Pit in Geneva

Busy busy

2007-06-09T13:31:00.001+01:00

It's now already two weeks that Tina and I are back from holiday ... and I was quite busy...
as I have changed assignment as of June 1st, with my successor in my old job only coming Jul 1st ... so I am kind off doing 2 jobs currently...

This entire week I was travelling already for the new job - starting to visit some of my new countries I will take care off ... Was visiting Damascus, Dubai and India in 5 days. Now I am really tired given that I got up every morning at around 7 and worked until past midnight. I had expected to have gained at least 5 kilos given the amount of food I got (business lunches every night) - but surprisingly I even lost a bit - must have been the temperature which was well above 35 degrees everywhere I went ;).

Pey just promised before to come and visit us in Geneva in July ... so I take this as a commitment!!
Frankfurt folks - shame on you - when will you come and visit too!!! Want to see you all before Jacks & Jasmina's wedding!!!

Greetings from Geneva ...
Peter

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Nha trang and the beach

2007-05-14T05:38:00.001+01:00

Tina an I are in Nha Trang now ... this part was supposed to be the beach holiday part of our trip ... i.e. less sightseeing and a lot of pool, beach, visiting islands etc... unfortunately the weather is not so good, so I write on the blog instead :)) and we have plenty of time to read lots. just finished to read a book about the life of kim phuk, who is the girl in a famous picture of the vietnam war running away after her village after having been hit by a napalm attack ... this is really a book worth reading! depressive, commotional but at the same time full of strength as well...

really pleased to see that alba & gaborno and jack are reading the blog ;)) greetings and kisses from vietnam!!!

hope that it finally stops raining ... so that we can rent a bike and go around

ciao ciao
peter

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My Son and Hoi An beach

2007-05-11T13:58:00.001+01:00

Almost forgot - today we were brave and got up very early at 5.30 pm to drive to My Son - a site with ancient temples of the Cham dynasty ... there is only few temples left, because this was heavily bombed by the Americans during the Vietnamese war, which you can really see because there is plenty of big craters all over.

Back at 11 am we spent the day with plenty of fittings at the tailor and tonight we went to the beach at 6pm ... we rented a little motorbike and threw ourselves into the crazy Vietnamese traffic ... it was really worth is - the beach was great and we stayed there until it got dark with Steve and Mardi - the nice Australian couple we met in Hanoi and then in Hoi An again. Everywhere people really want to sell you stuff ... but very often they are also happy to just talk to you (and maybe sell you some stuff ;) and to to learn English ... E.g. I met a girl today who was selling stuff on the beach and she had started to learn English so she could make money selling to tourists and this also allows her to take English lessons so that one day she will be able to work in a Hotel and not be a street seller anymore ... Really impressed by that!!!

Ciao ciao
Peter

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Tailors in Hoi An

2007-05-11T13:45:00.001+01:00

One of the big things in Hoi An is all the tailors that you can go to to make suits etc... Somehow this business has started some years ago and how they have around 200 tailors in the whole city .. I already did extensive research before leaving for the holiday on the internet to understand the places to go to ... and I went to a place that is really recommended everywhere called Yaly... to put a long story short - I ended up having 4 suits made and 8 shirts ;) ... this afternoon I had the 4th fitting and the stuff is simply wonderful. They have really good selection of fabric in Yaly and they did the suits exactly as I wanted them ;) ... if you want to have pure cashmere wool with no sintentic fabrics it starts at around 200 USDs .... beautyful imported fabrics (especially Italian ones ;) are up to 400 USDs ... but chosing good fabric really pays off, because the stuff simply looks amazing. And they do it exactly the style you want - so I went for the Italian style (off course) with the suits being more fitty around the waist and also the pants (dont know how to call it) ... Tina obviously did extensive shopping too ;)) Good that we leave tomorrow otherwise I am sure we would buy even more ... haha

Ciao ciao
Peter

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Hue

2007-05-11T13:34:00.001+01:00

After Hanoi and Ha Long Bay Tina and I have taken a flight and travelled about 600km further south to Hue - a city with a lovely citadel. We stayed in the Saigon Morin Hotel - a beautyful Hotel with colonial french architecture in the heart of the city. All the hotels we stayed in so far we found on tripadvisor.com, which is a really cool site if you travel, because it gives you traveller's ratings and opinions about hotels etc.

From Hue we took a train further south to Danang - a ride of about 3 hours that cost us 2 USDs (and that price included lunch and water on the train ;) ... Funny thing was we met this nice Vietnamese guy on the train who works with Swiss travel agencies in St. Gallen - he wore a Swiss T-shirt and was really proud and happy to meet somebody from Switzerland. Even funnier thing was that he had a big Swiss German accent talking English ... Arriving in Danang he arranged an extremely cheap taxi for us to go to Hoi An for 120000 dong (about 6 USDs) ... for a taxi ride more than 1 hour away ... Here in Hoi An we stay in one of the nicest Hotel i probably ever stayed in - it's called Ha An Hotel and it beats every top end hotel in friendlyness and attention to detail they put...it is simply amazing ... the rooms look so nice (I will need to put pictures) ... and for example this afternoon they realised we went to the room for a sleep and out of the blue they brought us fresh tea and fruit ... I definitely believe tourism will have a big future in Vietnam.

Ciao ciao
Peter

Ha Long Bay and cars in Vietnam

2007-05-07T10:59:00.001+01:00

Yesterday and today we did a boat trip to Halong Bay ... its a Unesco world heritage site...really beautiful. Cool thing is we stayed overnight on the boat .. with swimming in the sea, a lot of really good Vietnamese food and plenty of Vietnamese beer and vodka ... with no hangover at all today! The trip to Ha Long were the boat started is about 3 hours ... an adventure. You thought Italian drivers in Palermo are nuts? They are the most disciplined drivers compared to Vietnamese - never seen something like this. Vietnames cars constantly hoot, even on (what looks like) highways .. to just make sure cars (and especially scooters) get out of the way. What was really funny - i saw this little vietnamese kid playing with 2 toycars ... and the sound he was making playing with the car was not 'brum brum' (how I would have expected it) but instead he was going 'beep beep'. We also met a very nice Austrialian couple on the boat - Steve and Mardi, who actually had taken the Vodka we didnt get a hangover from. We will meet them tonight again for dinner.

Tina says hello to everybody - she wants to go out now...so I better stop writing.

Ciao ciao
Peter

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Yeah... Bangkok and Hanoi

2007-05-07T10:41:00.001+01:00

So ... Tina and I are finally on holiday ... We had quite a good flight starting on Wednesday evening in
Geneva via Frankfurt to Bangkok.
We had a a 2 hour break in Frankfurt so it was really cool that Alba and Jasmina came to the airport so we could
have dinner together ... it was great to see you - we miss you!!! The flight was cool, plane was half empty so we
had plenty of space. In Bangkok we stayed at the same place Jack and Jasmina stayed when they were there - in the Millenium Hilton - highly recommended, seldom seen a better and more friendly place. Highlights of the short 1 day stay we had were definitely
- the amazingly friendly people (and some amazingly friendly tuc tuc drivers ... haha ... see next point)
- riding the Tuc Tuc 2 times with both drivers trying to cheat us with their standard scams ... instead of bringing us to the destinations we wanted to go to, they brought us to some shops where they get commission ... good thing was we had our own private tuc tuc driver bringing us from one sight to the next, always waiting for us, but being dissappointed that we didnt buy anything in the shops they took us too
- the 1 hour oil massage we treated ourselves with in the spa in the Hilton

Bangkok is very interesting, although we only had a little more than 1 day - not even close to get a flavour of the city..so I guess we will have to definitely get back there one day. Yesterday we then flew to Hanoi in Vietnam - this place is magnificient. More scooters in 1 city than in the whole of Italy together. We are staying in a very nice little
hotel in the old quarter which we found on tripadvisor.com - it's called Hotel Elegance (http://www.hanoielegancehotel.com/). They even have a PC with DSL in the room, which makes it easier to book some more hotels we will need on the rest of the trip (and to write some stuff on the blog, given that Gabor and Alba seem to read it ... haha). We were also lucky today, as we managed to book this really nice boat tour to Halong bay tomorrow - with a nightover on the boat. Just hope the better will be better, because today it was quite rainy.

Ciao ciao
Peter

Off to Vietnam....yesssssss

2007-05-02T11:23:00.001+01:00

Ha...haven't blogged for ages....anyway I guess nobody

is visiting the blog any longer ... Am off with Tina

to a 2 and a half week holiday to Vietnam- so maybe I will

blog from there sometime if I find some nice Vietnamese

internet cafes ...

Ciao ciao

Peter

Saas-Fee glacier skiing and the Matterhorn

2006-11-27T21:27:00.000+01:00

Today my legs and body kind of hurt - but its really worth it. The skiing weekend in Saas-Fee was simply fantastic. We only managed to go skiing on Sunday, as on Saturday the top of the glacier was too windy. Hence we decided to do a little sightseeing trip to Zermatt, which is not to far away from Saas-Fee.

We went up to 3100m with the highest outdoor cogwheel railway (www.gornergrat.ch) to enjoy the view of 29 snow and ice-covered four-thousand-meter-high mountains including such famous greats us Matterhorn (4478 m), Liskamm (4527 m) and Dufour-Spitze (4634 m).

The Matterhorn is really spectacular - see below.

On Sunday the weather was great for skiing - we went to 3500m to ski on the Glacier. The lifts were pretty basic but the feeling to be on skis again was simply fantastic. Look at below and get envious... Can't wait now for X-mas skiing.

And Alba seems to have a place there too ;)))

Ciao, Peter

I'm writing again ...

2006-11-20T20:06:00.000+01:00

Ok....Gabor has complained to me that I never write anything in my blog.
This will change from today ... or at least I will try to keep you a bit updated regularly on what's going on here. (Don't worry, you will not have to read whole novels like on Alba's blog)

To make you really jealous, a picture of where I will spend my next weekend.

This is Saas-Fee (www.saas-fee.ch) and it will be my first skiing weekend this season. I can't wait for it! So who will be the first one to come and visit us here???

Ciao, Peter

P.S. Gabor, as proof that you are reading my blog, post a comment!!!

The 2006km tour in 2006

2006-09-17T11:18:00.000+01:00

This is about the fantastic tour that I did last week from 7th until 10th September... In Geneva there was a public holiday on Thursday, therefore I decided to take Friday off to do an extensive motorbike tour through the Alps to drive from Geneva to Südtirol through the Swiss mountains..

I managed to convince Erich to join me - so off we went on Thursday morning and only came back late on Sunday night ....

At the end I discovered a funny detail ... when we came back totally exhausted we had done 2006 km ... in 2006 ... and this in 4 days through almost all mountain streets ...

Now to the tour ...

DAY 1:
The first day took us from Geneva through whole Swizerland and the cantons of Vaud, Wallis, Ticino, Uri and Graubuenden to my beloved home country Südtirol (South tyrol). The ride was fantastic ... we crossed 10 different Alpine passes (see below in the tour details the individual passes with its height) ... with fantastic mountains and glaciers ... that's why I feel so at home in Switzerland ...

The start at Erich's place at 8:20 in the morning

The highlight was surely the last pass - the Stilfserjoch, where we climbed 2758m - the second highest Pass in the Alps (we will do the highest one, the Col d'Iseran on our way back ;-) On one side of the pass you have 36 so called Kehren/tornanti (don't know what they are called in English, kind of U-turn curves) and on the other side you have 48. If you have a motorbike....you know the fun ;-) (Check it out at www.stilfserjoch.it). From the Stilfserjoch you have a great view of the Ortler glacier(3905m) and the highest moutain group in Südtirol with about 30 summits over 3500. You see the glacier in the picture below in the background. It was pretty cold up there and we had been escaping the rain for the last couple of hours ... plus ít started to get dark and both our bikes were on reserve petrol ... So we decided to stop in one of the first villages down in the valley to stay over night ... we found a Hotel in Glurns ... Glurns is one of the smallest cities in the Alps - cool are the completele preserved city walls from the 13th century.

DAY 2:
On day 2 we started around 10pm from Glurns and did a little de-tour back to Switzerland through the Mustair valley to take the Ofenpass and then returned via Austria to Italy across the Reschenpass. We stopped along the Reschensee, which is a lake, or better a water supply dam with a very interesting history. What looks like a photomontage in the picture on the left is actually the remainder of the church of the town of Altgraun - a town which was flooded to use the lake as water supply for electricity production. The flooding was the result of a reckless project of Montecatini, a chemical company (which was later integrated into Edison). The project, originally a fascisct pre-war project, was executed in 1950 - 163 houses were destroyed and 523 hectare of land flooded.
The next stop took us to Meran, second biggest city in Südtirol (www.meraninfo.it). The remaining of the day was riding along further passes and at the end of the day we drove to Brixen, my home and natal town and the most beautyful place in the world ;-) (www.brixen.org).

DAY 3:
On the 3rd way my brother and Marco joined us for a truly amazing tour through the fantastic and impressive Dolomites, doing 8 passes. According to Reinhold Messner, the first man who climbed all summits higher than 8000m in the world - the Dolomites are the most beautyful mountains in the world.

So I will not write a lot, but let the pictures below talk ;-) The Dolomites are not only fantastic for motorbiking, but also for climbing, hiking and especially skiing in the winter. Simply check it out here ... www.dolomiten.net.

On the left is the mountain Schlern and above is the Rosengarten, two very well known mountains in the Dolomites.

Marco, Erich and my brother Giorgio in front of the Rosengarten (on the left).

Me and my bike in front the Sella on the Pordoijoch (on the right).

DAY 4:
Day 4 was our day to get back to Geneva - we started at 8am in the morning and it ended in a 15 hour tour the force with a couple of hour stops due to heavy thunderstorms. We decided not to take the way back through Switzerland - but go through Northern Italy (Como, Varese, Torino, Susa) and via France to take the highest pass in the Alps, the Col d'Iseran with 2770m. This pass (and the picture on the lefft ;-)) was really worth the whole effort - it is a must for every motorbiker - I even almost killed a marmot, that crossed my way.

After the Col d'Iseran and 100km before Geneva we got into heavy rain and thunderstorms. We had to stop twice as we were right in the middle of lightings and thunder - so we waited until the worst was over. In Annecy I even learned my bike can swim, as we were driving through a flooded street and riding through it the water was even splashing above my head.

TOUR DETAILS.

1. day
Start: Geneva
via Brig, Nufenenpass (2480m), Gotthardpass (2108m), Andermatt, Oberalppass (2044m), Chur, Lenzerheidepass (1549m), Julierpass (2284m), St. Moritz, Berninapass (2328m), Forcola di Livigno (2315m), Livigno, Passo d’Eira (2208m), Passo di Foscagno (2291m), Stilfserjoch (2258m)
Destination: Glurns

2. day
Start: Glurns
via Val Mustair, Ofenpass (2149m), Martina, Franzenshoehe, Reschenpass (1504m), Meran, Gampenpass (1512m), Fondo, Mendelpass (1363m), Bozen
Destination: Brixen

3. day
Start: Brixen
via: Waidbruck, Seis, Voels, Tiers, Nigerpass (1688m), Karerpass (1745m), Vigo di Fassa, Moena, Passo S. Pellegrino (1918m), Falcae, Cencenighe, Alleghe, Passo di Fedaia (2047m), Pordoijoch (2239m), Arabba, Passo di Falzarego (2106m), Passo di Valparola (2192m), Badia, St. Martin, Wuerzjoch (2004m), Luesen
Destination: Brixen

4. day
Start: Brixen
via: Brixen, Mezzocorona, Passo del Tonale (1884m), Sondrio, Como, Varese, Torino, Susa, Col d'Iseran (2770m), Val d'Isere, Albertville, Annecy
Destination: Geneva

The first entry ...

2006-09-16T19:59:00.000+01:00

Andrea just started a blog....and has explained me how this stuff works ... seems really easy...and here we go. Wanna definitely post the great pictures and story of my motorbike tour, that I did last week ... from Thursday to Sunday ....