Posted in , Travel

Auvergne from above

We are slowly starting to travel again, in small steps…

We decided that we did not want to go too far, and not across more than one border.  Our first trip was to Auvergne, right in the center of France, a region that neither of us had visited before.

And in Auvergne, the first thing we did was an early morning flight in a hot air balloon!  How early? See below!

This was the clock in our apartment as we were eating breakfast – cannot go out without some food and a cup of coffee.  The real breakfast will be after the balloon trip.

We had to meet across the street from the apartment (fortunately) at 5:30 AM and discovered that there was quite a crowd already waiting.  That photo is actually quite deceptive as at 5:30 AM, it is still dark! We finalized the formalities and were introduced to Stanislas, our “pilot” for the day and the gentleman on the right.  After introductions with the rest of our crew (we were in a small balloon with only 4 passengers + pilot) we were off to a nearby field in order to prepare the balloon for flight.  You can see our basket in the lower left photo.

Here you can see the various steps in the preparation of a balloon for flight.  The passengers are actually doing quite a bit of the work, under the directions of the pilot and one or more helpers.  On today’s flight, there will be four balloons, which could be quite interesting as we will not be the only ones up in the air.  After unloading the basket, the balloon shell is stretched out and securely attached to the basket.  The balloon is inflated initially with powerful fans and only once it is well inflated, it is heated up with the burners to get lift.  That will be the next step for the crew of “Auvergne Montgolfière”, the red balloon here carrying the name of the company we are flying with.

This is our balloon being inflated with one fan – it is called “Volvic” after a local water.  It is quite noisy actually as the fan is powered by a petrol engine! No power necessarily where you want to start your flight.  The departure point is determined to give us the best possible flight, carried by the dominant wind.  As we saw during the flight, there is a possibility to steer the balloon in flight by changing height, actually, a lot more than I thought but the general direction is still dictated by the wind.

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Posted in Travel

A wet week in Provence

In November 2014, Bee and I took advantage of the 11 November holiday to spend a week in Provence.

Part of the reason was to spend some time with my parents who spend a lot of time there; part of the reason was also to get away from the bad weather in Belgium and discover a region of France that we did not know well.

Unfortunately, we hit the worst weather week in Provence for a long time.  The weather had been generally bad all over Europe for most of the summer (see also my recent blog entry on the Dolomite in August 2014) but we were particularly unfortunate.

Our first “Road Trip” was to Moustier-Sainte-Marie, the Gorges du Verdon and finally Grasses.  We skipped the Lac de Sainte-Croix as the weather just did not allow us to enjoy it.

Moustier is renown for fine pottery and ceramic.  There are many workshops, some mostly with ‘tourist’ good, others with very nice ceramic.  The town has also maintained its medieval atmosphere and is built on such a steep slope that a lot of streets are still impractical with a car.  We walked around town until it started to rain a lot harder and ducked into a local restaurant to escape from getting really wet.

We ate at “Les Santons” (www.lessantons.com) and had a very nice lunch.

After lunch we drove through the top of the Gorges du Verdon, France’s Grand Canyon.  There were very nice views, unfortunately not very photogenic, so I decided to experiment.  I did not have my big camera, so I took my first panorama using my Samsung Phone.  Here is the result.

VerBlog002It is not bad, and quick and easy, but not quite the same as the results I am used to when I use my big camera and I then assemble the photos using Photoshop.  It is clear that the one shot facing the sun was more exposed than the others and the camera was not able to correct entirely for that.

I also took three photos of the mountain facing us and assembled those in Photoshop and here are the results.

VerBlog001

Much better from a blending point of view.  So I will have to be careful in the future if I want to use the ‘panorama’ feature of my phone.

From Les Gorges du Verdon, we went on to Grasse, the World Odor Capital.  We stopped at the Fragonard Factory where we did a very nice tour of the facilities.  Fragonard sells their own perfumes and Eau de Cologne in totally plain containers, as opposed to some of the other companies who sometimes spend more on the bottle than the perfume!  Fragonard is also one of the few remaining “Nose Schools” in France.  Students are trained to recognize some 300 different odors and the “Experienced” nose can tutor up to 12 students at a time.  We saw the ‘school’ room, but class was not in session.

We had spotted a few potentially good restaurants on Trip Advisor, but all of them were closed when we were there.  We stopped at La Voute for dinner and had a good meal there.

The next Road Trip took us to Les Baux-de-Provence, a small town in the Alpilles that has become an artist community.  Just outside of town there are abandoned stone quarries which are now used for sound and light shows called “Carrières de Lumières” (www.carrieres-lumieres.com).  Every year, they have a different show that runs roughly from March to December.  The show last show in 2014 was on Klimt and Vienna.  Images are projected around the whole quarries while beautiful music plays and it is definitely worth the visit.

We had lunch in Baux and then went to visit the Castle, which as per custom sits at the very top of the village.

The view is quite spectacular, but again, the weather was not really good enough for good photos.  I likes better the view of the ancient town from the castle

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Posted in Culture, Travel

Loire Valley – Episode 2

As I was saying in the previous post, after 4 days in Saumur, I moved to Amboise for the rest of my stay in the region. On the way, I stopped first at the Chateau D’Ussé

I then stopped in Azay-le-Rideau (8). This is not a Royal Castle and actually the person who built it paid with his life for it. He was Tax collector for the King, and apparently, not all taxes collected ended up in the Royal Coffers! It is one of the most picture-perfect castles, right in the middle of a small town.

Any angle that you look at it is special.

The pond and garden in the back offer even more striking views.

It also has some of the best interior decorations that I have seen. A bit more modern than others (I am not sure when pool tables were introduced) but quite interesting.

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Posted in Culture, Food, Travel

Loire Valley – Episode 1

As indicated in the last post, I spent a week along the Loire River in June.  It was a very relaxing vacation.

After a half day drive (I Left Brussels very early in the morning) I made it to Blois for lunch.  I walked around the town for a while before sitting down to eat in front of the famous castle (one of many…).  Here is the view of the old city with the Loire River in the background.

Here is another view with the beautiful cathedral

I went to visit the Cathedral which shows the typical Gothic style of the time it was built.

Actually, the current church is build on top of an earlier edifice, much smaller and in Roman style.

Part of the old church remains underneath the new one!

This is the back side of the Chateau de Blois (1)

And here is the view of the front entrance.  It is not very impressive from the outside, but a lot better once you get in…

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Posted in Culture, Travel

A flight over the Cher River

I recently spent a week along the Loire Valley.  During that week, I decided to take a hot air balloon ride.  I had initially planned to do this in the early morning, but got a call from the organising company telling me that the weather forecast was no good and that they suggested I go the evening before, to make sure I did get a chance.

I was at the appointed place for the meeting at 19:30 when the caravan of France-Montgolfières arrived with all the equipment.  The first vehicle obviously carries the basket while the second carries the balloon in that red bag that looks like an overgrown tomato – we will see more of that later…

I discovered that there were 12 passengers for this flight and that they could take as many as 16 in this basket.  They have a smalled basket in case they have 8 or less passengers…  This is more popular than I thought.

We loaded up into the two vehicles and set off for the departure point.  It is determined by the wind direction so that we leave upwind of where we want to go.

We unloaded the basket and set it on its side so that we could attach the balloon.  This is where we will be spending 1 hour in the air – there will be three of us into each corner section of the basket with the ‘pilot’ in the middle.

The balloon is rather large and tall when it is spread along the ground.

The fans will be used to inflate the balloon before it can be heated up with the gas burners.  Once everything was setup, we waited.  Thierry, our pilot with the blue shirt below, was concerned about regular gusts of wind which would have made the balloon difficult to handle.  Several times they released a small black helium balloon to see the wind direction and speed at higher elevation.  It was very consistent at all levels.

And we waited as the wind just would not die down.

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Posted in General

Quick Update

It has been a long time since I wrote anything, not because there was nothing to write, but mainly because there was too much going on. Let me just update every one on what has been happening and I will have to catch up later with the details.

On August 23-24 I moved into my new apartment in Brussels.  It was not easy and I spent the next three weeks unpacking boxes which had not been unpacked by the moving company.  There is a good story behind all that which I will write later so I will not go into details now.  Enough said that I am now settled with only a few things still needing to be done, mainly carpets that needs to find their final place and paintings that still need to be hung.

In early September, I went to England for meetings at the Fawley Plant.  Leave Wednesday evening and get in to the hotel at 8PM; work all day Thursday and half of Friday and get home Friday evening late.  You know the routine – the fun of business travel…

Mid September, I spent a week with my parents in the South of France.  Now that was fun!  The drive in my new car was a thrill; I was very glad to see them again and spend some quality time with them; the weather was nice etc, etc… 

Early October, I went to the US on a business trip.  First to Houston and then Baton Rouge.  I spent the first Saturday with Belgian friends who live in Galveston.  Their house survived Ike, just; their boat did not!  All is fixed now so we spent a quiet afternoon talking, talking, eating and drinking wine, and more talking.  In Baton Rouge, I saw Lee and Dave as well as Bee.  Lee and Dave came to see me at the hotel as we could not find another time to get together.  It was great seeing them again.  Bee was involved in our meeting but I saw her outside as well.  She seems to be enjoying her life here!

The last Saturday, I had lunch with Su Li and Han Wa in Kemah.  What a coincidence to run into Singaporean friends in Houston.  The weather was cold but we still had a good time.  I do hope that Han Wa did not catch the flu as he refused to wear a jacket even though the temperature was only around 15-16 C

Last week-end, I had a “friendly” regatta on the North Sea organised by the company where we have been renting boats for the last 15 years.  Nick was our skipper – we know each other well, even though we had not sailed together since 1997.  I did not know any of the other members of the team.  When I arrived in Zeebrugge, the wind was blowing in excess of 30 knots (for those of you not familiar with what a knot is, it is almost 2 km/hr therefore the wind was blowing in excess of 55 km/hr).  On the docks, it was at times hard to stand still.  The next morning, not much change and therefore the races were delayed in the hope that the wind would decrease somewhat.  It did, down to 25 knots before noon so we went out in out 37 foot Oceanis called Foxtrot.

We started with the Race Briefing.  I think this should have told me that it was not a good idea to go out! When you have to wear full foul weather gear on the docks, there is something wrong! Don’t we all look miserable?

Briefing

The first race started at 1 PM while the wind was still blowing hard and the waves were more than 3m high.  Nick steered the first race and it was hard work, especially since we could not find the windward buoy right from the start.  So we headed for the ‘judges’ boat as we figured it was going towards the mark to see how the boats managed to get around it.  It was rough moving around out there… I am not on this picture because I am already struggling to keep my breakfast down!

Foxtrot1

After a while, we got word from ‘race control’ that the buoy had been blown away by the wind and therefore the “W” channel marker near the judges boat would be the new windward mark.  We were the first boat around it and won the race easily.

When the waves are 3 meters high, it can really shake your boat, and get you interesting views of what is happening.  No, we are not sinking, we are just behing a very big wave.

FoxJump1

and since we cannot go through a wave, we have to go over it

FoxJump2

What goes up ….. must come down

FoxJump3

The second race was just as rough, with a new course again as the wind had shifted.  Michel steered this race and once again, we are the first to find the windward mark and lead all the way to the finish line.  As soon as the start is given for the third race, it is now 4PM, the wind died.  So we are drifting with 5-10 knot winds and 10 foot seas – not pleasant.  Two other boats have already given up because half of their crew is sea sick; half of our crew of six (including me) is also sick, but we struggle on for a while.  After a while, without wind, the third race is cancelled and all boats are advised to return to base. 

At the end of the first day, we are in the lead with 2 wins.  there are two boats tied for second (Reggae and Bolero) right behind us.  We have dinner together with other participants: Mussels and Frittes!

Dinner

On Sunday, the weather is much better.  15-20 knot winds and the sea is much calmer.  Our crew is down to four, so more work, but easier with the lower wind.  We make a mistake in the first race getting to the windward mark and the low winds are not in our favor on the downwind leg so we finish third despite Philippe’s good efforts steering.  I had the pleasure to steer the second race of the day. 

Foxtrot2

We made a bad mistake on the windward mark again and let Reggae (who already won the first race of the day) take a very long lead on the downwind leg.  However, they make an even bigger mistake and totally underestimate the speed of the tide.  Nick reminds me to pay attention to that and the lack of speed of the boat and I end up steering almost 45 degrees up-tide of the mark just to stay even.  Our actual track is directly to the buoy and in slow motion, we round the mark in first place.  Now, into the wind back to the start line.  The wind is low so it is a constant struggle to head into wind as much as possible while still maintaining boat speed.  We are barely gaining on the tide and therefore  are moving almost sideways.  Reggae recovered from their mistake and are just behind us – they seem to be able to consistently head to wind better than we can and with a smaller boat, they are better able to take advantage of the small gusts of wind when they come.  They slowly gain, but we are able to keep them behind us until the finish – we get line honours, but we suspect that with corrected time, they will actually be placed ahead of us in that race too.  Bolero is far behind and actually has to motor to finish the race, so the fight is now between Reggae and ourselves with two victories each – only one race left…

Nick is steering the last race.  We manage to beat Reggae to the windward mark and they do not make the same mistake on the downwind leg so they are right behind us round the last mark.  There is still not much wind, so we are having a slow motion head to head race less than 100 m between the boats.  This time, their ability to  head to wind better is too much and they nick us at the finish line.  We have given it our all, but we know that we are in second place overall.  Here are the results

Results

Notice the results of Racve 4 – We beat Reggae by 1:16 across the line, but they beat us by only 53 seconds on corrected time – 53 seconds between first and second place!  We also have the fastest time overall.  So a lot to be happy about.

Still, it was quite an experience and reminded me of the previous times that I has sailed on the North Sea.  I will continue to participate – I am not sure yet if I am ready to actually skipper a week-end (I will have to make sure that I can control my sea sickness before I can do that), but I will certainly go regularly as ‘experienced’ crew.  When I finally made it home on Sunday evening, I ate, went to sleep two hours earlier than usually, and slept the whole night in a very deep sleep – I guess I was tired from all the excitement!

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Posted in Culture, Travel

Catchup – AM

It appears that I have a lot to catch up on to let you know what I have been doing up to the end of 2008.

I will do this in two installments – one that I will call ‘before Myanmar or AM (Ante Myanmar)’ and another that will be called ‘after Myanmar or PM (Post Myanmar)’ but please do not hold me to that as I have no ideas how much effort either of those will take.

In late July, I made another visit to Sungei Bulow, Singapore’s Wetland Reserve on the North West corner of the island.  I went there very early as usual and immediately ran into a large flock of egrets

 

egrets

I also got a very good look at ‘mud skippers’ taking advantage of the low tide – even though they are officially classified as ‘fish’, they can breathe air and can spend a lot of time above the surface of the water.

 

skipper

There are crabs also taking advantage of the low tide – some are even climbing on trees, or on low lying tree limbs …

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crab2

This beautiful Kingfisher kept me interested for a while.  I had missed it initially, but saw movement out of the corner of my eye and noticed that he was looking at me as much as I was looking at him.

 

king1

king2

Amazing what small changes to the setting of the camera can do – and only if you look at both pictures side by side…

As always, there are Herons

 

heron

And monitor lizards

 

monitor

A very pleasant 2-hour walk and I am done.

In early August, Singapore celebrated its National Day, just as we were finishing the “Round Singapore Cycling Challenge” which I did cover earlier.  In my apartment, I have a privileged location and for the past 4 to 5 weeks I had seen the practices of the helicopter fly-by every Saturday around 6:30 PM.  The scenario was always the same: two “Chinook” helicopters each with a giant Singapore Flag would fly towards my apartment with three “Apache”.  Somewhere over Telok Blanagh, one of the Chinooks would veer away and a single flag, with three Apaches would continue towards the Marina Area.  National Day Parade is very serious, and therefore it would not be acceptable not to have the proper fly-by, even if one helicopter should have a last minute failure.

To my surprise, on this Saturday, there were three Chinooks circling about, each with a flag. Safety in numbers!

 

natdaythree

One of them peeled off early and therefore only two turned towards my apartment.  Does anybody hear the “Ride of the Valkyries” in the background?

 

natdaywalks

They come very close to my apartment before they veer off towards the Marina.

 

natdayveer

I followed them as they made their way through the buildings towards the Marina Bay.

 

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I could not see the actual fly-by, but it was followed by some aerobatics by the local air force team which I did see, but is very hard to photograph especially with my telephoto!

 

natdayjets1

natdayjets

One of them actually made a heart, and I had seen them practicing the arrow through the middle, but I could not see it from my vantage point.

 

natdayheart

All this was happening as the sun was setting in the West…

 

natdaysunset

In September, I competed in my second ½ Ironman, as a team again – let me reassure you.  I already reported on those events

At the end of September I was in Belgium and attended the “O” family reunion – I already told you about that in minute details.

After that, I spent four days in Normandy, visiting the Mont St Michel and the D-Day landing beaches.  I have been interested in WWII since a very small lad – events leading up to and during the war were regular dinner conversation with my parents and grand-parents and I learned a lot about what happened behind the scene and to the civilian population.  When I moved to Italy, I learned another side of the same story and witnessed for the first time the devastation of war when we visited Monte Cassini, and the huge military cemeteries that surround the re-constructed monastery.  With all of this, and the many books on the subject I had read, I never once visited probably the most important site from the war – the beginning of the second front that eventually led to the defeat of Germany.

I was very impressed with Pegasus Bridge (a new version but very similar to the old one), taken by the allied paratroopers in the very first hours of D-Day

 

pegasus

I visited the German bunker in Ouistreham which has been turned into a museum of the Atlantic Wall.  It is 5 stories tall – the views of the sea from the roof-top observatory are commanding.

 

bunkerview

But most of all, I was amazed at how much remained of the Mulberry Harbour in Arromanches!  You hear so much about the destructing force of the sea, and the legendary storms in the Atlantic, but to have so much of the pre-fabricated harbour still intact 60 years later was more than I expected.

 

arromanche

Not far from Arromanches is the Battery of Longues-sur-mer, the only one left intact with the original guns still in place.

battery1 

There is an excellent view form here to Arromanches and therefore it was imperative to disable these guns before the Mulberry Harbour could be built.

battery2

I also had to stop at Ste. Mere Eglise, the first town in France taken by US paratroops in the night of June 5-6.  It was immortalised in the film “The Longest Day”, especially the scene where one paratroopers was caught on the steeple of the church – he survived his ordeal with only a gun shot to his foot by feigning to be already dead when discovered by German soldiers.

stmere

Pointe du Hoc is another such famous place.  The point itself is not very spectacular.

pdhoc1 

What is left of the defensive fortifications gives a better idea of what happened here

pdhoc2

But most impressive is the ground all around the bunkers – this was left intact after the battle and it is clear that not everything was a direct hit!  What is must have been like to sit in the bunker while all this was raining on top and all around you?

pdhoc3

I visited a British cemetery in Douvres La Delivrande (‘only’ 1123 graves in this one)

britcem

and the main American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer (with over 9000 graves)

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both sobering, awe inspiring and peaceful – the exact opposite of the circumstances that led to the death of so many young men.

I will have to come back when I have more time to explore the small towns as each has its own museum, all with different themes.  One could easily spend more than a week in this area.

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Posted in Culture, Travel

The 5-Yearly Genealogical Migration

Just like the great migrations of Wildebeest and Zebra in the Serengeti and the Monarch Butterfly in North America, my kind migrates as well.  However, we are miserly of our efforts and therefore only do so every 5 years.

At least since 1954, the known descendants of our common ancestor Hans O have been meeting somewhere in Europe but I seem to recall evidence (an old photo) of a reunion already in 1931.  The last reunion was in Boppart (Germany, along the Rhine River) in 2003 and therefore we met again this year in Chantilly (France, near Paris).

There are now 12 generations of descendants – I am the 11th generation and my ‘code’ in the family tree is 13511131112 – it means that I am the second child of my father, who is himself the first child of the first child of the first child of his great grand father Hermann O and so on.

One of my cousins Cathrine O (number 135111311231) actually married her great grand uncle (many times removed) Christian O (number 13537323) who is a member of the 8th generation, but only a few years older than she is.  They met at a family reunion 25 years ago.

The format of the reunion is generally the same.  Everybody gathers on the Friday evening for “Registration” in the hotel selected for the occasion.  Just like all good conventions, we have name tags just to remind ourselves who we are (and not all names end with O any more as there are many descendants of female lines who have adopted, some may wonder why, another name!)

Dinner was a first opportunity to reacquaint with people we do not see on a regular basis – this is even more the case for me as I live far away from everybody else.  Most people came from Europe (France, Germany and Belgium) but a few also came from the US.

Saturday morning and the fun begins.  While one group decides to visit the stables of the Chateau de Chantilly, known for horse dressage, the rest visit the Abbaye de Royaumont, founded by the King of France known as Saint Louis

The garden is very nice as we approach the buildings

Everybody listens intently to our guide in the musical chapel

and than in the garden where she explains all the medicinal plants which were grown by the monks.  We are blessed with beautiful sunshine.

The old cloisters are still almost intact

But only this corner tower remains of the church, which must have been really grandiose – it was destroyed after the French Revolution, in a period when many monasteries were destroyed, and monks fled to Belgium and other neighboring countries.

The monastery had a very ‘sofisticated’ system for latrines – up to 60 monks could use it at the same time, in silence! It seems to fascinate our group…

Here are some of the organisers of the week-end.  This is not a minor activity.  Planning usually starts a year in advance and final attendance is confirmed several months early.  Just for the visit of the Abbaye, we had three guides, one of which needed to speak German.  All these arrangements needs to be in place in order to keep things flowing smoothly.

Lunch was at the restaurant of the stable in Chantilly after which we visited the castle of the same name.

O’s were seen meandering from one location to the next

Once again, several groups were guided through the ‘chateau’.

One room above all others attracted my attention: The Chinese room, with oriental motifs that were not necessarily Chinese, but everything East of Arabia used to be associated with China!

That evening, big dinner with speeches and lot’s of merry making.

On Sunday, we visited Senlis, a small town that can trace its history back to Roman times with a roman wall and a stunning church.  There is something up there ….

Ah, yes – the church …

old Norman architecture

and a nice place for lunch.

That marked the end of the week-end and time for O’s to return to their own pastures, until 2013 when once again they will gather in Brussels.From here, I headed for the Normandy Beaches made famous by the D-Day landings, but that will have to wait for another post in the future …

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