Category — sports

important game today, romania-netherlands 1:0 in the euro 2008 qualifying. with this important and surprising result romania is, amazingly, almost qualified! am keeping fingers crossed for the last 3 games.

more about boston later. takes a bit of time to let things sink in. for now just to mention how awesome it was to meet arturo and michal and their families.

the rugby world cup is going on these days. below some samples of what it can be like.

On the way back from zurich to the village on the other side of Confederatio Helvetica where I am still located for this project, I stopped briefly in Fribourg, a nice old town in shades of grey, with an impressive cathedral (like most towns here). Pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/explorish/fribourg.

i live close to Lausanne, but i never went to see the old town. i wanted to remedy that today, but due to a manifestation there was a huge traffic jam entering from the highway, so I decided to turn back and check out Versoix and Nyon. Versoix – nothing, except that the former Romanian king used to live there (or still does, donno). Nyon is quite a cute little city, with a medieval castle on the lake shore. No wonder those “poor” UEFA people chose this for their headquarters..

On the way back i managed to get into Lausanne, for a bried look at their impressive gothic cathedral.

Pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/explorish/VersoixNyonLausanne .

I watched episode 1 and 2 from star wars, now I’m gonna do 3 and then goodnight. I’m taking the series in a row, wanted to do this for a long time. Yesterday I said “this is a good day to start”. it was.

Sunday, March 25, 2007, 23:45

Taking advantage of the big sales going on, and inspired by the late winter, I bought meself ski equipment on Saturday. Skis and boots and everything. Doing that (plus a haircut) took a while, coz the cheapest skis were sinfully ugly, not even cool-ugly, just plain ugly, not pleasant to look at, very unfortunate color combination, so I hesitated a lot before spending a bit more to get something that I at least like to look at.. thought that it’s worth it since I’m not going to change them too soon if nothing unexpected happens… or shd I say rather expected? We’ll see… so anyway, it ended up being late, but I still went up to baptise them. Arrived at a closeby slope, but it was very small. Yet a mountain train (petite, on chains, very cool) was going up. There was a guy waiting in the minusculous station. He said ski lifts are already closed (was 4pm), but what I could do is go up with the train and come down till this station. Ok, cool, I thought, like verbier, you can come down nicely through the forest. After a pretty long wait (it is an anomaly in this country, but that train NEVER comes on time), we go up.. on the way he asks me – you’ve skied in deep snow, right? Nnnnot really, I said. Oh, he said, there’s a LOT of snow… oops.. ok.. lets see.. don’t worry, he said, there are plenty of people going down that way.. just keep left and you wont get lost. Ok… we arrived, he went off on a different route, down the mountain.. I was supposed to follow a path to reach the slope.. at the beginning of the path, I found this:

“Piste du Diable, Piste Noire difficile, non dammee, forte pente. Danger des avalanches.”

Diable doesn’t mean it is possible to dial, it means devil. i.e. it’s possible to …die. “Devils slope, black, very difficult, not flattened, steep slope. Avalanche danger.”

You gotta be kidding me, I thought. This can NOT be the way I’m supposed to go.

It was.

The path leading to it was ok… reached the slope.. stop. Close to the egde.. couldn’t see it going down. Went closer to the edge.. still nothin. Went TO the edge.. aha. THAT steep. GREAT. By this time I was alone, could only see two snowboarders far down in the distance, disappearing between trees. My parents’ voice in the back of my head, panicked with big eyes as always, told me to go back. And I tended to agree, whatta hell, its only normal to go back. Then I remembered there was a family with a kid, age 7-8, who seemed to be coming the same way.. I thought ok, I’ll wait a little; if they come this way, I MAY go with them. If that kid can make it, I can make it. they came. Mom, dad, little girl. They stopped, asking me for whazzup. ‘Err.. is it difficult?’ I asked. ‘Only this small bit till down in the valley, then it gets better’. ‘Aha. Hmm… donno..’ ‘why don’t you come with us, we’re not going too fast’. ‘Hmm.. ok, lets try’. Small prayer, off we go.

i learned skiing late, was already aged 20. Had always a fear of falling, from the beginning, given history of broken bones n stuff, and it aggravated after a nasty fall that srewed up my knee, which will probably hurt for ever. so I always skied very carefully, and as a result I could count my falls on the fingers of a single hand, and not count them all.

I fell on Saturday much more than in my entire skiing career. A ski got stuck in the snow. I fell further. About 5 metres. After all, it was damn steep. Had to work my way up back to the ski, which was a pain with legs sinking COMPLETELY into the snow. Then, trying to put the skis back on, one of them took off, downhill. Luckily it stopped in a tree, a few centimeters left from what would have meant its disappearing down into the woods. My NEW ski, I thought, that would have been a rather short relationship. An unexpected thing to force me change skis and get the ugly ones after all… or none at all. Shiver. So maybe that was a warning from above, that one shouldn’t care too much about image or beauty, it doesn’t last for ever ;). Eventually I managed to put them on, under the trees, where snow wasn’t so deep. That man waited ages for me, he was amazing. At one point he asked me how come i got on this slope ;P. i told him… he said that guy who told me is crazy… this is one of the most difficult slopes in the region… GREAT, I thought.. Cool, I also thought, if i make it. And off we went again. And down I went again.

But you know what. It is true that to get over the fear of falling, one has to… fall. Safely, if possible… which was the case here, because snow was so deep, it was almost a pleasure to roll down the hill. No kidding, there was no pain whatsoever, just the exteme sensation of… rolling down a hill full of snow. If I wasn’t stressed about losing skis and breaking stuff, and if knees wouldn’t have started to hurt after a while, the rest was actually fun. With one condition: arriving down in one piece. Thanks to that patient man, who waited up for me and showed me the way (it was foggy and I had no idea of the way, “keeping left” was a very vague concept given MANY WRONG alternatives to keep left..), I eventually reached the station where the car was… wet from the snow, but happy. This is a cool part of having your own gear, you don’t depend on ski lifts or rentals, and you can have… well, experiences like this, for whoever fancies sheer fear and adrenaline. I don’t so much :P, but its fun to talk about it once its over.

It appears I lost some of the fear of falling on that black slope.. slope of hope.

The name of the man is Fischer, like my ski brand. How life puts them together :).. they invited me for a raclette at their place in the evening, I went, was a nice time. Had some friends over, a couple with (another) 2 very energetic kids, even after a tiring skiing day (amazing!). was nice. Talking all night in french was almost as tiring as skiing ;), but I very much liked the opportunity to exercise “first-hand” french conversation.

Sunday I met them again, this time on “tamer” slopes. Very nice scenery, great slopes, following heavy snow on Friday. I was tempted to go back to the black one, with newly gained courage and confidence, but was wary of annoying Authorities Above, so I listened to the Panicked Parents Voice and refrained. For now.

Was nice… its over.. back to work.

Those were highlights of this week-end. Yesterday, the Geneva autoshow - HUGE, many cars, crowded.. was ok, nothing mindboggling, maybe car-fans would have had more of a “mekka” feeling, for me it was just interesting.

Was more excited today, went for half-a-day skiing in Verbier. Uh, skis you don’t see you forget. After the first two minutes I was gliding down on my… back. Good thing I didn’t take the big camera and the backpack, as initially intended… got scared I would get scared of steep slopes… eventually it was the first and last fall. It took a bit of re-getting used to on a blue easy slope, and then even the red ones posed no problems any more. Uff, that’s a relief. It seems that if you never ski enough for it to enter your blood, it takes re-getting-used to.. fortunately, it happens fast, so you can enjoy shortly after. Till knees start to hurt, but.. let’s not get into aging and other off-topics.

Verbier is a random ski resort (or at least I hadnt heard of it), and is greater than everything I’ve seen so far. Lots of slopes of various difficulties, lenghts and directions, merging and unmerging, you can have plenty of “scenarios” going so you don’t get bored. And I’ve skied only on about half of the valley, given lack of time.

At 5 slopes close, and I can see why. Around 4, the sun, who was spoiling us the whole day, went into a cloud, and INSTANTLY the wind started hauling, cooold, freeezing up there at 2700m, so – time to go downhill, fast. The cool thing was you can ski down literally to the… parking lot! They kept a snowy path through the woods, very nice touch.

I hurried back, before the pleasant post-ski tiredness caught me, coz I had a very windy road to drive back, fortunately no traffic, so I could exercise incipient windy-road-driving skills in relatively hassle-free environment, so the traffic jam I got into on the high-way wasn’t such a big deal. Was close to home anyway.

Now it’s time for a turkish lahmacun from the fast-food I get my dinner frequently from, reminds me of good old days with oriental food, and maybe watching monsters, inc. before going to sleep. Wonder if that’s wise, given dream options from watching monsters. Hopefully I’ll dream of cartoons.

Pictures from the autoshow here: http://picasaweb.google.ch/explorish/GenevaAutoShow2007

Verbier here: http://picasaweb.google.ch/explorish/LaSki