2016 Zaferna Ski-Seminar

[If you just want to flip through pictures without labels/context, here's the whole album]

I've just finished up a week in the Austrian Alps (although almost Germany; the only road into Kleinwalsertal comes from Germany), in a "Chalet" (Hütte) with 40 people from Uni Muenster, mostly undergrads, many just about to start their Master's. The students could get some credit for this as an actual seminar; they prepared a talk (there were 14) and we had a rather swift pace.

[Getting from Münster to Kleinwalsertal and cooking for 40]
It started with the bus leaving Münster at 23:30 a week ago, Friday night. It began with a group effort to load all the rented ski-equipment, luggage and food into the bus, which was fuller than usual (normally the group is kept closer to 30 than 40).

I might've gotten 4 or 6 hrs of sleep, and ended up eating a sandwich for breakfast when we stopped in Allgäu (still in Germany).

As soon as we popped out, we had to unload the bus for the previous group to climb in, then carry everything to the lift and load the lift (after sending a few people up to unload on top). The Zaferna lift is astonishingly slow. Shown here at sunrise, not moving yet:

looking out the common-room window, at the Zaferna Lift

We then carried (with some help from some sleds) the drinks and luggage and food and skis to the Zaferna Hütte, which may or may not belong to the Uni Münster; it's at least run by the Uni, and Uni groups have "first dibs" on its use.

view that morning out one common-room window

The weather was gorgeous, the snow was deep, and the first thing we did after unpacking was to split into groups, some skiing and some learning to ski. More on that later.

The first two talks were that day, as was my "dienst"; I was "Chefköchin" (head cook) for the day. I made Szegedy goulash. It was a hit, and I was surprised at how quickly everyone inhaled 12kg of potatoes. Thankfully, I had 3-4 people helping out, so had them peeling potatoes, stirring onions (with a giant wooden paddle-spoon thing) and grabbing ingredients.

Something we had to be careful about was the "Pistenraupe" (Slope-caterpillar), an amazing machine that could come by the hut any time between 17:00 and 08:00 the next day, which kept us in the hut all night. Also, the lift we had to ride to get to our hut stopped running at 16:30; one day, a group had to hike up the whole hill in their ski boots (and someone ended up injuring her toe through this)

[Sunday and Thursday -- Hikes in the area]
Despite the snow on the first day, the weather started heating up -- the forecast was rain, and I decided to go for a gentle hike instead of going skiing. We walked up and over to Heuberg, the next Lift-area, and found a restaurant that had vegetarian schnitzel, for the vegetarian in the group.  On the walk back, we caught sight of some beavers (otters?) sporting scarves.

The hike on Thursday was during the snow, down the lift and down to and along the river.
The snow really dampened the noise; in the mornings and evenings, everything was quiet but the rushing of the river. It was nice to get a look at it. It was snowing, which I haven't yet figured out how to deal with taking pictures of.

[Learning to ski] 
There was someone to teach the beginners how to ski and someone to give lessons to the somewhat-experienced. I ended up with the beginners, having never done this before.  Turns out, trying to learn to ski as an adult is rough.

We had a very throw-in-the-deep-end-and-learn-to-swim kind of approach, with a steep hill on the first day. I fell down every single time I tried to turn and got a wicked giant bruise, and took a break after a few hours of falling to eat a proper meal and have some semi-alone-time.  The next day I took a break, and then was up for more lessons. Another person had had to sit out as well (she got her knee looked at by a doctor after feeling injured) , so we ended up splitting the beginner's group into the "very beginners" (her and myself) and the not-so-beginners (the rest), with plans to meet after lunch.

The weather was warm and sunny and beautiful (and the snow was melting :/).
The awesome snowman that greeted us had started to melt:

Skiing was terrible that day and full of me freaking out about falling off/down the mountain, but after about an hour of mucking around, something clicked and I made it down the hill without falling over.
This is the view from the beginner's hill (which apparently belongs to a ski school (or multiple ones)), which explained the constant flow of tiny children up and down the hill.

beginner-hill view

So, my learning-to-ski went:

• day 1, nothing but falling and bruises and being convinced I'd fall off the mountain 
• day 2 (after a day off): going down to the beginner's hill and freaking out the whole time, until the last 10 minutes, when I learned the "snow plow" and life got better. Although, my "plow" was me crouched way over (and leaning forwards) to "brake" as much as possible. 
• days 3 and 4 similar to day 2, but much more coming down the hill without falling over, after an hour of freaking out
• the last day, at hohe Ifen -- no fear, perfect (clearly beautifully designed and artificial) beginner's practice area, which I rocked for an hour and a half

Friday's weather was awesome

On Friday I made it out (finally; had tried and failed in Wednesday) to Hoher Ifen, which was a solid hour away from us.  They had an amazing beginner's area. There was a bumpy hill, a flat area, a way around a tree -- and everything was long and wide enough that even when I lost control, I could get it back.

View to the right from the top of the beginner hill (that's the tree you could opt to ski around):

That was great. The hill was perfect, I wasn't freaked out at all, I was practicing standing up like a normal person and skiing semi-normally. From this kind of thing to this, although I was moving the poles from one side of my body to the other to help initiate turns, so maybe like the ski-pole version of this.

viewing looking up the first big lift. Much more impressive IRL

After my awesomeness on the beginner hill area, I thought I'd take the lift up to the "Mittelstation"
and check out a blue route (for the first time). Sadly, it started off with a super steep hill, and my legs weren't up to it, so after crashing into some snow, I went back to the lift and called it a day.

The next lift from there you needed to be on skis for (looking up Ifen):

After giving up on the blue route, I went back to the lift area and took a bunch of pictures. The views were breath-taking. I thought about going all the way to the top, but some clouds or snow or fog were moving in and I figured I wouldn't get enough of a view before I'd have to come back down

[A little about the math/talks/common area:]

In case you thought I'd say nothing about the math, here's a little about the talks.
I appreciated how it started with things I knew,  (spaces, homology) and then went into what I didn't (Rips/Delauney/Alpha Complexes/Persistence diagrams). I don't know if it means I now really want to read the source books, but I'm open to perusing some papers.  Here's a run-down of topics and some over the source material.

The room between talks:

And a gratuitous out-of-context picture of some slides:

and, to end, a picture of an awesome moonrise. 

There was a beautiful moonrise during one of the talks. My camera made this look much earlier than it is; this was very late sunset/early evening:

sunset- looking towards Riezlern/Oberstdorf/Germany

Oristano--a week.23--29.08.2015

So, if you want to plan a trip to Sardinia, I recommend basing yourself out of Oristano. There's a fair amount of hiking and ruins (e.g. Tharros) in addition to a variety of beaches.  In particular, I'd like to come back to the island at some point and do a tour of the Nuraghe.

Here's a map of the area to give you a sense of scale and direction (Torre Grande is labeled, which is where the beach of the first day to Oristano was):

Oristano and the area

Here's a nice link talking about the best beaches.

Compared to Cagliari, I found Oristano sleepier with pastels and peaches and muted tones to the buildings. It also felt a little more run down.

We passed by this quite a few times:

Huge Bouganvillea -- does it start on the ground or on the balcony?

The next picture shows well what I mean by pastels:

typical colors of typical row-houses

The routine this week has been:

• morning breakfast, walking (or taking the car) down to a Cafe, such as this one, by the statue of Eleonora d'Arborea, or an instance of Moka Efti. 
• (often) visit a beach (San Giovanni di Sinis or Mari'Ermi)
• (usually) come back for lunch 
• nap/explore/buy supplies
• whatever/dinner

On the first full day, we got a late start going to the beach in large part due to indecision about whether it'd be worth it, due to rough waves. We ended up at San Giovanni di Sinis. Here's a nice map (taken on a later date, from a different spot in the same larger "beach"):

The first two days we went to the beach (spiaggia) of San Giovanni di Sinis, in about the same stretch of beach. The water was super rough, but still fun.

I think this next one is my favorite beach pic:

Rough seas at San Giovanni

It's easier to sea the crashing waves in this next picture:

It was too rough to really swim properly, so there was a lot of walking in the water and letting the waves push me around.

Relevant words in Italian:
Spiaggia (beach), mare (sea), brutto (ugly -- used to describe this rough and choppy condition).

On Wednesday, we checked out a hot-springs spa halfway to Cagliari.

On Thursday,  back to the beach routine (and now with more guests around) we ended up going to Mari'Ermi, one of a family of beaches known for its awesome quartz-based "sand" (really, rice-sized pebbles). It's very long and very shallow and, due to not being sandy (or choppy weather), very clear. I got to try Stand Up Paddling (pretty hard, but fun) and snorkeled a bit.

I don't know any of these people, but it's a good sampling of what you see on the beach -- umbrellas (at least the one on the right clearly is lined from some SPF protectiong), tiny tents (for changing, shade, places for kiddoes to nap), bronzed people and a dog.

Now a picture of just the water. So clear! So shallow! so much white "sand"!

The "sand" didn't really behave like normal sand. For one, not quite as nice to walk on. Trade-off: really really easy to get off of you and out your bags/towels/whatnot.

Footsteps in the quartz pebble "sand"

I tried to take the classic close-up-on-some-sand picture (like this one) and failed. If you look at a bigger picture, the focus is a mess. So, here's a small one. It at least gives you a good sense of scale (keeping in mind that I have tiny hands):

After a morning at the beach,  I noticed that Is Arutas was only 2km away and I'd already looked up the bus schedule (almost no cell phone reception out there on the beach), so I opted to walk there and take the bus from there home.  I first ate at one of these "shacks" (Il Quarzto Blanco), an untoasted panini and a cola, then headed out, making good use of my (rain) umbrella to shade me from the post-noon sun.

The terrain away from the water is rough and mostly dry, scrub and hillocks. Which this picture doesn't show so much, but I liked the wall:

I took no good pictures at Is Arutas (I was feeling a bit self-conscious snapping pictures of the wall of humanity -- the crowd there was much denser than at Mari'Ermi, so ended up only with a garish seemingly-overexposed thing. Here's someone else's picture.  It shows the rock I was standing on. I decided to just give up and take the bus home in 20 minutes, since I was pretty tired. Also, because the next bus was in 5 hours and I had no umbrella and no shade to hide in.

On Friday, we went to San Giovanni di Sinis beach again, but a different part, past and down some rocks. It was much nicer and more interesting. Also, the water was very calm.

It's very shallow for a long ways. Every person-speck in this picture is standing or could be:

A calm day at Giovanni di Sinis

A closer picture of those rocks:

Looking towards the tower, this time from the beach. Again with the difficulty with lighting.

Here's a picture looking away from the tower -- all the people are again standing in the water:

In the far right of this picture is the staircase one has to clamber down to this beach. It's worth it

I wasn't willing to go too far into the water with my camera, so this is my only "no, really, it's so clear!" picture:

Outside of beaches, I did some small amount of lunch/dinner cooking (pasta fresca! amazing) and also went to have the "best Gelato in Oristano" (Caffeterria-Gelateria 38 on Plaza Marano). I had two scoops (due gusti). The flavors are blackberry(mora) and fig(fichi).

(Likely) my last Sardinia post, as my flight is tomorrow afternoon. So, ciao!

Cagliaria.Sardinia.Italy.Day2

Yesterday I left my small suitcase at the B&B and headed out with the intent of going to the saltflat wildlife refuge thing. Only to be confronted by far-off storm clouds and a rising wind. Ok, change of plans. It's a good day to go to the ”Citadel of Museums", in particular, the Archaeological museum.  

I had planned to first swing by the Mercato San Benedetto, but had not taken into account the fact that it was Sunday, and apparently it is not open on Sundays. Thankfully, the museum(s) were near-ish, so I headed off that way.

Pictures from the walk up the hill, looking over Cagliari:

Looking towards the storm (in the general direction of Sant'Elia, where I was the day previous to swim in the afternoon):

The museum starts with some impressive Bronze-Age era (maybe earlier?) stone monuments, some 8,000 or so of which can be found all over Sardinia, called Nuraghe.

one Nuraghe model. I was surprised by how large they seemed to have been

Additionally, the "Giants' Tombs", which seemed more like your standard half-buried-in-a-hill kind of prehistoric monuments:

They also had a number of molds used for making (bronze) spearheads and so, which I hadn't seen in a museum before:

I find myself always impressed with how old pottery seems to hold up pretty well, even when not buried in mud or ash.

Assuming I understood the label, this was found near Olbia

Head jar.

There are a lot of  "statues of giants" with matching tiny metal sculptures, of four general sorts. The text that went with these basically said "we have no idea what their purpose was" but super duper long-winded, with weird poetic-seeming commentary. The small matching metal sculptures were somehow traded or something, they think. No complete sculpture has survived, which is surprising as there were so many of them. They have lots of partial ones.

Model of a Nuraghe on the left, and the boxer on the right (two types of the 4 statues of giants):

So, Sardinian timeline: Bronze age, time passes, ~750BC Punic settlement, ~250BC Roman settlement. Then we apparently stop caring (at least in this museum).

Some of the museum's contents were from graves, some from temples, some from shipwrecks off the coast, not so far from Sardinia itself, such as these Amphorae.

Niro, looking like a boss:

Some other dude; I really liked the period where Roman (burial) sculptures got very lifelike, to the point of even showing kind of grumpy people. Maybe he's supposed to look regal, but he looks grumpy to me.

I found the collection of odd hands kind of creepy.

This thing which I'd been describing as a flowering bush is in fact not. It looks a lot more like a tiny poinsettia. I'm told it's a Bougainvillea.

After the museum (and after the minor storm), I walked around the Castello district and took a few pictures.  There is a surprisingly useful Cagliari app (free!) which has suggested walking routes and sites. I was fighting hunger and a bit of exhaustion from all the walking, so didn't do everything I'd intended (e.g. the Tower of St. Pancras and the Elephant Tower remained unscaled by me).

view of Cagliari post-storm

In this next picture you can kind of half-see the wall/ramparts I was standing on:

you can tell here how much further down the rest of the city is

Nice view of the Devil's Saddle (seen from a different angle in the last post):

I walked to this square (sort of the south end of the Castello district), and almost ate lunch at the small cafe there, which primarily served beer and very small pastries.  That's a satue of St. Francis in the middle.

Facing sort of behind me at the same square. The church is on the list of things to go see, but it was full (being sunday).  Chiesa Santa Maria or so.

A future goal (for the trip back): Castello St. Michelle

Somewhere nearby was an elevator up to a nice viewing platform (elevator up from the lower part of the city, so not relevant for me, albeit a bit amusing.  That's what I'm standing on in this next picture (squinty proof I was here):

Walked a fair amount more. Ended up walking down the hill a bit and ducked into a passageway to check out a place called Marrakech. The owner knew at once I wasn't Italian-speaking and asked if I knew French, which we then used to communicate, choppily. Had Tajin (biggest chickpeas I'd ever had) and sardines.  If you ever want to be amused (or have your patience tested), eat bone-in fish with me. I am hopeless at it, to the point where the shop owner commented to me ("il pesce è difficile da mangiare", or a French-Italian mish-mash of that) and looked sympathetic.

It was adjacent to a Youth Hostel, and very cheap (pro tip: if looking for cheap grub, go looking for youth hostels and what's adjacent).

The rest of the afternoon was hot; I stopped for Gelato (fig&nut and lemon&basil) and then a coffee. Spent some quality time reading.  Wandered to my B&B to pick up my suitcase and caught the train to Oristano, where I met up with my friends and we headed to the beach for a drink and to unwind.