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Across Northern Europe, Balkan Odyssey
Winter is coming to the Northern Hemisphere. And quickly. The Eastern seaboard has already survived a major storm. And in Tromsø, Norway, where Flickr user Tao, Ding snapped this image a few days ago, it is currently 2 degrees Celsius (36 Fahrenheit).
Got some seasonal photos taking up file space in your archives? Upload them to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. If we like what we see we might just select one of your images to be a future Photo of the Day.
The architectural influence of the Soviet years cannot be missed in Yerevan. Two examples in particular viscerally embody the grandiose massive-scale drama associated with Soviet architectural projects: the Armenian Genocide Monument and the 50th Anniversary of the Soviet Armenia monument. The latter can be reached from central Yerevan via the Cascade stairway.
The Armenian Genocide Monument at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex is moving and stark. The monument consists of a tall spire next to 12 enormous slabs of rock positioned in a tilted form around an eternal flame. With ghostly music playing on a loop in the background, the site is a powerful, emotionally-laden place of remembrance. The broad plaza around the monument is so big that it could easily accommodate hundreds of visitors simultaneously and not feel full. The monument dates to 1967.
The monument’s starkness has nothing on the neighboring museum, however, which documents the harrowing genocide of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman soldiers across Anatolia from 1915 through the early 1920s. The museum approaches its tragic subject matter in an extremely methodical manner, listing the regions where Armenians were killed and in what numbers, and providing various forms of documentation of Armenian cultural life during the era in question. Entry to the museum is free.
The Cascade leaves a less troubling impression. If the Genocide monument is irrevocably painful, the Cascade is joyful, utilized more or less as a park. An enormous terraced staircase, the Cascade connects central Yerevan with the Monument to the 50th Anniversary of Soviet Armenia. Construction on the Cascade began in the 1970s, and the stairway’s development has stopped and started a few times. Currently, the Cafesjian Center for the Arts is housed within it.
The Monument to the 50th Anniversary of Soviet Armenia towers above the Cascade. It is visible at the top of the image above. The monument has three features of note: a stone column, a low-lying rectangular building, closed to visitors, and a massive landing with great views over Yerevan. Cursory research has revealed that this monument was never completed. Today it towers over the city, commemorating Armenia’s tenure as a republic of the Soviet Union prior to independence.
These monuments are interesting and significant places for grasping Armenia’s recent past and current presence. They are essential stops for any visitor to Yerevan.
Check out other stories in Gadling’s Far Europe and Beyond series.
For such a small country, Belgium certainly has contributed to world cuisine. French fries, for example, are actually Belgian, making that whole “freedom fries” movement back in 2003 even stupider than it appeared. They also gave us Belgian waffles, although over here they’re called “Brussels waffles” after the capital. And let’s not forget about Belgian chocolate!
I’ve been exploring Antwerp, a wealthy city with hardworking inhabitants who like to splash out on fine food. Here are four restaurants worth a visit. Office casual attire is the rule here. Entrees range from about 15-25 euros ($20-28) except at Flamant Dining, where they’re a bit more.
My first night I dined at Brasserie Appelmans. This restaurant and absinthe bar only a few steps from the cathedral in the heart of historic Antwerp is popular with both tourists and locals. It’s strange to go from the Gothic spires and 17th century facades outside to modern minimalism inside. Through dim lighting you see a split-level plan with little décor besides mirrors, exposed brick and woodwork, and candlelit black tables.
For a starter I had an incredibly rich tomato soup with fresh cream and meatballs. It was almost filling enough for a main, but I managed a big bowl of Antwerp stew with veal prepared with Grimbergen Dubbel beer and served with thick-cut Belgian fries and salad of white cabbage, celery, and cherry tomatoes. After a long day’s walking and with the winter chill setting in for the evening, it certainly hit the spot.In keeping with the décor of the restaurant, the absinthe bar is dim and chic. It looks very popular and they had a large variety of absinthes but I didn’t partake. I can get absinthe at home in Spain and it’s not the thing to drink alone, certainly not alone in public. Both the restaurant and bar are busy by 7pm, as are many places here. Living in Spain I find Belgians to be early eaters!
Another fine restaurant is Felixpakhuis. Located next to the redeveloped docklands and the famous Mas Museum, it has a spacious and bright interior that gets quite loud as it fills up. Again bare wood and minimal decoration is the rule, although this time the colors are light instead of dark. For starters I ordered pumpkin soup with scallops followed by the Coc au vin. Both were well done and I appreciated the more casual atmosphere than you get in many high-end Belgian restaurants. While service was good at all the places in this post, the waitstaff at Felixpakhuis were the friendliest and quickest of them all. Make this your stop after seeing the Mas.
For those seeking the high end, try Flamant Dining, a restaurant on the first floor of the equally exclusive Les Nuits hotel. This is not a place you’ll stumble upon; locals have to tell you about it. It has a more intimate feel than the others, with a roaring fireplace and fine but minimal décor. I started with crispy goat cheese in a pig’s cheek spring roll with sweet red onion cream. For the main I had Australian filet pur grain fed with a pepper sauce, green salad, and Pont Neuf potatoes. Both were cooked to perfection, the pig’s cheek dissolving sweetly in my mouth. I found the pepper sauce a bit strong and overbearing on the excellent filet, but scraping a bit off solved this.
Another well-known and popular place is the Dome, which is a restaurant, a bistro, and bakery all within sight of each other. I had lunch at the bistro, a less formal and quicker option than the actual restaurant. A long aquarium took up one wall and windows took up much of the rest of the space, so between the fish and the Art Nouveau mansions outside I had plenty to look at during my meal. The chef brought out a series of small portions, including mackerel with mustard vinegar, scallops with pumpkin sauce and salad, spicy calamari (perhaps too spicy for some), and swordfish a la plancha with butter sauce. I’m a land lubber and rarely order seafood, yet I thoroughly enjoyed and finished everything. The restaurant, where you eat under a large neoclassical dome, is more formal and is hugely popular with the locals. The bread from the bakery is excellent.
The only criticism I have of Belgian cuisine from my limited experience on two trips to the country is that it’s too heavy. My appetizers were always too filling, yet too tasty not to finish. I saw very few small or light appetizers listed on menus, and when the hearty main course was set before me, all thoughts of dessert disappeared. Considering that many desserts included Belgian chocolate, this shows just how stuffed I was!
Don’t miss the rest of my series: Lowdown on the Low Countries.
Coming up next: Masterpieces in Silver!
This trip was partially funded by Tourism Antwerp and Cool Capitals. All opinions, however, are my own.
In the few days that I’ve been back from Alicante it’s been difficult for me to explain the sheer magnitude of a VO70 ocean racer to my peers. These sailboats are unlike your average Sunfish or J-105. They are massive, precision engineered creatures, optimized for weight, balance and speed. They are moving cities, with 11 men onboard, bunks, cooking and wash facilities. They’re also information superstations with a handful of remote controlled cameras, a satellite uplink and enough CAT-5 cable to impress any technophile.
At Team Abu Dhabi’s invitation we brought a team out to Alicante, Spain in late October to get a unique snapshot of the team and the race from the beginning. Days before the official launch we were out on the chilly Mediterranean waters on a practice run armed with only a handful of sailing experiences under our belt and a Canon SLR. The below gallery is what we captured.
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Sailing on the deck of a VO70 is like riding on the back of a dragon, mythical, awe inspiring and terrifying at the same time. As the ships tack and jibe back and forth near the starting line it’s eerily quiet save for the occasional shout from the skipper or the stress-groans from the carbon-fiber hull. To see this much mass and power moving in such grace is a humbling experience. To see the ships race is unforgettable.Ships leave Alicante and head towards Cape Town on the 5th of November. You can catch up with the fleet at nine other ports around the planet through the summer of next year. The full schedule is at volvooceanrace.org.
[Editor’s note: Team Gadling joined the Volvo Ocean race at the request and expense of Team Abu Dhabi. Media support made the ships sail no faster nor the writers get any wetter while on assignment.]
In all of professional sports, I doubt there are many athletes who travel more for their job than professional surfers. In fact, I doubt there are many people involved in any profession who travel more than professional surfers do on an annual basis.
Unless you are, oh, I don’t know, an exploratory oil engineer, a FedEx airline pilot, or some sort of covert operative, there’s a real good chance that the world’s top wave chargers are circling the globe far more rapidly than you are.
So just what does the schedule of a professional surfer look like?
To begin with, the 36 surfers on the ASP World Tour compete in 11 different events that take them across Australia, Brazil, South Africa, France, Portugal, Tahiti, California, and Hawaii over the course of the year. During the 4-6 weeks between events, many of these surfers are jetting across the globe chasing swells and doing promo shoots in countries that include the expected (Indonesia, Fiji, Costa Rica), the remote (Namibia, Madagascar, Iceland), and the downright dangerous (I’ve seen articles on surf in Libya, and it actually looks really good).
Considering the constant demands of chasing swells that can pop up in any corner of the world, many pro surfers spend little more than a month or two at “home” in any given year.
To dig deeper into the traveling life of a professional surfer I recently caught up with a team that’s been traveling with pro surfer Ian Walsh of Maui, Hawaii.One of the world’s best big wave surfers, Walsh largely forgoes contests in favor of searching out some of the largest, most remote waves on the planet. When he’s not stroking into bulbous, death-defying pits that would assuredly kill the rest of us, Walsh is making various promotional appearances around the globe for one of his major sponsors, Red Bull.
On a recent trip that just came to a close, Walsh and his team flew from Hawaii to Africa for a month of chasing swells from the sharky waters of Cape Town to the remote sand spits of Namibia. After Africa, the Walsh team was needed back in New York City for the premier of a Red Bull snowboarding film, The Art of Flight, during which time he jetted out to Rhode Island to hunt down some waves from a mid-autumn hurricane swell.
From New York the team hopped over the pond for a week of wave-hunting on the west coast of Ireland, after which time it was off to Salzburg, Austria via Prague to drop in at the Red Bull headquarters for a few days. Throw in a quick trip to Rome, and then it’s back on the wave-hunt by flying to Bulgaria to begin work on a documentary based around searching for surf in the Caspian Sea.
That particular trip involved driving overland from Bulgaria to Istanbul, then catching a plane to Baku, Azerbaijan, which is a place I feel you don’t regularly find many pro surfers. This, of course, is further evidence of the ever expanding quest of searching for waves in places you’d never think there was good surf.
On top of this particular 6-week whirlwind, Walsh was also spotted this year taking two trips to Indonesia, two to Fiji, three to Mexico, and of course, a couple of trips to Las Vegas thrown in for good measure.
If planning these trips sounds like a logistical nightmare, consider the fact the majority of pro surfers are sculpting their travel arrangements around shifting swell models of where they think the next big storm is going to rear its ugly head. It’s not unheard of for surfers to chase a swell from Tahiti to Hawaii to California and literally ride the same waves (albeit at smaller levels) they just rode the day before.
To add an additional variable, pro surfers don’t exactly have the luxury of flying carry-on with their favorite roll-aboard luggage. Aside from schlepping around a quiver of anywhere from 4-10 boards (which are really fun to travel with when flying to Mozambique and boarding a dilapidated fishing boat for a 3 week feral mission into the middle of nowhere), the modern surfer needs a small studio of electronics such as camera gear, video gear, and laptops to document the entire journey for the sponsors, magazines, and surf companies who make a lot of the travel possible.
So the next time you’re riding business class lamenting the fact you’ve been on the road for the last 2 weeks, consider the fact there’s some surfer out there trying to stuff a big silver board bag into a decrepit Nicaraguan taxi who’s chasing a swell he spotted while camped out somewhere in Sri Lanka. He’s sleep-deprived, heavily vaccinated, and willing to throw himself over a 20-foot ledge onto a jagged coral reef all for a chance to chase the dream we call the cover of a magazine.
In other words, it’s just another day on the job.
For more info on Ian Walsh and a greater window into the life of a professional surfer, check out the surf blog weekwithwalshy.com.
Photo: {Justin Clark; weekwithwalshy.com}