anyway, then grenoble and some climbing in criminal heat. Too hot. Up to Annecy for a planned short stay that evolved into almost two weeks. We went climbing about 20 days on the trip, and took pretty much no climbing photos - not sure how that happened. Here is my girlfriend and her shadow coming back down from a climb somewhere around annecy.
i saw this bottomfeeder and thought instantly of shortstacks back when they infested the 100bb games
then i took a photo of the bottomfeeder and baby bottomfeeder in the context of a cliche holiday photo in some european resort town next to a lake
time to move again, and best graffiti all trip, shame i was wearing my pack when i saw it and didn't think to take it off for the photo
Then we ended up with some friends in the Zillertal valley in Austria. Plan was to do heaps of climbing. It snowed while we were there, and rained. We got a few days in, but mostly ate and drank and complained about the weather. Here's some cheap organic austrian beer from a super-discount supermarket. In the background the ingredients to a classic french old-man-drinking-in-a-cafe-mid-morning drink, creme de cassis + cheap white wine = kir (second in popularity after pastis based on my observations)
then germany and another pretty flower, this time somewhere up the hill from an alpine botanic garden and a crazy bavarian wooden castle thing
the servants quarters from the old castle are now a restaurant, so we ate tasty beer and goulash and more
and then i found some playing cards, what's up with those queens?
from there it was back to munich, a train to frankfurt (arrived midnight), met some people (canadians), started drinking, stopped drinking around 9am to have breakfast, spent the day using coffee to stay awake while i explored frankfurt, off to the airport for my 8pm flight, 10hrs later i was stopping over in seoul, 3hrs later i was getting onto another flight, 12hrs later i was having problems at customs at Auckland airport in NZ, 3hrs later i was in christchurch. Fun ride.
and now, ten weeks since i left the winter and i'm sitting back in NZ. FTP still isn't up and running so it's time to try and remember my poker stars account details. I think there might be $50 sitting in neteller from a slow process test withdrawal after FTP -> neteller stopped working so well, otherwise i'll have to load up from life money.
Things are good.
