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Did you miss Slow Down Week? Me too... According to a clever flash anime cartoon over at Adbusters, January 14-20, 2007 was national break-the-pace week, a reminder that "slow living" is good. Better. Necessary? We think so.

 

When I talk to people about the Margaux Project and the idea of "immersion travel" they often say, "Oh, you mean like slow travel?" Yes, partly that's what we're all about. As well as culturally authentic travel (or real travel), responsible travel (eco-tourism and sustainable practices), adventure travel and good old fashioned flaneur-ing.

I've just returned to the warmth of my brother and sister-in-law's apartment outside Paris after wandering around the Puce de Clignancourt in the rain. Rain... Yuck! It made me yearn for snow, and when I dropped by the New York Times for a look at the world, "Finding Bliss in Avalanche Country, British Columbia" grabbed my attention. I'm ready to go skiing.

"What makes the skiing there [Rogers Pass in the Canadian Rockies], great is also what makes it foreboding: its annual snowfall of 567 inches — over 47 feet — one of the deepest in Canada."

Mark Sundeen's article is a good read, not just for the good storytelling, but for his get-me-out of the mainstream approach to skiing.

"Hot tubs and sushi notwithstanding, for someone who likes the backcountry, skiing at resorts and sleeping in motels is ultimately a bummer. So the next day, we pasted climbing skins to our skis, tested our beacons and skied into the woods, where we would spend the next two nights at the A. O. Wheeler Hut, a rustic log cabin about half an hour from the road."

Of course this is after a day of lapping the groomers at the Kicking Horse resort in Golden due to the high avalanche risks brought on with the massive snowfall. But as soon as the conditions are safe (safer?) he and his buddy head for the wilds. After crashing out for the night with a couple of dozen Canadians, they awake and for higher elevation, treking on their skis. Despite carrying avalanche security beacons in their packs, the feeling of security was distant for the the author as they advanced into the avalanche-prone backcountry.

"I didn’t feel particularly safe. Munzke predicted that our ridge would very likely split an avalanche from above onto the flanks on either side, and assured me if I just breathed a bit more slowly everything would be fine. So we dug a pit to analyze the stability of the snow, which Munzke declared to be favorable, then sat on our packs and ate salami and cheese and pieces of chocolate."

Then they were off, floating down toward the valley below through thigh deep virgin powder. Sound good? Still raining in Paris...

I've just returned to the warmth of my brother and sister-in-law's apartment outside Paris after wandering around the Puce de Clignancourt in the rain. Rain... Yuck! It made me yearn for snow, and when I dropped by the New York Times for a look at the world, "Finding Bliss in Avalanche Country, British Columbia" grabbed my attention. I'm ready to go skiing.

Oooomph! Another wheelie suitcase is bashed into your shins as the mob jockeys toward the overwhelmed attendants at the gate. They've just announced that your "red eye" home from a business trip has been canceled. That charming news after sitting in the terminal waiting for two hours because it was delayed! With your pulse skyrocketing and your hopes plummeting you jostle through the crowd while dialing your wife on your cell phone to let her know that you might not be making it home this evening.

Hibiscus with Plumeria, Georgia O'KeefeBluebird skies, warm weather and few tourists. Friday's visit to the Shelburne Museum to view the Georgia O'Keefe exhibition was a technicolor success. We had friends visiting for the last week, a couple and their three young children, and we planned a day trip to see O'Keefe's paintings, to wander around the living history exhibits, tour the steamboat Ticonderoga and generally ramble the beautiful grounds.

I love having guests, each new person gifts some new thing in the places I live ... it's always been that way and ML and Al have been no exception. Yesterday I saw Brussels in a new way. We began at the famous Atomium . You haven't heard of the Atomium well ... it was designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn for the International Exhibition of Brussels back in 1958. The Atomium is a structure that is half way between sculpture and architecture, symbolising a crystal molecule of metal by the scale of its atoms, magnified 165 billion times. It's an impressive wee place, with a restaurant at the top of the 335 foot high structure. The spheres have a diameter of 59.0 ft and weigh 2400 tons ... Photographs taken, we caught the metro into the city, abandoning our car in a shady place because the temperature was once again in the high 20's. We wandered in Grote Markt where I harassed street musicians with my camera ... I've taken to unashamedly asking for peoples email addresses after photographing them. No one has yet mistaken me for a stalker. We ate on Kaasmarkt, in one of the many Greek restaurants lining the back street, eating Gyros (otherwise known as Döner kebab in that other life that I lived). I do believe that Döner kebab is a meat I could eat endlessly ... it was good.

And so we returned to Belgie only to be back out on the road within 24 hours ... The 150km drive to Amsterdam turned into a 200km trip due to a closed piece of highway and a road lacking signage. We travelled about 60km without any kind of reassuring 'Amsterdam' indicators ... ahhh like Belgium, it seems the Netherlands runs light when it comes to marking the way. We arrived at the hotel and caught the train into the city. With memories of Heidelberg still in my mind, first glance Amsterdam didn't impress. It has something of the crazy chaos of Istanbul but lacks Turkish friendliness. We made one or two mistakes, jumping on the first canal boat ride we saw ... shop round on these because some are like buses and not pretty to ride on. On a happier note, we had 3 kiwis from Auckland sitting behind us and we chatted about 'home' between views from the boat.

You know when you're travelling on a flat road somewhere in the Netherlands and you look out across farmland and see a massive cloudbank where the Southern Alps would be if you were driving the Canterbury Plains back home in New Zealand ... and your heart misses a beat?

I forgot the Black Forest part of the journey ... perhaps it is that we covered so much ground in so few days. We travelled from the lowlands of Belgium up into the Ardennes and on through a little of France, Germany and the Netherlands in 30+o celsius heat, with the temperature staying that high until our return to Belgium last night ... it doesn't make for clear-minded thinking.

So, we began the journey with lunch in Vianden, Luxembourg - filling the car with the cheaper Luxembourg petrol (1.24euro per litre versus 1.43euro here in Belgium). Fuelled we headed for Strasbourg. After a night in a place best not written about we ate breakfast outdoors in an old Strasbourgian square near 'the' cathedral where our travelling companions, Mary Lou and Al, exchanged birthday gifts. A delicious moment that was...