Reading the signs

Dan’s digital camera has been kept very busy this year. Much of the time, we’re taking the more conventional kind of holiday snap, but I’ve also been taking pictures on work trips which I can use in presentation, to bring the working abroad experience to life.

Scavi Aperti

So, as a mix of both: here are some of the more unusual examples of signage we’ve come across this year.

And first prize for signage has to go to Madrid’s airport, which helps you locate the right place with use of beautiful colour coding. It’s not just us – it won the Stirling Prize this year for UK architecture (as the architect is from the UK, even though the building is elsewhere). If you were to ‘sing a rainbow‘, this would be a good starting point.

Roast chicken dinner

I managed my first proper roast dinner this year!

When I’ve said this to others, they always tell me that a roast is easy. But with timings of potatoes and veg to add to the equation, I was never sure I would manage to make it work out at the right time.  As a former vegetarian, I probably worry more about whether the meat is cooked, etc, quite apart from knowing how to carve it.

For the vegetarian readers, I also managed a nut roast this year, Dan’s mum’s speciality from a time when she cooked macrobiotic meals more.  Nut roast is actually Dan’s favourite meal ever, a great reassurance to me when we started going out, and my cooking repertoire was mostly veggie.

2 factors that made doing the roast even better:

– handing cookbook to Dan for him to come up with an ambitious recipe for stuffing.  Why roast a chicken if you can’t do it in style too?

– having a few recipes for leftovers, such as risotto, that I felt comfortable with.  So not only do you enjoy the roast, you have a further feeling of smugness when you make use of the rest!

Having said that, my homemade stock has tended to sit in the freezer, as I forget I have it.  In a toss up between rapidly defrosting the stock, and grabbing a stock cube instead, the stock cube wins every time.

Perhaps next year, I’ll attempt some other kind of roast.  On the other hand, I’m sure I can practice the chicken one for a while yet…

Stretching your legs

Dan and I are not necessarily known for being the sportiest people, but we like a walk, particularly where there’s some good scenery to take in.

Our summer holiday in 2005 gave us lots of walking opportunities, visiting a town in Slovenia which is a ski resort in the winter, but has lots of walking and biking options in the summer.  The views were fantastic, and there were lots of well-signposted routes to try out.  We even came back contemplating further active holidays, which is a good sign for us.

This year, we didn’t really manage anything on the same scale, although we did some walking in Fife around Easter time.  However, going to Austria, which has some stunning mountains, we felt we had to have a day’s walking at least.

Maybe it’s an efficiency thing in Germanic countries, but when we set out to do our walk, we found a lot more people with us!  The Alpine societies keep everything in very good order, and we took on a gorge climb, mostly through series of wooden ladders which enabled you to move from level to level.

I gave up counting how many we’d been up after 100 – and yes, every bridge was neatly labelled…What impressed me was the number of families where everyone was out walking, even where the kids were quite small.

By the top of the gorge, the organised air continued: a fully functioning pub serving meals as well as liquid refreshments.  Admittedly the weather was good for walking that day, but the pub and surrounding meadows were packed with people resting after the climb.

We headed back down the path, rather than return down the gorge, though the path was also pretty steep in points. The number of people who had climbed with kids in backpacks or brought trecking-type pushchairs up became more and more impressive.  It wasn’t as restful as being able to hike almost on our own in Slovenia, but we came away feeling we had gained an extra insight into Austrian society.

We also felt we should gain some extra points for hiking from a starting point town called Mixnitz. Maybe there’s room for some kind of pre-Christmas product called Mixnutz.

Watching the match at the pub

Another first for the year – watching the Portugal v France World Cup game at a bar in Glasgow, while the World Cup was on.

I co-run an induction course  every July: two days to prepare people for working abroad.  We hold the course at the University of Glasgow, so there’s a chance to try out the student areas nearby.

This year, we had a French student on work placement with us, who was helping at the course.  Naturally, we had to follow France’s fortunes (at semi-final stage at that point) in the World Cup so that she didn’t feel too homesick.

Dan claims this was not a real ‘match at a pub’ experience because the bar also had a restaurant inside.  One part of the bar floor was raised up and screened off, a bit like a square band stand, and you could sit there and eat while all the blokes stood in front of the bar instead.  There were even additional TV screens by the tables so you could be sure of a good view, should someone block your line of sight to the bar.

If anyone thinks this is a more civilised way to try the experience, we were at Bar Buddha, near Ashton Lane.  Food well recommended too!  And thankfully, France didn’t lose that game, so all went well for our French guest.  (She did however come in late, the day after the France v Italy final…)

Taking a half day

Or preferably, two weeks of half days.

I did this a couple of years ago, when we moved into our flat.  I liked it so much, I did it again this year, during August, while Dan’s mum Jen was up to stay. Work in the mornings, feel virtuous, then run away quick at lunchtime…

One of the nicest aspects of taking the time off was just doing normal Edinburgh things, like walking round Arthur’s Seat, the hill in the middle of Edinburgh that looks a bit like an elephant’s head.  It’s something I did from time to time as a student, but don’t often get round to doing now, particularly as we don’t live close to that part of town any more.

The walking is quite easy, and you can also drive around.  You get a whole range of views, from ones of the coast, to being between Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags (surrounded by hill, but with an unexpected loch at the top of the road up), then looking down on the village of Duddingston and its bird sanctuary, followed by aspects to the south of Edinburgh (Pentland Hills etc). Finally, back to face the Edinburgh buildings skyline, looking back over university areas where Dan and I used to study.

A grand afternoon out – for free.  Maybe I’ll manage a climb up Arthur’s Seat again sometime too.