Transhumance or The big cow exodus

So, today I was back on the track of my travels. Went hiking to Ballon d'alsace again. But a different one...

Well, when my friend was inviting me for this... exercise, he sounded like that: "There are cows, a lot of cows! And they are walking. And people have to walk behind them to the top of the mountain!" Well... when I heard, I honestly had very mixed feelings: a lot of walking... in a place where I have already been... behind the cows... in a most probably rainy weather... climb to the top of the mountain when I am so tired after a crazy work week... My sleep-seeking brain has even invented a refusal startegy: to call 15 min before the early morning departure and say something to stay peacefully in bed whatever it could cost.

I guess the nature itself conspired against me, because I was woken up early in the morning by the bright sun beams bursted into my bedroom. And then my mind gave up: get up and move! In an hour we were heading on to Giromagny, the start point of the whole THING.

In reality, the whole as I quickly found out at the place, was the fest of cow exodus (sorry, but really can't find another word to describe it) for their summer pastures, uphill in Ballon d'Alsace. The cows are adorned and let out to the towm main square where the musicians are playing all kinds of triumphant and merry music to commemorate the Day and to probably cheer up the animals. Though the latter is probably really useless as the cows seemed so excited that they definitely did not need either cheering up or stupid people's snaps and poking - they were eager to go to their summer camp!


After all people's pomposity organized to at-least-as-they-thought pay respect to this almost sacred animal for cheese loving France, the gates were finally opened and the happy cows rushed (literally) to the top of the mountain. Those curious, sporty, local or just crazy gapers headed on to follow the herd, me being among them.
It was a very intensive, but enjoyable march along the beatiful mountain road. Crispy mountaineous air did not help sweating as we tried hard to keep up with happily running cows. Somewhere in the mid-way, the whole cow-people crowd made a break and we had a chance to taste a wonderful mulled wine... while cows didn't. Huh...

We arrived to the long-discussed "top of the mountain" in total 4 hours. There I was indeed surprised to see huge tents already installed and waiting for their tired and hungry hikers (in no way cows meant, though really sorry for the cows). When we found ourselves inside, the first thought that came into my mind was: "Gush, but isn't it Oktoberfest back in Munich?!". It appeared very similar to me. Big crowd of thirsty for good fun, food and drinks people and live music. And onwards, there was a lot of fun, and amazing (also very similar to German) food and amazing local wines (not beer thankfully ;-)). And people were dancing and laughing and everyone looked relaxed and restful.


It was a good day. Thank you Sun for waking me up!

"...Thank you for the music..."

This Saturday Belfort is hosting a big music festival, FIMU or Festival International de Musique Universitaire. It is really unusual to now see this good old, usually so conservative, town to wake up for this international hassle which is gonna take place in a day. Just saw all the scenes and rock pavilions which had been constructed in just one week. The whole Vielle Ville (Old City, Altstadt or whatever you can call it) just suddenly changed its face: couzy squares and little streets now have to bare all the rocker insanity on their long-standing medieval shoulders.
They told me it was one of the best times to visit Belfort. It turns into a smaller version of Cannes during its famous cinema festival. Well, you dare Belfort!

The Goals.

Hi Everyone! It's been a while I didn't touch my blog. Well... now it got busier and tiredness and business more and more often extinguisheany desire to go and spring out emotions to the world. I have two things, which I feel like I wanner write about... And they are not particularly linked.

But anyways! I had a beautiful week-end. (Thanks to E. - my travel companion - who was finally back) Went to Saut du Doubs, an a-a-awesome place on the border right between France and Switzerland. I was told that it's the best time to go there now as the river is in its full water. And it was really amazing: it showed all the natural power of the young spring and the frantic current of the waking up mother-nature. The waterfalls and the whole
forestry were great! It seems I haven't tasted such air for years.You know, it was really funny to pass a bridge which connects French land, on its one side, and Swiss land, on its other side. And even more funny: on the other side of the bridge there was a table with all notes like "You are now crossing the border. Please keep ready your passports or other ID documents". And all this in a real wild forest where not only customs officials, but a forest-guard is not a very frequent passer!!

I was longing for a week-end like this with a proper sun and a real May warmth! To catch the first sun tan on the face and to doubt whether to take off the coat, since it's warm, or to keep it on, since the wind is still mean. In a word, it was probably the first proper fest of SPRING in Europe this year. And it was generous.

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The second point is... Well... I am sitting right now in a totally dark room at my place. After another amazing week-end day-out in the nature. And I don't want to switch on the light - yeah-yeah, one of those "no-people-and-please-no-light" moods. Yeah... and listening to Leslie Feist. One my American friend advised me, so I finally got to find her records to listen. Kinda not bad. Yes, so! And I got suddenly (and probably stupidly) nostalgic. Nostalgic and a bit... empty. Looked through the pictures, mine and some of my friends. And somehow felt that so much is behind. So much efforts, feelings, emotions, hopes, achievements and falls, people, friends, intentions etc..... MBA is over, many of the life stages are in the past. So, what now? I realized that all my life I had goals, very strong personal goals I was stubbornly moving to. I don't mean that I don't have a goal now. It is just that I think I am getting a bit (ok wanted to say older, but will say ->) wiser. And now the goals turn into some "bigger life pictures" and it both scares me and makes me feel somehow weeker and more vulnerable, I guess. I understand that I probably should no more be "egoistically" stubborn in moving where I want, but then... how to live without this "break-any-wall-on-the-way" movement? And how to keep up with all those dear and loved ones? Well, I don't know the answer, at least now. And don't want to switch on the light.

Week-end incroyable!

Last week-end I had a bi-i-i-i-g trip. In one set covered Switzerland and a fair part of France! :-) But what a travel it was!

So, we started on Saturday morning, early beautiful morning. The plan was already made: Basel - Colmar - Strasbourg. And so it occured with... mmm, slight interventions in-between.

We came to Basel around 10:30-11:00 am. From the first minutes I could sense this big city (well, big compared to Belfort) spirit. And besides, it was Switzerland, which per se meant a business flavor floating in the air. It was a pleasure seeing so many busy looking people in Versace business
suits talking to each other on the streets, walking talking on the phones or just loitering around and shopping, but still with a very busy view. We went to the central area to take a breakfast. After that there was a lot of roaming around and glazing at shop windows - the so called lache-vitrine, if my French knowledge does not betray me. We passed a fussy market square, which seemed very French to me, though the city itself was entirely German speaking as opposed to Geneva. It was funny making my way through the crowd of people and not cars. And it felt good!
We left Basel at around 3. And headed on to Colmar. It did not take very long, just about 1.5 hours, to get there. My anticipation of the town was: it is gonna be a little provincial ville, so what am I gonna see there? But E. was (thankfully) persistent taking me there and, oh how grateful I am for it now! To this town, we arrived at a big parking place and the first thing that surprised me was that there were so many trees in blossom just everywhere.

Taking little narrow curly and very clean streets we moved on to the city center. And I found myself in a museum. The only difference was that everything was real, people around, houses, trees, cobble roads. Live museum! Everything, every house, every balcony, every wall, every cafe, every person seemed to have had medieval history. And it didn't feel weitr at all. It felt peaceful and timeless. We wandered in Colmar and ate straberries, and drank chocolate, and tasted local spécialité - special salty bagels, the name of which I cannot remember now to my shame. But then there was time to leave since we already stayed far longer than was planned. Strasbourg was ahead...

We took our time for driving from Colmar to Strasbourg and, again, it was not long: in Alsace everything is not far from :-).

As many of you may know, Strasbourg is an officially pedestrian city. So, we had to leave the car at suburb parking space and take the tram to the center. We went down on the Kléber square and took a quick tour around the city center. It looked week-endly busy and the style (no matter how trivial it may sound) was sensed everywhere. We had a short tour, but it was getting darker and we potentially had to head back to Belfort. And it was that time when that insane idea was born - to stay overnight so that to see more of Strasbourg the next day. And so we did. And we, thus, had enough time for a proper diner when we tasted another Alsacian specialty choucroute, which is a close relative, if not a twin, of German sauerkraut served with a variety of meet and sausages.

Next morning we continued with Petite France, the oldest area of Strasbourg, incredibly picturesque and, indeed, very ancient. We went to the famous Strasbourg cathedral and saw famous astrologic clocks. An impressive mechanism to see! It was raining from the morning, which as I was told was a very typical Strasbourg weather, but it somehow didn't spoil the grandeur of the city and my impresson, even for me - the one who absolutely cannot bear rain.

We left Strasbourg around 3 pm and I understood that what I saw was still a tiny part of what Strasbourg could offer. But... at the end of the day, it's not the last time I was going there ;-)! The week-end was approaching its end and we had to go back to Belfort. But, it wouldn't be us, the two adventurous souls, if we would just drive peacefully home.

We decided to make the way back through the mountains. Vosges mountains. The car was climbing higher and higher and suddenly (you would never think) it started snowing heavily! Please keep in mind that it was 6 April on the calendar! I was naive enough not to take any warm clothing and shoes. And the weather was sensational enough to seduce us to get out of the car and to play snowballs. So, in the end I was wet and freezing, but who cares about such trifles. We stopped by at Gerardmer, a beautiful town in the lowland - a retirement dream. It was a little town scattered across the bottom of the bowl, formed by the mountains and the lake in the middle. We grabbed crêpes in the quay restaurant. It was a bright sun shine outside, trying to correct the weather's mistake melting the sudden snow piles. It was a short, but very bright impression, therefore when we left I thought that I should do my best to come to Gerardmer once again, with my special one.

Having gotten over the Vosges mountains, we had to cross another chine called le Ballon d'Alsace or also le Ballon de Belfort. There, weirdly enough, it was sunshing and felt really hot. So hot that we even discussed laughing that during those two days we expereinced at least four seasons, all at once.
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When I started this post, I realized that I would never put into paper (into Word.doc in this case) all feelings and impressions I had during this all-around-Alsace week-end. So, forgive me for the dry facts and missing 99% of my bright emotions here. But I have an excuse: come and see it all yourself!

A challenging journey.

Traveled to Germany last week-end... Came back on Tuesday morning. Now it's Wednesday evening and I am still so tired.
It was something like this:
- booked my train tickets Belfort - Mulhouse - Strasbourg;
(just on the day of my departure, which was Thursday, the whether decided to go insane and to turn winter in the middle of spring. So, all things like snow, wind, minus temperature were there altogether)
- arrived to the station and <...> the train Belfort - Mulhouse cancelled. Duhh... And no idea when it can potentially start running as they told me there was some accident on the track;
- called a friend of mine and he took me to Mulhouse by car. Well... this world still has quite a bit of good people around. E., thank you!
- cought up with the train to Strasbourg. Hooray, now everything's gonner be awright.
- aha, wait! Life is not that simple;
- the bus tickets I booked in a hurry before appeared to be... (how to put it in a better way?) for the previous day. Hmm... and don't even ask me, how it could happen. I don't know and period. But I already had a serious session of 'self-analysis and reprimands';
- having discovered this, tried to buy train tickets, but - voila - the ticket desk happily closed for Easter and automatic machines did not sell tickets for the international travel;
- decided to try and buy on the board;
- I told you, life is not simple!;
- an "amiable" German train driver just refused to sell me the ticket on board giving the following reasoning: "Where are you coming from? - Belfort? - Why didn't you buy in Belfort? - [Because I bought the tickets for the bus etc etc] - Mademoiselle, what bus?! It is the train station! " Duhh... So, with the half-empty coach he just left, even after half of the Strasbourg station personnel was begging him to sell me those stupid tickets and take me! Well, it must be something cultural, I don't want to talk about it...;
- had to spend that horrible cold night at the station. Thanks to the French management of the station for their caring attitude, they gave me a separate waiting hall where it was warm and secure;
- fuhh...
- didn't sleep the entire night. In the morning, took a train. It was also DB, but luckily they were sell tickets on board (as the ticket desk was still closed);
- Voila Germany...;
- every train I had to change was delayed and no one could tell me whether I could take the next corresponding one. In fact, no one knew anything!;
- ok-ok... Arrived.;
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Traveling back was just a bit easier as I took the Night Express. Though it was no less cold, but it is no one's fault, right?
- only on the way from Mulhouse to Belfort it appeared that the track was not yet mended and the train stopped half-way in Altkirch. They provided a bus - no problem. The only thing is that it took 1.5 hrs instead of the left 15 min to get to Belfort... Duhh...
- I dunno. I am just so tired.

But the Easter week-end itself was really good. Was worth all these challenges and I even had one bright sunny day near Rhine with beautiful live jazz music!!! :-)

That's it! Stay tuned. :-)

78e Salon International de l'auto & Accessoires Geneve

It was one of the few moments in my life when neglecting all the MBA sustainability effect and any imaginable and unimaginable human virtues my mind was screaming: "I want only money, I want lots of it and I want it right now!!!".

78e SALON INTERNATIONAL DE L'AUTO & ACCESSOIRES GENEVE.

Duh... I don't know where to start and what to tell you about, folks. My companion, at least had a clear picture in the end which car he exactly wanted. I left the exhibition with luxury and technical shock and with a dozen of options of what I could potentially want.

Jaguar, Aston Martin, SAAB, Audi are just the few coming into my mind at once.

It was luxury, glossy, serious, flirty, appealing and frightening... all at a time.It was very busy. I would not imagine that there were so many people in this little Europe willing to "cash out" enormous sums of money for those
terrific pieces of iron, glass, leather and plastic. But it is good! Very stimulating. For instance, instigates to go and win a lottery, or... rob a bank... or, worst case, WORK HARD. ;-)

After a few hours of roaming from Mercedes to Porsche and on, I was looking at the cars as at the pairs of shoes. And everything looked normal, and everything looked affordable. :-) I was wandering, and wandering, and wandering, and every other model looked better than the previous one until I realized that we were walking in circles and that all the comparisons were fake.

In the end of the luxury tour we went out to have a grab and found ourselves eating (don't laugh here) a kebab!! Yes, yes! I am not a great fan of such kind of meal and I don't remember when I was eating it the last time, but, oh, how much I enjoyed that one! We were probably so tired of walking around and bored with luxury ;-) that we were devouring those kebabs stupidly looking and laughing at each other.

Yes, a gorgeous day! And now I know where to spend my next salary!

Sweet Geneve

Went to Geneva this week-end... My first time I went there... What to say? WOW! No.

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW...

From now on this city is awarded the price of the "dream place" to live in! [Though it doesn't mean that the contest is over] ;-)
The reason why I "suddenly" decided to go there is because there was the biggest auto exhibition going that week. The biggest in Europe. And, since MBA is over, I thought why not to look for this or that iron beast for myself... :-)

My companion made me get up very early as for a Saturday morning - 6 am! - so that we could depart at 7. All went really well and we left Belfort on time. It was a crispy morning and the sun was showing its tender, childishly hesitating beams to the sun-starving city. The closer we were getting to the Swiss border, the stronger and the hotter it shone.
At 10 am, if I am not mistaken, we stopped by a ferme-auberge for a breakfast. It was a cozy place with smorgasbord majoring in local sorts of cheese served, surprisingly enough, on the billiard table :-) Local cheese taste and the crunch of croissants immediately sweaped away any subtle memories of last two weeks of rainy March Belfort.

At about 11 am, in a cotton mist, I saw a white boat which like a ghost ship was lingering down in the valley. Oh, my Goodness! "But this is a huge lake!!" (Yes, yes, it's exactly how I merely screamed in the car) It was a big terrific lake in the chalice of the Alps. "Yes, it is le Lac de Léman", answered my companion in his calmness. But I guess my noisy reaction made him think that it was the first lake I saw in my life and so he turned right, away from the croudy main road, and we started descending to that wonder lake through a plethora of little and unimaginably cute villages. He looked at me in a cunning manner and said: "Ok, I have a new idea!". For a second I started douting that we would still catch up with the exhibition, but luckily I stayed silent! Et, voila! We ended up at the very shore of that lake! It was a lovely little town called Lutry. It was very warm, sunshing, the water was calm, almost dead calm. It loked like an idyl with families walking along the quay and grandparents watching their restless little grandchildren. The place had a yacht-yard and the boats were quitely floating on the waves made by numerous swans busy with their morning exercises.

My companion suggested to take a boat to Geneva. We went to the lakeside cafe to ask about the schedule. Lively waitresses did not show any sign of surprise when the two newcomers asked about the nearest boat to Geneva. Instead, one of them ran immediately away and came back with a brochure of the schedule for the whole next year. She showed us the hours of depart and there was obviously nothing in the nearest several hours (or even days). She continued explaining that it is just such season that there were no many boats going and that normally there were many if them awaiting for those willing to sail. Thus, we had nothing else but to absorb the generous sun and to hop into the car explaining to ourselves all the advantages of the previously chosen "traditional" car-journey plan. When we were leaving Grandvaux (neighbour village, next to Lutry), I caught a though that if such places exist on this planet, than Paradise must have been (without any doubt) somewhere on our Earth too!

So, ahead!
In a few minutes my companion pointed out to the left nudging me: "See there? That is Mont Blanc..." Yahoo! Mont Blanc! Finally I saw it! Well, though from the car window, it looked impressive and inspiring. One could recognize it without any fail: yes, yes, yes, it was (who would guess) the highest pick of the mount range.

In a few more shiny enjoyable hours we arrived to Geneve. I will skip the whole story of the car salon as it deserves a separate place in the next post and will take you to a quick tour around the quay of le Lac de Léman in Geneve and the city center. We parked at the headquarters of HSBC in front the lake and decided to walk further, because it was not a big surprise that the traffic was absolutely insane and we had been moving with the speed of 500 m/hr, no more. The city met us with all its luxury and amicability, no matter how surprising the contrast can be. I am afraid to sound arrogant, but walking along the vivid streets I had a feeling of "I-can-do-everything" and "there-are-no-limits-for-me-in-the-world". One could literraly touch HAPPINESS hovering in the air and absorb the ease of life as freely as relaxed citizens were drinking wine and hot chocolate all around the streets.
We, of course, dropped at in one of the chocolateries and had our well-deserved and long-desired cup of Swiss pride. Oh, do I understand why they are so proud of it!

It was getting dark and we had to head back home. My mind was screaming reluctant to leave the busy city. On the way to the parking place, we did not fail to swing by the most expensive city hotel, Beau Rivage, to take the information about the prices. :-) The diligent reception girl for about half an hour was explaining what was included in the EUR 5 800 royal suit. With the view of exhausted billionairs we nodded and thanked and said that it was good to know for the next visit.

And we left the city... And it was unforgettable... And I definitely will come back there again!