Descent of Speed

My train pulled into Simferopol bout 5:30 in the morning. I shoved my bags into a locker, and grabbed my skateboard and started skating around town. Unfortunately I didn’t really know where anything was, and the sidewalks got progressively worse. After a couple of hours I decided to head on to Yalta.
Yalta lies about 100 kilometers from Simferopol, and one way to get there is to take the longest trolley line in the world. For 12.40 hz I hopped on board. Just under 3 hours later the trolley arrived in Yalta, not the fastest way to go!
I found my hotel but couldn’t check in yet, so I took a walk along the beach. I didn’t know it yet, but the beach in Yalta is basically split into two my a small harbor. My hotel was just to the east of the harbor. The beaches east of the harbor are almost all pay beaches, from about $3 to $20! The free beaches were completely full, almost entirely covered in towels. Even the pay beaches were fairly full! Pretty much any flat spot near the water had a towel, or a person laying on it.
After checking into my hotel, I took a short nap. Getting up at 4:30 in the morning, after a fitful night on the train doesn’t leave one very refreshed. It was about 4:00pm when I decided to go out for some siteseeing. I left my tour guide at home, and the hotel didn’t h]have a map. I didn’t know where anything was. I knew one of the sites I wanted to see was near the water just outside of town. So I decided to head out looking for the Swallow’s Nest. I decided to head west along the beach. This is when I discovered the promenade. Apparently this is Yalta’s biggest tourist attraction (as I later found out, most of the rest of the sites are actually outside of town.) The promenade is a nice wide boardwalk along the beach. There were several shops and a hand full of restaruants and cafes, as well as some amusement rides. At the end of the promenade is a small park. Through this park you can walk along or behind more paid beaches. I walked for a while before I reached what seemed to be the end of the walk, and still no Swallow’s Nest. Later I discovered I wasn’t far away!
I decided to retrace my steps and get some dinner. I found a restaraunt on the promenade, so I could people watch while eating dinner. I ordered a BBQ Chicken. I’m not sure what the feed their chicken in Ukraine, but definitely not hormones, as I got the skinniest chicken in the world. Even the bones were skinny, the half of chicken lookd like a pancake! And it wasn’t BBQed. Thankfully I also ordered a nice large plate of potatoes, as the $3 order of bread consisting of 3 slices of bread didn’t go far to sate my hunger.
The promenade was full of people slowly meandering, as well as street artists and musicians. There was even a concert and a fireworks show.
Friday I decided to do some more siteseeing. I got on the internet the night before and found some maps, so I was off to see the cathederal in town. This was actually one of the few sites to see in the city itself. Everything else lies 10 kilometers or more outside of town, and require taking a bus. I found the main cathederal, which look spectacular, but wasn’t very large. On the way I spotted a small sky chair, so I hopped on board. The door just latches shut! I rode up to the top of the hill, and as far as I can tell the only thing up there was a large war memorial for both WWI and WWII.
After visiting a few other churches in town, both specactular on the outside, but fairly plain on the inside. I decided to hit the beach for a bit. Another night spent people watching on the promendade. The big draw tonight was a fashion show.
Saturday I hopped on a bus and went to Lavida Palace. I started off on the wrong bus, well the bus took me in the right direction but I was above the palace, and had to hike down the hill. The palace isn’t the spectacular to look out, but its claim to fame was a big meeting between Chruchill, Rosevelt and Stalin. From the palace there was a path the led 7 kilometers to the Swallow’s Nest. I decided to go for a walk, and the end of the path there was some random, closed wall, but no Swallo’s Nest. I thought I saw it a while back, so I retraced my steps about 2K! I could see the building off in the distance, but again I had to climb down the hill.
The Swallow’s Nest is an impressive site for such a small building, and has to be the largest tourist attraction in the world that is a restaurant! It is a small castle like building, perched on the edge of a cliff. As you approach, the way is lined with sourvenier stalls, and you have to even pay to get close to the restaraunt. There are several cafes and souvenir stands surronding the building. I thought it was ironic that there are cafes that you can sit out to admire another restaraunt! It was still a pretty cool building.
It was still light out when I got back to Yalta, so I decided to hit the Fairytale Park. This is a small park, next to the zoo on the outskirts of Yalta. The park has several sculptures that bring fairytales to life. The heart of the park is a collection of wooden carvings, that depict many scenes from fairy tales. I saw the seven dwarves, and I think I recognized some of the other tales.
Back in town, on Saturday night, the promendade was completely packed, it was almost impossibile to walk there were so many people. There was a concert going on, but I was hungry. There weren’t many restaraunts, and most of them were full. I decided to eat back at my hotel. For some reason the service was really slow. I was almost done eating when the fireworks show started. The show lasted for almost a half hour! I decided to go outside and watch it. My hotel was on the backside of the harbor, fairly close to where the mortars where being launched. They weren’t launched very high. You could feel the shockwaves from the explosions! The alarms for several cars kept being set off. The fireworks show was acutally one of the better shows I’ve seen.
After dinner I went back out to the promendade. The concert was over, but a DJ was spinning, along with some gogodancers. The area was full of people, and bottles. The show ended at 1 am. There were a lot of cops and army men ready to stop any trouble, but the crowd dispersed fairly quickly. I don’t think there were that many drunk people.
Yalta was definitely an interesting place. There are a lot of sites to see, althought I missed quite a few. There are caves nearby that are supposed to some of the most beautiful in the world. There are a hand full of palaces and some cool churches. The water is warm, but there are too many people to really enjoy the ocean. The number of people does make for some great people watching in the evenings. The prices are a bit high, especially for Ukraine. To top it off, Yalta isn’t easy to get to. There are better seaside places to go to.

One problem with taking a vacation with no set schedule, is becoming lacadasial. Somethings still require a schedule.

Yes, I almost missed my train out of Kyiv. I was downtown people watching, and figured if I left at 10:30 I had plenty of

time to get back. About 10:36 I started heading back. In the metro station I ran into someone who wanted to talk to me

about my longboard, of course he didn’t know much English. He thought the board was old school. I was wearing my

northwestlongboarding.com tshirt. I told him it was a longboard and pointed at my shirt. He said “oh so you lay on it?”

Or rather he said something, and mimiced laying on the board. I told him no, you stand on it, but then gave him my card

that showed me luging.
Of course this took several minutes, and I missed the metro, the next one was 5 minutes later. It was 11:00 when I got to

the train station. I ran and got my luggage, on the other side of the station. Ran back, figured I had time to buy a

coke. Ran downstairs and got on the train. About a minute later it left the station!

Kyiv is a strange place, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, until I went to the beach today. There is an island in

the middle of the river with a nice long beach. There is a metro stop on the island near an amusment park, Hydropark.

About half of the amusment park was abandoned. The rides sitting there dipliated and over grown with weeds. Yet the other

half of the park was vibrant and active. That was the feeling I had about Kyiv, it was vibrant and full of life and the

same time it was abandoned. Not far from my hotel was an old rusted out hulk of a car, apparently it had caught on fire

at one point, as the roof of the building above it was melted. Based on the debris under the car it was there for a

while.

Free enterprise is slowly taking hold. There are coke/water stands everywhere, but very few restaurants. There aren’t

many businesses along the river. Anywhere else this place would be teeming with life. But here there were places that

felt like no one had been there in ages. Many of the free enterprises are temporary, almost as if no one is sure what to

expect. Or maybe that is just the cheapest way to start?

The heart of the city is a small stretch of road that leads to Indepence Square where the Orange Revolution was held a

few years ago. This road is lined with upscale stores, mostly selling clothes, and a handful of restaurants. But it seems

like it was the place to be. I went there every night for dinner and to people watch. On the weekends the road is closed

to traffic and open to pedestrains. It was amazing to see the number of people milling about. There were plenty of street

vendors selling water and beer, but only a few artists.

The fashion was a little surprising to me. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the women wore mini skirts of short dresses, but only

about 1% of the guys wore shorts. Even in the heat of the day. Women seemd to wear sandals, some other flat shoe, or

stilletos. I saw only a few heels that weren’t stilletos. Guys wored just about everything, but mainly sandals or some

dark shoe, with few tennis shoes. I once read you could tell a tourist because he would wear white tennis shoes. The

women also seemed to wear about every color under the sun. It was a lot of fun to sit and people watch.

I saw a bunch of churches, which I guess would be consider Othordox churches. They differ from west europe churches

mainly as they are sqaure. Most cathederals are in the shape of a cross, with one side longer than the other three. But

here the four sides are all the same, so the church is more of a plus shape. In addition a large, painted wooden

structure separates half the church. I thought it was to create a “backstage” area, but apparently that is where the

chior sits, with a small door opened to the people.

Thursday I went to the Larva, but I woke up late, and by the time I went through the cathederal grounds, and found the

caves they were closing. I made it through one of the caves, which was basically a tomb. But apparently it is a

pilgrimage site. From here I wandered over to the large steel sculpture, of what I kept thinking of as Mother Justice.

This statue dominates the skyline, or at least what I can see from my hotel room. No quite as tall as the statue of

Liberty, but it is close. There is supposed to be a substantial war museum under the statue but it was closed.

Friday I started off at the Cherynobly Museum. Everthing recommended I go there, but I can’t say the same. The place

seemed to be a huge memorial to those that died, with little info on what actually happened. There were a few recent pics

of the town, but not as much as I would have liked. Some of the museum was in English, but a lot wasn’t. Apparently they

have English tours every so often.
I walked around until I found a restaurant. Sat behind two guys talking baseball! And ate a very expensive meal. I looked

for Andrew’s Decent (Andriyivskyi Uzviz) a nice winding street that leads from the neighborhood I was in up the hill.

Apparently this is a major tourist attraction. A nice little museum at the bottom shows how people used to live on the

hill. It was fascinating, but unfortunately not in English.
Up the hill I walkd past a ton of street vendors, selling mostly crafts, although at the top many were selling

traditional souvenirs and jewlery. St. Andrews Church is at the top. a magnificent building, and one of my favorite

churches.
Not far away is St Sophia Cathederal. There is a bell tower you can climb for 5 hz, with some spectacular views. But

unfortunately the church itself is now a museum, and it sounds like you can only go in by guided tour. I opted not to

visit, but to walk around the quite grounds. Entrance to the grounds was 2 hz.
Within view of the tower was St Michael’s Monastery. A larg imposing church, complete with the typical golden top towers

that every church seems to have. There was a small wooden church next to the cathederal that I enjoyed just as much as

the main chapel.
The sun was low, but I still had some light left so I went in search of the Golden Gate. This was I think the main

entrance to the walled city a few hundred (or a thousand) years ago. The gate was massive, or rather the wall was

massive, something like 20 meters thick. Over the centuries the wall and the gate detoriated. In the 1800’s they decided

to cover the gate with dirt to preserve it. In the 1900’s they dug it up, and found it was still detoriating. So they

rebuilt the missing portion of the gate to protect the remains. It is an imposing structure. And it seems to be facing

the wrong way!

I decided to start Saturday off with some time at the beach. On the way out I stumbled on the amusment park. It was the

oddest thing I’ve seen. I’m not sure if some of the rides just broke down, or what happened. There were a few other

structures on the island that were also in disrepair. After the beach I got my luggage from the hotel and took it to the

train station. Figured it would be easier if I stuck the luggage at the station, than to return to the hotel at night.

Especially considering the train station is near the center of town, but the hotel isn’t. I barely managed to get my

luggage in the lockers. The lockers were old, but allowed you to set a combination. There were 4 dials inside you set.

When you returned, you set the four on the outside.
I dropped my luggage off then went in search of a few sights I missed. The first was the next stop over, St Volodymyr

Cathederal. Another beautiful church, that seemed to have a mass going on. I listed for a while. the chior was beautiful,

although I don’t have a clue what they were saying. I don’t understand why women have to cover their heads (almost all

the women wore scarves.) Its ok to wear miniskirts, have bare shoulders, but not allow the hair to be free? While most of

the women who covered their heads wore more conservative clothing, I did see one girl with bare shoulders, and another

with a miniskirt (both wearing scarves.) Not everyone wore scarves. I am guessing some of the tourists didn’t. At the

Larva women were required to wear scarves (and they could even buy wraps to cover their legs if they had a short skirt

on!)  I guess the reason to cover up is to prevent tempting the guys?
It was pretty late by now, but still plenty of daylight left, so I decided to look for a few more sights. The next was

the House with Chimaeras. Well not so many chimaeras, but plenty of other creatures. Mostly pigs and elephants. This was

a really cool house, and a must see if you visit. The house is adorned with a ton of creatures, most hanging over the

edge as a gargoyle would, but others are just on the side of the building. I wasn’t planning on seeing it, but I am glad

I did.
Next I wanted to see Mariyinskyi’s Palace. I think I had gone by it before, but missed it. I found the street it was on,

and started to head down the street when I noticed what looked like an overlook (at this point I’m on top of a bluff.) I

decided to go check the overlook out, when I noticed that the palace was right there! The palace wasn’t facing the street

as I suspected, but a small park near this overlook. Unfortunately it looks like the palace was being renovated as there

were boards covering the fence in front of it, and the grounds behind the fence were lined with large metal canisters.
It was getting late, and the sun was almost down, so I decided to head to the heart of the city to people watch before it

was time to go. That was when I discovered the road was closed to traffic. I skated up and down the road perhaps a dozen

times. It was pretty cool as there was a gently incline. I skated up the road, then when cruise down it. I went slowly to

people watch at the same time. At 10PM the road was opened to traffic. A police car roaded by, followed by a tanker truck

of water that was spraying the road. I guess it was to conivnce people to get off the road, or get soaked!

Wow, it has been a while, and a lot has happened.

After Salsburg we hopped on a bus and took the 15 kilometer journey to Thalgau. Turns out I ended up with the hotel that didn’t have internet or a lift. The first day it rained, and most of us just sat around and watched the 20 or so guys who braved the elements.

Thursday wasn’t much better, but it didn’t rain too much. The course was wet all morning, but dried in time for qualifying. Midway through the standup qualifying someone thought it started to rain again, so they cancelled the qualifying. But when we did our luge run, it was dry.

Friday the weather was much better, at least it was dry. Saturday, race day the weather was perfect. Sunny and dry, altough it looked like it might start to rain in the afternoon. I made one small mistake that cost me the race, and took 14th and 15th.

We had talked about hanging around town for an extra day, but when we woke up Sunday we decided to head out to Munich. We got to Munich in the early evening. The other Aussies already had a hotel, so we went and got rooms there. They local YMCA. Don’t stay there, instead pick one of the three hostels that are LITERALLY next to the train station. They are cheaper, have internet, and won’t lock you out of the building at 12:30 in the morning.

Monday about 30 of us descended on Munich. First we hit a local mini ramp. There were over 30 guys from Rock n Roll there! Roughly 1/3 of the field, it was pretty cool watching the guys hit the ramp. After the session we hung out on the beach on the river, before finally checking out the standing wave. The wave itself wasn’t that great, as a recent storm messed it up, but a few of the guys tried to body surf it. The sun was already going down, or I might have jumped in.

We went to Hamburg the next day, I had hoped we would hit the bar scene there, but everyone was too tired, and I had a 8:20 plane to catch. I woke up this morning at 6:30, barely made it on the plane!

I pulled it to Kiev about 3:30, and got a ride to the hotel. The hotel is across the river from the major attractions, of course no one mentioned the river is about a mile wide! The main city center is also fairly far away, with no easy subway access. Looks like I’ll be skating a bunch.

I skated around, checked out the city center and managed to get lost. I had a map with my, but it is pretty much useless as the names are in English. There was one subway line that gets me closer to the hotel. So I left the city center, decided it was early and would skate for a bit. I knew there was another subway entrance on the way back. I got on that subway, and I think I knew where I was going, except I ended up back in the city center! I needed to change to a different track, but I couldn’t find the other track. I followed the signs till I got to an intersection, and there were no more signs. After wandering around looking for the other station I decided to just skate back to the hotel. Of course I didn’t really know where I was. Well I had an idea where I was on the map, but I could match the street names up to verify it (that is when I did find a street name)

We pulled into Salzburg around 10:00pm at night, and fortunately the first hostel we found had room for us. We were all pretty tired and slept until noon the next day. The rest of the gang was being fairly lazy, so I took off and went for a hike on the mountain across the river from the old town.

I got back in time for dinner, and still everyone was being lazy, so I headed out for a walk around the old town. Which is basically just a large outdoor mall, with shops like “The Body Shop.” I had a cake in the shop underneath Mozart’s apartments. Just before I got back to the hostel, it started to rain. My friends had decided to go out for a skate, and ended up getting more soaked than me.

I spent the rest of the evening doing some laundry, and managed to turn all my whites pink. I’m gonna have to rewash them several times when I get home.

It rained most of the day today, so after a lazy morning at the hostel a few of us did a little shopping (with ponchos first on the buy list.) Now we are getting ready to head out to the next race.

Spent the last week in Jungholz at the Almabtrieb race. It was sunny the first day, rainy the second, kind of cool threatening rain the next. Almost sunny but not quite the following day. And then today it rained most of the day, but then we were on the train.

We pulled in to Salzburg about 10pm, and were lucky to find a hostel for the next two days.

WOW!

Our race was cancelled due to fog and rain, and most everyone bailed out early. We had a small after party, and Sunday was pretty mellow at the resort. Marcus and I walked down from the resort to watch the Tour de France. This is something I’ve wanted to see for years, but it was always just too far away. This time it was within walking distance.

We got down in time to catch the caravan, which is a parade of advertiser vehicles about an hour long. Crazy looking vehicles, and lots of free stuff. I managed to snag a package of laundry soap! A van stopped, selling official souveniers. I bought a back for 20 euros, and got a shirt, hat, key chain, wristbands and a towel. What a deal.

The last group of French to leave the resort graciously gave us a ride to the train station, where we ran into one of the Canadian crew. They had tried to catch the 9:30am train, only to find it cancelled. All of the restaurants at the resort had been closed, so we hadn’t eaten all day. Unfortunately it was fairly late, so the local stores were closed, but we found a small pizza place that made the best pizzas.

We took the night train to Paris, and remembered that today is Bastille day, so the tourist office was closed. We were lucky to find a room around the corner from the train station. After dumping our bags, we took off skating across Paris, on a search for the Eiffel Tower. Because of the holiday, many of the roads were closed and we were able to skate them freely.

On the way to the tower, we cross a park and noticed a large group of people looking northwards. They appeared to be looking out a sculpture garden. I was trying to figure out what they were looking at when a formation flew overhead trailing blue, white, red smoke! They were starting the day off with a minutare air show (or rather a fly by by several groups of airplanes) and we happened to be in a great spot, and just the right time!

We climbed up the tower, listening to some of the music from the Champs de Mars, where they are staging a concert for the holiday.

 What a great couple of days, Tour de France yesterday, and Bastille Day today. And I made use of the free laundry detergent…. mmmmm fresh cleaned clothes.

It’s Friday night, it’s raining outside and I am getting sick. Still in the Pyrenees. There is a chance the race will be cancelled tomorrow due to rain and fog. They ran the standup race today because of possible bad weather. We had a great morning session, but the clouds started coming over the mountains and lunch, and the resort was fogged in by the end of the race.

The Tour de France will be just down the road from us on Sunday!

I woke up this morning on the train in Luchon, France. A small tour in the Peyrenes. We took the overnight train from Paris. That was a small ordeal. We had to take the subway from one side of Paris to the next. We weren’t exactly sure how long it would take, and how much time we had. We had problems getting all of our bags through the subway ticket gates. One person even climbed over the gates! We got all of our bags on the subway, except for me… I made it on, but barely.

We got to the train station, and some of the guys wanted to get some alcohol, and someone else wanted an ATM. We couldn’t find either in the station, and we figured we could grab a beer in the diner car.

After we got settled in to our cabin (we somehow got all 16 bags stowed into our small cabin) the girls we met in Amsterdam stuck their heads in the door, along with some of the guys from southern cal. Our group grew to about 10 strong, and we decided to go off in search of the diner car. We walked for what seemed like a mile, but no diner car! I guess they figured an overnight sleeper train didn’t need a diner car. Our cabin was in the very last car, so we just hung out at the end of the car for a bit.

The race is at the Peyragudes Ski Resort. Doesn’t look like there are too many people not associated with the race here. Since we got in about 9AM we have had plenty of time to explore. A few of us walked down the course to the next village. I had some bread and cheese for lunch!

I’m sitting on a high speed train heading to Paris. Travelling about 300 KPH! Just over an hour to go from Brussels to Paris. We’ll take an overnight train to our first race.

Didn’t really do a whole lot in Amsterdam. Spent a good portion of yesterday picking up a couple friends from the airport. Their bags were delayed. When we got back into town, we spent several hours skating around town, and hitting various FEBO’s to grab a Kroket (an amazing Dutch food, thing deep friend pot pie.) I also finally got to try some really good poffertjes, another famous Dutch treat, basically miniature pancakes smothered in butter and powdered sugar. I’ll have to upload a photo soon.

We got up early and skated around a bunch today. We stopped by the open air market again, I looked for the guy that was making fresh hot waffles (they aren’t really waffles, but they look like thin versions with carmel sandwhiched between, yum!)

On the way back to our hotel to grab our bags we ran into two racers from Canada. They happened to be in Amersterdam for 3 days, and were catching the same train to the race.

I got to Amsterdam this morning, early. The plane was almost an hour early. On the way out you go by passport control. there were two agents, one doing all passports, one doing EU only. There were two in line for EU, and about 20 or so in line for All Passports. I got in the All line, but kept an eye on the EU line. Sure enough as soon as she cleared the two people, she changed the sign to All Passports. I waited for a second, and NO one moved! So I decided to get in line. Just before I got there, the next person in the other line just noticed the change, but I don’t think anyone else in the room noticed.

Marcus was meeting me, but I figured I wouldn’t be ready to go until 8 or so, and he didn’t get there till 9.

So far we managed to only check out a local market, and wander through a couple of parks.

Almost out of time…