Переведу на днях.
…in English
This year we’re tempting the fate and with quite insane hope to have some flights in South Alpes taking all the equipment we could need there — hang gliders and mountain ski :).
Perhaps it’s going to be the most indefinite trip to Europe I’ve ever had before, so let’s see what comes out of it 🙂
Driving so far is rather exhausting of course, but I really enjoy such way of our journeys — all the time you can gaze at smth interesting, see new places from inside, catch sights of things you wouldn’t have noticed if had travelled by a plane for instance. This time is special since it’s Christmas and New Year’s dates, so Europe is even sprucer and brighter then usual.
While we made the first part of the trip to Vienna we’ve gone through Slovakia with its wide Carpathians valley and the capital Bratislava:
Slovaks take care about drivers and stick some amusing and helpful pictures of possible gym exercises using a car.
Apart from that, their police never sleeps and catches malignant violators, who don’t buy the Slovak Vignette in the right time. The fine is 140 euros if you do it for the first time. And it’s up to 700 euros if you haven’t understood your fault and been exposed secondly. We were smiling a lot, acknowledged our guilt and explained that really have tried to buy the bloody vignette before the entry to the autobahn but haven’t found. The cheery policeman Roman were smiling too and in quite good Russian replied that we are just too good for such a big money, so he would fine us on only 40 euros and permit to drive another 40 kilometers forward in searching for the vignette. Ohh, really such a great man, thanks to him very much.
The Austria was started from great amount of wind turbines and amazing, very beautiful and neat Vienna.
You easily can tell what direction from Moscow to Europe is one of the cheapest. There were soooo many Russians in the downtown. The majority is in the hurry of purchasing clothes of course, not in the sightseeing.
The Christmas is already over and Santa Clauses are waiting for the New Year, warming themselves up:
The next day after Vienna we had to reach Bassano del Grappa in Italy. Have passed through so close and sweet to my heart places as Villach with its Dobrach Antenna — that was my first quite distant way point in the summer. I’ve tried to conquer it for several times and at last managed to do so and even almost made it back to Greifenburg. One of the first long XC routes on the hang glider 🙂
So here is the picture of what this place looks like now, without clouds:
Huh, yeah? 🙂
In Summer time you can see the Antenna closer from the air above like Kostya did (don’t have my own photo, the camera batteries have died):
Okay, go further, the next place was so well known Gemona with its Thunderstorms, awful take offs to the lee side and again very pretty Mountains.
Then another 200 kilometers through wintery Italy with its +12 C and green fields, leaves on the bushes and smells!
And at last, after 2600 km, we’re in Bassano now 🙂
As usual for us, the route seems rather long. Btw, I’ve estimated that somehow I’ve managed to cover smth like 65000 km during my travels in the last year, 55000 km from that was by a car. Wow.
Last couple years hang gliding has became my main spare-time spending and although I’d prefer to do so this time as well, I’m glad there possibly will be a chance to ski, all the more so it may appear to be skiing inside so familiar and close to my heart mountain areas where we used to fly last summer. Apart from that, in case of non-flyable conditions (common mates, that’s winter there :)), we want to attend this well known Marmalada ski resort in Dolomites with its high 3k+ peaks and loooong slopes. I’m curious if it’s possible to take off and land there in this time of year. Would be nice to take some cool shots flying over the skiers.
So, stay tuned and Felice Navidat in case there won’t be enough time to write smth before the 1st of Janurary 🙂
Подвеску то получили? 🙂
Нас пока только польские полицаи гоняли, с тем, что дельты не должны за габариты крыши выходить)
Неа, она пока в Милане. Очень надеюсь ее скоро забрать. Пока летаю в старой.
awesome shots congrats