Before you ask: I was not hiking in a creek, the rain simply flooded the hiking trail. But see for yourself.

Fortunately this happened only during the last hour on the way down… it started out as quite a pretty day, see album below.

Krumbachstein – Album

For the records:
Kaiserbrunn – F. Haller Haus (burnt down!) – Wassersteig – Krumbachsattel – Krumbachstein – Lackaboden – “Eng” – Reichenau
7hrs, 1.100 m altitude

I just re-read some of the things written last year and earlier. How things fade, importance and focus changes, life goes on. But too late for philosophy tonight. Will try to do some of that on another occasion.
Somehow Due Torri has lost a bit of its purpose, commenting on this exceptional year of my life and (almost) everything (important) that happened in it. Though it was fun to find out that the 2nd edition class of the world’s best Retail Banking MBA found out about it and read it, confirming a lot of my experiences on the MBA.

But I guess it still has the potential for an acceptable travel blog or something of that kind.

So to try and get back in tune with blogging here is a short report about a mountain trip in this summer-to-be. Last weekend I spent with friends close to Graz, celebrating common sailing experiences and two birthdays. And to burn some calories between those two parties my friends Hans and Robert and me went up Hochturm, a peak in the Alps near Eisenerz, the former center or iron mining in Austria (see HERE, quite interesting story btw).

As nice as it is having a whole mountain to yourself, the price to pay for that privilege was freezing our … off! The wind was blowing and the temperature was between 5 and 10°C.! On July 30th!! ‘Nuff said.

You can get a little impression here:

But ok, here goes: the last big summer episode was a fantastic six day trip to stunning Portugal, the south-western corner of which to be more precise. As it is never to late to try some of your childhood dream fascinations I had decided to learn to surf – the wave riding thing, no sail, no kite, just a board, the ocean and me! When checking with Verena, a good friend of mine who is as close to a surfing pro as anyone I know she sent me to the village of Carrapateira where I arrived on what italians would call the “Ferragosto”-weekend in the mid of the month. As I had not been able to secure some accomodation beforehand I tried my luck knocking on doors around the village, getting a bit desperate already when I happened to find the bio-farm of an Austrian-gone-Portuguese who offered me a spare camper parked on the side of the field.

The Magic Bus

I nicknamed it “The Magic Bus” (see it on Whotube) as I was already thinking that a small miracle needed to happen in order for me not having to sleep in my car and as a reference to “Into the wild”, one of my favorite movies of the last years. Anyway: I very much do recommend Klaus’ hospitality and to advertise also his “real accomodation business” here is the link to his apartments!!

So all is well that ends well and after two days I was supplied with a room in the house of a lady in the village where I stayed for the rest of this short holiday. But a very special thanks and mention here goes to the supplier of this room: Edoardo, owner and fantastic host of Pensao das Dunas (Link!!)

Seriously, I have travelled a fair bit in my life so far but the hospitality encountered here stands out very distinctively! Edoardo goes out of his way to help his guests and even people he can not accommodate for lack of space in his cozy pension which is not too big. So whoever gets a chance to go to this area, don’t miss to go there. And book well in advance!!! The link is up there, Edoardo speaks around 5 languages, his wife even 10 more, so no worries that you might not be understood!

To finish up I want to say that meeting people with open hearts has made this trip so memorable. Maybe that area attracts such people in particular. To be mentioned – besides Edoardo, his congenial partner Victor and Klaus from the bio farm – are the surf camp students from all parts of Europe, the Danish family who have a house at Bordeira beach (can you imagine!?), the accountant-goes-rock-musician and his family from Lombardia, the teacher ladies from Barcelona and a very special note: thanks to Malgorzata from Poland for your company during my last breakfast on this holiday and even more for inspiring me to get back to writing this blog.

Portugal impressions

The first week of doing so I spent in Austria’s neighboring country Switzerland, to pay long overdue visits to friends who had moved to work there – to be more precise in Bern and Neuchâtel. The first thing you can notice about Switzerland when you travel from Vienna is that supposedly no one travels there, at least not for leisure. This can be derived from the fact that in the airport bookshop you can find travel guidebooks for some very exotic destinations, but none for Switzerland. The second thing you might notice is how organized that country is. Getting a half-fare card for the swiss train system plus a ticket from Zurich Airport to Bern took me roughly two minutes (!), including a brief wait in line, filling in a form (done by the SBB official) and the payment. And the trains themselves have a no-nonsense approach to punctuality: if it says 18.27 then it is 18.27, and not 18.26 and definitely not 18.28… scary, kind of!

So what is there to do beyond the obvious sightseeing

Downtown Bern

(e.g. the city of Bern, nice!): Certainly enjoying the nature in its different aspects – the most fun one being a boat ride in a rubber boat down the Aare river from Thun to Bern, in Captain Jörg’s very own river yacht. This turned out to be a favorite day out for quite many people, as we arrived on the departing point there were already a lot of other boat crews getting ready for the ride. And as pointed out previously also there organization Swiss style prevailed as there was a guy offering “inflate your boat with my compressor for a couple of Swiss francs”. The only obstacle on the otherwise quite relaxing float are the rapids near Uttigen, called the “Uttiger Schnelle” or “Uttiger Welle” by locals. Maybe the same locals who suggested us to pass it on the very right part, which we ultimately decided to ignore as the waters where really white there (right) but not on the left… the reason for this being – as we were soon to find out – the fact that on the left where we tried to pass there is an upstream current. Which took us around in circles, until we managed to row clear of it and went straight through the middle of the fun – wet, but ultimately happy! (I am giving this detailed recount as I was not in a position to shoot pictures or movies during the action, sfortunatamente. ) Get an impression on some other guy’s video below:

The second part of my visit then brought me to the French speaking part of Switzerland, namely the quaint city of Neuchâtel where I was very nicely hosted by Judith and Magali, who took me on the first day up a little natural marvel in the Swiss Jura mountains: the Creux Du Van,

Creux Du Van

a massive cliff in an otherwise gently hilled landscape. Other than that experiences featured my first cheese fondue (yum!), a bike tour of the three lake country (beautiful!) a hike on the foot of Eiger, Moench & Jungfrau glaciers (fantastic!)

Glacier Views

and swimming in the Aare river (17.5 °C, by free will, not by boat accident!) as well as Lakes Neuchâtel (refreshing) and Morat (summerly bathing temperature). And to fill train and plane traveling times I read Dan Brown’s latest “The Lost Symbol” and got quite disappointed by the ending. But anyway. OK, and if you have been patient enough to read to here than you may also want to take a look at the picture gallery for sake of completeness.

A trip to Switzerland – August 2010

Budapest from above

So what was there to do for the excursion team: eat (well, a lot), sweat and soak the night away in the fantastic historical Rudas Spa (take a look here), explore the city profoundly (and look good wearing John Ford glasses while doing that) and finally get ourselves surprised, a little drunk and quite happy during a wine tasting session sampling very nice Hungarian wines. Even a business idea was born! We would just need someone to actually DO SOMETHING. But doesn’t that always seem to be the problem? (See: MBA teamworks, inter-human relationships, etc.) Well, I may be getting to philosophical here. Better look at some pictures – feel free to send your feedback regarding the beauty of the glasses and consecutively of those wearing them to Mr.Ford directly! Alternatively drop me a line and I will pass it on!

Budapest Visit June 2010

Wedding At Mamaia Beach

So Romania promised to be interesting and this promise was kept. There were friendly and open people on all sides, families and friends of the couple, fun and drink-hard sailors and there was a romano-hungaro-austrian reunion.

And being already there, Andras and me did a quick sidestep into the Danube river delta, to get just a glimpse of one of Europe’s last remaining natural treasures.

Pelicans in the delta

Just get more impressions for yourself! Here is a picture gallery and here is the Romanian half-cousin of Angus Young playing “Thunderstruck” on his harmonica!!

Oana’s wedding and Romania

About two weeks ago I was reminded of the fact that I had not blogged in a long time through a message sent to me by someone who stumbled upon a duetorri post I had written about a year ago, asking for some details on the hike up Schafberg. Of course I answered the questions, but when logging in here I realized that my last post lies already more than half a year back.

So the urge to decide if I will finally give up blogging completely or try to bring duetorri back to life became stronger. But still I could not get myself started, until today I met someone… but more about that in one of the next posts – so here we go with some News Of The World.

This winter really deserves its name here in Austria. It has been a long time since we last had so much snow also down in the valleys and even in the city. So after fighting off a slight cold I had been struggling with two weeks ago it was time to get on the slopes another time, so far I have only managed to go skiing for two days between x-mas and new year’s which certainly is not enough for a winter like this one.

Last sunday I then went with two friends to Annaberg, a quaint little village on the way to Austria’s most important place of pilgrimage, Mariazell. Despite a forecast of some sun, we remained under cloud cover or even in slight fog for the whole day, but ok – most importantly there were lots of snow (Click on the pic for the link to a short photo album, only phone camera pictures)!

And what I am now really looking forward to is a 4-day extended skiing weekend early March in Obertauern, not one of the biggest but one of the most convenient skiing resorts, with many accomodations directly on the slopes. So after the aprés-ski fun one must just be fit enough to finish the  trip down the hill…

But from the beginning: around Christmas I made plans to spend new year’s eve with some friends and friends of theirs I had not known before. On Dec 30th I learned that one of the guys I knew got sick which triggered a chain reaction of all others (which I already knew) deciding that they would go somewhere else, for multiple reasons – one of them certainly being the fact that the location for the party was a mountain hut 2.150 mts above sea level in the mid of the tyrolean mountains.

But as I was already close, visiting friends in Innsbruck I decided to join anyway especially as our friendly organiser Matthias invited me to come and party with the international crew that would get together to celebrate the end of a decade and the beginning of a new year.

And the outcome: a great evening, a beautiful nature experience, not too much headache the next day despite some icelandic “black death” and the forming of a new promising German-Austrian sledging team, maybe just a little too late for this year’s winter olympics…

New year’s 2009 / 2010

Above the picture gallery, below a link to a youtube video. Maybe the one showing me playing the guitar and singing will also turn up at some later point in time… that’s the heritage of the Web 2.0 decade.

Yesterday afternoon I went for an hour long run around some places of my childhood. With temperatures well above zero, still some icy baked fields of snow on the ground and the sun shining through a silvery haze of thin clouds it was a very nice winter experience. Especially running along the danube river that is almost still at that place with no one else nearby made for a relaxing and mind clearing experience after days of “this-has-to-be-finished-before-christmas” at work.

And even though I do not want to bore the MBA class readers of this blog with too much looking back I can not resist but post the link to my December 2008  blog archive. It feels so far away already. I wonder what it will be like returning to Bologna AND to Alma in about two weeks – that will certainly be an occasion for more blogging. But for the next week I have other plans, I just found a great inspiration below:

(Pictures taken from the ever-fantastic “Big Picture”)