This is a life I always dreamed about ;)
Didn't think I was going to type some words about our trip to Europe, and tried to say to myself that it's not possible to take some good photos from train's window, but decided later if I can see it then it should be possible to show.
I've never been in this beautiful Europe, all I've seen before were some big stupid cities which I couldn't understand how people could live in. It seemed not natural and totally disgusting. But now it looks much better here and I'm going to explain what I mean.
I was unbelievably lucky to come into that kind of weather which met me in Vienna. It wasn't summer yet but really green fresh and beautiful blossoming spring.
When the plane was just going to land I spent all my attention to check the type of clouds, cloudbase altitude, wind strength and everything connected to flyability. And it didn't look very nice but not that bad: it was sunny, not strong thermal wind, small little cumulus nearly 500-600 meters from the ground and 200-300 meters high, temperature around +18 degrees. Not perfect for flying but at least not raining and not too hot to carry my 27 kilo of bags around. And it was really funny when I found that almost nothing works at Saturday, at least I couldn't find where to buy a map which I did need to understand how to find my hotel. People around were very friendly, one homeless man told me that everything is closed but show where I can find the city map, one old lady tried to check my hotel booking and help me to find it on map but didn't and it was ok, I just needed to find my way by myself. It took 5 minutes, not bad:) I was a bit surprised when I didn't find any ticket-control system on U-trains and next day I was even more surprised when I didn't find any opened ticket cashier and any ticket automat so didn't buy ticket at all... Street with my hotel was that small that they didn't even type it's name on the map so I just counted the little streets from metro and after 10 minutes going straight turned to the needed street. Looked at the power points and laughed a bit, I didn't have the laptop and phone recharger any more. Stayed a while at the hotel organising everything around and then went for dinner and little walk. Was lucky enough to go into supermarket at 17-55, bought what I was gonna eat and found in 5 minutes that all the supermarkets also closed. So no recharger, no map, no opened shops and pharmacies. Tried to adapt the phone recharger to Austrian power points but just made a mess and ugly recharger which still couldn't fit into it and after that finally found the way: something reminded me that I had universal battery recharger so just used it. And laptop just needed some battery-economy mode. We did organise a connector for recharging at the airport the next day evening.
Vienna was very quiet and nice, maybe because of weekend, maybe it was just it's quiet part, maybe it was just music in my headphones, but I was impressed.
The view from my window show perfect family style picture: small homely balconies with soft deep chairs and flowers around, kids painting and little handmade things and long green vines on the walls from the ground till roof.
I saw new park with huge amount of flowers and green trees nearly every minute walking anywhere from the hotel, beautiful buildings every 10 seconds, didn't find any crazy drivers, and maybe the only thing I didn't like was too many beer pubs in the city. All other European, Asian and African capitals I saw before made me a bit crazy, their rhythm was too intensive and I didn't like that amount of people around. So Vienna looked like it was exactly that place I would prefer to any other capital from which I ever saw in my life.
Then I went to the airport to meet My Love. We didn't find any cheap car for rent and decided to go Lienz to meet our Russian friends by train. Bought the ticket but again didn't find any map to understand where to go so waste some time and couldn't go all the way to Lienz in one day, had to stop in Villach to spend the night. My Love tried to sleep some time.
That was a moment to meet new mountains in my life. I knew they were beautiful. This word can explain nothing about Alps. I didn't find any words in my mind. I opened my eyes and my heart to absorb and remember that wonderful view.
Green grassy edges right next to massive sharp rocks, so many shades of green in the forests, big European cows, sheep, little old houses and castles on the tops, rain making the view so clear and sharp that eyes start crying and the clouds beginning from the tops of closest trees, villages, small towns, churches, rivers... I even began to understand my mom's words "I want a chalet in the Alps".
Also i tried to look at that beauty connecting to our trip, i mean find the landing options in the valleys and on the edges. It looked a bit strange that small roads didn't have power lines around, and big power lines had plastic balls on the top line so everybody could see that from some distance. Forest trees didn't look nice for landing: they were very high and didn't have branches first 15-20 meters.
6 may we came to Greifenburg hoping that we can find on radio our Russian friends. It was rainy and cold but carrying big bags around didn't let us to catch cold. Found the camping, didn't find Russians, spent whole day checking forecast for different places trying to find the flyable weather and it gave us a chance to stay in Greifenburg few more days.
Next day was rainy too and it was a good time for writing and checking forecast again and washing and shopping and walking around. The only thing we didn't do is sending the glider to Werner. We brought the Rook from Nepal and we were going to send it by post from Vienna but Austria has many holidays in May so we just brought it at first to Villach then to Greifenburg and we didn't find the post office opened even once. I was worried about it but Stan wasn't.
The 8th of May wasn't really nice flying day, enough just to remember how to fly. Half an hour in the air and i was happy again.
Even with lots of clouds and their shadows on the ground we had amazing views which i cannot even describe.
I'm used to a different beauty, Russian and Himalayan, not Alpine, and i couldn't stop taking photos of everything around.
We landed long time before the rain and watched some funny landings later.
Some our friends landed somewhere else trying to run away from the rain. But drying the gliders together collected us in one place again. Forecast looked nice only for one next day and again shity after that so we decided to escape from incoming weather. We tried to send the extra glider to Werner but again were unpleasantly surprised because of closed post office. At least we gave our solo rescues to Russian friends so minus 4 kilo nearly, but still had to fly with extra glider and that didn't seem funny. In a real it was even more horrible than we thought, but i could survive, it was much more uncomfortable for my pilot cause he had that extra glider between his legs squashing the very important part of his body))
So we could fly only to Lienz (nearly 20 km), landed in model-airplane club, jumped into a train to San Candido which is on Italian border, then to Fortezza, then the genius mind of my lovely pilot understood: even if we escape from incoming cloud today and find the good weather, we were still stuck with the glider...
And we decided to continue our way back to Austria to that place where Werner can meet us and the glider. Went to Brenner, then Innsbruck, then Feldkirch, and he met us and drove to his house in Bubikon (Switzerland). Spent there 2 nights under a rainy cloud and then went to Annecy. Swiss trains are not cheap. And than more sad thing they gave us the wrong route. And we wasted 2 hours in Thonon waiting for the bus back to Annemasse to change the way. Came to Annecy at 9-30 p.m. and didn't have any power to find a camping site, went to expensive hotel again.
Next day was Sunday again and buses didn't operate, we went to Talloires walking (nearly 11 km on road) with our backpacks, thanks god, without extra glider this time))) and it wasn't raining... almost))) found the camping in Talloires but it was empty and continued walking to the south side of lake to find a different one. After some walking caught the car with Albanian driver who was so kind to drive us to Nubliere camping where we found good discounts for paragliding pilots and were happy to build our tent finally. Next two days we expected good weather and were very excited about possible flying. Put our tent next to SIV landing and the weather was good enough for SIV students, they kept flying that day until 8-30 p.m. and our thoughts were full of envy. We went to walk around to check some shops but almost everything were closed again even cafes. Went to Doussard to check the landing there and to try to find some shops. Landing in Doussard is perfect straight huge grassy territory opened for any side wind with shuttle bus going to take-off every hour. There were lots of landing options around the lake but this one was the best i thought.
Next morning we finally went to fly. Saying it was beautiful around meant saying nothing about this place. Finally we could see the big mountains around with the snow hats and lake from the top of mountain and lots of gliders flying and white cumulus in the perfect blue sky.
We scratched a bit next to take-off, got a little bit higher and went across the lake looking at the gliders flying next to small rocky wall. It didn't look that small from the ground, it even didn't look like a wall separate from the next big one, but in flight from nearly take-off high it seemed low. When we made it above the lake, found a big sink and started to look at the landing place trying to find windsocks, but finally nearly 100 meters above the landing level found a lift. That side of lake where we just came had the east exposition so it should be working by the time we came there.
Went up with ridge and jumped to the next rocky mountain right behind the Doussard landing, got stuck there for some time because of shity wind at 1400 m which broke the thermal and gave us a big sink every time we tried to go up.
After 45 minutes knocking to the ceiling we decided to go back to rocky wall, then found the gliders flying next to the big rocky wall and went there.
That mountain looked unbelievable from the side, specially when looking from the other side of lake: it seemed that a huge dinosaur and next to it the smaller one sleeping near the lake and we could see their two spines.
We got some high and went back across the lake. That time we had enough altitude to make it almost to take-off high, we thermalled a bit and l went to the north side, closer to Annecy.
There were lots of gliders and I really enjoyed catching them with my camera lens, the best one was new black and blue Delta 2, very beautiful one!
And i can not describe how beautiful and breathtaking is flying next to those rocky monsters around Annecy lake, they all are different and feeling thermals next to them made me thinking I could understand their characters a bit.
When flew back from city side caught a big sink again and i thought again we were going to land soon at the Talloires landing but my lovely pilot was very patient and scratched the little wall with trees and then found the thermal to get higher which let us go back above take-off and to planned landing field.
Didn't like the closed little fast food shop, as we found before, they put the proper mustard into their hotdogs and we missed it a little bit already. Don't remember what did we do the rest of the day, i'm sure nothing special, but we were going to fly next day too.
Next day didn't let us fly a lot, we couldn't even make it higher than take-off even with take-off time nearly one hour later than the day before. It was more windy and cloudy so all the normal thermals on sunny side were in rotor and were not normal thermals any more and we had to work with some weak and crappy stuff on lee side, got couple of small collapses and went to landing. Later we saw some gliders flying higher above take-off but didn't even envy a bit because the flying next to take-off was never our goal so we just relaxed the rest of the day. I have to say that flying temperature in Europe wasn't warm even on sunny days, it was even freezing sometimes, and if we didn't enjoy our flight more than we felt cold - we didn't enjoy at all so even having one flying day a week we didn't mind to stay on the ground more than expected.
We discovered some places around, found some paragliding and tourist equipment shops, found the best spaghetti carbonara in the world (yes, in France!), at least we both didn't try any better carbonara before. If you ever going to stay in Doussard, try it in the restaurant in front of Le Lac Blue Camping.
Next three days were rainy and cold and we were really happy to have a roof above our heads, huge thanks to Alexis for that! He had something to do in Paris and lent us his camper van, which was saving us from cold and water for three days. Those days were meeting days for us, nobody was flying and everybody tried to find something to do so we met Andy and Stephan. Andy was driving around looking for adventures and even when the weather let him fly one hour he flew one hour. At the same time we met Stephan who was new X-Alps pilot from USA2 team and he was trying to motivate himself to do some training but that kind of weather distracted everybody. Stan talked to him a lot looking on the map, told him some thoughts about the route and the weather, and I was trying to make a mental picture of Athlete in my mind. I knew three X-Alps pilots by that time and all of them were very different. Evgeniy, Russian Athlete had every day training, with rain and cold, with flu and sick, he hiked up to mountain in Pokhara every day, in Bir every day, in Kathmandu every day. He was heading to the goal every minute of his life. Tomi from Romania was a hiking superstar in Pokhara, he hiked up from landing to take-off and waited for the jeep with tandem passengers for another 20 minutes, nobody could compete with him in speed hiking. Babu was also a new X-Alps pilot and I didn't know a lot about him, just once David (now Stephan's supporter, USA2 team) brought him to our place for dinner and i found in his eyes the goal. He looked like he didn't know exactly what to do and where to go, but he said he would do it. He was famous in whole paragliding world because of his flight from Everest and Kilimanjaro, i didn't know what variety of famous it was. Later we observed two more fighting X-Alps characters in Bornes To Fly race - Martin Muller and Victor Sebe, who show their intentions very sharply. And i couldn't compare with them my impression of Stephan. Anyway, we will see during the race:) For sure it was interesting to watch.
At the end of week Andy found the perfect adventure - hike and fly competition Bornes To Fly, mini-X-Alps with much more weather for walking than flying but lots of pilots surprised me, trying to make more kilometers than others they didn't only glide top to bottom but even thermalled. Yes, the weather was that bad that about thermalling i can say only "even" )) The weather was that bad that the lady from our camping reception gave us free wi-fi for a week and let us go into a big tent where children have some events during the high season and where we cought hide from rain and wind. We found there a swing for harness and lots of interesting books and toys. Tried to start making the pod for Kuik2, bought some materials with some extra free stuff in RipAir shop before.
We had little flight on Monday, it looked strange, we spent nearly two hours at take-off waiting for any pilot going higher than take-off, then we took off, thermalled fast, went with one solo glider along the rocky ridge to the north, tried to jump to the next one but met really strong wind which didn't let us go forward but down and we found the lift just maybe 80 meters above the ground, but it was nice straight thermal and it let us go up to the same position, we came back above take-off, went to the south but got huge sink, even thought about emergency landing next to the lake but it let us go closer to the main landing place and we almost made it, landed on a field 150 meters before.
Packing was quick so we decided to go to main landing and pack our sky&clouds properly and eat our favorite hot-dog with lots of mustard. Had a look what they have at the exhibition, there was some kind of testival, but didn't find anything we needed and went home.
The race was finished in 3 days (Saturday - Monday) and we had our flight from Mainland Europe to Malta on Saturday, forecast didn't promise anything good for Annecy and looked at least sunny for the east side of mountains so we decided to go with Andy to Italy. He has a big camper van but only two seats at the front for the driver and one passenger, and I was the second passenger and I took the VIP sit at the back which is more bed than seat. Slept couple of hours and when I woke up we were already in Italy and high in the mountains. There was still lots of melting snow and Andy showed us beautiful place with a big lake on the top of mountain. There was a ski resort but season already was finished and it a looked like nobody was there for long time even abandoned. And also we saw the high water level of that lake, it should be really nice there in summer.
Going downhill we were almost falling down from clouds, unreal and unrepeatable feeling! One more thing I noticed on the way was huge amount of poppies blossoming everywhere. It was exactly that time when they were the most beautiful and i was nicely surprised watching those beauty everywhere around. We came to Rivoli because we didn't know where the camping site we planned was situated and tried to find a place with internet. McDonalds didn't let us use its internet because we didn't have the sim-card from one of four countries it accepts and the only way we could use was the Holux GPS which didn't have map with roads by that time so we just had the distance of 11 kilometers in straight line and direction to the goal. 4 km walking made it just in time to catch the bus then some more walking up and down hill and a bit around... We were slightly confused when found the absolutely straight and short road from train station to the central square which we spent nearly one hour to come around to couple of days earlier. Camping looked very different than in France and Austria, it was small and didn't have any regular customers in it. Quiet place between two lakes, next to the small town with lots of green hills around and snow mountains on the horizon.
We found a cafe with special breakfast for us, big supermarket next to the central square where they sell bread depending on its weight, extreme sports shop with nice discounts. Weather looked nice only for normal people, pilots wouldn't like that wind. Once we were even scared to fall asleep because of the wind up to 90 km/h and noisy huge trees around our tent. Food in the closest restaurant was really terrible so we spent there 3 nights and moved with light heart closer to the airport for one night before our flight from Mainland. Ryanair made us a bit crazy and mad of their stupid rules so it was perfect time to fly away ;)
p.s. it was my story, the passenger's point of view, the pilot's one is here http://parakros.com/2013/06/08/eu-2013
I've never been in this beautiful Europe, all I've seen before were some big stupid cities which I couldn't understand how people could live in. It seemed not natural and totally disgusting. But now it looks much better here and I'm going to explain what I mean.
I was unbelievably lucky to come into that kind of weather which met me in Vienna. It wasn't summer yet but really green fresh and beautiful blossoming spring.
When the plane was just going to land I spent all my attention to check the type of clouds, cloudbase altitude, wind strength and everything connected to flyability. And it didn't look very nice but not that bad: it was sunny, not strong thermal wind, small little cumulus nearly 500-600 meters from the ground and 200-300 meters high, temperature around +18 degrees. Not perfect for flying but at least not raining and not too hot to carry my 27 kilo of bags around. And it was really funny when I found that almost nothing works at Saturday, at least I couldn't find where to buy a map which I did need to understand how to find my hotel. People around were very friendly, one homeless man told me that everything is closed but show where I can find the city map, one old lady tried to check my hotel booking and help me to find it on map but didn't and it was ok, I just needed to find my way by myself. It took 5 minutes, not bad:) I was a bit surprised when I didn't find any ticket-control system on U-trains and next day I was even more surprised when I didn't find any opened ticket cashier and any ticket automat so didn't buy ticket at all... Street with my hotel was that small that they didn't even type it's name on the map so I just counted the little streets from metro and after 10 minutes going straight turned to the needed street. Looked at the power points and laughed a bit, I didn't have the laptop and phone recharger any more. Stayed a while at the hotel organising everything around and then went for dinner and little walk. Was lucky enough to go into supermarket at 17-55, bought what I was gonna eat and found in 5 minutes that all the supermarkets also closed. So no recharger, no map, no opened shops and pharmacies. Tried to adapt the phone recharger to Austrian power points but just made a mess and ugly recharger which still couldn't fit into it and after that finally found the way: something reminded me that I had universal battery recharger so just used it. And laptop just needed some battery-economy mode. We did organise a connector for recharging at the airport the next day evening.
Vienna was very quiet and nice, maybe because of weekend, maybe it was just it's quiet part, maybe it was just music in my headphones, but I was impressed.
The view from my window show perfect family style picture: small homely balconies with soft deep chairs and flowers around, kids painting and little handmade things and long green vines on the walls from the ground till roof.
I saw new park with huge amount of flowers and green trees nearly every minute walking anywhere from the hotel, beautiful buildings every 10 seconds, didn't find any crazy drivers, and maybe the only thing I didn't like was too many beer pubs in the city. All other European, Asian and African capitals I saw before made me a bit crazy, their rhythm was too intensive and I didn't like that amount of people around. So Vienna looked like it was exactly that place I would prefer to any other capital from which I ever saw in my life.
Then I went to the airport to meet My Love. We didn't find any cheap car for rent and decided to go Lienz to meet our Russian friends by train. Bought the ticket but again didn't find any map to understand where to go so waste some time and couldn't go all the way to Lienz in one day, had to stop in Villach to spend the night. My Love tried to sleep some time.
That was a moment to meet new mountains in my life. I knew they were beautiful. This word can explain nothing about Alps. I didn't find any words in my mind. I opened my eyes and my heart to absorb and remember that wonderful view.
Green grassy edges right next to massive sharp rocks, so many shades of green in the forests, big European cows, sheep, little old houses and castles on the tops, rain making the view so clear and sharp that eyes start crying and the clouds beginning from the tops of closest trees, villages, small towns, churches, rivers... I even began to understand my mom's words "I want a chalet in the Alps".
Also i tried to look at that beauty connecting to our trip, i mean find the landing options in the valleys and on the edges. It looked a bit strange that small roads didn't have power lines around, and big power lines had plastic balls on the top line so everybody could see that from some distance. Forest trees didn't look nice for landing: they were very high and didn't have branches first 15-20 meters.
6 may we came to Greifenburg hoping that we can find on radio our Russian friends. It was rainy and cold but carrying big bags around didn't let us to catch cold. Found the camping, didn't find Russians, spent whole day checking forecast for different places trying to find the flyable weather and it gave us a chance to stay in Greifenburg few more days.
Next day was rainy too and it was a good time for writing and checking forecast again and washing and shopping and walking around. The only thing we didn't do is sending the glider to Werner. We brought the Rook from Nepal and we were going to send it by post from Vienna but Austria has many holidays in May so we just brought it at first to Villach then to Greifenburg and we didn't find the post office opened even once. I was worried about it but Stan wasn't.
The 8th of May wasn't really nice flying day, enough just to remember how to fly. Half an hour in the air and i was happy again.
Even with lots of clouds and their shadows on the ground we had amazing views which i cannot even describe.
I'm used to a different beauty, Russian and Himalayan, not Alpine, and i couldn't stop taking photos of everything around.
We landed long time before the rain and watched some funny landings later.
Some our friends landed somewhere else trying to run away from the rain. But drying the gliders together collected us in one place again. Forecast looked nice only for one next day and again shity after that so we decided to escape from incoming weather. We tried to send the extra glider to Werner but again were unpleasantly surprised because of closed post office. At least we gave our solo rescues to Russian friends so minus 4 kilo nearly, but still had to fly with extra glider and that didn't seem funny. In a real it was even more horrible than we thought, but i could survive, it was much more uncomfortable for my pilot cause he had that extra glider between his legs squashing the very important part of his body))
So we could fly only to Lienz (nearly 20 km), landed in model-airplane club, jumped into a train to San Candido which is on Italian border, then to Fortezza, then the genius mind of my lovely pilot understood: even if we escape from incoming cloud today and find the good weather, we were still stuck with the glider...
And we decided to continue our way back to Austria to that place where Werner can meet us and the glider. Went to Brenner, then Innsbruck, then Feldkirch, and he met us and drove to his house in Bubikon (Switzerland). Spent there 2 nights under a rainy cloud and then went to Annecy. Swiss trains are not cheap. And than more sad thing they gave us the wrong route. And we wasted 2 hours in Thonon waiting for the bus back to Annemasse to change the way. Came to Annecy at 9-30 p.m. and didn't have any power to find a camping site, went to expensive hotel again.
Next day was Sunday again and buses didn't operate, we went to Talloires walking (nearly 11 km on road) with our backpacks, thanks god, without extra glider this time))) and it wasn't raining... almost))) found the camping in Talloires but it was empty and continued walking to the south side of lake to find a different one. After some walking caught the car with Albanian driver who was so kind to drive us to Nubliere camping where we found good discounts for paragliding pilots and were happy to build our tent finally. Next two days we expected good weather and were very excited about possible flying. Put our tent next to SIV landing and the weather was good enough for SIV students, they kept flying that day until 8-30 p.m. and our thoughts were full of envy. We went to walk around to check some shops but almost everything were closed again even cafes. Went to Doussard to check the landing there and to try to find some shops. Landing in Doussard is perfect straight huge grassy territory opened for any side wind with shuttle bus going to take-off every hour. There were lots of landing options around the lake but this one was the best i thought.
Next morning we finally went to fly. Saying it was beautiful around meant saying nothing about this place. Finally we could see the big mountains around with the snow hats and lake from the top of mountain and lots of gliders flying and white cumulus in the perfect blue sky.
We scratched a bit next to take-off, got a little bit higher and went across the lake looking at the gliders flying next to small rocky wall. It didn't look that small from the ground, it even didn't look like a wall separate from the next big one, but in flight from nearly take-off high it seemed low. When we made it above the lake, found a big sink and started to look at the landing place trying to find windsocks, but finally nearly 100 meters above the landing level found a lift. That side of lake where we just came had the east exposition so it should be working by the time we came there.
Went up with ridge and jumped to the next rocky mountain right behind the Doussard landing, got stuck there for some time because of shity wind at 1400 m which broke the thermal and gave us a big sink every time we tried to go up.
After 45 minutes knocking to the ceiling we decided to go back to rocky wall, then found the gliders flying next to the big rocky wall and went there.
That mountain looked unbelievable from the side, specially when looking from the other side of lake: it seemed that a huge dinosaur and next to it the smaller one sleeping near the lake and we could see their two spines.
We got some high and went back across the lake. That time we had enough altitude to make it almost to take-off high, we thermalled a bit and l went to the north side, closer to Annecy.
There were lots of gliders and I really enjoyed catching them with my camera lens, the best one was new black and blue Delta 2, very beautiful one!
And i can not describe how beautiful and breathtaking is flying next to those rocky monsters around Annecy lake, they all are different and feeling thermals next to them made me thinking I could understand their characters a bit.
When flew back from city side caught a big sink again and i thought again we were going to land soon at the Talloires landing but my lovely pilot was very patient and scratched the little wall with trees and then found the thermal to get higher which let us go back above take-off and to planned landing field.
Didn't like the closed little fast food shop, as we found before, they put the proper mustard into their hotdogs and we missed it a little bit already. Don't remember what did we do the rest of the day, i'm sure nothing special, but we were going to fly next day too.
Next day didn't let us fly a lot, we couldn't even make it higher than take-off even with take-off time nearly one hour later than the day before. It was more windy and cloudy so all the normal thermals on sunny side were in rotor and were not normal thermals any more and we had to work with some weak and crappy stuff on lee side, got couple of small collapses and went to landing. Later we saw some gliders flying higher above take-off but didn't even envy a bit because the flying next to take-off was never our goal so we just relaxed the rest of the day. I have to say that flying temperature in Europe wasn't warm even on sunny days, it was even freezing sometimes, and if we didn't enjoy our flight more than we felt cold - we didn't enjoy at all so even having one flying day a week we didn't mind to stay on the ground more than expected.
We discovered some places around, found some paragliding and tourist equipment shops, found the best spaghetti carbonara in the world (yes, in France!), at least we both didn't try any better carbonara before. If you ever going to stay in Doussard, try it in the restaurant in front of Le Lac Blue Camping.
Next three days were rainy and cold and we were really happy to have a roof above our heads, huge thanks to Alexis for that! He had something to do in Paris and lent us his camper van, which was saving us from cold and water for three days. Those days were meeting days for us, nobody was flying and everybody tried to find something to do so we met Andy and Stephan. Andy was driving around looking for adventures and even when the weather let him fly one hour he flew one hour. At the same time we met Stephan who was new X-Alps pilot from USA2 team and he was trying to motivate himself to do some training but that kind of weather distracted everybody. Stan talked to him a lot looking on the map, told him some thoughts about the route and the weather, and I was trying to make a mental picture of Athlete in my mind. I knew three X-Alps pilots by that time and all of them were very different. Evgeniy, Russian Athlete had every day training, with rain and cold, with flu and sick, he hiked up to mountain in Pokhara every day, in Bir every day, in Kathmandu every day. He was heading to the goal every minute of his life. Tomi from Romania was a hiking superstar in Pokhara, he hiked up from landing to take-off and waited for the jeep with tandem passengers for another 20 minutes, nobody could compete with him in speed hiking. Babu was also a new X-Alps pilot and I didn't know a lot about him, just once David (now Stephan's supporter, USA2 team) brought him to our place for dinner and i found in his eyes the goal. He looked like he didn't know exactly what to do and where to go, but he said he would do it. He was famous in whole paragliding world because of his flight from Everest and Kilimanjaro, i didn't know what variety of famous it was. Later we observed two more fighting X-Alps characters in Bornes To Fly race - Martin Muller and Victor Sebe, who show their intentions very sharply. And i couldn't compare with them my impression of Stephan. Anyway, we will see during the race:) For sure it was interesting to watch.
At the end of week Andy found the perfect adventure - hike and fly competition Bornes To Fly, mini-X-Alps with much more weather for walking than flying but lots of pilots surprised me, trying to make more kilometers than others they didn't only glide top to bottom but even thermalled. Yes, the weather was that bad that about thermalling i can say only "even" )) The weather was that bad that the lady from our camping reception gave us free wi-fi for a week and let us go into a big tent where children have some events during the high season and where we cought hide from rain and wind. We found there a swing for harness and lots of interesting books and toys. Tried to start making the pod for Kuik2, bought some materials with some extra free stuff in RipAir shop before.
We had little flight on Monday, it looked strange, we spent nearly two hours at take-off waiting for any pilot going higher than take-off, then we took off, thermalled fast, went with one solo glider along the rocky ridge to the north, tried to jump to the next one but met really strong wind which didn't let us go forward but down and we found the lift just maybe 80 meters above the ground, but it was nice straight thermal and it let us go up to the same position, we came back above take-off, went to the south but got huge sink, even thought about emergency landing next to the lake but it let us go closer to the main landing place and we almost made it, landed on a field 150 meters before.
Packing was quick so we decided to go to main landing and pack our sky&clouds properly and eat our favorite hot-dog with lots of mustard. Had a look what they have at the exhibition, there was some kind of testival, but didn't find anything we needed and went home.
The race was finished in 3 days (Saturday - Monday) and we had our flight from Mainland Europe to Malta on Saturday, forecast didn't promise anything good for Annecy and looked at least sunny for the east side of mountains so we decided to go with Andy to Italy. He has a big camper van but only two seats at the front for the driver and one passenger, and I was the second passenger and I took the VIP sit at the back which is more bed than seat. Slept couple of hours and when I woke up we were already in Italy and high in the mountains. There was still lots of melting snow and Andy showed us beautiful place with a big lake on the top of mountain. There was a ski resort but season already was finished and it a looked like nobody was there for long time even abandoned. And also we saw the high water level of that lake, it should be really nice there in summer.
Going downhill we were almost falling down from clouds, unreal and unrepeatable feeling! One more thing I noticed on the way was huge amount of poppies blossoming everywhere. It was exactly that time when they were the most beautiful and i was nicely surprised watching those beauty everywhere around. We came to Rivoli because we didn't know where the camping site we planned was situated and tried to find a place with internet. McDonalds didn't let us use its internet because we didn't have the sim-card from one of four countries it accepts and the only way we could use was the Holux GPS which didn't have map with roads by that time so we just had the distance of 11 kilometers in straight line and direction to the goal. 4 km walking made it just in time to catch the bus then some more walking up and down hill and a bit around... We were slightly confused when found the absolutely straight and short road from train station to the central square which we spent nearly one hour to come around to couple of days earlier. Camping looked very different than in France and Austria, it was small and didn't have any regular customers in it. Quiet place between two lakes, next to the small town with lots of green hills around and snow mountains on the horizon.
We found a cafe with special breakfast for us, big supermarket next to the central square where they sell bread depending on its weight, extreme sports shop with nice discounts. Weather looked nice only for normal people, pilots wouldn't like that wind. Once we were even scared to fall asleep because of the wind up to 90 km/h and noisy huge trees around our tent. Food in the closest restaurant was really terrible so we spent there 3 nights and moved with light heart closer to the airport for one night before our flight from Mainland. Ryanair made us a bit crazy and mad of their stupid rules so it was perfect time to fly away ;)
p.s. it was my story, the passenger's point of view, the pilot's one is here http://parakros.com/2013/06/08/eu-2013