twinga

Weekend in Tannheimer Tal

Friday night we checked the weather report for the Alps ... forecast: sunny! So, quick check of possible tours in our maps, quick call to the Otto-Mayr hut

on Saturday morning to reserve two beds, and off we drove in our lovely Mazda 3, summer sun songs playing from our ipod.

The hike from the parking lot close to Reutte in Austria took about 2.5 hours through some nice scenery. Good thing it didn’t take longer than that: it was pretty hot and humid outside. We reached there around 6 p.m., when we also had our first Weizen. Hmmm... some yummie hut dinner was served around 7 p.m., then some more drinking, and then sleeping with five other people in the room. I’m lucky to report that nobody snored!! ☺ The next day was going to be a little more exhausting, how exhausting I (ok, we... I’m not saying Tobse did it on purpose ;) ) didn’t know yet.

We got up around 7 a.m. and started hiking around 9 after a hearty breakfast. First challenge: to get across a large field of stones that were literally in danger of coming down. The path suddenly ended and, me thinks, the path was just recently covered by a new rock slide. We made it across safely and had our first nice views from here:

We continued along the mountain’s saddle, saw the rare Edelweiss flower
and were finally challenged by a bit of easy climbing ... fun ☺

We then reached the peak of Rote Flüh (2108m), climbed around the Gimpel, down to the Tannheimer hut, and back up around Gimpel, down into the Valley. The whole thing took about 9 hours and we were BEAT ... but happy. Whereelse can you get sunshine, mountains, rivers, views, cows, horses, climbing, hiking, beer drinking, oh, and ... sunburn (my wonderful sunburn starts right above the sock line and stops where my hiking pants start). It’s quite wonderful ☺.

Anyways, you should come visit us to see how beautiful it is in Southern Germany/Austria/Switzerland. All other pics are on flickr. Enjoy.

How to cook Chicken Biryani in Germany

This past weekend Tobse and I visited my long-time friends Teasy and Biene who live about three hours from here at the beginning of the foothills of the beautiful Odenwald. I’ve known them for probably eight years or so, I freelanced for their respective companies, and since they are both “always-online-workaholics” and super fun to boot, we’ve stayed in touch while I was in London, India and San Francisco. Back in Germany, I decided it’s time to go visit them. B has a cooking blog called Koch-Banausen, and so it was clear that we need to come up with a fancy recipe for our Saturday night hang out.

They wanted to cook something Indian, so I decided to try something I hadn’t tried myself before: Chicken Biryani (here’s some history, if you are interested). Tons of different ingredients go into it to make it taste the way it’s supposed to taste, and I’m proud to report: We made it! It was super yummy and tasted almost like the Biryani at RR in Bangalore. Ok ok, I said "almost" … :-) Thanks also to Tysonice for passing on the Raita recipe through his younger brother. It was delicious.

To check out the original two blogposts in German, click here and here. The latter one makes fun of me giving “commands” to my fellow cooks. So unfair, I had also chopped stuff before AND, given it was such a complicated affair, someone had to pay attention the right ingredients go in and the right time, right? Ok ok, that’s so German :-)

Here are some pics:

Tobse making Biryani

The "Indian" chefs

Making and drinking Indian Chai

Hiking weekend in Waidring

Here are a few pics from the recent weekend in Waidring ... enjoy :) Also see the related blogpost "Snowboarding in Waidring". More soon.

Busy with life...

What can I say, I really want to post far more often, but I somehow don't find the right time to do it. There's so much to tell though...

A new baby girl has been born, the first child of one of my very best friends, and I'm so happy for him. The whole family is psyched, and I feel psyched too, even though I'm thousands of miles away. Must be the love waves :). So here she is, please welcome Maya Joy, a Texan-American/Keralite-Indian beauty:

Whatelse is new... For the past six months I've been working as a freelance PR-consultant with a growing client base and I'm wondering how the hell I got into it since I once swore to myself to never do PR again. Well... must be because I don't know what else to do :)

Then, I'm continuing to hang out with sports addicts, otherwise called my boyfriend and his family :). We went up to Höllentor (means "devil's gate," how appropriate) close to Germany's highest mountain the other day. The peak was at 2100 meters and I was BEAT. The next day we did some "easy biking" to Eib-Lake, which ended in a 3 km incline that almost threw me off the bike. Didn't help that it had 30C degrees outside. The cool lake made up for it though.

Then... Germany won against Turkey in the European soccer championships yesterday. I live in a neighborhood with a large Turkish population, and we first watched the game in a bar and later on from home (longer story). At home we watched it over the Web, and the coverage was delayed by a minute or so. So whenever we heard people screaming and yelling, we had to guess for a minute which side shot a goal :). Either way, we are in the finals, although Germany played a really bad game.

Via Claudia Augusta

My longest bicycle ride ever has taken us today from Augsburg to Landsberg. 42 kilometers along the "Via Claudia Augusta", the ancient Roman road that led from the Po River lowlands and the Adriatic Sea all the way to Bavaria and the Danube.

Here's some history:
"It all began in 15 B.C. when the Roman General Drusus the Elder, the adopted son of Augustus, decided to open a passage through the Alps for the military incursions in Rhaetia-Vindelicia and in the Noricum, today known as Austria. The immense job of building the road was completed 60 years later in 46-47 A.D. by Drusus’s son, Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.), to connect people and goods between the Adriatic Sea and the Po  (...)"

And here are the pics. Next time I need to remember to take my Canon EOS30D with me ... please excuse the 3MP cell phone quality :)

Pusteblumen



Landsberg

Banana Royal :)

Dohlenfels climb

Today I did my first multiple rope lengths climb, also called "alpine tour." The Dohlenfels in Konstein is 50 meters (164 feet) high and it took 4 rope lengths to go all the way up. There were a bunch of scary parts too, but I only had to rest once, the other parts I climbed straight through.

Plus: we had 22C degrees and sunshine today (it's been great weather for the past 2 weeks now!), which means we got a sun tan to boot :)

P.S. And no, we didn't skip work ... today was Pfingstmontag, a bank holiday in Germany :)

Spring is coming!!! 18C degrees and sunshine

I really had to laugh out loud today... about three days ago all weather services were prepping you, announcing that it's going to be sunny and warm all Sunday. 18C degrees! And sure thing, today it was sunny, 18C degrees warm, and everything and everyone that could walk, crawl, drive, ride motorbikes, swim or whatever was outside today.

Two days ago we started to think about what we might do on such an auspicious occasion. Guess what came to T's mind first thing: Rock climbing outside -- of course. So, the point where I had to laugh out loud was when we were sitting in the car, with open windows, and the radio host chatting away "Hi everyone outside, wherever you are, because today it doesn't matter where you are as long as it's outside." It still gives me a kick when I realize how important the weather is in Germany. I mean, we've had winter now for 6 months!! But summer time has officially arrived last night at 2 a.m. and I can't wait for the long, hot summer evenings, where it's bright until 9:30 p.m. Anyways...

After having recovered from our Costa Rica trip jet lag (pics here) and yesterday's James Bond party hangover (pics here) we drove up to Konstein, part of the Southern "Frankenjura" and climbed the Asterix & Obelix rocks. It was super fun, although I definitely need to climb outside more often to get over my "real rock panic."

After climbing - to make it a perfect day trip - we went to the famous Italian gelateria Eismosena in Rain am Lech. Germans don't like standing in line very much, but for this gelato they do. Hmmmm... (Btw, all pics are taken by my new cell phone, a Sony Ericsson k800i, 3.2 MP camera).

Snowboarding in Waidring, Austria

I think I just won’t mention that I haven’t been blogging in a while. There are no excuses, so I’ll jump right in.

Last weekend we went snowboarding in Waidring, Austria. T’s friend’s grandfather, who used to be on the board of a big German bank, owns a huuuuge house there. And no, it’s not just some big house, it’s a very old, family owned house with tons of bedrooms, a music room, a chimney room, a dining room, children's rooms, a sitting room, an office… in short: it’s old, it’s huge, it’s beautiful … simply impressive! Here are some pics.

Saturday and Sunday we went snowboarding and I’m proud to report that I’ve been making some progress. I can control the board in most situations, can do frontside and backside turns, and even dared to speed up a bit :-).

And of course... there was other fun involved :) More pics on my flickr page...

Snowboarding in Tirol

Here are some impressions from the Alps in Reutte, Tirol (Austria). It was my first day of snowboarding, but unfortunately I don't have any pics that show me lying on the ground (really, I don't have any), so here's some scenery. :) The last pic is Schloss Neuschwanstein, the famous castle, at night. Click on the pictures to see them in bigger size

Klammspitze

Here are some pictures from our trip up Klammspitze (1924 m), a mountain in the Ammergauer Alps in Bavaria. The weather was wonderful, the beer excellent as always, and the view fantastic. I have to admit that I was quite exhausted when we reached the top ... didn't realize that rock climbing gives you strength, but definitely isn't an endurance sport :).