Old neighborhoods The first item in our agenda was to visit the neighborshoods where we used to live and work, both of which have undergone quite a few changes. This is the Pasir Panjang village (in 2012) as we remember it when most of the businesses had already closed because […]
We had friends visiting from the US this weekend. Today it was one of the first real Summer days here in Grenoble, and what did we do? We took these guys above 2000 meters to show them Winter (when it actually just unseasonally snowed in their home state). This is […]
When we left Grenoble at 8am. (on Wed Nov. 11) the town was completely covered in thick clouds. When we reached Sappey-en-Chartreuse at about 1000 meters we started to see the surrounding peaks, and then the clouds were behind and below us and we enjoyed sun shine for the rest […]
A week after our Budapest trip we were in Paris for an extended weekend. We stayed in the Voltaire/Bastille neighborhood again. We found street after street lined by “boutique shops”, run mostly by Asians and selling the most horrendous outfits for shockingly low prices. Some of them had particularly creepy […]
Our original plan for the Ascension holiday weekend was to visit Annecy, which we have wanted to do for some time (since winter). Then we checked the weather forecast; it promised mostly rainy and chilly weather around Annecy and Grenoble. Another look at the weather map told us to go […]
It’s been three years since we last visited our friends in Chinchón and three years since we ran our last street marathon, also in Madrid. As usual we arrived at Madrid-Barajas T4 and picked up our rental car in T1, and then drove about 50km south to Chinchón. On our […]
So we were in Groningen, the Netherlands, for a conference for four days. We’ve never met as crazy a bicycle town as Groningen. You may expect that a completely bicycle friendly town with practically no cars would be a nice and relaxed place to go about. Think again. Groningen is […]
We never used to think that Europe is a place with unique characteristics that its members share and at the same time make it a thing, different from other things. Salad at Crudo Osteria Temporane, Turin, Italy. To us what constituted Europe appeared as separate countries like Finland, Germany, Spain, […]