Hello there everyone, It’s been a hectic few weeks over the Christmas period, apologies for the lack of communication both via the blog and email, phone calls etc. Hope all enjoyed the festive period. It was business as usual over Christmas here, it didn't feel all that festive. We are still in St. Anton as you can see, however the season isn’t progressing quite like we imagined. It seems we chose to come and work a season in the Alps the same year that global warming has started to kick in. There is a remarkable lack of the white stuff. If [View Full Entry]

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Hello there everyone. Sorry for the lack of communication recently but we've been really busy. We got jobs fairly easily in a ski resort here in Austria which is called St. Anton. The company is a small upmarket one with a few chalets. I got a job as a nanny for some weeks, when a family who have booked one come to stay, and a chalet host (general skivvy) at other times. Simon is a resort rep and driver. There was not much need to stay in Innsbruck any longer and we felt at a loose end in the caravan. There [View Full Entry]

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Hello all. I am now writing from Austria. After a short stay in Berlin, unsuccessful in terms of jobs, we headed down here to see what is available on the skiing resorts. We made the shocking decision of hiring a car - it went against the grain after being so environmentally friendly on our bikes, but train journeys are incredibly complex. So, we loaded it up with large amounts of stuff (how we ever fitted it all on our bikes is a mystery to me; but then, that was before we owned a large piano accordion) and spent the day driving [View Full Entry]

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Hello all. Just a quick entry from Odessa where we have spent a few days before returning to Germany. We took the train here from Kiev. I thought it might be a bit odd to suddenly eat up the miles after the slower progress on bicycles, but I was wrong. We slipped straight back into travelling quickly and even found ourselves complaining at the slow rate the train seemed to move at through the night. Taking a night train was an interesting experience, the little cabin we were in seemed quite ornate for its purpose with patterned carpet, frilly curtains and [View Full Entry]

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Hello all. We are now in Kiev and have spent a few days here. It is by far the most modern place we've visited in Ukraine (that's not saying much), and is a lively place. It is full of high-rise buildings and crazy drivers. Crossing the road is almost impossible in central areas and you have to use subways, which function more like shoppping centres. This made getting our bikes across town an extremely tricky business and we had to bump them down and up staircases - not easy as they were fully loaded and extremely heavy. The big news is [View Full Entry]

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In terms of Ukrainian distances, we are very nearly in Kiev (the Ukrainians like us to spell it Kiyiv, but I'll stick to the more familiar version) - in a relatively nomal city called Zhytomir about 140 km west of Kiev. The few days in Lviv were spent mostly wandering around the compact city centre. We did visit the Lviv City Museum but all the exhibits, though very interesting, had explanations in Ukrainian so we were able to understand very little. Our evening entertainments consisted of going to see a ballet and a concert of music by Lithuanian composers, the latter [View Full Entry]

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After over 2000 miles, we are now in Ukraine, the place we have been making for. But that doesn't mean that we're ready to stop yet - the country is vast and there is a lot we want to see. At the moment we are in Lviv, a beautiful city with lots of old, elegant buildings. The place we are staying in is called Hotel George, and it's pink. Naturally, this has prompted a stream of Rainbow impressions. The hotel is a huge regency building, with a distinct air of faded grandeur - sweeping staircases, grand entrances, and elaborately decorated, but [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone. We are still in Poland and progress with cycling has been a bit slow this last week. First we stopped in Krakow for a few days, then we came 90 miles here, to Zakopane, and have been here four whole days so far. It is a fairly touristy resort in the Tatra mountains which border Poland and Slovakia. In summer it is inundated with hikers and in winter packed with skiers. So we were hoping we would catch it at a quiet time but that has not been the case... The day before we left Krakow we visited the [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! We made it to Krakow two days ago and have been enjoying some rest and relaxation here. Cycling across southern Poland was not particularly interesting as the roads were quite main ones and a lot of the towns very functional places. We stopped one day by a little hilltop town and decided to camp wild nearby. We found a river and set up cosily on the banks. In the morning I was blearily cooking the porridge outside out tent in my pyjamas (very glamourous) when a gnarled old farmer came along leading two cows on chains. He looked bemused to [View Full Entry]

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Hello there everyone. We are now in Poland and are well, if slightly ragged around the edges. Prague was fun but we were glad to leave as it was so packed and touristy. We saw some interesting stuff though, from a museum of Communism to a frantic jazz band in a cellar. We then cycled for a day to Kutna Hora, a little medieval town which had at one time been very important due to its silver mines, but once the silver ran out it became forgotten about. We spent a day there wandering about, buying pyjamas for me (I left [View Full Entry]

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