It's Me Again/France/Lisbon

Back from the deeeaaaad! Did you miss me? Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, but life has been busy. When I talked to you last, I was staying in Switzerland with Louise, Clemence, and Pascale. I had dinner with them, and they took me to les Bains de Gruyere (a cool swimming pool) and the European women's volleyball championship (Neuchatel, their team, won). After visiting them, I went to Chamonix and stayed with the Silitch's, some family friends. This was pretty mellow; I just babysat their kids, Birken and Anders, for a few days, and helped out with Birken's birthday party. After this, it was off to Val d'Isere! The three weeks there were really fun - my skiing improved a lot, and I got to meet my dad's old hockey pals (he was the hockey coach there in the late 70's/early 80's). I discovered that European ski areas are way better, or at least more diverse than North American ones. Val d'Isere has miles and miles of piste, even connecting to another resort, and exploring the mountains was half of the fun. I also got to watch snow polo, which is as entertaining as it sounds, and enjoyed lots of fine dinners (oxtail, anyone?) and French conversation. The only low point was having to briefly fly back to the states to see my grandma, who has a brain tumor; however, this ended up being a fun little trip, and a good chance to see the family. After Val d'Isere, on the 30th, I flew out to Lisbon, to wait for word from some Spanish organic farms I had applied to WWOOF (work in exchange for room and board) on. I still haven't heard from them, but going to Lisbon was a great decision; I landed at the Lisbon Chillout Hostel, which is the nicest place I've stayed so far. There was a really fun crowd there at the beginning of the week, including another guitarist, and we got to enjoy a fun mix of seeing the town during the day and partying at night. I got back in touch with some Portuguese friends I met in Thailand, and, after some footwork, managed to meet up with them for coffee. I also got invited on a surfing trip by two of the Austrian girls who work at the hostel, Mira and Sonja. We went to Peniche, an amazing surf place, with three other Austrians, and stayed a night. The waves were a bit big for me, but I managed to have a good time anyway, and gave the Austrians some basic surf lessons. Yesterday, I took the train to Sintra, an amazingly scenic little town a ways outside of Lisbon, and walked around, seeing a cool, overgrown old Moorish castle and a former Portuguese royal palace. This second one was notable for it's amazing opulence, and the sheer number of colors in the facade; if you want to see a truly gaudy place, google Pena Palace. These two ruins were situated close to one another, in a pleasant park that smelled like home. After seeing Pena Palace, I spent a very long time wandering through the park, and found myself walking the three kilometers into town in the dark, through a spooky woods. It was a bit creepy, but the ambience was actually kind of nice, and I had a great jog for the last two kilometres. It wasn't the last jog I had that day either; when I got back to Lisbon, the Austrians invited me out to Bairro Alto, the party district, and I ended up making a four a.m. jog back to the hostel. My legs felt surprisingly ok this morning. Today, I've been trying to figure out where to go next. I don't have anything figured out yet, but I've got plenty of time...LYA

Greece 1

I'm sorry Oliver. I know it's been a long time, but aren't I allowed to have a vacation? There's no need for the belligerent whining or threatening messages or disturbing videos you've beens sending me. But if the only way to make you stop is to start writing again, I guess I will. First of all, I'm not in South-East Asia anymore, a fact which I think deserves some recognition. So here is my list of things I will and will not miss about SEA.
Things I will miss:

• Rice
• Cheap food
• Cheap everything else
• Friendly people
• Warmth
• Crazy backpackers
• Elephants
• Paul and Nikko
• The Sawatdipongs
• Joe and co.
• Songtaews
• Mopeds
• Stir fry
• Curry
• Interesting roofs
• Hilarious English
• People waving frantically from the wrist with both hands
• Gratuitous fireworks
• Bad Asian TV
• Roti
• Interesting birds
• The odd monkey
• ...and much more

Things I won't miss:

• Rice
• Smog
• Humidity
• Litter
• Hawkers
• Staggering poverty
• Being looked at like a human ATM
• The gap between rich and poor
• Novelty t-shirts
• Bad Asian pop music
• Australians in Bintang tank tops 
• Overcrowding

As you can see, and as I've often written, Thailand and Bali were something of a mixed bag for me - valuable and fun, but also tiring and difficult. So it was with some relief that I boarded the plane to Athens and the developed world. The journey over was great - I had three dinners, got to stretch out in my empty row of seats, and watched "2001" at 4 am and 20,000 feet. I arrived in Athens early in the morning of a crisp, clear day, greeted by views of rocky, scrubby hills and a landscape uncrowded by hawkers - more boring, perhaps, but a lot easier. Up until this point, I've either been met by friends or made my own arrangements to get to a cheap, basic room. This time, my mom had planned everything, so the travel agency picked me up and shuttled me to my five-star hotel, where I relaxed with room service and a steam sauna before watching atrocious Greek television on a flat-screen TV while reclining in my large, comfortable bed. I love parents with disposable income. The nice room was especially convenient for me to get over whatever lingering, beer-and-nasi campur-induced illness I'd been suffering from, and I didn't really do anything for the first two days, apart from taking one short walk and playing a lot of iPod solitaire. Mom was supposed to show up around 2 pm on the 19th, but, unfortunately, her flight came through Charles de Gaulle, so she actually ended up arriving at 3 am, waking me up. We got a bit more sleep, then woke up at seven to get on our bus tour of Greece. I had been snobbishly dreading the tour, but it actually ended up being pleasant and relaxing. We saw several of the major archaeological sites in Greece: the ampitheatre at Epidaurus, Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi, Thermopylae (that's where 300 happened), and the mountaintop monasteries of Meteora. The people on the tour were pleasant, the ruins, apart from being spectacular monuments to both the ambition and transience of human endeavor, were cool and uncrowded, the landscape was the most beautiful I'd seen on the trip, and not having to think was great. The only bad part was returning to Athens; because of transport strikes, a drive that should have taken twenty minutes took three hours. But even that wasn't too bad, and it made dinner taste a lot better. The next day, we saw the Acropolis, another spectacular monument to both the ambition and transience blah blah, and enjoyed a nice Christmas Eve dinner in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near our hotel. Christmas Day was equally mellow, and on the 26th we flew to Crete, for a six day horse ride. I went in with memories of my epic Icelandic trip fresh in my mind; sadly, the riding wasn't nearly as fun, and everyone else on the ride was above forty. But riding was still an interesting way to experience the island. The terrain alternated between steep, rocky mountains, which my horse, Diamond, had a bit of trouble negotiating, and flatter, populated olive country, where we occasionally got to canter. The villages were duly picturesque and maze-like; riding through them, I always felt like part of a gang in a Western film, as the locals would turn out to stare and everything would go quiet apart from the steady footfalls of our horses. It was a good thing that we were riding all day; the food was delicious, heavy, and endless, with five- or six-course dinners of tzatziki, bread, dakos, stuffed veggies, lamb, and much more every night. There's much more to tell about the ride, but brevity and laziness are going to keep me from writing it; maybe I'll go into more detail in a later blog entry. Basically, it was fun. After the ride, Mom went home and I flew to Milan, in order to catch a train to Switzerland. I had half a day to see a bit of Milan; after finding my hostel, I took the subway downtown, where I reveled in my return to Western culture. I saw the beautiful Duomo cathedral, proof that occasionally religion can be a good thing, along with various other picturesque old buildings and extremely well-dressed Italians. That night, I hung out with a Brazilian and a Korean from the hostel; the next morning, I just managed to catch my train to La Chaux-de-Fonds, a town in north-west Switzerland where I am now, visiting my friends Louise, Clemence, and Pascale and trying to speak only French. Yesterday, I hung out with Louise and some of her friends and understood nothing, then had dinner with Pascale's boyfriend and some family friends, and understood a little. Today, I saw their horse, the town of Neuchatel, and a distant view of the Alps. It's snowy, and I'm happy to be back in the cold. LYA