Month: October 2005

Which company does this sign belong to?

There was fog at Munich so we were late taking off and as we were flying into Copenhagen they told us that they were sorry but that those of us with connections would have to stay in a hotel and get planes in the morning instead. Then they changed their minds and encouraged us to run. So I did… even though on the boards it said gate closed and they were just calling my name when I arrived huffing and puffing at the gate for the domestic flight home. I managed it but my suitcase didn’t and was delivered the next day.

National costume is quite common in Salzburg. The picture shows a modernised version of national costume.

I had a very uneventful journey here flying to Munich and then taking the train to Salzburg,  apart from getting off the train in the wrong country. I mistook the destination board for the station name and thought I was already in Salzburg when in fact I was still in Germany. So I had to ask a passerby the stupid question ‘Which country am I in?’. Fortunately the train was still in the station so I could get back on for the extra 7 minutes it took to get to Salzburg. Well it serves me right for using the stereotype that German trains are never late!

Salzburg seems very attractive and the weather has been wonderful but since we both sleep and work in the hotel I have not as yet seen too much of it. However I can vouch for the fact that the cakes are wonderful.

Yesterday we had dinner in the restaurant in the castle which dominates the town. The way up was a funicular which seems to go at the speed of sound. Unfortunately we lowered the tone by going through the streets singing songs from ‘The Sound of Music’ which apparantly Germans and Austrians are not very familiar with.

In all the excitement, Nicole, our Austrian host, forgot her keys… somewhere, she wasn’t quite sure where so this ended with a reconnaissance party going back to her, by now, locked premises where one of us climbed over the wall so we could have access to her car where she thought her house keys might be. They weren’t and so Nicole ended up sharing a room in the hotel with one of us until she could get into her office the next day where, fortunately, the keys were lying on her desk and she could finally get home to feed her rabbit.

Today Saturday was the first day that I could get to see Salzburg in the daylight. It is very attractive and highly recommended for a city break.

We survived 5 earthquakes and the attention of countless cats on Samos during the girls’ half term holiday which also coincided with the end of the season on Greek Islands. So we were one family of very few staying at the hotel. We ate lots of olives and feta cheese and tried the stuffed vine leaves and moussaka and ouzo. Even though Turkey was barely a swim away from the east coast of Samos we resisted the temptation to take the ferry over since the prices were so high. The weather was always sunny though a bit chilly at the beginning. Everyone except Anne managed a dip in the hotel swimming pool and/or the sea. The Greeks kindly translate town names into western lettering but the spelling is not always standard so following directions could be something of a guessing game but we seemed to get there in the end. Another guessing game was interpreting the ruins that we saw since there was very little help on hand, even for world heritage centres. Tony scored a miserable tally of 34 different bird species but that beat at least China.

Tony went off to St Petersburg on Wednesday. On Tuesday he went all the way to Copenhagen to the Russian embassy to get his visa. He had to do it in person because he has been using his passport so much lately that he could not afford to send it through the post. Having been to the embassy he feels that he has aready had a taste of Russia. He was frisked on entry and relieved of his penknife. The staff would only talk to him through a glass window. They were upset that the passport number on his application did not tally with the number on the passport he presented and so they made him wait another hour while they cleared that up and decided finally that they would give him the visa anyway. Tony isn’t sure but suspects that they got in touch with the British embassy to confirm his story. His story was that he was forced to get a new passport because he is due to go to the USA in November and they have already let him in with his non-machine readable passport once in January and they wouldn’t let him in again without either a new passport or the old passport with a visa.

Anne was going to a one day conference in Copenhagen on Wednesday (a little mix up of dates). So she ended up going on one plane to the capital while Tony took the next one. Anne had to spend two hours in the air because there was fog at Copenhagen and they were on the brink of turning the plane round back to Aarhus. She wasn’t really bothered about that especially as the conference turned out not to be as relevant as it had been made out to be. But she did wonder what happened to Tony who was on the next plane.

Tony decided not to take the mobile phone to avoid being killed if someone wanted to rob it and also he wasn’t sure it would work there anyway. And so Anne got a short email from him the next day confirming that he had arrived safely but with no other details as he said he was only allowed one minute on the Internet.

So a long day for everybody as the girls were picked up by the parents of one of Mia’s friends from school and were picked up by Anne at 7.45. It would have been 6.30 but SAS cancelled the booked plane probably because of the chaos earlier in the morning.

The weather today is glorious, one of those surperb crisp sunny days when the leaves are turning and the sycamores erupt into unbelievable colour.

The Foxes went to Vorbasse yesterday to visit Adele Reeberg, an old friend from Greenland expeditions in the 1980s,  who was celebrating her “serious” birthday by holding an art exhibition.  The painting were really superb, although not for sale, spanning just 5 years of serious endeavour.  You can view her talent for catching spectacular light effects at:  http://www.areenberg.dk/

In mid-September Tony was again at the Agricultural University at Hvanneyri in western Iceland to watch the White-fronted Geese wending their ways home.  The weather was unsually cold, with snow down to sea level lying thick on the hills.  This was very early compared to normal years as most of the sheep were still up on the mountain pastures.  The team caught 60 geese, resighted many geese caught in earlier years and counted a record number (3300) geese on the farm, meaning that at least 1 in 8 of all Greenland White-fronted Geese alive in the world passed through this one place!  As usual, the locals were bemused by much counting of goose droppings in the fields at night (after the geese have departed for the roost!) illumated by spectactular shows of the Northern Lights, many early morning roost counts, much hilarity but little sleep! Tony even squeezed in a lecture on the geese (see link!). The team caught up with news and the doings of the many old friends at the University farm at Hvanneyri where they were based and had a busy and enjoyable time!