DIARY: Oli's Visit

My old friend Oli, who's real name is of course Oliver, was over a few weeks ago, just for a prolonged weekend.

We somehow couldn't be arsed to take too many pictures, but the few I got are here.

He's been touring the world with his girlfriend Juliane for the last year or so, and has only recently returned to Denmark. Chances to meet up have therefore been far and few between.

Family Pic: Julle, Oli, Laila, Vibs, Janne, Mathilde

The Good Ol' Dorm
I've spend some of my funniest (but also most chaotic!) times at Otto Mønsteds Kollegium, in Aarhus Denmark, a dorm with some 100 souls living there. I spend almost 6 years in that place, and in the final years we were a small clique of people who turned into somewhat of a surrogat family.

Oli is a member of this extended family, being an exchange student from Germany, and so is his girlfriend Juliane, Brian whom I visited in Madrid earlier, and of course, Mathilde, who was my well-organised host for the snowy holiday in Canada.

Now, I'm fortunate enough to go home on holidays on the 22nd of August, and on the 1st of September I'll be in Aarhus, hopefully reacquainting myself with all these faces as we all gather to celebrate my friend Christian "Kedde"'s thirtieth birthday, the end, I mean beginning of his life! But before that Oli and I had a chance to catch up with the usual stuff....

Whiskey, Pool, Good Food, and Scrubs, Scrubs!!!

It's somewhat of a testament to our common obsession with the tv-show Scrubs that we actualy got through 16 episodes in the three days Oli stayed here (before you yell "Gewalt", the episodes are 20 minutes long!).

No wonder that we can laugh ourselves to death to the show, let's face it, it's perfect for men: Dr. Cox is the man we all want to be, Ted is the guy we're happy we're not, J.D. is probably who we are, and The Todd says all the things we wish we could get away with saying everytime there's a hot female around!

Now, our friendship wasn't build solely around an American sitcom (it was in fact build around endless lines of Fisherman's Friend shots in the Dorm bar, but that's another story from my alcoholised past!). Oli is a bit of an amateur chef, having a big idol in his namesake Jamie Oliver, so when we weren't wining and dining downtown, he took the chance to cook up not only two excellent breakfeasts but a great dinner as well!

I wondered for a second if that was how marriage would be, but before dismissing that a dream, I couldn't help sending a wish to my atheist gods not to tie me up with a blackhaired German guy down the road!!!

Back at the Table

We spend a few nights at the Palace as well, a great pool place on Camden Street, playing good old rock classics from your untroubled teens (Metallica, there ya go!), while Oli, a terrific poolplayer, handed out his usual beating.

I had to notice with a slight tingle of sadness that I just can't invest my usual competitiveness into other sports than running these days: Or in other words, I play as well as I can, but I don't invest the "extra" anymore, maybe it's passion, maybe it's something else. Hard to say. Losing or winning used to be life or death for me, but now it's just a game. For much the same reason the bowling ball lies dusty around, my poker book hasn't been opened for months, and Liverpool defeats just don't hurt quite so much anymore.

Is there a limited amount of passion in every person? I think that's a very good questions, but not one I will attempt to answer, and while it would be scary to have it all set aside for running, I find that's not the case. I'm just saving the rest of mine for something that's really worth it, and that doesn't involve cues, darts, or balls. It's still (or perhaps finally) a fun game, though, and a great way for us to reminisce as we spend several nights every week at the dorm playing pool while having a few bottles before sleeping in and forgetting to study! (there's the drinking again!).

Porters and Whisky

Back to the present again, another common hobby of ours has been good beer and whisky. In the past we've shared some good bottles of both from Belgian Chimay to Scottish Ardbeg whisky and Irish Connemara. This time we started out by sampling the special homebrews at Porter House where I had taken Brian and Jens a week earlier on their stopover for the American roadtrip.

On the final day we decided to give the whiskys a look-in and went to the Jameson Distillary (which I haven't visited in my 2.5 years here!). The tour was quite interesting, especially since I've previously visited the Whisky Museum in Edinburgh and this tour highlighted the differences between the two whiskey productions.

We had a few samples at the end, and I must say the Jameson is much smoother than it's given credit for, and I got to take a good Gollum-lookalike picture of Oli with his 12-year old in hand!

All in all, a good fun weekend, but nothing more than a warmup for my holidays. In the meantime I make a promise to all my friends to try and practice my ability to party without being hammered! It's a bit of a change, to give it time alright!

DIARY: Canada Trip 1

Well, I've returned from Canada, and now I have also recovered from St. Paddy's weekend! Even though I stayed true to my "max three beverages" rule, Friday was still late (very late!), so I feel slightly below optimal today.

Not too tired to talk about Canada, though. Overall it was a great trip (thanks Mathilde!), here's my day-by-day tale:

DAY 1 - Endless Atlantic Miles and Arrival
I decided to go to bed at 02:00 in the morning, to make it easier to sleep the first night and overcome the -5 hour time difference.

I flew over Amsterdam directly to Montreal, and while the flatlands of Amsterdam always have depressing effect on my mountain-loving soul, everything went great in Schiphol Airport, and the transatlantic flight (my first in a 747) was very pleasant and we were well-fed!

On arrival (around 17:00 local time), I quickly got a bus and then a taxi to Mathilde's apartment close to downtown (that's "city centre" in English) Montreal.

After much hugs and kisses (actually it was more like "a look who's arrived, ready to eat?"), we went for a walkabout and I got reminded was real cold was!!! (temperatures were around -13 degrees Celsius on the first day).

Well you don't mind it too much when you can snuggle into a warm sleeping bag afterwards and have a long exciting week to look forward too!

DAY 2 - Mount Royal & Mathilde's Office

On day 2, we had a long stroll, and our first destination was Mt. Royal (a mighty cliff of 211 metres, the name reminded me of our own Danish "The Sky Mountain" which also stands at a staggering 151m). The mountain has given the name to the city, though, and is actually quite impressive (its much broader than its high!), and offers a spectacular panoramic view over the island of Montreal and the rest of the Monteregian Mountains.

The lowlight was that my camera started malfunctioning because of the low temperature, so I'm gonna have a serious talk with Dell about that! Fuji Cameras surely must tolerate below zero temperatures!

After that we went back "downtown" (YEAH), and Mathilde took me to her office located on the gazzilionth floor in one of those fancy skyscrabers (known as "glasscages" by older Irishmen). I was very impressed, especially with the offices with a view, they don't let you forget that you've reached the top in those places. I wonder how far into the basement you can be demoted....

After that we had lunch with one of her colleagues and I inspected some local outdoor shops (this is part of a "little plan" of mine, but I shall not speak more of that here, shhh...).

The evening introduced me to a little tradition called 5-7 (in French!) where you get two beers for the price of one (a ritual that translates well into all languages). I got a good taste of the local brew (which isn't too bad at all!), and met our designated driver for the weekend trip to the mountains, an Austrian friend of Mathilde's called Christian.

Day 3 - THE BIG DAY

This was the day were would leave for the mountain and forest region North of Montreal. But before that we had another (for me critical!) visit to a huge Canadian Outdoor Shop called Mountain Co-Op.

The centre was just as impressive as I had hoped, and I was blitzing away and recording notes like a madman of the make of this shopping centre while indulging in (WARNING SEXIST REMARK) a shopping spree worthy of any woman (WARNING OFF). All in all I got: 2 trail running socks (one winter, one summer), 1 Sleeping Bag, 1 Compression Bag, 1 Toughskin madras, a bunkload of energy bars (for the trip!), and a balaclava (renamed to "balaclalavala" after lengthy discussion with Mathilde. In Denmark we call it "elephant hood" which is weird since it doesn't feature a snout...).

On our return to Montreal city centre (sorry, downtown, and no, I won't let it go!), we packed up our stuff and got picked up by Christian in a nice big American style convertible.

We then went on to pick up the girls from Ottawa and drove up North through great sceneries of frozen pine forests and densely vegetated hills between which small Christmassy villages were scattered in what seemed like idyllic semi-isolation.

As you can see, the night finished with a nice dinner, a well-lit fireplace and general coziness in a magnificent cabin (I'll put one of those on my "to-buy-when-I-get-rich" list. And before you ask, no plastic surgery is not on that list!!!).

To be continued...

DIARY: Trip to Canada!!!

Across the Broad Atlantic

...is not only the title of a great Wolfe Tones' album, its also where I'll be going tomorrow. Not huddled on board one of the grim Coffin Ships of days gone by like so many other's from Ireland before me, but riding a KLM transatlantic plane.

Visiting an old friend!

Now experiencing the spectacular wilderness of Canada should be reason enough to go in itself, but yet its not my primary reason. I am going over to visit my old friend and dorm-mate Mathilde (girl in black on the left seen four years ago at one of our many spectacular Dorm parties, during an, not surprisingly, "Irish-themed" room session in my room back then).

Montreal and Mountain Cottage
I'll be spending the first and last days of my one week trip in Montreal (checking out the city, watching a game with the Montreal Canadians, and more!).

The highlight of the trip will, undoubtedly be our weekend trip to a cottage in the "wild and way" close to Mont Tremblant (more on that on my mountain runner blog).

I'll be posting pictures and stories upon my return, so there should be a few good shots to look forward too!

See you on the other side!