… now available in the gallery.

I spent the last three days (Friday to Sunday) in Budapest, at our company’s annual conference/off-site. (Last year’s trip went to Berlin.) We spent most of our time in various social activities, including a lot of eating, so I didn’t have time to see as much of the city as I had hoped, but here are some brief notes:

• Warm. The temperature was around 15 to 20°C during daytime. After the +5°C we had in Stockholm, it was a bit of a shock. I’d forgotten what 20°C feels like, and wished I had brought sandals.
• “Continental,” with lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants, shops spreading their wares into the streets, street performers etc, and a lot of people out and about in the evening. Of course it’s easy to get people to hang around in sidewalk cafes when the weather outside is so balmy.
• Grey and beige, since almost all houses were clad in local sandstone. Made me think of central Paris, which was similarly grey.
• The Donau (Danube) is nowhere near blue.
• Buda and Pest are strikingly different. Buda is hilly, green, residential. Pest is flat, gray, commercial.

The most interesting sight I saw was the thermal baths of Szécsény. It’s a complex of indoor and outdoor pools, heated by natural hot springs. It was interesting to see bathing as a social activity: the crowd was mostly adults hanging around, conversing, and floating. There were hardly any children around, and I imagine they would have found the baths quite boring (although there were some fountains and a jet stream.) The coolest pool had a water temperature of 18°C and the hottest was 38°C – too warm for comfort, in my opinion. But the 34°C pools were quite pleasant, and the relaxing atmosphere was quite contagious, although I have to admit to getting slightly bored and impatient after an hour or so (at which point I fetched my camera and did some wandering).

Photos coming up soon, hopefully.

We spent Sunday afternoon at Oliver’s three-year birthday party, out in the countryside. Ingrid met mosquitoes for the first time in memory, as well as stinging nettles, and was not happy about either experience. She also fell face first onto the arm of a wooden chair while climbing on it, hard enough for a big bruise. I think the other guests will remember her as “that kid who was screaming all the time”. Ingrid, on the other hand, will probably have more positive memories. She might remember the singing potty, or the digging in the dirt, or the book about Little Red Riding Hood with all the movable parts, or all the incessant snacking.

(By the way, she’s gotten used to mosquitoes by now and swats them away with barely a comment.)

Monday we were my father’s country house and it did not go too well, so we’ve been in Tartu since then. Unfortunately this has coincided with a heat wave, and Tartu lacks Stockholm’s wading pools, so I’ve really struggled to come up with things to do. We’ve ended up spending a lot of time with Rahel and Katariina, mostly on various playgrounds and at their place. Katariina is just that little bit ahead of Ingrid (in age and in development) that Ingrid is really interested in anything Katariina does, and likes to follow her around and copy her actions.

The boat trip to Tallinn was smooth but somewhat disappointing. Last year Ingrid really enjoyed the play room; this year there were far fewer toys because nobody had bothered to replace the ones that broke, so there wasn’t much to do there. But the whole thing was still a big event for her. First the trip to the harbour, then getting on the boat, then dinner in a restaurant, sleeping on the boat, and breakfast on the cabin floor.

We spent most of Friday morning in the Tallinn Zoo, so we wouldn’t have to begin our day with the two and a half hour car trip to Tartu. Most animals were interesting for about 2 minutes (Look, a tiger! OK, let’s go.) but Ingrid really enjoyed the petting zoo: goats, a pig, downy yellow chickens, rabbits etc. She was not too keen on getting too close to the mouth end of bigger animals (such as goats) but very interested in seeing them eat and drink.

Today looked set to be rainy (although in the end it didn’t rain at all) so we stayed in town, and I decided to start with my shopping plans: lots of children’s books in Estonian, and some movies too. Already I discovered that some books that were easily available last year, were hard to find this time, so now I’m preemptively buying books well above her age, just in case they’re not there when I want them. I am not looking forward to the task of packing my bags, or lugging them home.

We’ve also renewed our acquaintance with Oliver and Katariina, both just a few months older than Ingrid, both of whose mums I grew up with. Coming up tomorrow: Oliver’s birthday party.

We had a company offsite/conference this weekend, in Berlin. My first overnight trip without Ingrid.

The weekend was an interesting experience in many ways.
Interesting to spend almost three whole days in only adult company.
Interesting to be out on town after dark.
Interesting to sleep alone in a bed.
Interesting to meet my colleagues outside of work. Some of them turned out to be not at all like I had expected, in a very positive way.

On Friday we flew to Berlin, had a sightseeing bus tour, and dinner together. Saturday morning we had the official “conference” part of the weekend, and then a free afternoon, and then dinner again, plus nightclubbing for those who were interested. Sunday, a few free hours and then flying back home.

The free afternoon and morning were meant to be spent together, but 3 days of constant socialising would have been more work for me than my actual work, so I skipped that and wandered off on my own. I felt a bit guilty at first but only for a short while – I really enjoyed exploring Berlin on my own. (I suspect I wasn’t the only one doing that, there’s at least one other odd guy in the company.)

Mostly I did a lot of walking. The highlight of the trip was Hackeschen Höfe, an area with eight small linked courtyards, filled with small shops and cafés. I also had time to see

• quite a lot of the S-bahn
• the Holocaust memorial (which was sort of impressive but didn’t feel like much of a memorial)
• the park of Tiergarten
• a few remaining bits of the Wall
• the Siegessäule (that landmark pillar with a golden statue of Victory on top – the one in Wings of Desire), including climbing up to the top of it (285 steps)
• the quarters around the parliament, Brandenburger Tor, etc
• one nice church (St. Hedwig’s) and another nice church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche)
• a replica of the world’s first traffic light

One afternoon and one short morning is far from enough to get a good feeling for a city, of course. But from what I had time to see, Berlin as a whole wasn’t really my kind of town. Too large, too flat. It’s full of broad straight boulevards, lined by flat facades. There were some interesting houses but even those had been placed in straight lines. And too much grey stone, too little colour.

The one thing that struck me about Berlin is how full it is of history. There are monuments, plaques, exhibitions in parks and along streets. There’s the Wall, of course. There is history everywhere, and it is so present, so close to the surface. I could not walk through the city without thinking about all that has happened there. I wonder if Berliners think as much about history all the time. After all, what’s history for me is just “the past” for many of them – they’ve lived through it themselves.

PS: Photos here.

A selection of photos from our vacation is now online. The general vacation pics are on Flickr (in Flickr’s usual reverse chronological order – it may make more sense to view them from last to first), and the pictures of Ingrid are in my gallery.

This whole vacation felt like an experiment. We hadn’t been on any particularly adventurous trips with Ingrid – only visiting friends and relatives, and that’s quite different from a week of hiking. We weren’t exactly nervous, but quite unsure about how it would work.

It worked out perfectly all right. Ingrid was OK with sleeping in a strange house and a strange bed. She was OK with being carried on someone’s back most of the day, and spending anything from 1 to 3 hours in a car every day. She was OK with eating strange food at somewhat unpredictable times. She was even OK with two 4-hour flights.

I suspect that she was quite bored much of the time, because she slept more than usual. Or it may just have been due to all the new impressions. But she accepted the boredom quite well.

The only slight complication was that she wouldn’t drink enough water (and did not produce enough wet nappies). Of course breast milk was as popular as ever, but I don’t think the amount she gets nowadays is anywhere near enough to keep her hydrated. We resorted to giving her diluted peach juice instead of water, and that went down very well.

Speaking of nappies, that tends to be our main logistical concern when travelling. Cloth nappies are OK if we’re going somewhere for a day or two, but for a longer trip it has to be disposables because we usually don’t have anywhere to wash and dry the nappies. If we buy them at home then they take up a lot of space in our luggage, especially because it’s hard to know exactly how many we’ll need. If we buy at the destination then we usually get lots left over (they’re usually sold in packs of 60 or more) and then either have to give them away to someone, or take them home with us, which raises the issue of luggage space again. I wish nappies were sold loose, by the pound.

All in all a great success. It was certainly helpful that we were lucky with the weather, and travelled with a very helpful company. And I think we hit the sweet spot in her age: old enough to not be too “fragile” and sensitive to changes, young enough to accept days of boredom. We’ll see how the next vacation goes.

One of the more interesting aspects of our vacation in Gran Canaria was the house we stayed in. It was a cave house. It turns out that cave houses are widespread in Gran Canaria and in some other parts of Spain as well. We saw many caves while we were walking and driving around. A few were prehistorical caves dug by the Guanche, the stone age people living on the islands before the Spanish arrived, but most were more recent. Some were being lived in, others were used for storage, and quite a number had been abandoned.

“Everybody knows” cave men lived in caves, but I’ve always wondered how they could find enough suitable caves. It turns out they didn’t – they made their own. That wouldn’t work in the hard rocks of Scandinavia, but in the light porous volcanic rock of Gran Canaria it’s quite doable, probably even with prehistoric tools.

The cave house didn’t feel much different from a normal house, really. There were no windows except in the front of the house, of course, so the night could get very dark. During daytime, the front garden compensated for the lack of windows – we had breakfast outside every morning. All the walls and floors were made of stone, which kept the temperature very even throughout the day and night. But there was no feeling of being in a dark dank cave – it was quite cosy.

We were told that the interiors of most cave houses are whitewashed to look like ordinary houses, but in ours the walls were raw rock, which I thought looked very nice, and brought out the cave-ness of the house.

The builders had also used the original rock for furniture and interior features. You want side tables? Right, let’s carve out two side tables. You need somewhere to put a fire extinguisher? OK, let’s carve a fire-extinguisher-shaped niche here. Shelves in the bathroom? Can do. But once the side tables and niches and shelves are in place, that’s where they’re going to stay!

Cave wall	Niche for fire extinguisher
Side table	Bathroom shelves

Want to build your own cave house?

As I said, Darren, our local Upland Escapes manager, was out of action when it came to walking. But he did provide us with excellent food. The Upland Escapes package included breakfasts and packed lunches. The breakfasts were self-catering, and our kitchen was stocked with all we could possibly want: fresh bread and cheese and fruit, fresh eggs and juices, and excellent jams, including a lovely quince marmalade. The fruit bowl was based on local fruit, including things whose identity we could only guess at (which later turned out to be guavas, and a very large papaya).

The lunches were even better. I was most impressed that UE had managed to find staff who were both good guides and such good cooks! The words “packed lunch” had led me to expect sandwiches, or maybe an occasional quiche slice. Admittedly we have been conditioned by past holidays to have quite low expectations when it comes to food. (The low point was reached in Pyrenean mountain refuges, where breakfast consisted of dry biscuits.) And Spain isn’t exactly known for its vegetarian cooking.

Instead we got wonderfully varied meals: there was a quiche slice, yes, but also a pizza sandwich, roasted vegetable kebabs, potato salads, cous cous, and so on. Each lunch was juicy and flavourful, and always topped off by a scrumptious cake. And all of this was made from great quality ingredients and beautifully presented – which must have been extra challenging given that it all arrived in plastic containers and was made to last at least half a day before it was eaten.

In fact Darren’s lunches were so much better than anything we could find in the local restaurants that we kept them for dinner, and took bread and fruit for lunch, or made do with what the restaurants had to offer. The restaurant fare may have been OK for meat-eaters but wasn’t particularly exciting for vegetarians, whereas Darren’s was created with vegetarians in mind. We did our best to praise his cooking each time we saw him but I’m still not sure whether we managed to properly convey just how pleased we were with the food. This was the first holiday ever where the food will be one of our most positive memories. (You can probably tell that from how much I’ve talked about it here.)

(In fact we had one good restaurant meal on our last day, in Las Palmas, at La Chascona. It was the first and only restaurant we saw that offered something other than the standard menu full of grilled meat, and had good food, so I feel it deserves a mention here.)

(To be continued.)

We had quite specific requirements for our vacation, mostly because of Ingrid. This was our first walking holiday with her, and we didn’t know how she would react. So we didn’t want to commit in advance to walking a certain amount each day, or following someone else’s pace. We certainly wanted self-guided walking rather than groups, and no full-day hotel-to-hotel walks. At the same time we wanted the whole thing to be as easy and convenient as possible. I didn’t want to have to think and plan too much, so putting together our own itinerary armed with just maps and books (which is what we’d normally) was not ideal either.

It turned out that there is a company offering holidays of exactly that kind. Upland Escapes, a small travel operator, offers flexible walking holidays in several locations in Europe. (Do the Canary Islands count as Europe?) Their packages include accommodation, a hire car, and a set of maps and instructions for local walks. The walks range in length from one hour to a full day (8 hours or so). Just what we wanted!

Near Roque Faneque, taking in the view and Ed’s biscuits

We were very happy with Upland Escapes, and would absolutely recommend them if you’re looking for a walking holiday. I really only have good things to say about them – there wasn’t a single case where we thought they could have done better.

Normally all guests are cared for by their local manager, who also doubles (triples) as walking guide, translator, and cook. But because we happened to be their only guests in Gran Canaria at the moment, and because Darren, the local manager, had hurt his leg and couldn’t guide any walks, we got the personal attention of Ed, one of the founders and managers of the company. Ed helped us choose our walks, and accompanied us for walks on some of the days. He also answered all our questions about the islands’ nature, culture and history. And how many guides surprise you with home-made biscuits when you reach the peak of your walk?

In addition, because Ed had been personally involved in scouting out the walks, he knew all of them well and could advise on details like which walks would have most shade, and propose a selection of walks that would be as varied as possible. There were walks through and between the neighbouring villages, walks on exposed ridges, on wooded slopes and in quiet valleys, and in (extinct) volcanic craters.

The walking handbook was not quite as good company as Ed, but the descriptions were all very clear and we had no trouble finding our way on our self-guided walks, either.

(To be continued.)