's quite amazing to see the different painting etc on each skull. Combined with the amazing views, it's definitely something to see.
That night we headed out for a final dinner before returning to the house and playing a few drinking games (one was asshole with rules involving wearing stupid things to explain the photo - Kath and Walter looked stupid too!). Walter also taught us dice based game which involves a lot of bluffing and tricking etc of the other players. Kath and I sort of ganged up on him towards the end and managed to get him pretty ripped. It was getting late and we were looking for a way to end the game when I managed to pull an amazingly lucky roll out of my arse to hit Walter with some drinks. It was pretty awesome so here's a pic of me with the two lucky 4's. We figured that was a good note to end on and so hit the hay.
Monday was general clean up before heading back into Salzburg. On the way we stopped at the clinic but I was concerned about not missing the flight so I didn't get my arm looked at. Turned out that was a BIG mistake, but more on that later. Walter showed us quickly around Salzburg and we got a present or two before heading to the airport for a flight back to London. It was delayed a little but no big dramas.
I decided I'd actually better go and get my arm checked out as it was still massive and I couldn't move it properly some ways. Monday night I tried to sort out whether I could go and see a doctor etc on private health care (public system is real slow). When I enquired with my travel insurer, they told me I couldn't claim because I'd returned to London! WHAT THE!?!?! I was so pissed off as I had medical proof I injured it (staff at the clinic in Salzburg) but even though I argued like a madman, but they are bastards and wouldn't do it. BAH! What happens if you get malaria, then come back to London and need medial attention?!
Tuesday morning I grumpily looked up a public health clinic website and found one close by. Surprisingly it was free and they could see me quite quickly, awesome! I was seen by a doctor within about 30 mins of getting there and she was a bit worried about a couple of things (I cant straighten it completely or bend it to touch my face), so she sent me to a nearby hospital for xrays. This is where the long waiting came in. Despite being seen quite quickly by an admitting nurse, it took an hour for a doctor to see me, another hour for an xray, another hour for the same doctor to look at the xray and 2 minutes for her to say 'the bones are ok, but you've damaged the tissue'. Bit of a waste of a day, but really, it's a public hospital and they did sort me out for free, so it's not THAT bad.
(NB: Since then I've actually been back in London and found a note asking me to go back to the hospital. It seems I did have a hairline fracture after all that and I now have to be alittle careful with the arm. It's a pissy break, but it's still a break.. awesome!)
While I packed for Paris that afternoon Kath headed in to town to try and score some cheap tickets for a musical that night. She nabbed tickets to Guys and Dolls which was very good. Don Johnson was playing the lead male character and he was brilliant. After that we grabbed a late dinner at a French wine bar I like in Soho.
That was about it. I said bye to Kath the next morning and jumped on a train to Paris. Kath had more days in London and while I'm spewing that I couldn't spend more time with her, I'm glad we got the weekend etc. See you soon Kath (she's moving to London in a couple of months).
Paris has been pretty standard. I worked the first few days but we had a massive lucky break and got Sunday off (fully paid as we finished all the work Saturday). I unfortunately wasted a lot of it as we headed out for dinner and drinks on the Saturday night and didn't get back to the hotel until 7am Sunday... just a few quiet ones :). The funny thing was, we met a friend of one of the work guys who took us to a cool 'club' - it was the same Aussie bar I got hammered in last time! Friggin hilarious! Coopers was good to me that night and although we got in late, I felt ok on Sunday and did manage to get into town for a look around. I just walked a lot checking out cool things like the Luxembourg Gardens, St Germaine, Notre Dame, churches and statues etc that I came across. I love being back in this city.
Our hotel is nice but it's quite out of the main city area, so it's a bit annoying as there's very little entertainment or food around. On top of that the wireless internet has been down all weekend, so I was pretty bored. Hopefully things will be better this week. One cool thing about work is that one of the ladies here has an awesome dog who's allowed in the office. He's wicked! Oh, and the canteen for the office is frickin amazing, the food is awesome and costs like 2-3 euro a plate (which we don't pay). French people have it sweet!
I'm heading back to London for a couple of days next week then I'll be back to Paris for another 2-3 week stint. Hopefully I get more time to look around the city and just 'be' in Paris. I'll check out the Louvre again prolly and maybe some of the smaller things you don't normally see as a tourist. I'll let you all know how it goes.
Catchas
Anka
Gday from Paris guys, I'm working here for the next month or so. Things here are totally disorganised and the French have a very peculiar way of doing things which I'm having to become accustomed to. Basically they do stuff all and complain a lot about the amount of work they still have to do! (ok, that's a bit of a generalisation). Sometimes it is a bit difficult to get information and things out of them, but we're starting to get somewhere.
I did manage to get mostly over my cold towards the end of Brussels, enough to be able to take a walk around the town on the last day and see some of the sights. It turned out we'd actually seen most of the things located in the old town area, so that was quite good. The only really touristy thing I saw was the pissing boy statue... It was so... underwhelming. Seriously, it's about 30cm tall and it's a little fountain of a boy pissing... so what?? Maybe that sums up Brussels. It was actually a decent city, with lots of museums and good food, but it's not exactly party central.
So back to London and some kind of semi-normal life. I had taken the coming weekend off to go snowboarding with Kath in Salzburg, so I got a few days to organise some things in London and catch up with people. I did make sure I got at least a night or two of good sleep so I wasn't stuffed for snowboarding.
That Friday I landed at Mozart airport and met up with Kath and Walter. We jumped straight in the car and headed off to Walter's house in a town called Attersea (I think) about 40 mins out of Salzburg. The house itself is really nice with polished wood everywhere, but the view from the windows over the massive alpine lake is just amazing. As the heating takes a while to kick in, we had to sit around with blankets on for a few hours that night until things warmed up. Fortunately there was beer to help us along.
The next morning we roused ourselves and headed towards the mountains. We stopped for supplies and gear on the way, and the drive took around 30 mins, so we didn't hit the slopes till almost 12. There hasn't been good snow in Austria this year but we had a small fall earlier that week, so there was stuff to board on. However, it was also very warm and so it quickly turned the snow to slush with ice underneath. Once we got up to the top of the mountain, things were pretty good.
Unfortunately I was finally 'unlucky' on my board and i had a little accident. I jumped over a bit of a hill, and although I landed a bit off balance (not unusual, usually I can recover) the board hit a pile of slush and I wiped out (also not and unusual incident, most of the time it's all good). Somehow my arm got caught/lodged in the snow behind me as I fell. This basically made the arm try to bend the wrong way for a little bit till everything shifted enough to allow me to bend the elbow which then allowed the arm to slide underneath me to the front again. I still can't remember exactly how it happened, but it hurt pretty bad straight away but I could still move it and stuff so I was sure it wasn't broken. I managed to board out the rest of the day but I was careful not to try anything too tricky making sure I stayed off it.
On the way back to the house Walter took us to see a sweet waterfall just minutes from his house. You have climb along a rock ledge about a meter wide for 50m or so to get to it. It was worth the effort though and totally hidden. On the path to the waterfall is an outdoor church, it's quite weird to see but apparently it is stull used. Once we had returned to the house I took off my kit and checked my elbow out. It had badly swollen so we got some improvised ice packs (wet tea towels left outside to freeze) and tried to treat it. I was ok after a beer or two and we played some boardgames to pass the night away.
The next day the arm was still big, so we went to a doctors surgery, but it was closed. Walter had some bandages in his car first aid kit so we strapped up the arm and headed off. It was a fine, clear day so I just took it easy again and only did small jumps. Anything dodgy I just took slowly and basically didn't fall over all day (except a small one near the end which was ok). One thing I did discover with boarding that confidence plays a major part. With the arm stuffed my confidence was shot and I rode really really badly for the first few hours. After a while I realised I'd be ok if I just didn't get too nuts and felt fine speeding down the mountain. The afternoon had a few nice long runs in it where we boarded down trails through trees with the sun shining - very nice.
Again we stopped on the way home at another small village on the way. This village is amazingly beautiful with the lake etc, but the thing to see is the church graveyard. Because there is such little land between the moutain and the lake, the locals only have a few large graves. Instead they have a tradition where the skull of the person is decorated with paint etc and placed in a special chapel. It's quite amazing to see the different painting etc on each skull. Combined with the amazing views, it's definitely something to see.
That night we headed out for a final dinner before returning to the house and playing a few drinking games (one was asshole with rules involving wearing stupid things to explain the photo - Kath and Walter looked stupid too!). Walter also taught us dice based game which involves a lot of bluffing and tricking etc of the other players. Kath and I sort of ganged up on him towards the end and managed to get him pretty ripped. It was getting late and we were looking for a way to end the game when I managed to pull an amazingly lucky roll out of my arse to hit Walter with some drinks. It was pretty awesome so here's a pic of me with the two lucky 4's. We figured that was a good note to end on and so hit the hay.
Monday was general clean up before heading back into Salzburg. On the way we stopped at the clinic but I was concerned about not missing the flight so I didn't get my arm looked at. Turned out that was a BIG mistake, but more on that later. Walter showed us quickly around Salzburg and we got a present or two before heading to the airport for a flight back to London. It was delayed a little but no big dramas.
I decided I'd actually better go and get my arm checked out as it was still massive and I couldn't move it properly some ways. Monday night I tried to sort out whether I could go and see a doctor etc on private health care (public system is real slow). When I enquired with my travel insurer, they told me I couldn't claim because I'd returned to London! WHAT THE!?!?! I was so pissed off as I had medical proof I injured it (staff at the clinic in Salzburg) but even though I argued like a madman, but they are bastards and wouldn't do it. BAH! What happens if you get malaria, then come back to London and need medial attention?!
Tuesday morning I grumpily looked up a public health clinic website and found one close by. Surprisingly it was free and they could see me quite quickly, awesome! I was seen by a doctor within about 30 mins of getting there and she was a bit worried about a couple of things (I cant straighten it completely or bend it to touch my face), so she sent me to a nearby hospital for xrays. This is where the long waiting came in. Despite being seen quite quickly by an admitting nurse, it took an hour for a doctor to see me, another hour for an xray, another hour for the same doctor to look at the xray and 2 minutes for her to say 'the bones are ok, but you've damaged the tissue'. Bit of a waste of a day, but really, it's a public hospital and they did sort me out for free, so it's not THAT bad.
(NB: Since then I've actually been back in London and found a note asking me to go back to the hospital. It seems I did have a hairline fracture after all that and I now have to be alittle careful with the arm. It's a pissy break, but it's still a break.. awesome!)
While I packed for Paris that afternoon Kath headed in to town to try and score some cheap tickets for a musical that night. She nabbed tickets to Guys and Dolls which was very good. Don Johnson was playing the lead male character and he was brilliant. After that we grabbed a late dinner at a French wine bar I like in Soho.
That was about it. I said bye to Kath the next morning and jumped on a train to Paris. Kath had more days in London and while I'm spewing that I couldn't spend more time with her, I'm glad we got the weekend etc. See you soon Kath (she's moving to London in a couple of months).
Paris has been pretty standard. I worked the first few days but we had a massive lucky break and got Sunday off (fully paid as we finished all the work Saturday). I unfortunately wasted a lot of it as we headed out for dinner and drinks on the Saturday night and didn't get back to the hotel until 7am Sunday... just a few quiet ones :). The funny thing was, we met a friend of one of the work guys who took us to a cool 'club' - it was the same Aussie bar I got hammered in last time! Friggin hilarious! Coopers was good to me that night and although we got in late, I felt ok on Sunday and did manage to get into town for a look around. I just walked a lot checking out cool things like the Luxembourg Gardens, St Germaine, Notre Dame, churches and statues etc that I came across. I love being back in this city.
Our hotel is nice but it's quite out of the main city area, so it's a bit annoying as there's very little entertainment or food around. On top of that the wireless internet has been down all weekend, so I was pretty bored. Hopefully things will be better this week. One cool thing about work is that one of the ladies here has an awesome dog who's allowed in the office. He's wicked! Oh, and the canteen for the office is frickin amazing, the food is awesome and costs like 2-3 euro a plate (which we don't pay). French people have it sweet!
I'm heading back to London for a couple of days next week then I'll be back to Paris for another 2-3 week stint. Hopefully I get more time to look around the city and just 'be' in Paris. I'll check out the Louvre again prolly and maybe some of the smaller things you don't normally see as a tourist. I'll let you all know how it goes.
Catchas
Anka
posted by Anthony Hawke at 11:16 pm
3 Comments:
But what about the French poonanie, have you gotten some Parisian loving yet? ;-)
hmmmm wouldn't you like to know :)
Anka you should try to go to Reims and do a champagne tour.
Cheers
Gumi
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