3rd January 2007

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a really good festive season!!! After my mad December with way too many parties, alcohol, chocolate and whatever else is part of this crazy season I headed to the Swiss Alps on 24th December. For once the flight was actually ok, if I decide to ignore the panic of the previous days when Heathrow cancelled I don’t know how many flights due to f-o-g. No comment….

Anyways, after some proper duty free shopping (Yay! The only European country where you can actually do that!) the flight arrived relatively on time, I jumped on a train to Landquart (that’s about 1 1/2 hours from Zurich) and then on to the funny red trains to the final stop ( that’s another hour and something) – Scuol. It’s not a very well know town, but I have spent most of my summer & winter holidays there since I was a little girl. Scuol (website) is near the Austrian border, about an hour from the well-known St. Moritz, but nothing like it really.

The snowy view on the left is from Tuesday morning, shortly before leaving… CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? No snow whatsoever for over a week and it obviously comes down in kilos the night before my departure. According to the latest update about half an hour ago…ladies & gentleman it’s STILL snowing. Call that bad luck or what??

Well, there was a tiny-weeny bit of snow, just to decorate the trees in the valleys and a bot of the fields, but skiing was definitely out of the question. Some nutters tried it anyways, but with 20cm natural and a little bit of artificial snow on the slopes…let’s say the hospital was overrun with broken bones and the rescue helicopter was flying a lot more than usual. But, no need to despair. Way too many things to do anyways: decorate the Christmas Tree, eat lots of Swiss delicacies (try Landjaeger sausages, they’re fantastic), sleep a lot, sleep even more, watch many DVD’s or useless christmas telly, go for long walks, hit the shops (???yeah, right…the butcher perhaps!), play silly computer games, read, and so on, and so on It was brilliant in every way, and I probably slept enough to cover the next 2 month.

So, what to do to avoid total boredom? Easy, take a carriage up the mountains, sit in the sun and indulge in a really good lunch. These were our two horses that very bravely dragged us up the mountain for over an hour. You should have seen the jealous looks from those poor sods walking the same path..he he he! It can’t really get better than this! Of course…if there would have been enough snow it would have been a sledge instead of a carriage, but… I am not complaining. After a couple of hours the carriage took us back to the valley. I felt a bit like an elderly lady with my blanket, but it was worth it!!!

This is the view on the valley behind the farm where we paused. It was the 31st December and even if we were probably at 1800m height, still no snow. I know I am repeating myself, live with it….it is very frustrating if you have spent a few winter holidays there and always had the possibility of building entire snowman-families without the risk of running out of snow! Enough of this… check out the carriage in the bottom right corner, the dwarf with the red hat is my dad

Here you go, a short summary of a perfectly relaxing holiday.

London has me back, I have survived my first day back at work and it is currently raining. It can only get better. So, for the moment I wish all of you a fantastic new year…

Tine