Go Go Go

From the second week of July it has been very busy! Right after I finished work in Dublin, my girlfriend and I were able to go on a nice holiday in Zakynthos, Greece. I had never been to Greece before, so it was an incredible experience. The people are very nice and there is a lot of traditional culture everywhere you go. The weather was quite hot, but the sea was only a walk away from the apartment. The scenery isn't bad, either.

After the week in Greece it was back to Milan and Zurich for the weekend. From there I flew back to Ireland and was finally able to head back down the country to Limerick and Kerry. It was nice to see everyone again and catch up with all of the family. The weather in Ireland this summer has been surprisingly good, and it was the same for that weekend!

I was expecting to stay down in Kerry for a good 10 days, until I had to head over to the continent again! I had been in contact with the Fischer Skis factory in Austria, about picking up skis towards the end of August before I headed back to Utah. However, the entire factory was on holiday break for those two weeks, so I had to change my plans. The head of the race department, Siegi, agreed to meet me on either the 29th or 30th of July. That meant heading back up to Dublin on Monday to catch an early flight Tuesday morning!

My best friend Scott also managed to hop on a flight over to Munich to have a little adventure. We had some good company with us for the next 24 hours, a brand new 4-Series BMW. As soon as we picked up the car we headed to Ried Im Innkreis, Austria, to the Fischer factory, to go get some new skis! Siegi was there to greet us and even gave us a little factory tour after we picked out my skis - there were quite a lot to choose from.

Scott and I decided to get the most out of the car before returning it the next morning. We drove from the factory straight to Salzburg and did a little exploring. The castle towards the city center was our first stop. A tram took us to the top, and the view was well worth it. After that, we headed out to the Red Bull Museum, somewhere I've always wanted to go and check out.

I'll try to keep the rest of this trip short, as I'm sure I'm boring most of you already. From Salzburg, we were stuck on where to go next. It was about 8 pm, so we had a bit of time to cruise around. However, the Salzburg/Munich area is right in the middle of everything. Vienna was on the list, but because there's no Autobahn, we decided 3 hours of 120kmh was going to be too boring. Stuttgart was it. 3 hours of Autobahn each way, makes for a lot of fun.

We made it to Stuttgart around midnight, and cruised around the city, visiting the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz factories along the way. At around 1 am, it was time to head back towards Munich. To make our sleeping situation a bit interesting, we decided to make Dachau our parking location for the night. An interesting, eery experience, but definitely one for the books.

Morning came and the car had to be dropped back to the airport in Munich. We definitely missed it while riding the bus on the way to Zurich. We finally arrived with all the gear to my girlfriends house around 1 pm, covering about 1300 kilometers in the space of 24 hours. One hell of a trip.

Scott headed back to the US the day after so I stayed in Zurich for the rest of the weekend. I was able to go to the Zurich Street Parade with my girlfriend; it's one of the largest street festivals in the entire world. Huge trucks parade around the city all day blasting music. You definitely wouldn't see anything like this on the other side of the Atlantic.

I flew back into Dublin on the Sunday night from Zurich, and flew out the following morning to Athens, Greece. I'm currently in Ancient Olympia at the moment, something I'll update you on in the next blog! That's all for now.

/CL