A little Taste of Ehnen (Luxembourg)

Last week I went for an afternoon of wine tasting with some people from work. We were visiting the wine museum in Ehnen, a small village next to the Moselle, next to the border between Luxembourg and Germany. Getting there on a Sunday was quite the trip, since all bus lines ran very infrequently. But the weather was lovely and the environment beautiful, so it was totally worth it.




 

 

 The museum is owned by the state and produces some special wines itself. We started our day with a guided tour through the museum, where the wine making process was explained to us. Unfortunately, the tour was only available in French, German and Luxembourgish, so we needed some translating, since the only language we have in common within our group is English. Besides that inconveniency, the tour was really interesting.

 

 

After the museum tour, we had a glass of wine produced at the vineyards that belong to the museum. These wines are there for the visitors of the museum to taste, but you cannot buy them. Very exclusive (and very tasty)! We continued our tour outside, with a walk through the vineyard and an explanation of the geology of the environment. The surroundings were very beautiful, with the Moselle at the backdrop and the walk was great.

 

Our sunny walk lead us to... more wine! Back at the museum, the wine tasting started. We could try several white wines produced in the area. We expected to get just a small glass of each wine, but actually there was wine aplenty. A pleasant surprise.

 

The day was lovely. This was a perfect group activity for in the summer. I forgot how nice the Moselle area is. I definitely plan to go back more often this summer.

 

 

 

 

A Day at the Spa - Antwerp (Belgium)

A couple of weeks ago, we had one of those long weekends that May knows so many of. I met one of my oldest childhood friends in Antwerp for a weekend of catching up, chilling out and sight seeing. Well, you can scrap the latter one, barely any sight seeing happened because we were too busy with the first two things. Which was, to be honest, pretty perfect.

 

Both of us were tired from working all week and traveling to Antwerp all morning, so our first day existed mostly of eating and drinking coffee. Back at the hotel, we had two missions; find a spa for the next day and explore the party life of Antwerp. But then we discovered that the Eurovision Song Festival was on, so we hád to watch that. It lasted until 2AM, so the party plans were definitely failing.

 

Luckily we did find the spa we were looking for, although it took ages, several calls and many searches so find a nice one that was remotely close. Not thát close though, as it turned out. We had to go to Brussels airport and then take a bus from there. While being on the train, we learned that we should have bought a special ticket, just to be allowed to pass through the airport. That was so ridiculous to us, that we decided to be rebels and pass the airport without buying it. With success!

 

Then it turned out the bus driver had never even heard of the bus stop we were going to. When we finally got there, the street did not look like a street that was close to a big and fancy spa. It pretty much looked like we might be on an unsuccessful expedition. But then there it was, this amazing castle-like building with a long lawn leading up to it. Here's a little impression from the outside, since no pictures were allowed inside.

 

 

 

 

The spa was better then we could have imagined, and so was the weather. When we sat on the chairs outside, next to the swimming pool, it was as if we were in a warm and exotic country. There were nice drinks, nice food and different saunas and baths. It was an amazing day to really relax and chill out big time.



What's Up With the Duck?

Some love it, some hate it. It was made people smile a lot. Some people think I am cool and some look at me as if they think I am insane when I pull out my yellow rubber duck to place it at a landmark to take a picture. It has happened more than once that my little yellow friend nearly got stolen by a kid. Also did I nearly lost my group on a guided tour because I was busy taking duck pictures in the back so not too many people would notice. People have started to buy me duck gifts. Above all; I got many, many remarks about his little fellow. Bringing this gadget along on trips turns out to be the perfect way to start a conversation.

So, why did I start taking pictures with those ducks? To be honest, I stole the idea from some friends. They took vacation pictures with two little bears and had a whole collection of those. This made the pictures so much more fun and special than just any picture of a landmark. Many people can take the exactly the same picture of a famous building or sight, so I wanted to add something to make it my unique picture. I decided to go for a rubber duck since it's bright, waterproof and it can float. Also, there are many different kinds of rubber ducks available. So I see opportunities for a future collection there.

Meet the team:

 

 

 

 

This is Billy Bob. The first duck of my collection. He has joined me on my travels to Prague, Porto, Antwerp, The Hague, Sarajevo, Mostar, Dbrovnik, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Chennai, Vianden, London and more.

 

 

 

This is John. I brought this one because I thought it was a pilot and he could thus be traveling the world. But then my mom pointed out it's a police man and all friends who I asked agreed with her. Bummer. For me, John is still a traveling pilot. Some of the places he has been to are Trier, Porto and Berlin.

 

This last one was a gift from a friend. I call him Barney. I haven't taken it on travels yet because I am too afraid to lose it and I won't be able to replace it. So this one will be featuring in my photos with running BIBs and medals.

 

 

That's it. Hopefully I'll be adding more ducks to my collection soon.

Exploring Chennai: Mahabalipuram - Tamil Nandu (India)

 

It's been a month since I have come back from India and I am still not done telling the crazy stories. Every time I see a friend I haven't seen for a while, I have lots of fun anecdotes. It is not that I got to see or so a lot when I was over there, but I did see a lot of things that we do not have over here. I wouldn't say it was a culture shock, more a culture amazement. Not always in a positive way, but surely in a memorable way. Somehow, it's usually the daily things that I end up telling people about; like the traffic on our way to the office or the high amount of staff members we had to pass every time we entered the hotel (around 24 from entering the premises until entering the room).

I do realize that I might not be giving my days of sight seeing the attention they deserve. We did see a lot of nice things in those days. I've been very busy the past weeks, but now I finally had the time to upload some photos of my visit to Mahabalipuram.

 

 

On Sunday, we had two cars with driver to take us and two guys from the company around to some touristic places in the region. First we visited Mahabalipuram, a group of monuments which has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We were lucky enough to have a guide for our group, so we got to learn a lot about the temples.

 

 

Soon it turned out that this spot is not only a place for foreign tourists, but that it is also visited by many Indians. For them, our group was a walking touristic attraction. Many wanted to take photo's with us.

 

 When visiting the second temple, we noticed that there were three goats on top of the temple, casually taking a walk on it. They must have been mountain goats, because they did not at all seem uncomfortable with climbing on the carved stone at about ten meters high.

 

This big rock is just fascinating. It stands solid on a steep slope, with only a small surface touching the ground. The guide told us that many years ago, the British have tried to pull it down and that even elephants were not strong enough to get the rock moving. True or not, it's a great photo opportunity.

 

 

Oh yes, cows are just standing around anywhere here.

 

 

 

Later we moved on to the shore temple, where there is a separate entrance price for Indians and foreigners (about 10 times more).  In 2004, there has been a tsunami on this very coast. The guide told us that there used to be two more temples before that, but they were wrecked by the water. Some pieces of stone and sculpture were found back on the shore and have now been added to the remaining temple.

 

 

The temple is surrounded by dozens of life-size stone cows and many carvings and statues of the god Shiva. Because you had to pay to enter, the street sellers could not sell their souvenirs on the premises of the temple. But creative as they are, they did find a way to reach the visitors anyway.  They would stall out their products in between the bars of the fence surrounding the premises. That's what I call innovation.

 

 

Later we went back to the cars and had to drive a while to go to a place where they had recreated an old Southern Indian village. It was full of cute little buildings, which had small museums about the history of India inside.

 

 

 

 Unfortunately, we did not have a whole lot of time to walk around since we had a late lunch scheduled. At the beach! On our way to the restaurant, we noticed that the road along the coast was full of beach and water parks that looked like carnivals. Many were overly decorated with bright puppets, clowns and cartoon-like statues. Several of them could easily serve as the set for a horror movie. The restaurant turned out to be in one of those big, bright parks. Luckily, one of the nicer looking ones.

 

 

That day was international woman's day, so me and my female college were welcomed with a rose. During the meal we each received another rose from an Indian Charlie Chaplin impersonator (hilarious!). The meal was accompanied by live music. But not the kind of music you expect to hear when you are on a beach in India. No, we were treated on songs like "Stand By Me" and "Waterloo".  Wonderful.

 

After the meal we went for a small walk on the beach. This sign was very funny to me. The real reason swimming is not allowed, is because of the strong current. According to the sign, the reason you are not allowed to swim are the jellyfish. Of course, jellyfish can be dangerous. However, neither the guys from the company who went with us, nor anyone from the table next to us had ever seen a single jellyfish there. Another sign in India which did not make a whole lot of sense.

 

That was the end of a long and warm day. Time to get back to the reality of working life and start the laptop to prepare next day's training session. But this time charged with vitamin D and good food.