Maiskogel
I've arrived in Kaprun, early yesterday morning and I was so eager to try out the slopes I didn't even unpack my bags before heading out. Now, at the end of my second skiing day here, I've already got a pretty well formed opinion about the place. It's great!
Because it's less than 300m away from where we're staying we only tried the Maiskogel ski slope, both yesterday and today. With an altitude difference of 968m (765m to 1733m), a total ski lift ride 4611m long that takes 15.4 minutes, 18 km of intertwining easy, medium and difficult slopes and a long-way-round descent of over 7km (also done in 15 minutes at about 30 km/h) there's more than enough there to keep you busy for a couple of days.
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| Christian Nasulea - 04.01.2009 | |
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Happy New Year!
A great big Happy New Year to everyone!
This time around the coming of the new year found us roaming the streets of Budapest, singing, shouting and dodging fireworks.
As a result this year we wished each other Happy New Year! bilingually (like road signs in parts of Romania) in both Romanian and Hungarian. Although we were out on the streets we decided to keep to a decent dress code, as you can see from the bright green ties in the enclosed picture.
So, once again La multi ani! (RO) and Boldog uj evet! (H).
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| Christian Nasulea - 01.01.2009 | |
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Cars, Accidents, Insurance and Roadtrips
After a successful 5th snowboarding day in Busteni I decided to head back home earlier to start preparing for the upcoming European trip. I was very happy because the traffic had been pretty light south of Busteni when I overtook this car in Sinaia that was half on the road - half parked on the curb and was signaling its intent to get out. Just as I passed it the car abruptly pulled out and rammed into the right side of my car.
What followed were 3 hours at the traffic-monitoring police station filling out forms and making phone calls to mechanics, insurance agencies etc. Considering this same car is supposed to go to Hungary and then to Austria early tomorrow morning the challenge now is getting it up to speed to be able to take the trip despite its current bashed-in condition.
The car that hit me didn't have any kind of insurance so the driver was fined about 1500 RON and had his license plates removed. He was from Braila and was the kind of guy who makes a potato look smart.
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| Christian Nasulea - 28.12.2008 | |
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Kalinderu
Yesterday was one of those skiing days you just wish would never be over. The Kalinderu ski slope in Busteni still seems to be my favourite. If only it were a bit longer I probably wouldn't even need to go anywhere else.
My snowboarding day started out with temperatures around -13 degrees Celsius, which seems to be good as I am now wearing an additional bit of armour. It was sunny, the snow was good, I met some good new people and got reaquainted with others, all good fun.
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| Christian Nasulea - 28.12.2008 | |
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Snowboarding in Predeal
I've spent my last couple of days mostly in Predeal trying out the ski
slopes. Although it's been snowing for days now, the layer of snow
barely exceeds 30 cm, which means it's nowhere near the kind of snow
cover needed to be able to take on the "Sub Teleferic" ski slope.
There are many things I feel I need to complain about
when it comes to skiing in Predeal: long queues to get on the ski lift,
12 RON for a ski lift ride, no discounts for buying more ski lift
points at once, still only one ski lift for all the slopes, a big patch
of stones in the middle of the "Cocosul" ski slope, stupid people
sleighing on the ski slopes, stupid-er people not doing their job and
thus allowing the aforementioned idiots sleigh and slide down the ski
slopes on their stupid plastic bags and, last but not least, 12 RON FOR
A SKI LIFT RIDE!!!
We did have some good fun though, as you
can see from the video above, shot with the ATC3K, hand-held by Ionut
as he was struggling to stay behind and keep me in the frame while
avoiding all the ski slope traffic. Also featuring Andrei and Simona
who made the last couple of days loads more fun for me.
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| Christian Nasulea - 27.12.2008 | |
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Norad Tracks Santa
If you're going to be at home for Christmas this year this will probably be an interesting thing to look at for a couple of minutes throughout the day.
Watch Santa's progress delivering Christmas presents to children all around the world by going here:
 noradsanta.org
Google and Norad have teamed up this year for the by now traditional Norad Tracks Santa project. So we'll get real-time information about Santa's whereabouts spiced up with photos from Panoramio and videos from YouTube.
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| Christian Nasulea - 25.12.2008 | |
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Valea Dorului Snow Start
Sunday I finally opened up the snowboarding season with a short trip to Valea Dorului on the Bucegi Plateau above Sinaia. Strangely enough it was the only place around here where there was any snow, and there was plenty of it to ensure great skiing and snowboarding conditions.
I have to thank Ionut for joining me, tutoring me and working his magic to cut down our otherwise significant transport costs.
We boarded all the options in Valea Dorului at least once and even enjoyed a bit of powder on one of the untouched routes. The plateau was full of people and, perhaps it was just my impression but, it seemed there were more people snowboarding than there were skiing. The food at the challet was more expensive than ever. The weather was good considering where we were, though I must remember to never leave home without my ski mask again.
All things considered... good stuff! Must do it again!
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| Christian Nasulea - 22.12.2008 | |
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Prague
I've spent the better part of the last week in Prague attending a conference and for this I want to thank everyone I came into contact with in Prague for contributing to make it a pleasant experience.
I don't want to talk about the presentations I attended during the conference here as they will be the subject of other discussions that best fit elsewhere. Instead I want to quickly go through the highlights of what happened in between the conference. Here are the highlights:
- Ice skating at the very old Zimni Stadion early one morning, just before meeting the ambassador of Malaysia.
- Shopping for skiing protective gear in Prague's many sports stores.
- Prague night life with Tural, Aika and all the other very friendly people from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia.
- Uruguay Bull in a Brazilian restaurant in the center of Czech Prague with our Azeri friend. I think you can't get much more intercultural.
- A comparative study of Czech, Polish, Bulgarian and Romanian words for "donkey" over coffee in the Old Town Square Starbucks.
- An exhibition of Inca gold near Gold Street at the Prague castle.
- Refining the art of night time photography
- Going to the train station 3 times to book seats for the return trip and coming back empty handed.
- Looking for the missing train at Hlavni Nadrazi train station and finally boarding the train to Krakow to get back to Romania.
More information and visual aids for all the above can be found in the Prague album in the Photo Gallery.
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| Christian Nasulea - 15.12.2008 | |
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Concert in St. Nicholas' Church
Tonight, in the frey of seeing everything we could of Prague in just a few hours, we stopped at St. Nicholas' Church in the Old Town Square for a concert.
Perhaps it was partly due to the euphoria generated by the freezing cold in the church, but it just felt like those voices were coming from somewhere else, not simply from the two mere mortals in front of us. I briefly glanced back in a moment of clarity at the people behind me and realized just how mesmerized everybody looked.
The enclosed video simply doesn't do it justice but at least you'll get the general idea.
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| Christian Nasulea - 11.12.2008 | |
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To Prague
I'm heading out to Prague in less than 24 hours. Should you happen to find yourselves in the area anytime next week it just might be that I will see you there.
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| Christian Nasulea - 06.12.2008 | |
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