It’s also a poignant reminder how small people were back then, and how different their lives were. Where Tamar keeps her Piano, the original farmer, his family, and their cow would have spent the winter.

Kinga and I rented a Streetcar (huge fans of the on-demand car sharing scheme, there’s one 3 doors down from my house), and headed North. This trip had lots of additional concerns, not the least that this was our first trip as a ‘couple’. Could we stand each other, or even the other’s driving styles? Luckily we survived intact (unlike my skull when it hit another door-frame), and even joked about our secret concerns once we returned.

We woke up the first morning to 3 inches of snow, which was beautiful! And difficult – we had to shovel a lot of snow and then drive cars up an angled, snow-covered mud track. Two hours and a bit of burned rubber, the cars were out and I celebrated by leaving the keys in the ignition and the window down. Being Yorkshire, a kind neighbor rolled up the windows and dropped off the keys.

Once we got the car out, our days turned to frolicking! Kinga wore her cute wellies (which Tamar disdained for farm work but appreciated the fashion statement), and we all went for a walk through . . . field and fen? What is it you walk through?

While Tamar had lit the fire on the first night, the second night we went out for dinner, got back a bit late, and it wasn’t really worth lighting the fire. So we made our hot-water bottles, headed up stairs, and simply couldn’t stop laughing as we joked about how completely frozen we were. I’ve been camping in 0 degree Fahrenheit weather before, but you know what you are in for. Here we were with a bed and electricity and a hot shower, and our room temperature was hovering around freezing. In the morning I was surprised my water glass wasn’t frozen.

But I think trips like that make you appreciate the modern creature comforts even more. How else can you appreciate turning up the thermostat if you’ve always had one?

I’ll finish off with my favorite picture from the trip, two horses drinking from a trough. It was completely frozen when they approached us, hoping for sugar cubes or carrots. Finding nothing, they pushed through and broke the ice, and drank what must have been very cold water! In the background is Robin Hoods Bay, the same view you see when looking out Tamar’s kitchen door.

We spent most of the time in Bend, Oregon, which is where I would imagine Hunter S. Thompson living now, instead of his Aspen, Colorado hide-away. The change in the landscape is stark as you drive from big-city Portland, through the densest of moss-covered mountain forests, into the high desert of sagebrush. We skiied on an extinct volcano, and hiked on lava flows. This was definately not Kansas, or New Jersey for that matter.

The first photo is the brilliant morning sun hitting mist in the trees.

The rest of the photos are at my Picasa Web Albums.

In the group-cooking that ensued over the holidays, someone made lasagna, and drained the beef fat into a bowl rather than just pour it down the drain. This is generally a good idea, unless you have an energetic 12 year old (emotionally speaking) wandering around your house.

One bad idea lead to another, and I ended up making a fat candle by plunging the wicks or birthday candles into the fat, and lighting them. It burned for about an hour until someone blew it out in disgust.

But, for future reference, when the world economy truly goes down the drain and you are sitting around in your cold, dark house, you know that you can light your house with the fat left over from cooking hamburgers/your neighbors cat/your neighbor.

If anyone would like to do this at home, the trick is to make sure the wicks go all the way to the bottom, and are preferably anchored to something. If the wick is too short, it has nothing to support itself in the liquid tallow, and just falls over, extinguishing itself. That’s what happened to the one on the right in the photo.

We stayed at snobby St. Anton in Austria, where our waiter insulted us for drinking ‘rain-water’ at the dinner table, despite the mineral water for sale was bottled only 20-odd miles away. Offended by our awful customer service, we showed our colors and moved to a cheaper and nicer guest house. I showed Jordy and Mark how to make sandwiches in the morning and then hide them in the snow at the bottom of the lift, so you can eat throughout the day.

The snow was decent, though began to melt as temperatures soared, and the risks of global warming became tangible in the form of mushy snow. We went to Ischgl for two days, which quickly became my favorite resort with only one vowel in its name. It was so large we skied from Austria into Switzerland, and back. Photos of the trip.

I loved Berlin, especially the privately-owned, rather odd (and occasionally cheesy) Museum of the Berlin Wall., which displayed the zip-wire system used by one family to flee from a tall building, pictures of tunnels dug 20 feet under the ground, and children’s artwork you might see displayed on a fridge. We also went to the movies in Berlin, and I laughed upon seeing the two ‘courting’ seats in every row, where the dividers were removed so the couples could, presumably, snuggle.

I had my picture taken in front of what is left of the Berlin Wall, and also standing before the Reichstag wearing the warmest hat I’ve ever owned – a Soviet Tank Helmet lined with sheep’s wool and padded to prevent injuries. I bought the hat in a market selling old postcards, random housewares, and all manner of surplus Soviet military garments.

Near Munich (Munchen) we ate at a local beer hall prominently displaying its logo everywhere it could–a fat Bavarian whistling for his dog, who he couldn’t see because the dog was hidden by his monstrous belly.