Category: Travel

I am dog tired tonight, so this blog post is going to be less than creative, I’m sure.

I didn’t know alot about Hamburg a few months ago, but two of my friends recently discovered love interests in the city, and both raved about it. I was curious.

Sadly, my schedule didn’t leave me much time to look around. The British Columbian trade commissioner in Hamburg picked me up about 15 minutes after I got into my hotel room and drove me around some of the more beautiful parts of the city. There are two inner-city lakes and lovely wide and green parks. Mostly I noticed the houses near the river. Huge mansions a few hundred years old line the streets and are just stunning. Obviously, the city isn’t hurting for money.

I was then whisked off to the Business Club Hamburg, where we spent quite a while getting set up. I don’t mind public speaking as a concept, but I do get very nervous a few minutes before my talk these days. Maybe I’m just out of practice. I spoke for about 20 minutes and then had varying success answering some tough questions from the audience.

After the presentation I did end up having several people come up to me to learn more, so that was positive. I stayed until midnight chatting with some interesting people I met.

The next morning after a couple of hours of reading in bed (lovely!) I was pinged to go for a coffee meeting. I rushed to get ready and check-out and then headed back downtown. Luckily the subway system in Hamburg is clear and relatively easy. (Certainly compared to London, which I find very tricky.) We talked shop for about an hour and then I went straight to the airport.

A whirlwind 36 hours, but worth it. I look forward to going back to the city when I have more time.

The marketing line for Montenegro is “wild beauty”, and it is clear that this is a well-chosen descriptor on the first drive from the airport. The Black Hills are rugged with brush, cactus and the dusty green of olive trees. The roads are windy and steep, offering a spectacular view of the large lake, mountains and, of course, the ocean.

Annie and I went to Montenegro in the middle of August to spend a week with my friend, Ana. Ana was born in Montenegro, grew up mostly in Belgrade and lived the last 16 years of her life in Russia. (Her family knew the writing was on the wall when Milosevic came to power.) Ana has a place in her birth-land and kindly invited us for a holiday.

Ana has set her apartment up to have her own main living area and then a separate guest apartment with a kitchen, bath and balcony. What luxury!

Here is the view from “our” balcony, nearing sunset:

The beaches are rocky, instead of sandy. We did travel one day to a sandy beach and it made me appreciate the stones…no sand in clothes, food, or cameras (yikes! Thank goodness I was able to blow it out of the lens over a couple of days.) Although of course Annie loved the swimming and playground!

The first day we just enjoyed the beach near Ana’s place. We borrowed a car floaty thing that was perfect for Annie to swim around with. The water was colder than I had anticipated, which I was very thankful for as every day was between 33 and 37 degrees.

The next day we caught a boat and went to an area called Sveti Stefan (St. Stephen), which was near a small island that had been built out entirely for a hotel.

After a couple of hours in the sun we took a walk over to the former royal summer residence, also now a hotel. It was a beautiful walk through a more lush woods ending in the manicured lawn and sheltered cove that was well-chosen by the royalty.

The following day Ana’s mom and niece, Zorka, came to visit. Zorka is 5 years old and Annie was happy to have a playmate. Zorka’s family lives in New York but they spend the summers at her grandparents summer home on the other side of the shore from Ana. The girls had some squabbles (Zorka has three older siblings and Annie isn’t used to being teased) but overall it was awesome for her and me that she was occupied with a friend.

Ana’s mom is absolutely lovely (although we really couldn’t speak to each other) and an amazing cook! I now know where Ana gets her culinary skills. Did we ever eat well over the week. (The other reason for the full body cover up!)

We also took the opportunity to learn a few words in Serbian, which of course Annie picked up much easier than me and could pronounce with no problem.

The last night we went for a drive around some of the shoreline. We decided to go for dinner at a restaurant that Ana has been going to with her family since she was a child, called Stari Mlin (Old Mill). It is nested in the trees by the water and specializes in, as expected, fish. There is a trout pond that elicited a delightful story from Ana. Many years ago when someone ordered the trout, the father or mother would call to their daughter “Marica, two trout.” Marcia, as wee lass at the the time, would run to the trout pond, grab her net, scoop out the trout (never missing) and crack their heads over her knee. Now that is fresh fish. The trout pond is still there, but I understand the on-request catching no longer happens.

We had a spectacular meal and then headed off to walk through the lit streets of Kotor. On the way we passed the old mountain wall, 16 km snaking up the hill.

Kotor is a city with roots back to 168 BC. The buildings and walls and narrow streets are from the Middle Ages. It is best to go at night with the lovely lights sparkling off the water. My step-father Drew also went to Kotor on a side-trip during a volunteer stint in Belgrade and has very fond memories. Sometimes the awe of what is man-made can grab me just as much as natural wonders.

On the other side, though, there are parts of Montenegro that are still very much developing. The shoreline is well built-out, especially in the last few years with Russians purchasing a great deal of property. But the local people are still coming to terms with what it means to live in a free market economy. They sell land off, mostly to Russians, and then take the money and build large three-storey homes more in-land. Except the money runs out before the house is finished. We frequently passed these half-finished homes, obviously not worked on for months or years. (Oh wait, spending more money than you have? Maybe they have caught on exactly to the free-market economy.)

The rest of our trip was relaxing on the beach, going for late-night walks on the very bustling boardwalk, and eating amazing food, both home-cooked and at restaurants (totally delicious pizza! As good as anything I’ve had, even in Italy).

Ana, I hope we didn’t wear out our welcome, as we would love to come again next year!

As things head into a time of major change and uncertainty, (six weeks to go before we have no income and nowhere to live. But who’s worrying?) I’m trying to appreciate my non-working status a bit more.

Last week the warm winds blew in and so, after dropping Annie off at Kindergarten, I decided to go for a hike. I strolled by the river and then wound my way up one side of the mountain. It was just stunning. After only about 15 minutes hiking the view of the river, city and the breathtaking Alps were all before me. That is one of the insanely spectacular things about living in a valley; you hike up one side only to get an even better view of the range on the other side. Snow-peaked and ragged and awe-inspring. I was only gone about three hours, but it felt like a real break.

And then on Sunday I got a Skype message from my friend Nicole. The last time we had gone skiing together she had grabbed my skis by accident. (Not really that surprising, as “my” skis are Nicole’s old skis that she had for a number of years.) So now her and her husband were away on a week’s ski holiday without her skis. She was going to take the train back up to Innsbruck and switch, but hey…I’m not working, I have time, so I offered to drive them down.  Great, she exclaimed, I’ll by you a day’s ski pass and we can all go skiing together. I was so in.

Nicole and Tom were down in Italy at the Dolomites, about one and a half hours south of Innsbruck. After getting a wee bit lost, I met them in the parking lot and we layered up (it is cold again this week) and hit the gondola. The Dolomites are the perfect ski area for a sort-of beginner like me. Most of the runs are on wide bowls, not too steep with no danger of death-defining edges to fall off of.

But what was really great was how very, very beautiful it was. I must have said “What a view!” about a thousand times. Enough to make Tom want to hit me, I’m sure. The mountains are more rugged at the top than the Austrian Alps, with more rolling hills in between, so it was different kind of beauty for me to experience.

I didn’t have the camera (cameras and winter sports are not compatible, we discovered a couple of years ago) so searched for some shots of the area on Google. Here is what I found that was closest to what I experienced:

And just to add to the Rockwellian picture-perfectness of it all, every few minutes we would pass Haflingers pulling traditional sleds with tourists bundled in woollen blankets.

Skiing with Tom and Nicole is also very civilized. After about an hour we stopped on one of the gazillions of mountain-side Hütten and had a drink. Hot tea with rum made the rest of the morning pass by with a warm glow. For lunch we skied to a restaurant Nicole had scouted out the day before. I ordered house-made pasta (we were in Italy, so of course) with sun-dried tomatoes, Speck and a pile of fresh Arugula on top. Yum, yum and yum.

We talked about how pretty the Dolomites must be in the summer. So I poked around and found these images of the area in warmer weather:

Yeah, I think I’ll be coming back.

After a couple of more hours of skiing I headed home to sort-of make it in time for my evening German class. That is the kind of spur-of-the moment experience that makes all of the challenges of living in a foreign country so completely worth it. And it is these kind of days that remind me that life can be very generous and that it will all, eventually, work out.