For those who don’t get luu’s emails, she has a new photo site: luu.livster.net

Dear god Solidus, your days seem to consist of staggering, in a state of abject decadence, from one foul pit of guesthouse to another, whilst swilling the product of a crafty shop owner’s still and annoying all and sundry with your rather-too-loud “happiness” / drunken jollity.

What price the culture and sights of the country?

The highlands look good – have you done a “tame” walk?

By an odd coincidence, Han and I just watched The Beach… watch out for sharks!

Mayrhofen is in the Tyrol region of Austria.

I should be around that week/weekend for meeting up. See you soon.

Han and I went to see Blood Diamond last night – pretty good I thought, though a little cheesy and laboured at the end.

Well, I had an excellent time snowboarding/skiing in Mayrhofen last week.

It all looked a bit warm when we arrived (about 12 °C) but we woke up on Tuesday morning to a village blanketed with several inches of snow and it didn’t stop snowing for the whole week and often went as low as -10 °C in the evenings. This made for excellent snow conditions, but poor visibility.

I sampled plenty of local foodstuffs including Schnitzel, Schnapps, Strudle and plenty of “Grillwurst mit pommes”.

I improved my skiing somewhat with a day and a half on some decent skiis. Weight forward and hips into the slope and all that. Pretty sure I looked rather like a pro;-)

The poor visibility meant that I didn’t take many photos:

On Thursday we got above some of the clouds and saw some sun.

Me and Chris

At the end of 6 1/2 days skiing, it was still snowing!

Solidus, that aloe drink looks pretty foul. How is Hotel Dusk: Room 314?

I filched this from the author’s website:

Q. When did the idea of an autobiography, with the city both as a character and as a backdrop, first strike you?

A. With respect, Shantaram is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact.

Also, from a bbc story:”Roberts admits that the novel very closely mirrors his own extraordinary life.”

I suspect it’s liberally embellished truth.

Apparently, Johnny Depp is going to play the main character in the film version…

To be honest, I think I’d need to be paid money to do a Nevis (or any other type of) bungy jump. Looking at the various videos on YouTube just confirms it. Utterly insane.

In those pics, jul looks like he could be one of the Others in Lost, or a thin, long-haired version of Mr Echo…

I purchased a Snowboarding helm today, so that when I do my crazy tricks on the slopes of Austria, my noggin will be protected. I also have the added advantage that it makes me look like an idiot.