Border Crossings

The Jura Mountains in the background

The plan today was to spend the first day of the new year skiing in the Jura mountains.  Just across Lake Geneva from the Alps, the Jura mountains, which straddle the Swiss-French border, ‘only’ go up to 1720m (Le Crêt de la Neige), but during the winter get plenty of snow and so have a few small ski resorts at the highest part, which is in the French part of the mountains.

We got up quite late so thought it wasn’t worth the long(er) drive to a ski resort in the Alps, plus we thought that since the resorts in the Jura are much smaller, there would be far fewer people than in the Alps.  It turns out most other people thought exactly the same thing, so when we saw the line for the main lift up to the pistes we decided it wasn’t worth paying to rent skis just to stand on them waiting for the ski lifts, so turned around and half an hour later were back home.

One of the tracks through the forest

So after that disappointment I decided to go for a bike ride (since I have been re-acquainted with my bike, if only temporarily) to take advantage of the slightly white New Year (we had some snow a day or two ago).  I headed back in the direction of the Jura mountains, but stayed in the plain between them and Lake Geneva.  I’d never really cycled in that area before, but came across some great tracks through  the forest around there, which were even better with the late afternoon winter light.

Although it snowed recently, it was followed by very cold rain which didn’t melt the snow but which froze on top of it – meaning that everything became coated in a layer of ice; at some points on the tracks I was riding on sheets of ice several centimeters thick.  The funniest incident was when I was getting a little more confident on the ice (which was often making loud cracking noises beneath my tires) and had picked up a little speed.  I got to a paved section which looked like it wasn’t covered in snow or ice.  As soon as I got on top of it though I realised it was a completely smooth sheet of ice – and I was going downhill.  Automatic response: apply the brakes.  You can probably guess how well that one worked out – wheels stop spinning, bike keeps moving.  Next automatic response: put my feet on the ground on both sides for some stability.  Great, that worked, I was more stable, but still not slowing down.  While all of this was going on, two people were walking in the opposite direction.  I looked up as I glided past them and said “bonjour” to them.  They looked at me and replied “bonjour… ça glisse!” (hi… it’s slippery!)

Horses chilling (literally) in a snowy paddock

Anyway, at one point I arrived at a narrow road running perpendicular to the track I was on (just next to a field full of… bison).  I turned right down this narrow road, but a few minutes later discovered the end was fenced off and I couldn’t get through, so I turned around.  When I got to the place where I had turned onto this narrow road, I went back onto the track I had been on, but discovered that I had, unknowingly, crossed the border!  Being a TCK, but more importantly having spent a lot of time in Switzerland and regularly crossing into France (even working in France and living in Switzerland at one point, meaning I crossed the border at least twice a day) means that I’m no stranger to borders – but I have to say this one took me by surprise!

To top it off, the Swiss had even put a sign up that read (translated from French) “no crossing of this border allowed, except for people walking or on a bike during the day, with the necessary documents and merchandise not exceeding the tolerated limits”.  Any bets on how often the border police actually check anyone there??

Probably one of the least used yet sign-posted borders in Europe

Happy New Year!

A very happy new year to all of those who use a calendar that says it’s the 1st of January today!

Where do the years go though??  One year everyone’s worrying about that Y2K business, next thing we know it’s 2009 – what’s up with that??

Gaufres de Liège

That’s Waffles from Liège to non-French speakers.  During the months I spent living and working in Liège last year I picked up a waffle-eating addiction habit.

Belgium is known for its beer, for its chocolate, but also for its waffles.  Many of the bigger cities in Wallonia, the French-speaking region, have their own type of waffle – there are waffles from Brussels, from Liège, and from Namur.  They’re all different, but my personal favorite is the waffle from Liège (a happy coincidence, since that’s where I was living).  Waffles from Liège are quite dense and sweet, and have a caramel (essentially burned sugar) coating.  They come in two flavours – vanilla and cinnamon.  Either way, they’re the last thing you want when you’re on a diet – which would have been a cause for concern given the quantities I ate while living there (there was this great place on a street corner on my way home from work…), but luckily I have a metabolism that means I will probably never have to watch what I eat – again, a happy coincidence.

Despite having left Liège just over 1 year ago, I still haven’t managed to kick the addiction habit, so I was naturally ecstatic when I got a gaufrier (waffle iron) for Christmas.

I stole used a recipe I found on this great website (click on the “Gaufre de Liège” link) all about the different types of waffles in Belgium, although I used less butter than the recipe calls for (I also didn’t make 15 to 25 waffles, since eating those single-handedly would have posed some problems, even for me).  That means that if you too want to make these but don’t want to have a life-time’s supply, you’d better cut the quantities.

Ingredients (15-25 waffles)

• 1 kg flour
• 75 g yeast (the fresh, living stuff – although dehydrated yeast works too if you let it re-hydrate in a small amount of milk for 15 minutes beforehand)
• 500 ml milk at room temperature
• 50 g vanilla sugar (this is castor sugar which has a vanilla flavor – if you can’t buy it you can make your own by leaving a vanilla pod with the correct amount of sugar for a couple of days)
• 2 eggs
• 250 g butter (cut down from 500 g (!) in the recipe on the original website)
• 50 g honey (preferably a runny-ish honey)
• A pinch (or two) of salt
• A few drops of vanilla extract
• 600 g pearl sugar (if you can’t find this, you can always get some sugar cubes and crush them down into rough lumps)

Some of the ingredients, ready to go

Method

1. Start by making a dough using 800 grams of the flour, the yeast, the 500 ml of milk, the vanilla sugar and the eggs.  Mix them all together well and leave it to rise for 15 minutes.
2. Add the butter, honey, rest of the flour, salt and vanilla extract and kneed the dough until it’s nice and even, then let it rise for another 10 minutes.
3. Wash hands (if you make these you’ll see what I mean).
4. Add the pearl sugar (mix until evenly distributed in the dough), then make balls of the dough of about 100 g each (you can eyeball it – enough to fit on one waffle iron).  Leave the balls to rise for another few minutes.
5. Cook the waffles on the iron – each waffle usually takes 3-5 minutes.  Ideally the sugar should burn a little on the outside, although in practice this doesn’t always work.  Then eat!

The dough, ready to be made into individual balls

Obviously you need to be careful when you take them out (use a fork or some other implement, being careful not to scratch your waffle iron) because the sugar on the outside will be very hot.  But after a few minutes they’ll have cooled down enough to eat.  I was planning on taking a picture during cooking in the waffle iron, but in my haste to get to the eating part forgot!

Waffles from Brussels are always eaten with some kind of topping (cream with fruit, nutells, icing sugar, etc.) but waffles from Liège are eaten as they are.  So once they’re cooked, enjoy!

The Times Photography Competition

I had a pleasant surprise today – I submitted a picture a couple of weeks ago to a monthly travel photo competition held by The Times and found out today I was one of the finalists!

About a week ago they posted a second set of nominees (they post 2 sets of nominees per month) and I wasn’t in either the first nor the second, so I’d figured I didn’t have a chance.  They announced the winner today and posted the top 10 pictures (I assume in order since the winner was first).  I was flicking through them just to see what pictures had made it through and when I got to number 8 was surprised to see my own!  Unfortunately I missed out on £420 worth of camera, but I’m not going to complain about 8th place!

Check it out here.  (Click on the “December’s finalists” link under the “Multimedia menu partway down the left-hand side of the page – you need to scroll down a little – and mine is the 8th picture (some of the others are worth a look as well, like 4 and 7)).

It’s a picture of some Hungarians playing chess in the Széchenyi baths in Budapest, Hungary, taken on the 11th of September this year (with a Nikon F65 camera – bought in Budapest after my previous one broke!)

Merry Christmas!

Wishing a merry Christmas to all Christian readers of my blog (and non-Christian readers if you celebrate Christmas)!  I hope you all have a great day, whether it’s with family or friends or on your own and that you’ve been good this year so that you get loads of presents (that’s how it works, right??)

Since I’m in Switzerland I was hoping for a white Christmas – but it doesn’t look like that’ll be happening.  Instead I’ll have to make do with the view shown below…  Ah well, I guess it could be worse!

Merry Christmas!

Places of the Past

My planned route through South East Asia, almost as twisted as the Mekong itself

Since I’ll be graduating in June (supposedly) and therefore, in theory, joining the working world shortly after, I decided that it would be wise to postpone that eventuality and travel.  Two friends of mine, whom I met while at university, also enjoy travelling and, since they’ve never been to anywhere on the Asian continent before, our plan is to start in China and head south.  They’re planning on working their way all the way to New Zealand, but due to budget constraints I’m going to head back to find a job probably after Indonesia.

Despite that I’m going to have a several month long loop from China down into Laos, across into Vietnam, over to Cambodia, followed by a hop through Thailand (just to pass through) on my way to Myanmar before ending the trip by flying to Brunei, working my way across  the island of Kalimantan and heading back to either Singapore or KL via Java and Sumatra.  Just for fun I decided to buy a world map, put it up on a noticeboard I have in my room and pin up the planned route.  The plan is of course subject to change once on the road.

Unlike the two friends I’ll be travelling with I have been to most of these places before – just not in many years.  Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Brunei (if I get there) will be new to me, but the others I have all visited before.  I don’t mind though, they’re all countries I could go back to time and time again.

The first stop will be Beijing though, which I’m a little apprehensive about.  Well, I don’t know if apprehensive is the right word for it.  Having spent 3 years living there I know (knew) the place well, but given the pace at which China, in particular Beijing, has modernised, I don’t know how much of it I will recognise.  While I’m there I’m planning on visiting the Lido – the Holiday Inn residential area where I used to live – to see how it has changed.

One of the downsides to being a TCK is that sometimes it can seem like your past didn’t happen.  Once you leave a place and the people you know, you have very little to prove to yourself that it really existed.  There are memories, but nothing really tangible, in particular before the internet become commonplace and people could keep in touch via e-mail or chatting.  That’s the case for when I moved away from Beijing; with the exception of a few people who I’ve found on facebook, I have no idea what happened to anyone I knew in Beijing, and I haven’t been back in 12 years.

I guess I’m kind of scared that when I go back I’ll find that it’s all gone – the school (which I know has already moved, but I don’t know if the old buildings still exist), the apartment block where I lived, the park across the road and the market a couple of streets away.  Obviously I can’t expect it to be like a time capsule, but on the other hand I just hope there is something – anything – left.

Last Lecture

I won’t be graduating until June, but because of the way my course works my last lecture is tomorrow morning.  Next semester I’ll be going on an exchange to France (more about that later though), so with the exception of exams in January and a week of presentations in May, this week is essentially my last in Bath.

It all seems kind of surreal at the moment, because it sort of snuck up on me; it was only at the beginning of this week that I suddenly realised after tomorrow I would no longer have any lectures.  It makes me think that, at least according to the University, I know what I need to know to be an engineer now.  Kind of scary to think I could be designing the next generation of airplanes… and people would unknowingly step foot in a death machine designed by me!

Jokes aside, my 5 years of university have gone by incredibly quickly.  I guess it’s true what they say – life is like a roll of toilet paper; the closer to the end you get, the faster it goes.  I remember my first few days – arriving in Bath a bright-eyed, innocent (at least partly) 18 year old, living in a house with 17 other people, kind of like my time at boarding school, but with greater expectations, more hope for the future.  University was the time of my life when I would grow into the person I wanted to be; I would become an engineer and graduate with a 1st degree, I would know what I wanted to do, I would be able to find a job easily with such a good degree – basically I could do whatever I wanted.

Now, that may all be true, but at the time I didn’t realise that what was more important than all of that was knowing what it was I wanted.  And that’s still a question I don’t know how to answer.  Maybe I have just put off making decisions because I figured things would work themselves out – a kind of delusion of choice; in the past decisions beyond my control have effected my life and so maybe I’ve fallen into the habit of assuming that no matter what I want, somehow someone else’s decision will make mine irrelevent.

At least it’s true that looking at who I am now I barely recognize the kid who stepped out of the car in first year.  I’ve met some great people who I know I will be in touch with for years to come, if not for the rest of my life, and I’ve also had some great experiences, in particular last year working in Belgium and France.

I guess I have mixed emotions about the end of University – I will miss it, without a doubt, but it is time for me to move on – to somewhere bigger and to (finally) earning my own money (assuming I can find a job of course… this isn’t the ideal year to be graduating).  I also can’t help but feel that at times I could have got more out of it, that I missed some opportunities.  And then there’s the usual question – where do I go from here?