Sports and Travel

Our steep track had been created over decades, if not centuries, by the gaunt olive-skinned shepherds who roam the arid rocky mountain passes of Las Alpujarras in southern Spain. You’d often hear them before you could see them. There’d be a gentle clanking of the small bells of the white sheep and then the flock would emerge from over a nearby fold of these infinitely ridged hills, led by the sort of boy who gives Philistine giants the heebee-jeebees.

We stumbled out of the car on the Lungarno at around 10 pm. My legs were sore as I rested on the wall at the edge of the Arno River and stared across toward Piazzale Michelangelo. I took in deep breaths of the cool, fresh night air and closed my eyes – back in Florence again.

Yet another twisted tale of volcano madness. It was Wednesday, April 14th, 22:25 and my friend Roxane was arriving in Vienna from Paris. She was only staying until Sunday, but the trip was well worth it… we hadn’t seen each other in over seven months, even though we live only a two-hour flight apart. I’d been warned she was completely broke, so our four days together would have to be spent on activities that didn’t require a lot of cash. No problem.

Apr. 17, 2010, ICE 26 north to Dortmund, Germany from Vienna, departure time 10:40 a.m. At Vienna Westbahnhof the lines in front of the ticket counters are easily 50 meters long. The platforms are teeming with people. The numbers pulling little black carry-on bags and shouldering laptop briefcases are a clue to who these travellers are: the airline passengers stranded when the Vienna International Airport at Schwechat was closed on Apr. 16.

The “volcano-marooned,” they described themselves.

High above, atop a slender column is Archangel Gabriel. Perched, both hands are full. In his right, the Hungarian Holy Crown of St. Stephan – the first king of Hungary – in his left the king’s two barred apostolic cross, awarded by Pope Gregory VII for ushering Christianity into Hungary.

It’s little more than a huddle of farmhouses - a satellite village of a glitzy Alpine ski resort. You’ll find the ski bums at night if you go through the low door into the village’s only significant drinking hole - a cavernous cellar bar which profits from the lack of better alternatives. The bums are lined up along the bar, rosy-cheeked from the wind and the altitude, and buying beers with the paper tokens the bar sells at reduced cost to workers.

Nearest the door, clasping his glass with obscenely large hands, sits a huge Russian in his mid 30s, his shaven head slightly reddish from the sun. He says we should call him Franky “because you fools wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name.”

Thailand. Fall 2009. The plane lands on time, the doors open and the climate controlled tunnel guides the passengers into Bangkok’s Suvarnbhumi airport. This airport is a monster – the world’s third largest after Dubai and Beijing – with metal limbs and glass skin, pathways that move even if it’s not going uphill. Making my way through to the baggage claim is no small task, nor does time fly by traveling on and off the kilometers of moving pathways.

My first experience of the ancient town of Dürnstein in Lower Austria was via a grainy old home movie shot in the 1960s. The film was of a wedding, where the bride and groom move awkwardly through a church courtyard overwhelmed by well-wishers and a polished brass band, trumpeting the ceremony in grand Austrian tradition.

The first thing we saw was the top of the red and white Tyrolian flag, standing tall and rather proprietorial in the luminous mist. At last a mountain hut! I was feeling exhausted and light headed after an exhausting two hours of winding climbing up from the East Tyrolean village of Matrei on my mountain bike.