life without a plot

# While it's still 2012 — A happy New Year, everyone!

# Still coughing, but today I got so stir crazy that I went for a short hiking tour regardless, and it doesn't seem to have done much damage. And the day was absolutely, although perhaps somewhat unseasonably, gorgeous (see below).

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# Christmas was okay-ish. Spent the 24th with the parents and a good part of the 25th baking our traditional Mohnstrudel, which for once did turn out really well. (Especially gratifying since last time I made if for my sister's birthday 1) the yeast dough didn't really rise and 2) I fell asleep, because by the time I put it in the oven it was well past midnight, and the damn thing very nearly burned. Stayed at home on the 26th, though, since I didn't want to pass the cold on to the nieces, and I wasn't really up to so much family, either.

# Merlin, again, because the more I actually think about it, the more the ending annoys me. It is a cheap cop-out in the end, not to mention manipulative both on a Watsonian and Doylist level.

An Arthur not days/hours away from death and despite everything grateful for Merlin doing everything to save his life would have asked harder questions about more specific instances, like if they would even be in this place if Merlin hadn't lied to his face a mere eight episodes earlier. And it's simply not true that Arthur would just have chopped Merlin's head of if he'd found out. Uther would have, no doubt about that, but if Merlin had sat Arthur down some time after Uther's death and said something along the lines of, well, at the time we didn't want you to kill his father, but what you learned from Morgause was actually true, ask Gaius if you don't believe me? Merlin is a classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions, and he can go on blaming himself for Arthur right along with Morgana. But does the show intend for us to see it that way?

And the audience is too distracted by the fanservice and too busy sniffing and hunting for tissues to notice that, or that the issue of magic and the old religion was quite a bit more complex than a teary 'But I did it all for you'.

Once again, right until the end, Arthur has no agency whatever, getting himself killed in a war that he could very likely have been avoided if only he'd known all the facts.

Gah. Enough said.

# Downloaded the DW Christmas episode, because, hey, it's been more than a year and a half, maybe I've changed my mind? Except things never happens like that, do they?

# Spent a rather indecent amount of money on a fjällräven parka and feel really kind of guilty. Granted, two thirds of it were gift vouchers I got from the parents and sister for Christmas, but still...

# Started the fourth draft of the Meta from Hell (tm). Every time I open the damn thing after a couple of months and look at it, somehow a complete re-write or at least rearrangement seems to be necessary. Kill me now, please.

 

Firstly — Merlin 5.05, where things are finally getting serious. (And a bit more ambitious than ~comic relief~, thank God.) The one minor quibble I have is that I seem to remember that Arthur was already more respectful towards magic/the old religion, but my memories are more than a bit fuzzy here because for the last couple of seasons I haven't exactly been watching very attentively. This aside, The Disir is the best and strongest episode in a very long while, and it made me go from meh to genuinely curious what kind of an ending we are heading towards.

( spoilers )


Secondly, picture spam. This is from my brief and too-soon-over holiday last week, before the snow. From Hallstatt up to the Wiesberghaus (1.884m). I only regret not taking pictures on my way up when it was still sunny... (In case anyone is interested, this (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is what it looked like on top. I'm only linking these pictures because they're really crap photography-wise, but there is little you can do if the sky is completely colourless/white...)

( descent into the mist )

More backlog clearing...

These are from last Sunday, although after last week at work it feels so much longer than that. From Mitterlengau up the Schusterkogel, and then along the rim of the valley via Teufelssprung and Hohe Penhab back down again. The mood is very different here, because while the mountains are about the same height, this is slate rather than limestone, so there are alpine meadows right up until 2.000+ m. (Which personally I'm not so very fond of, because cows? Large heavy animals with pointy horns, and not always so peaceful, especially when they're in a herd with their calves. I'd definitely prefer them behind fences. At least it was apparently still too early in the year for them to be all the way up, so most of the hike was blessedly bovine-free...)

This was also the most relaxed tour, because I didn't put any pressure on myself, but let myself stop for taking pictures, breaks, or just to sit down and enjoying the view for a bit, because I knew I had to drive back to Vienna the next day and really, really didn't want to leave. I don't remember having felt so at peace for a long time, although sadly last week killed that mood pretty fast.

Horses, for a change. At least better than cows, although I try to keep a respectful distance too...



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Finally sorted out and uploaded (although admittedly still rather indiscriminately) my pictures from last week's hiking tours in Salzburg to flickr. They're really nothing much photography-wise, all credit is due to the sheer gorgeousness of the landscape, but I enjoyed that time so much that my sense of self-critique refuses to cooperate. Hence, picture spam.

My level of fitness, or rather lack thereof, still makes 1.000+ m of hight difference a bit of an exercise in masochism, but I've never been to Salzburg this early in the year, and not only was it still incredibly quiet and peaceful — even on a Sunday I was more or less alone for most of the day and only met a handful of hikers towards the end of the tour —, but it caught me by surprise how much spring still lingers up in the mountains. Above 1.700, 1.800 m there were still plenty of snowfields, and in other places you could still see the pressed-down dried grass where the snow had molten only recently, with the first flowers coming out.

This batch of pictures is from Monday when we had a heatwave and I got up at 4:30ish and started out at 6:15 in the morning to avoid the worst of the heat, up to the Passauer Hütte. (Which I forgot to take a picture of, but you can sorta kinda see on a high resolution version of the tenth picture, where the right edge of the clouds meets the top of the mountain.) The pictures were taken on the way down, so they're in reverse order, snow and rocks to tree-line and flowers...

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A few pictures from yesterday's hiking tour up the Schöpfl (Schöpflgitter - Klamm - Wöllersdorf - Forsthof - Schöpflgitter, approx. 7 hrs.), which to be honest was a bit meh. Not as cold as last weekend, but overcast, with a fog starting half-way up the mountain, which, yes, is quite romantic and picturesque and photogenetic, I know, but it's also the middle of April and it felt like being thrown back into November. Around noon it started to drizzle with increasing frequency, so I had to pack away the camera for good eventually. Partly it was enjoyable, but partly just too much walking on roads and muddy forest roads ploughed up by heavy machinery and muddy forest paths ploughed up by (apparently) a gazillion icelandic ponies. Google Images tells me the view is pretty from the top; I had to check the sign over the door of the Schöpfelhütte to make sure I'd actually arrived...

( trees in the mist )

 

A few pictures from last weekend's hiking tours. They're nothing much (the photos, that is; the hiking tours were fantastic) since they were all taken in a bit of a rush, because right now I'm more interested in exercise than photography, and giving yourself a pretext for stopping every few minutes isn't exactly conductive to achieving a greater level of fitness, but maybe they manage to capture the mood at least a little bit. Sunday's tour was on the Hohe Wand (for personal reference: Waldegg - Waldegger Haus - Kleine Kanzel - Sky Walk - Packles - Grünbach, almost 9 hrs.) The week before temperatures had dropped again, so when I started out from Waldegg there was snow almost right down to the train-station, and if it hadn't taken me already 90 mins. to get there, I'd probably have been discouraged and turned back. As it is, I'm glad it had, and I didn't, because it was absolutely gorgeous, especially when the sun was out, although also wintery and forbidding with an icy wind and occasional snowfall when it wasn't. I was walking through snow almost constantly until I came to the sun-exposed, slightly lower south-western edge of the mountain in the afternoon, but since it was only a few centimetres of new snow on dry ground, it wasn't icy or slippery, just rather picturesque...

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Monday morning I had a dentist appointment, which wasn't the best of ideas in my currently, shall we say, a bit emotionally volatile state, because even a routine check-up and the suggestion of dental hygiene in the near future was enough to almost trip me into a panic attack, but after lunch and having calmed down a bit I decided to go for a quick hike after all, took the train to Bad Vöslau and went up to the Eisernes Tor. Sunny and warm enough for nothing but a t-shirt at least on my way up, trees in gardens were already blossoming, and looking out from the train window the landscape had taken on a green hue. Further up it was still pretty brown and bare, although also dotted with primroses, Leberblümchen, pink/purple erica shrubs and other early flowers, and if you looked closer, buds were beginning to open, too. Came down to the train-station in Baden at dusk, tired and a bit sore, but more balanced than I've felt in a while, and something of that has thankfully stuck during the week...

(It was also rather gratifying to note that despite not doing very much during winter, for the first time I really noticed an effect of all that walking and hiking, with less stopping and having to catch my breath on steep climbs... Definitely looking forward to Rax and Schneeberg this summer.)

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What I hate about time of the year, now that I've got into the habit of going for walks on the weekend, is how you basically have to make the decision a day in advance and set the alarm early, or it isn't going to happen, because it's dark by four. It wasn't much of a question today in any case because I was too tired after working yesterday (in my old shop for a change, which was rather more stressful, but surprisingly, dare I say it, fun... yes, it's Christmas, which I usually whine and complain about, I know, but it was nice to actually be busy rather than stand around killing time.)

Slept, wasted time, watched another two episodes of Miracle Day (5 & 6). (In parenthesis, just briefly, because I don't want to say a lot before I'm finished, but I'm rather surprised at how much I enjoyed it so far, how well it stands the test of rewatching and how fond I'd become of the characters without really noticing when — or even that — that happened. And it's not that Christmas makes me more charitable either, because I mentally bitch about Merlin every week. Sometimes I think one should avoid expectations as much as possible, because they can really ruin things. When I watched MD back in summer, I always had this voice in my head that kept comparing it to CoE, kept making assumptions about what was going to happen, which, in hindsight didn't help. At all. Maybe it's knowing where the story goes, how it ends and how the pieces fit, but it flows much smoother this time around and there are things I found jarring the first time that I simply don't notice any longer in a negative way now that I don't expect it to be CoE II. It's maybe a bit too concept-heavy overall, but it most definitely isn't stupid.)

Went for a bit of a walk around six, browsing two Christmas markets on my way. (Same stuff as every year, bit depressing really, and drinking punch on your own makes you look like a sad alcoholic, so I didn't. Plus, it wasn't cold enough either.) I guess it didn't help that I had Glukhovsky's Metro 2033 on my iPod, because listening to Artyom getting very nearly executed in the Moscow underground in a post-nuclear world while looking at Christmas tree ornaments and various arts & crafts stuff is a bit... bizarre, and not in a good way. Returned home an hour and a half later, depressed and disproportionally tired.


A couple of pictures from last Sunday that I never got around to posting, partly also to cheer myself up and remind me of the fact that somewhere the sun is shining, even when all I'm seeing is mist and darkness and artificial light. I had to get up at 6:30 to catch a train at 9:00 and a bus at 9:30; it was still frosty when I arrived at Heiligenkreuz (and there was even a bit of snow higher up on the Peilstein), but it was a such beautiful sunny day, although everything was very bare already. Strangely enough it felt more like early spring than late autumn. I should have taken sunglasses, but after what felt like weeks and weeks of mist and city greness I didn't even think of that. Probably a good thing I still had an old tube of sunscreen in my rucksack...

( +3, although they're really nothing much... )

Access Advanced in two weeks and then I'm done, done, done until Christmas. Of course there'll be the usual Christmas retail insanity, but right now that prospect seems almost stress-free in comparison to the last couple of months, because then I'll at least be allowed to come home and simply crash. (Famous last words...) And then I'll have to seriously start looking for a new job after Christmas. Also, the two weeks of Russian seminar I did in July? Either I'm crazy or masochistic or both, but I'm planning to do it again in February, so life isn't really going to stop being busy anytime soon. Still, though. It'll be at least one thing off my mind.

I'm just so tired. I'm also turning into a complete hermit, apparently. I feel somewhat guilty because I keep turning down people who want to do things with me, but at the moment spending what free time I have sitting cooped up in a cinema, or standing around in a museum, watching/looking at something I'm only 50% interested in at best seems simply intolerable. I need to be outside, I need to move, and I'm not really willing to make compromises for other people's levels of fitness either. I know I'm being rude, but on the other hand I think that's what kept me functioning over the last weeks. I only have so much energy.

So, anyway, pictures from Tuesday's hiking tour; no artistic aspirations, I just want to share them. Hours of walking through the mist, colours continuously changing from yellow (maple trees) to russet (beech trees) to a sober green-grey (pine trees), blurred like an impressionistic painting, the sound of water dripping from the trees and leaves falling on the wet ground. Almost completely alone the whole time, only twice meeting other hikers. It's an eerie feeling, even if you have a map and the path is clearly marked, when everything outside the circle you're moving in disappears in a greyish-white nothingness, especially when you're somewhere you've never been before. Apparently all the fairytales you've listened to as a child leave you with an archaic subconscious fear of getting lost in the woods that neither reason nor maps can't quite dispel... And then I was finally high enough and the mist started to thin, and after all those hours in the dripping grey it was simply wonderful to see a blue sky again, and the sun filtered through the branches and last wisps of mist, everything suddenly almost shockingly crisp and clear.

(On a more prosaic note, I was also forced to notice that I'm not really in a very good shape. Note to lazy self: pick more demanding routes. Uphill ones, that is.)

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These are from last Sunday; sometimes it pays to simply look down.

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