Trans-european Mountain Goats Odyssey

Flashback to summer: I discover that the Mountain Goats are touring Europe for the first time in several years. Now, obviously (sadly) they weren't going to come to Vienna. I decide however that seeing as I have no idea when they might come back, I should go see them anyway. An examination of the schedule indicates that the easiest place to see them in would be Cologne. But, what's this? They were also playing in the Belgian city of Ghent! 'I have a good friend currently living in Ghent who I haven't visited yet!' I think.

Shoes in central Ghent...

Thus it was that I ended up travelling by train to Ghent, staying there for 2 days, seeing the mountain goats, then hopping on the train to Cologne to catch them a second time before finally arriving back home.

Ok, so it goes without saying that the Goats were amazing. They're my favourite band after all, and the chance to them on a tour where they were playing basically anything from their back catalog they felt like was really special, and made the value of seeing multiple gigs so much higher. I could go on a long time about both, suffice to say they were both totally different in venue and atmosphere, and that at the first I got to hear this song played live on piano, yay!:

So, Belgium. I really liked it! We spent only a few hours in Brussels, enough to see the main square, eat chips (V important in belgium) and find the first of many beer locations. What a joy to be in a place that not only has a beer culture, but also a beer VARIETY culture!

Most of my time was spent in Ghent, which was a lovely place. A stunning centre of the town with medieval and 20th century faux medieval buildings, a massive church and cathedral next to each other, a castle, and several picturesque squares and canals. Much more importantly than any of this stuff though was the feeling that Ghent had a real cafe and bar culture. I know I shouldn't judge other places by whether they have the stuff Vienna has, but it was easy to feel at home in Ghent as one could sense that you could lead a similar cafe and restaurant based life there as I lead here in Wien. The cafes aren't just for great beer either, on Saturday night we experienced a great live jazz/swing/rock'n'roll quartet in a packed bar. Another cool thing was the whitewahsed graffiti gallery situated in an old barge, of which there are many pictures in this post's accompanying gallery.

We also tried to spend the day in Bruges, but the weather was diabolical and drove us into far too many very touristy locations. Probably Bruges is great with the sun out but I preferred the more lived-in, less ENGLISH MENU HERE atmosphere of Ghent. The funnest thing in Bruges was seeing the graveyards of twisted umbrellas piling up and up at every rubbish bin in town.

A summary of the waether in Bruges as we visited

The trip required a lot of time in trains, which was for the most part enjoyable though I doubt I'll ever get the proper hang of sleeping on a night train. I managed to get through the whole of American Gods (for the second time) which was a great companion if a little at odds with the surroundings of central europe!

Pictures here...

As always,
der Tom.

Autumn Mists on a Salamander Quest

One Sunday I awoke, terribly late as usual, and discovered that it was dark, dingy and thickly overcast. Although it was not raining, the streets were slicked with water and it looked like it might start up again any minute. I immediately phoned my friend and fellow quest-participant Ash and we agreed that it was perfect weather for... A SALAMANDER QUEST.

The aim of the salamander quest is so simple, I shall not spell it out here. In previous years we had discovered that this time of year and weather conditions were excellent prerequisites for a successful quest, although ideally there would have been a few more dead leaves already on the ground.

We set off from the familiar ground of Cobenzl, halfway up the Kahlenberg and one of the most frequented parts of the Wienerwald still within city limits. The clouds were so low we were completely immersed in them, visibility was down to a few tens of meters and the widely spaced beech trees loomed indistinctly in the distance. Although it was not raining, the woods and undergrowth rustled constantly with falling water droplets, the fog condensing directly onto the leaves and dripping down in a strange almost-rainstorm.

Less than an hour of damp searching and many fungi photographed saw us heading on a major path in the direction of delicious Austrian Gasthaus food with which to fortify ourselves. On this path, quite undisturbed, sat a big, fat, orange and black salamander. Victory photos taken, we adjourned to the restaurant, consumed our lentils, dumplings and bacon (well, in my case) and then headed home, content in the knowledge of another salamander quest well quested.

This is what quest victory looks like. Cool and mildly poisonous.

Here's the full gallery!

Der SalamanderTom

Crete Field Trip

Part two of my geological journey to small parts of Greece...

We took the night ferry from Athens to Crete, which was a lot more luxurous than I was expecting. I mean there weren't gold plated bathtubs or anything but our cabin looked like any land based hotel room and the ship was so big I don't think I felt a single wobble the whole night. Sadly the ship still arrived before 7am though, so no lie in!

We spent 10 days on Crete, all of which I enjoyed greatly. I am sure part of this was to do with the existence of precious, precious clouds and even on one occasion rain! Also one huge advantage of Crete is that it has big (up to 2500m) mountains so there are some upland areas which are also cooler!

Crete is much bigger than I realised, over 200km long, and in 10 days we only covered parts of the western half of the island. The scenery changes dramatically, in keeping with the varied geological units and tectonic history that has affected the island and continues to the present day. There are high limestone mountains with folds on all scales, broad bays with sandy beaches, precipitous terraced areas and switchback roads aplenty. Big height changes are common, driven by the differences in erosion between various rocks combined with huge numbers of faults uplifting and downthrowing different segments. Best of all there is lots and lots of coast, leading to beautiful exposures of structures in full 3D.

The traces of earthquakes were everywhere for the trained geologist. A fault scarp is the exposed surface of a fault which breaks the surface as one side is thrown up and the other side is thrown down. These really are fantastic s
tructures, you can feel with your hands the scratches and mineral lineations which display the most recent movements of the fault for all to see!

This 50m high cliff is a fault scarp!! Note that it would not have been exposed in one event though, that would be an utterly huge earthquake.

We stayed in a varied selection of towns in Crete, ranging from a 'proper' town where many local people seemed to live, to a town which was completely swollen with beach tourism, to a village with barely 40 houses nonetheless entirely (and I mean this) occupied by german holidaymakers. All of these offered fantastic food, which is best experienced by ordering as many small dishes as possible, even though one waiter was convinced this was 'not the greek way' (he would have had a fight with the serifos waiters who were pretty sure it WAS the greek way!).

All in all an excellent trip, after years more or less out of the field, and a limited field experience at university, it was more than useful to get some quality time on the rocks with a whole buch of students and some excellent field geologists, most of whom were discovering the outcrops for the first time themselves, lending a very excited atmosphere to the whole proceedings...

There's a whole other half of crete to explore someday, I guess!

Until then, here's the gallery of photos from the half I did see...

Der Tom