For the first time in 12 years, snow fell on the slopes of Yangminshan. The first photo up top was taken on Sunday morning by a friend riding his bike about a kilometre, as the crow flies, from where we live. Hordes of people jammed the mountain roads and scores of kiddies (and adults) copped their first sight and experience of snow. There were snowmen on car roofs, snowballs brought home for the freezer and Taipei's best impersonations of Douglas Mawson replicated over and over again on all the roads and lanes leading up to the mountain. As for your intrepid correspondents, we were nestled under blankets in our uninsulated apartment with a tiny blow heater with the effectiveness of a disposable lighter in a force 5 hurricane. We strolled through the dank mists to the cinema on Saturday evening and enjoyed a meal out, but come Sunday morning and the plunging mercury and whirling sleet, we hunkered down for the duration.
Last weekend we celebrated our wedding anniversary by visiting one of Taipei's latest and greatest fusion cuisine restaurants, Mume, just squatting in a little lane way off the great Ren Ai Road circle in the south eastern restaurant belt of the city. Both gaily tripping out in our new Italian shoes, we taxied there and back and had a wonderful gastronomic experience. The decor was Asian urban cool, the waitstaff diligent and attentive and the food selections were all divine. We marveled over each dish as it came and enjoyed them with the accompanying explanation of same. Cabbage completely burnt on the outside and smashed up ("deconstructed") cheesecake were just two of the unusual but incredibly tasty items we tried. Accompanied by a cocktail and fine glass of white wine each, it was a really special treat. Another strange sensation was cutting and splicing a tiny segment of our wedding video and posting it on social media. We received lots of lovely comments, but we felt a little voyeuristic watching this gorgeously outfitted and outrageously young couple who seemed just vaguely familiar!
You'll be mortified to realize that I'm yet again going to refer to our Christmas trip, but come on, I have to write about a whole "nother" country yet! Vienna is within metaphoric spitting distance of the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, and we couldn't deny ourselves the oppportunity to check it out.
After negotiating the German language ticket machines, we hopped on a train we thought was going to Slovakia, waving Vienna behind just temporarily on Boxing Day. As it turned out, we'd chosen the right train and the city quickly slipped away to reveal flat expanses of farmland dotted with gigantic wind turbines quietly churning away for endless kilometres. There were also literally mountains of potatoes at railway sidings, dwarfing the rail stock set to haul them. The train whispered over the Slovakian border with the customs officers looking bored and bemused. How could we enter another country without even a cursory glance at the all important documents? In Slovakia, all are welcome it seems!
It's really bizarre to be jettisoned into a post communist world after the refined surrounds of Vienna in such a short space of time. Within an hour and a half we were using clunky roadside boxes to buy bus tickets, and trying to read incomprehensible signage vaguely pointing us towards the main attraction of the capital Bratislava, the old square and surrounds. Somehow, after going the wrong way from the bus stop, we headed up the hill towards one of the other attractions, the city castle perched atop one of the few high spots in the immediate countryside. It was really impressive and despite the fact it was closed for the public holiday we had all sorts of fun posing for silly photos in its vast courtyard and castle wall viewing areas!
We moseyed on down the hill passing restaurants selling various cuts of wild boar, game meats and other intriguing delicacies: if only they were open for Cass to sample some Slovakian fare! Eventually, we sniffed our way across to the cobbled streets and lanes of the old town and were treated to some beautiful architectural curiosities and wonders. A tiny terrace (the narrowest building in Slovakia) was sandwiched between ancient town wall gates and street sculptures. The town was eerily quiet as most shops were closed down or clossing down for the holiday, but we thoroughly enjoyed our wanderings without the crowds. There were slightly unappealing reminders of Bratislava's emeging identity on the young backpacker's trail, with swilling grog fliers and "shot" pubs springing up in some of the backstreets. Mercifully, though, it remains exactly what it was: a city recently emerged from communist rule and its associated crumbling infrastructure, which has managed to maintain the soul of its central core.
The street art was quirky and fun, apparently an attempt by the city planners to lighten the mood from the dour face portrayed by previous ideologies. We had fun with the worker emerging from the man-hole cover, sitting on the racked Penny-Farthings and escaping the falling portcullis in the main street! We ducked into the start of a mass in a beautiful church and watched as a thousand pigeons took flight to darken the sky momentarily around the main square. We lunched in a restaurant where Cass ate Slovakian dumplings and I had Slovakian style goulash (which, Mum, I must report tasted remarkably similar to your famous casserole!) and we warmed ourselves for an hour or so with good hearty meals and a splash of wine.
All too soon, however, we realised that we'd need to bus back after negotiating the clunky orange ticket boxes once more, whereupon we arrived again at the station which had definite undercurrents of Stasi chic about it (see above!). We'd misjudged the timetable slightly and were barely seated before the train slipped away from its stodgy moorings, heading back to Vienna and more adventures. Mercifully for you, dear readers, our travel tales have ended. However, as I threatened previously, I will post the first of many videos today up top, with one more to follow each week for the foreseeable future...cop that!
Photos: snow road in Yangminshan on the weekend, shots from Bratislava and shots from our anniversary dinner. I'm reading the second in a Dennis Lehane trilogy, Live By Night, the first being thoroughly entertaining. I'm having trouble keeping this bit up-to-date (and I've been slack keeping up with Cassy's voracious reading, however I know she has recently finished the quirky light read, Crazy Rich Asians before her current darker tome, Richard Flanagan's Narrow Road to the Deep North).
