Back from skiing.

I just spent the past week skiing in Disentis. It was wonderful. Now I need to upload the pictures of that trip, and of the trip I took to Davos during the WEF and do a couple of postings about those trips.

Copyright - Copywrong: Michael Gisinger at BlogcampSwitzerland_2.0

I'm getting around to a few things I've dropped. This one I should have taken care of quite some time ago. I still have a couple more videos from BlogcampSwitzerland_2.0 that I haven't processed. They're in German, though, and I wasn't all that excited about the topics. However, the exception to all of this is Michael Gisinger's talk on copyright, which I thought was excellent, as was his High German presentation. Michael gives a nice history of copyright and discusses a few views on how copyright is viewed. Unfortunately, if you don't understand German, you won't understand the presentation. If anyone out there wants to tack some subtitles on it, feel free to do so. I can even provide the original video file for some better quality.

Es ist ein bisschen spät. Ich hätte ein video von Blogcamp_2.0, und ein presentation von Michael Gisinger gemacht. Dieser presentation ist sehr interresant. Er spricht von den Geschicte des Copyright. Als das Video ist auf Deutsch, wenn jemand kann Subtitle machen, dass gut ist.

A trip to Laax

From Vals

A picture of Vals will have to suffice, as I don't have any of Laax. The skiing conditions are similar, but the lifts in Vals are mostly surface lifts.

Last tuesday I took a trip out to Laax. I decided taking the train and bus would be a good way to get there, as I was going on my own. Fortunately, SBB (the swiss train service) had a deal on travel and lift tickets, so I ended up paying less than I would have for gas and ticket to get my trip. The connections are great, and the trip was more or less relaxing. Being a weekday, I didn't have to worry to much about the crowds. The views as the train headed down Lake Zurich were wonderful, and the weather was great. It is an adventure, however, to figure out what to do with your skis on the trip. The newer railcars have a luggage/skirack you can put your skis in. I was in an older car on the way down, and ended up placing my skis in the luggage rack over the seats. No problem.

Arriving in Chur for the transfer wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Fortunately, I was in a car that ended up stopping right in front of the escalator. From there it was easy to get to the bus. The bus had a rack in the back for skis and snowboards, so all I had to do was enjoy the trip up.

The bus took me all the way to Laax, though I could have disembarked in Flims. When I arrived at the ticket counter with my coupon from SBB for my ticket, I was told I'd have to pay FIVE FRANKS for the RFID tag card that was my ticket. I was fairly unhappy about this, as nothing anywhere said anything about the extra charge. Though, they had my money at this point, and if I wanted to ski, they were going to make me pay this. Still, it's a rip-off.

It was then time to ski. I worked my way to the top, riding various lifts. I spoke to a number of fellow skiers, all in German. Most were German, though I did speak in a combination of Swiss-German and English to a middle-aged gentleman from Appenzell. All complemented me on my German. The Germans said that I didn't speak with too much of a Swiss accent. I suppose my German is better than I think.

Lunch was interesting, as I had planned on just grabbing something quick, like a burger or brautwurst. Instead, I stumbled into a gourmet restaurant on the summit. It was still fast. However, it was a very nice meal with white tablecloths. I was thinking this is a far cry from what passes for food in the US ski resorts I've been at. I had a nice meal of capuns, which are dumplings filled with bacon or sausage and wrapped in a spinach leaf. They were very good. My mother-in-law also makes excellent capuns as well.

The skiing was pretty good. There was a bit of wind up top, but I found a chairlift on the west side of the area that was servicing a nice slope and that was in the sun. I skied there for a couple of runs, and as I liked this run the best, it was of course the slowest chairlift.

After a couple of runs on the chair, I had to work my way over to the Burton Snowboard Opens. The son of one of my cousins was competing, and that was really the reason I was up at Laax. So, I went over and saw him compete and met up with him and met a few of his friends. It was nice to talk to a few Americans again. Then it was time to go catch my bus home.

All in all Laax is a pretty cool place to ski. The tickets are a bit pricey, but the lifts are great (except for that slow chairlift). The snow was good. The views wonderful. The runs were good as well. In many ways it reminded me of skiing at Crystal Mountain in the Cascades, but the food was so much better.

Rainbows

I was just rightly chastised by the Global Librarian, who lives on the other side of town, for not posting a blog entry since November. December was pretty busy. I was a couple of weeks during the holidays up into the mountains, where I didn't really have much network access. Anyways....

Yesterday we got a storm that passed through, but it created some really nice rainbows. Here's a couple of pictures:

Flashback: Cinque Terre

From Cinque Terre/...

While discussing travelling around Europe with friends at lunch today, someone mentioned the Cinque Terre, and what a wonderful place it is. I mentioned, yeah, I've got links to some pictures of it on my blog. Well I thought I'd written something...

Back in early July I went and met up with some friends of mine from Seattle in the Cinque Terre. It's a wonderful place, with great food. We were staying in a small town just north of the Cinque Terre proper. It's a bit cheaper that way, and a lot less touristy. That said, the proper Cinque Terre is one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. There are many hiking trails in the area, and train service between the small villages on the Cinque Terre is quite good, even if the trains don't quite come up to the standards of those here in Switzerland.

Levanto, a town just north of the Cinque Terre is also an interesting place to visit. There is a small but wonderful public market to be found here.

I spent a couple of hours in Sestri Levante on my way back whilst waiting for the Cisalpino train. I found Sestri quite tourisity, and not quite as nice as the other places I was at.

If you do go to the Cinque Terre, be sure to try restaurant Ciak
in Monterosso. Their seafood ravioli (pictured below, and looked even better when it was brought out.) is wonderful.

From Cinque Terre/...

Three years..

I've been an official resident of Switzerland for three years so far, well as of yesterday.

BlogcampSwitzerland_2.0 Dannie Jost Video "The Swiss Myth"

I'm finally getting around to posting the videos from the Blogcamp. It's been a bit of a long time, but there have been a few roadblocks in the way, such as Google Video's upload client not working quite right. I'd embed this video in the page, but I've got it hosted elsewhere. So, you'll just have to view the video via traditional methods.

Dannie Jost gave the Blogcamp presentation that I saw in English. There might have been one other (not counting the Swiss Startup stuff) presentations in english, but I think they might have been at the same time as Dannie's. Dannie lead a group discussion on the topic of "The Swiss Myth", and what it meant to us. After a bit of a political discussion, the talk moved off into other, more interesting topics. It also wandered off into being discussed in German (so be aware, if you don't understand German).

Enjoy the large quicktime video(300MB), or download with a right click the smaller (100MB) mpeg4 version.