xc skiing

so last weekend was pretty relaxed, watched the movie 'moon' one night which i suggest, it's quite good. saturday was just hanging around, went out to zurich for a bit although it's still quite snowy and cold. had some good fondue for dinner then went out to zurich again to check out a jazz show. really really good, talented band and played some good music, soul and reggae beats too. expensive drinks though, like 20 bucks for a cuba libre...

woke up pretty early next morning and took about 2 hours to get to this place called langis, where we rented some xc skis and headed off for some xc skiing. another first for me, just tried the 'classic' style this time, but pretty much just immediately fell over as i clipped in. feels weird, skis are so light. but pretty quick i got the hang of it and was going with the nice glide as well as the kick double pole technique. there is very little to no transferable skills from alpine to xc skiing. maybe herringbone up hills but that's about it. pretty fun though, a bit of a foggy day but a good workout with some good friends nonetheless. ended up going about 15k or so, but it really was tiring and definitely felt some hip flexor soreness the next day. tried a bit of 'skating' style at the end as well, and i will for sure be picking this up at home. haha, now i'll need like 5 pairs of skis...there wasn't too much bus service up to this place so we ended up hanging out at the restaurant and had some soup and a beer, good end to a good day. man those guys on the olympics make it look a lot easier than it is.

on tuesday night, imogen heap was playing in zurich so we grabbed some tickets and headed out after work. it worked out that there was a vietnamese restaurant right next to the bar/club where the show was, so we went ahead and had some dinner there. had some bun bo hue and tried a bit of hu tieu as well, and it was definitely the best i've had yet since i've been here. pretty legit, i was impressed. still, can't believe it's 20 chf/20 bucks for a bowl of noodles though, outrageous. in any case we headed off 'abart' to check out the show. some random band from iceland was the opening act, 'helgi jonsson' i think it was, not bad, but probably played far too long of an opening act and kinda emo. after a lengthy stage set-up (later on proved to be completely appropriate) the show started. she's from the uk and it was nice to hear some english music live too. it always nice to be able to understand stuff. she's very musically talented and had some pretty cool/weird instruments, a great voice, and i'm sure about a million loop pedals as well. really good show i thought. it was too bad that it was getting close to midnight, and the last train back to baden was at quarter to - didn't really feel like sleeping on the streets of zurich so unfortunately we had to go home. still, from what i heard it was totally worth it.

not too much else happening this week, just kind of getting ready for the week trip to EGYPT starting on saturday, should be really good, +40 weather, sun, will be perfect, really looking forward to it.