Whilst we had lots of sunshine during our week skiing in Courchevel, we also had a day where visibility was less than perfect (to say the least).  Whilst it is not very easy to ski in a grey (cloud) or white (snow) out, it’s certainly an interesting experience!  At one point we were skiing along a thin path, next to a steep drop off piste and we were unable to tell the difference between the sky and the snow! Very weird experience – it felt a bit like we were floating in a dream surrounded by clouds!  Very cool   Here is a bit of video Mark took when we stopped to try to figure out where we were (at which point the visibility was actually a little bit better!)

We’ve all been drinking way to much for me to do a proper blog post, but here are a couple of video clips from the lift experience tonight, one from the outside (on Chris’s iPhone) and one from the cramped inside (on Mark’s iphone)…

From outside the lift…

From inside the lift…

Today we found our favourite mountain bar/restaurant of the trip so far! La Folie Douce appears to be quite a new place, with very trendy decor, an amazing outdoor terrace with chill out chairs and a delicious buffet style restaurant with a great selection of food.

We were actually trying to find another bar which has an outdoor champagne serving area made of ice, however our navigation of the slopes was a little off and we had to ‘settle’ for the nearest hut we could find….we were very pleased to find this place

Whilst dinners in the chalet have been amazing all week (thanks to Matt and Christie), our lunchtime meals have been a little more basic, usually consisting of burgers, crepes or sandwiches.  A few of us have been craving a spaghetti bolognaise all week, so were very pleased to see it on the menu at this restaurant.  We were even more surprised when our lunch turned up in a glass jar!  The (fresh) pasta was on the bottom, the sauce next and then some parmesan cheese.  Take a look for yourself in this video…

Very tasty! Although next time I will make sure I mix the sauce and pasta up right at the start, as the pasta in the bottom of the jar was a little dry.

Here are a few shots of the interior and exterior of the bar (click for larger images)…

Last night we decided to wonder down to the sledge run which is walking distance from our hotel.

Before we could start we had to find a place to hire sledges, which we did relatively quickly for a mere 3.50 Euros.  Due to the fact that kids were allowed to the use the sledge circuit, I had assumed that it was going to be easy and perhaps a little boring…I was VERY wrong…

The first couple of turns do start off very slowly, giving you chance to get used to the steering mechanism on the sledges.  However, as you pass the 2nd or 3rd corner, the drop becomes a lot steeper and the whole experience changes from a leisurely slide down the snow, in to a scary out of control rollercoaster ride down the winding bends of the track.

Whilst we were not going as fast as we were when skiing, it feels a LOT faster when you are sitting on a plastic tray only a few centimetres above the snow.  The handles on the side of the sledges provided a means of steering, however they were SO sensitive that they could only be used in short correcting bursts.  Every time we encountered a sharp corner, or an unexpected obstacle (i.e. some kid who had fallen of their sledge), we had to improvise a method of steering using feet, hands or anything else which was available to change direction quickly.

Of course Mark decided to strap his Flipcam HD to his goggles and film the whole thing, so here is the footage complete with Ed flipping his sledge upside down, Mark crashing in to the back of random French people and me falling off the edge of the circuit in to fresh powder snow…

Mark and I spent this afternoon on our own whilst the others went for a ski lessons. 

Whilst we did actually spend most of the afternoon skiing (honestly), at about 4pm we were pleasantly surprised to get to the top of the chair lift to hear TUNES!

A local bar called ‘Le Roc’, which was a traditional wooden French mountain style building, with an outdoor deck area for eating and drinking, along with a less than usual set of deck chairs along with a DJ playing some funky/electro house tunes to entertain the passing skiers…

We initially stopped to take few pics and videos, but were too energised by the music to ski away, so instead we ended up sitting on a lounger, ordering some mojitos and chilling to the cool (see what I did there!?) tunes…

Whilst we planned to just stop for one drink, the mojitos were (relatively) cheap, the tunes were good, the views absolutely breathtaking, so we ended up having 3 or 4 mojitos each…

The (slightly drunken) ski down back to the hotel was interesting to say the least!  We actually ended up staying a little too late which meant that some of the ski lifts were closed.  A nice French lady who was in charge of one of the closed lifts instructed us to ski down the bottom of the resort, get a cable car back up to the top of the mountain and then ski back down to the hotel.  That worked a treat and we got back to the 17:45, plus we met a nice Chinese lady during the trip up the mountain – good times!

We set off at 4:30am this morning, heading to Gatwick, flew to Chambery airport in France, and then sat on a bus for 2 hours for a transfer to our chalet in Courchevel.  The Peti Chapi Teah chalet sleeps 10 pepole (5 rooms), and comes complete with two chalet people who are cooking dinner for us right now…

Ed and I are sharing our room.  We have the smallest, darkest room, but it doesn’t really matter too much.  I think we’ll spend most of the chalet time in the communal area which has a huge dining table, a fireplace and a TV area…

We have just been down to get our hire skis.  There were three standards of skis available – Bronze, Silver and gold.  We opted for gold, although to be honest there was not a noticeable difference in the quality – will probably go for silver in future and save 25 Euros. 

It’s been a long day, so we’re chilling tonight, having dinner, maybe watching the rugby down in the bar, and then get a good nights sleep in preparation for a full days skiing!

Will try to stay active on the blogging front, but to finish it off today here are a few photos of the view from our chalet…

I was working in the Amsterdam offices for a few days last week (a longer trip than my unscheduled visit 2 weeks ago).  Schiphol airport is a great place to be if you have to wait for flights, there are a huge number of shops to choose from, a casino, a museum, restaurants, bars and even a spa.  However one of my favourite things about the airport is that it is a walk-able distance away from the new Microsoft offices…

The Amsterdam offices are unique due to the fact that the entire Dutch subsidiary effectively works from home, but uses the office as a social hub to meet colleagues and customers.  There are no offices, or even any assigned desk spaces, instead everyone simply turns up and finds a spot in one of the variety of different styled working areas around the two buildings. 

It is surprising to see how this environment makes everyone in the office naturally socialable and chatty (or perhaps that was because they are Dutch?!).  Everyone kept saying hello to me, which confused me at first because the first couple of times it happened I thought they were people who I had met, but forgotten.  Whether it was the receptionist (who perched on a random spot in the atrium with a laptop), women serving coffee in the common area, the random stranger in the lift or the people sitting around the area near us, everyone was constantly smiling, saying hello and never trying to avoid social interactions with those around them (unlike in other office buildings I have been in). 

The mix of funky decor, friendly Dutch people and a flexible working philosophy definitely seems to have worked in Amsterdam and creates a very dynamic working environment.  Here are a few of my favourite pics from around the office…

The atrium can be seen in the bottom of this pic, with a funky fabric wall above it on the 1st floor…

Here is a hot desk area with soothing low lighting, cool coat hangers and another fabric wall in the background…

And yet another style of working space, with yet another set of colours for the fabric wall (I loved those walls! )…

There is even an Asian style low table which can be used for meetings, lunch or anything else you like…

Definitely a new way of working, which REALLY works in my opinion.  I wonder when we will get the same  concepts in the rest of the world?!

I haven’t got around to producing the rest of this yet, but here is the first part of our Le’Mans 2009 video..

Hopefully I will get the rest finished before Le’Mans 2010

News year resolution is definitely to VIDEO more!

During a recent business trip to Munich I had the great pleasure to attend the fantastic live performance from the Chinese State Circus.

The venue was a previous residence of a German monarch which is now used for a variety of events… (note: it actually was covered in snow when we were there)…

Click here to see it on Bing maps.

During the summer the gardens provide a tranquil area for Germans and tourists to get away from the cars, busses and trams of Munich.  The interior reminded me of the British Museum a little, with lots of marble, staggeringly high ceilings and beautifully designed rooms separated by grand pillars.

We were with a bunch of Microsoft people, so they arrange for us to have dinner before the show.  The food was very nice, consisting of fresh bread, rare cooked beef and a imaginatively presented ice cream dessert…

It felt a little weird sitting at a table in the corner of the huge reception area, surrounded by other theatre goers (is that a word!?! Spell checker didn’t pick it up, so I guess it is!), but it was a nice start to the show (particularly after a couple of glasses of Champagne

The meal only lasted for about 45 mins (since we arrived a bit late), after which we wondered in to the next room to wait for the show to start.  The stage looked fairly basic without any of the performers on and kind of reminded me of a nativity stage from my old school productions….

The show started with a tubby German (I think) guy walking in from the left, with a spot light focussed on him whilst he struggled to lift him self up on to the stage.  The skill required by the acrobats in the show required huge amounts of concentration and seriousness, so the comedy element added by the tubby guy was a welcome addition.

Gradually the Chinese acrobats entered the stage and performed absolutely breath taking acts as part of a continuous story line.  I must be honest and admit that I have no idea what the story was supposed to be, mainly because I was so mesmerised by the various ‘stunts’ on stage.

The audience area was dark, so it felt a little rude to take photos during the performance, hence I do not have any.  Photos was not really do the show justice anyway.  Some of the amazing acts we saw included dives and sumsauts through wooden rings barely wide enough for a man/women to fit through, one guy balanced upside down on another guy’s head whilst they mirrored each others actions as the guy on the floor walked along the stage, juggling giant vases (I think they were plastic), human pyramids (although that description hardly does it justice), a women shooting a bow an arrow upside down with her legs and toes and a lots more absolutely unbelievable routines.

(Photo from Idene)

(Photo from augschburger)

If you would like to spend a couple of hours being shocked and amazed with increasingly risky and unbelievable performances right in front of your eyes, I strongly recommend going to see one of these shows.

A quick search of Flickr for Chinese State Circus photos shows acts which were not included in the show we saw, so I suspect each show has it’s own unique combination of performances and routines.

Had a bit of a travel knightmare on Friday

We were in Munich all week whilst southern UK had it’s heaviest snow storms in a couple of decades.  Heathrow and Gatwick have had closures, hundreds of flights have been cancelled/delayed and Munich airport was expecting heavy snow on the day we were travelling.

We woke up in the morning in the hotel and checked BritishAirways.co.uk to find out that our flight had been cancelled After calling American Express travel we found out that all BA flights to Heathrow were cancelled/unknown, so our best option was to fly to Amsterdam with KLM, and then from Amsterdam to Heathrow.  We booked the flights, but decided to head to Munich airport to see whether Serena’s “I’m a gold card member’ line made any difference with BA.

On arrival to Munich airport it became apparent that NONE of the planes which should have come from Heathrow had arrived at Munich, so there was little chance of getting on a BA plane.  Serena did try the BA Gold Card line, but the response was “We can’t change the weather, not even for Gold Card members” – fair enough   Our thoughts were that BA would have been hit worst by the problems, since they have lots of flights from Heathrow and Gatwick, so they are having to cancel/reschedule lots of planes to clear up the mess.  So, we decided to head to Amsterdam using KLM.

KLM flight went well.  The Dutch flight crew were pleasant enough and they served drinks and snacks even though it was a relatively short trip.  Serena did a bit of preparation reading for our unexpected trip to Amsterdam (airport)…

Thankfully on arrival to Amsterdam our KLM connecting flight was on time, although we still had 3 hours to kill.  The British Airways flights from Amsterdam Heathrow were all delayed, so in this instance KLM was definitely the right option.

The airport was enormous.  It is split in to three different sections each of which host many shops, bars and restaurants.  We grabbed some food in a little noodle bar…

…and then split up to do a little shopping.  Well, more accurately…Serena did shopping and I went and sat by the gate, listening to tunes on my iphone and caught up on email/blogs on my netbook.

Travelling is one of my favourite times to read or catch up on work, so I’m not a big shopper.  However if you do prefer to shop in airports, then Amsterdam is a great place to be…

There is even a museum…

After a few hours waiting/shopping in the airport, we finally took off (on time) and got back to the UK at about 5pm.  Unfortunately we landed at Terminal 4, and my car was in the business car park of Terminal 5, so we had to go on mini mission with a couple of buses to get back to the car.  I got a nice pic of a snowy English country side as we made our approach to Heathrow…

Based on the amount of abandoned luggage, I am assuming that there were quite a few disappointed travellers missing their essentials…

Two of my friends were having a leaving party in Reading in the evening, so I got back home as soon as I could (which took a while thanks to the lack of grit on any of the roads in my area), got showered and changed and headed to the train station, where I had to wait for another 45 minutes due to cancelled trains.

I eventually got to Reading at about 9:30pm, missing the buffet, but in time for wine, champagne and plenty of dancing Crazy travel day, but still lots of fun