September 2019
Tuesday, 28 January 2020 19:37![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iguana
In September I played an escape room with Tim and Ems, who was visiting from Norway for a long weekend. I attended PyCon UK for the fourth time. I also visited Rae & David in Zürich, and Alyssa and Bertram in Den Haag, but before that I walked across a country! It was Liechtenstein, the sixth-smallest country, but it was very pretty.
PyCon UK
I once again had a lovely time at PyCon UK, with it presenting some great opportunities to catch up with friends. Samathy had rented an airbnb which turned out to be great for hosting an evening of cooking and chatting.
I made a huge number of personal achievements; for my reference they are in a locked entry here.
I once again had a lovely time at PyCon UK, with it presenting some great opportunities to catch up with friends. Samathy had rented an airbnb which turned out to be great for hosting an evening of cooking and chatting.
I made a huge number of personal achievements; for my reference they are in a locked entry here.
Schengen 2019
As part of a vague aim to catch up the number of countries I've visited to my age (this was #29), I decided to visit Liechtenstein and the challenge with a country that small is to spend a whole 24 hours there!
In the end I think I spent about 25 hours in Liechtenstein, though I think if I'd gone up into the Alps there might have been a bit more to do, but it's very difficult to find information about it. As it was, I decided to walk across the country, from Buchs in Austria to the West, having got the train there from Zurich Airport, to Feldkirch in Austria to the East, staying i n Vaduz overnight.
Vaduz turned out to be very pretty, with the castle on the hillside lit up at modestly night in an otherwise wonderfully dark sky area. I sat out on my hotel balcony in the middle of the night just absorbing the starscape.
The walk itself was okay; the nicest bit by far was around Vaduz, after which it turned into managed forest; indeed one part was closed and I ended up having to take a detour around a main road.
It was very cool to cross two country borders in two days; and in fact on the way back to Zurich from Feldkirch the train passed back into and out of Liechtenstein within the space of about five minutes!
Before heading off I spent a couple of days in Zürich, where I met up with Rae, David, and Thereza. With Rae and David we did another escape room and we had a fun afternoon doing some sightseeing and playing Innovation and Azul, two tabletop games.
On the second evening I boarded a NightJet overnight train which took me as far as Hanover in pretty decent comfort, where I changed for a train across to Den Haag.
It was the first time I'd seen Alyssa and Bertram since they had moved there, and their new apartment was great. Alyssa took me to her local Hackspace (by bike! It was quite a scenic route, and not too scary!) and we had a good wander around town too, fortunately not coming across the farmer protest (though that did explain the number of tractors we saw!).
I flew home on the 2 October, into East Midlands airport which was tiny but had a bus that goes almost straight back to my house, so that was super convenient.
As part of a vague aim to catch up the number of countries I've visited to my age (this was #29), I decided to visit Liechtenstein and the challenge with a country that small is to spend a whole 24 hours there!
In the end I think I spent about 25 hours in Liechtenstein, though I think if I'd gone up into the Alps there might have been a bit more to do, but it's very difficult to find information about it. As it was, I decided to walk across the country, from Buchs in Austria to the West, having got the train there from Zurich Airport, to Feldkirch in Austria to the East, staying i n Vaduz overnight.
Vaduz turned out to be very pretty, with the castle on the hillside lit up at modestly night in an otherwise wonderfully dark sky area. I sat out on my hotel balcony in the middle of the night just absorbing the starscape.
The walk itself was okay; the nicest bit by far was around Vaduz, after which it turned into managed forest; indeed one part was closed and I ended up having to take a detour around a main road.
It was very cool to cross two country borders in two days; and in fact on the way back to Zurich from Feldkirch the train passed back into and out of Liechtenstein within the space of about five minutes!
Before heading off I spent a couple of days in Zürich, where I met up with Rae, David, and Thereza. With Rae and David we did another escape room and we had a fun afternoon doing some sightseeing and playing Innovation and Azul, two tabletop games.
On the second evening I boarded a NightJet overnight train which took me as far as Hanover in pretty decent comfort, where I changed for a train across to Den Haag.
It was the first time I'd seen Alyssa and Bertram since they had moved there, and their new apartment was great. Alyssa took me to her local Hackspace (by bike! It was quite a scenic route, and not too scary!) and we had a good wander around town too, fortunately not coming across the farmer protest (though that did explain the number of tractors we saw!).
I flew home on the 2 October, into East Midlands airport which was tiny but had a bus that goes almost straight back to my house, so that was super convenient.
