Alps ski resorts - Schladming

It has been already 8 months since I moved to Austria. This was after more then 3 years which I spent in the US Great Plains. After such a long time on the Plains, the mountains of Austria are for me as a Paradize. Already before I came here I told myself to take advantage of this landscape: hike, ski, snowshoe etc... Sofar I introduce to my regural readers (I hope I have some) areas in the Wien vicinity which I consider good for day or twoday hikes. Now, its time to tell you something about where to go for skiing.

Last week I spent in Schladming, ski resort maybe an hour southeast from Salzburg. The main advantages of Schladming-Ramsau area? The price, location, ski conditions, mix of nations.. I recomend coming here as we did, bunch of people renting an apartment (for instance http://www.bruckreiterhof.at/). We ended up paying around 45 Euros per person for three nights. I think .. pretty good price. Also the skirental may get much cheaper if you make an online reservation (i.e. https://www.sport2000rent.at/de/rent/). Finally, dont forget that it may get much cheaper to buy 2 or more days skipass than to buy only single day passes. The panorama picture shows the ski area above Schladming at around 4 pm by my friend Zoltan (www.bartalis.com), the sunsets are amazing. At 4 30 its already dark. The following picture was taken by one small restaurant down by the slope at around 5 pm.

And regarding the rest? Thats half of our skiing crew. Martina, Mike, me and Fida.

San Francisco

This american most photographed sructure and symbol of San Francisco was built alrady in 1937. At that time many bridge engineers questioned if its possible to built a bridge over the 2,042 m strait with swirling tights and currents. The bridge faced very strong oposition. Apart from other bridge engineers, also ferry agencies complained, department of war was afraid that the bridge would interfere with the ship traffic, people in general complained that such a structure would destroy the beautiful look of San Francisco.

Seventy years later the Goldgen Gate become the most photographed structure in the US. The amount of tourist crossing Golden Gate brings the important dollars to the San Francisco treasury.

AGU (American Geophysical Union) 2007

The American Geophysical Union conference takes place in the sunny city of San Francisco every year shortly before Christmas. Around 10 000 people from all around the world come to present their research projects focusing on issues in geography, geology, space engineering, hydrology, biogeoscience, atmspheric science etc. I also was lucky enough this year to participate in this enormous event. I would like to encourage young scientist from all around the world to search for a way how to come and present their research. They might be surprised by the new suggestions, ideas, critics and more importantly by the oppurtunities, which can this conference bring them. So dont hesitate and go to http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/ to check the past conference. It was the Nobel Prize winner Al Gore who brought a further attention to this conference when presenting one of his talks on Global Warming last year.