Author: Anne Fox

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!

Sooooo… Yes…. Well Mia and I managed to get a ticket to this closed event which Gwen went to with her school yesterday. It sounded like a music concert but really it was a recording session and the famous groups and singers were just there to make the whole thing a little more palatable for the 9000 children. In between the songs was a poor woman with a flag and a microphone trying to coordinate the singing of 9000 children in a football stadium. ‘On the count of 3, la la la la la la laaaa.’ ‘Now we need to all start at the same time this time.’ ‘Fantastic… but there was just one little thing – so let’s do it one more time.’ ‘OK, it’s a wrap!’

Some of the boys around us took great delight in screeching disharmoniously rather than singing which annoyed me greatly. Then I found out that they’d been selling T-shirts saying ‘I screeched the loudest at Verdens.’ so then I stopped feeling sorry for the organisers and thought they’d brought it on themselves.

The event was featured extremely briefly on the Danish news in the ‘and finally section’ when the singing sounded very good. I won’t give a link to this because it is an extremely involved process and all in Danish to get to this video extract.

All I can say is that I expect record producers are very good at extracting the best out of their performers so I am sure that your CDs will all sound tip-top. You DO remember that you signed up for these Christmas song CDs don’t you?

Tomorrow Gwen will be going to the football stadium in Aarhus to take part in a world record breaking attempt for the largest choir. It is being done to support the Danish branch of Save the Children and includes the presence of royalty (well near royalty, Princess Alexandra is only just still a princess after having divorced the prince) plus the cream of Danish popular music and the Ant and Dec equivalent from children’s TV as host. Mia and I are going to try and sneak in too (we will have the right papers but security will be tight).

The children have been practising their singing and the words have been changed after complaints from the teachers about swear words and so on. And you will have the opportunity to judge for yourself when you receive the CDs which you kindly paid for in advance about 3 months ago.

I’m afraid that there are no photos because Tony has the digital camera with him in Iceland. But there is a video on the newsletter website if that is where you are reading this from.

Last Friday we took delivery of a 12 week old kitten who was re-named Hazel after a he turned out to be a she. The girls had known about this for a week and had carefully planned what we needed. I managed to convince them that a box with a blanket would be OK for her to sleep in but we did invest in a transport cage. The poor thing miowed all the way and is now incarcerated in the hall for a few days until she decides that she shouldn’t run away when she is finally let out in the garden. She is very well behaved and used the ‘toilet’ properly from the word go.

Having the kitten has persuaded Gwen to take the 12.30 bus home to keep her company otherwise we normally don’t get home before 3pm. Normally Gwen is dead set against taking the bus. We still haven’t worked out exactly what will happen when we go to Greece in October though Gwen’s friend, who supplied the kitten, offered to feed her that week. But it’s a long cycle ride.

Yesterday Gwen’s after-school club took them to the next town for a traditional harvest time fair. It is a mix of fun fair elements and market and was the first time that we were aware of it even though it is a tradition that goes back over at least a hundred years apparantly.

Gwen thought the whole thing was not very exciting and even though she went with about £5.50 in her pocket she had difficulty finding something to spend her money on. What she did approve of though were the stalls dishing out free sweets and balloons but especially the sweets. When we took a closer look at the wrappers we were horrified to see that these were given out by the Danish equivalent of the BNP or National Front. So now we have Dansk Folkeparti balloons laying about the house and any visitors over the age of about 15 may ponder the contradiction of a house full of foreigners seeming to support the Denmark for the Danes party. But they seem much more mainstream here than the equivalent parties in the UK. We are forever seeing the partyleader on chat shows and being invited into her home to admire her tasteful decor in the gossip magazines.

Thank you for all the cards and presents which Gwen received on the occasion of her 11 th birthday. There was a definite horsey theme running through a lot of the cards and presents. Don’t know why really! Gwen asked to go and see Madagascar as her birthday treat so as it was the weekend we went all the way into Aarhus and went to see the English version.