Fika!

Fika is both a Swedish verb and noun (pronounced "fee-ka") that roughly means "to drink coffee/tea/squash," usually accompanied by something sweet. /Wikipedia/

[dobrichovsky]

Helsinki and St. Petersburg

This was... uh... five months ago? Okay—first I had to return home to Prague where I have the equipment to develop films. Then I had to do the actual developing, and since the trip was so long ago, I kept forgetting that I still have the rolls in the fridge. So I finally managed in September, then the scans, some editing and now the pictures are all finally online. All was shot with a Nikon F-801 and a Nikkor AF 24mm/2.8D or Nikkor AI 50mm/1.4 lens, on Ilford FP4 Plus film and developed in Ilford ID-11.

The trip started in Stockholm with a overnight ferry crossing to Helsinki.

We had nearly a whole day in Helsinki with the weather constantly changing from warm sunshine to hailstones and even a few minutes of snowfall (it was May). To be honest, I was much more impressed by Helsinki than I was about Stockholm—unlike most other people.

And after another overnight ferry crossing we finally arrived in St. Petersburg. I call it a city of contrasts—I first stayed with our group on the guided tour of the pimped up central city—okay, it's nice, even clean and everything, but that's not where the 5 million population lives.

Those parts look rather different and not as fancy, but probably still very fancy compared to other parts of Russia. Nevertheless full of interesting architecture. Also, all over the city, preparations were under way for the celebration of Victory Day, which is celebrated on the 9th of May in Russia, because it was already the 9th of May Moscow time when Germany surrendered. Decorations remain unchanged since the Soviet times.

Industrial areas take up a large portion of the city, some factories are still in use, some defunct, some defunct but being used as a warehouse instead.

Next day I did visit the "ice-cream church" as an "important" tourist attraction just round the corner from our hostel, but then went elsewhere, just as the day before.

Meanwhile in Russia:

There was a filmcrew here, so I even got inside the factory:

So that's the city from both perspectives. But it also has a BIG port!

[dobrichovsky]

Hej! I realised that I never posted this to the blog—the northern lights time-lapse video I made on our trip to Lofoten in March—so that's for your viewing pleasure!

I also finally managed to develop the rolls of film I shot in St. Petersburg, so you should be seeing those online soon too.

[dobrichovsky]

London

Oh that was ages ago /February/. But so that the pictures I made don't just end up in a drawer /wish that were possible with digital/, here you go.

/London stereotypes: rain and doubledeckers./

/Tube strike: one bus after another, no one gets in because it's simply full./

/Space Invaders streetart./

/Chinese new year: the year of the horse—which is my year./

/Too late to let./

/View from The Photographer's Gallery./

/Fort Nelson./

/The Channel./

/Weather changes./

/Coffee and mushroom soup./

/Guinness./

/Southampton./

/Chewing gum art on the Millennium Bridge./

/Borough Market./

/The moon. Oh and that pointy building on the right was kinda new to me./

[dobrichovsky]

Санкт-Петербург, несколько слов

Oh yeah, boring, you already saw this picture just before I left to Saint Petersburg last week—well too bad—but if you look closely enough, my packing list almost completely lacks digital technology. That's why you won't see any actual photos of the trip in this post. I'll post them eventually when I get them done, but that'll be some time in July. Now it's merely a few words.

My goal was to pack as light as possible, because I always have the notion of bringing along lots of stuff which could be useful—which you just tend to do when you travel by car. And there you go—packing minimalistically works perfectly as well.

I love travelling but I hate being a tourist so the concept of being part of an organised city sightseeing tour disturbed me a little—which is why I spent the day before departure looking for alternative obscure places to see and that led me to a wonderful book on Leningrad avant-garde architecture which would become my bible for the trip. It's still in fact a guidebook but it takes you to places tourists don't usually go to.

So, Russia: the way it works is that if you go to St. Petersburg by boat on the St. Peter line and are part of an organised tour, you can stay in Russia for 72 hours without requiring a visa. I never found any proper information or any details, there are about two vague sentences about it in some sort of an official statement so it seems as if the whole thing is somewhere in the grey zone. But they'll let you into Russia, let you out and nobody cares what you do. (And I believe you are not limited to staying with the organised tour group or even staying in St. Petersburg itself.)

Fortunately, the degrading feeling of being a tourist was not such of an issue, because there was only a handful of foreigners around. We arrived for the weekend after the 1st of May, which is a national holiday in Russia so the city was packed with Russians on holiday—therefore any offers on the streets and barkers persuading you to go on their tour or eat at their restaurant were in Russian aimed at Russians which made it really easy to just simply ignore them.

Group sightseeing has several disadvantages: the first is that it is extremely slow and the second is that synchronising the pace whilst taking photos is near to impossible. (Maybe it's just me taking pictures of things that the group doesn't find at all interesting.) In the afternoon on the first day our group found itself in a 2 hour queue for the Hermitage—I would have liked to see it, but instead of wasting a precious 2 hours of the limited time you have in St. Petersburg it felt like the right time to start pursuing the avant-garde guide and head to the outer areas of the city.

Saint Petersburg is a city of contrasts. The fancy central parts stand as a complete opposite to the shabby suburbs where the 5 million population spends their daily lives; towering residential blocks, some even 30 stories high, are still being built like they were 40 years ago; those which have been around for some decades have seen little repairs except for new children’s playgrounds which must have appeared in yards all around the city only during the last few years—all looking exactly the same. Residential areas blend with industries in close proximity; some factory buildings look as if they were abandoned but are in fact still in use—the others are occupied by small businesses such as car repair shops; of course many are also really abandoned and just falling apart now. Festive decorations for Victory Day on the 9th of May seem unchanged since the Soviet times.

Travelling around the city is fun by itself—the underground is straightforward—you even get a local map in nearly every station, which really helps when you don't have a proper one (I just had the ones in the book)—and most importantly, it feels like home because the train cars are the same we have in Prague (well, had, because all the original ones are now renovated). With trams and buses it all gets a bit more complex—there's no such thing as a map (at least not in paper or poster form) and you have to highly appreciate it if you get a list of stations the bus or tram goes to, because you don't get those at every stop. Sadly even if you do, they don't help that much when you don't have a map with street names to find the stops. It still highly increases the chances of choosing the right line number though. (And I expect it to be even more challenging if you're not able to read Cyrillic.) A ride on a bus or tram costs 25 руб. and you pay to a conductor, a ride on the underground is 28 руб. and you buy a coin which you later throw into a baffle gate to let you through.

Communicating in Czech or with the few sentences I can put together in Russian isn't very effective but it's still a better way to go than trying English—the only people I encountered speaking some English (except our tour guide and the girl running our hostel who both spoke very well) was a film crew shooting in an abandoned factory who let me have a look inside. On the other hand shop assistants in a small shop (about five of them each selling their category of goods—bread, general groceries, drinks, chemists' supplies etc.) seemed more amused about their own English abilities rather than my Russian—I believe they could say less in English than I could in Russian. I still sure managed to buy some filled bread pastries (saying that I just want any which are not sweet) and a bottle of квас.

I feel most people visiting St. Petersburg on the 72 hour tours really miss out on a substantial part of the city's picture—or for that respect of a real urban and industrial Russia just there at your fingertips. And even more so for those who have never seen a city of the former eastern block.

[dobrichovsky]

Lofoten, part two

You won't believe it, part two is here, just as I promised—by the end of April. I think I wrote enough words for the other two parts, so I will let this post rely solely on the picturesqueness of Lofoten. The photos were shot on Ilford FP4 Plus film and developed in Ilford ID-11.

[dobrichovsky]

Lofoten, part three

Hey, where's part two? To keep a chronological order of things, I'm jumping straight to part three, because I have two rolls of film worth of imagery for the second part, but still have to develop those when I go home for Easter. I had several reasons for also shooting film: 1) I wanted to. 2) Matyáš was fascinated by the fact that my digital camera can shoot 6 frames per second and that's where most of the battery power went. (When will we see those GIF videos, hmm?) 3) Your film camera will work just fine when it's -20°C (well, I did actually have to change the batteries up in the mountains, but they had been in the camera for three years already; and yeah, your digital camera will probably work just as fine, the Canon 600D managed 1000 pictures per charge at -20°C, but that's ideal use—time-lapsing—no LCD, no exposure metering, no autofocus...)

So, what will happen in part two? We will hike up, sleep and hike down. And it'll be quite adventurous. And yes, we'll survive. Damn, that spoils all the drama. Anyway, this is what it looks like when you're up there and there's snow all around you:

You also get some more northern lights:

These were kind of boring. They stayed in the sky for several hours, but didn't change much. And when you stay outside all that time you kind of get used to the sky being tinted green. And we stayed outside for quite some time because the ethanol for the stove we bought in Norway just wouldn't burn like Swedish E85 does. This was our living room:

We should get sponsored by Sir Joseph. But enough of part two. After descending, we decided that we wanted to see some more of the epic scenery Lofoten has to offer and find an ultimately epic place to sleep.

When you see this in the map, you absolutely know where you're going. At least if you're a kamikaze traveller, as we like to call ourselves.

We were disappointed that you couldn't drive as far as the light house (you probably could with a Land Rover). At first we had mixed feeling about the place—although it wasn't cold, it was windy (what would you expect, facing an open sea) and smelly (what would you expect when there's a fishery just over the bay). On the other hand, the sky was clear and the northern light were beginning to emerge all over the horizon. Matyáš went scouting for a sleeping place and returned very happy, saying that he had found the most epic spot to sleep we could have ever dreamed of—a piece of rock making a natural wind shelter.

That night we definitely had the most dramatic aurora display of our trip.

The next day we decided that we should drive to the westernmost village at Lofoten, called Å. (Hmm, that'll be in part two as well.) As we got there, the snowstorm promised by the weather forecast finally came.

Driving in this kind of weather is fun, but also very tiring and slow. Of course we didn't forget to visit our favourite gas station in Lødingen, and this is how the car looks after 200 kilometres of driving through fresh snow:

Snow kept on falling and the wind kept blowing so we chose to carry on until it gets better. After another 100 kilometres we stopped at a lay-by.

I must say that a toilet is probably the most obscure place I have spent the night so far. But it was perfectly clean. It was warm. Too warm—there was a heated floor which just keeps on heating when you're inside. I had to let air out of my camping mat to keep it from bursting. And the light only goes off when everybody is perfectly still. At least it doesn't snow inside.

We woke up early just to find out that we would be spending the day waiting for convoy traffic once again. Well, twice. First on the Norwegian side between Narvik and Riksgränsen and then again on the Swedish side of the border.

I imagine the other drivers must have wondered why the car was facing in the wrong direction—that's to make sure it starts again—if parked uphill, air sometimes gets into the fuel lines like it did at Lofoten.

At least we could sleep up for the previous night, and at Riksgränsen we even had Swedish mobile coverage which meant Internet access. We also concluded that it was about time to spend one night in a hostel—not a good decision to make at 9PM in Abisko. All hostels being fully booked, we drove to a lay-by which showed something saying "shelter" close by in our map. Quite a luxurious cabin (read: closed, bare, wooden cabin with several benches and a table)—meant for emergency nighting, which we didn't feel was really our case—but nobody has to know that we could just as well manage sleeping outside in this weather and that we were just being lazy.

The next day, feeling like the biggest tourists ever, we booked a hostel in Kiruna for the night. We also had a short walk in the Abisko national park, just like seeing-snow-for-the-first-time tourists do. In Kiruna we went shopping, sightseeing and bought post cards. Kamikaze travelling -20 points.

Kiruna is a mining town which lives off the largest iron ore mine in the world (under that big lump of landmass in the background of the picture above). They have recently decided to move most of the town east so that mining can continue and go deeper—one of the last chances to see Kiruna before that happens I guess. Apart from that, they have a church (which they'll be dismantling and re-erecting):

In 2001 it was voted to be the most beautiful building in Sweden. And there's also this rocket you can't miss:

It's there because of the Esrange Space Center which is located close to Kiruna. The rocket is surrounded by heaps of snow, at least something to break away from tourism. (Kamikaze travelling +1.)

Then there's the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi and a scavenged ice glass from the ice bar:

You can enjoy ice in your own way:

In the afternoon, several friends from Norrköping and Linköping were arriving at Kiruna airport for their own Lappland trip so we stayed to greet them (and you get Eduroam at airports both in Sweden and Norway) and finally headed south again.

Some more homework:

We almost thought we wouldn't see any reindeer during our trip, but we did on the last day:

That's it (for now)—stay tuned for part two—I'm not exceptionally good at promising blogposts, but it could be up by the end of April : )

Part one is here.

Klára's stories: part one, two and three (in Czech).

[dobrichovsky]

Lofoten, part one

At the end of March, we drove north. Being the worst planners ever, that's about all we knew about our trip on the Friday of our departure. I picked up Matyáš and Klára at Skavsta (where they flew low-cost from Poznań, getting there by bus from Prague) and returned to Norrköping to pack my things. I had an exam on Friday and several deadlines the days before so I had absolutely no time to prepare my stuff for the trip (and that was the case for most of us, resulting in having next to nothing planned). At least I was better off not having to do any homework throughout the trip. Anyways, by 2AM we were ready to transfer to Linköping where Klára(2) was expecting us.

I prefer to use first names when blogging as it just feels natural and still retains a certain degree of anonymity. This time it doesn't work that well... too bad.

We convinced Klára(2) to bake perník and make pancakes while waiting for us which made for a wonderful (not only) breakfast (not only) the next day.

Before leaving Prague, Matyáš and Klára went through some sort of cheap food shopping euphoria, based on our complaints how things are expensive in Sweden (and Norway). This is partially true, but it is not that much more expensive to have to fill up every kilogram of the 32kg weight limit you get when you buy hold luggage with Wizzair. Nevertheless, we ended up with an absurd amount of random food imported from the Czech Republic and considerably less space in the car.

I still have some in my cupboard. Now it was time for Tetris practice, a skill we would perfect every day from now on. I keep feeling surprised that things always just fit into the car.

Our first stop was Biltema in Linköping, for two reasons—kaffe och bulle för 5 SEK and we needed a power inverter so that Matyáš could finish (heh) his homework which was due during the trip. I guess it was after 3PM when we actually left Linköping—we headed in the same direction I had driven in October and stopped to sleep somewhere just after entering the Jämtland county on the 311 road with a grateful temperature of around -15°C.

Morning (you're right) sun is very pleasing to wake up into and makes the waking up–making breakfast–packing process quite enjoyable (longer as well I guess, but who's in a hurry, it's not like we're just in 1/3 of the journey north).

Ice tea for breakfast seems pretty decent.

And this is what it looks like when someone's lazy inside the tent and taking pictures (not me this time):

So, further north! I was quite surprised by a signpost just out of Trondheim telling us that Narvik is still more than a 900 kilometres' drive. Guess that's not where we'll arrive today. Driving during the night has its ups (like no traffic) but also downs (like that you can't see the nice scenery outside which you're driving through). Fortunately, we have Google Earth and WiFi for that.

On the way, it came to my mind that we should already be close to the Arctic Circle—it was only about 100 kilometres ahead so we concluded that we should sleep there. But then you come across this, like 5 kilometres south:

Apparently, the E6 crosses the Arctic Circle in the mountains and with the wind, snow and all, traffic is limited to driving in convoy. When you arrive, you just get a general sign in Norwegian with no further clues like "there'll be a convoy in the morning" or "you're stuck here until the snow melts". The only people awake when we arrived were Lithuanians who were just about as clueless as we were. Fortunately, there was a cabin (with heating) in which most of the other travellers were waiting and sleeping, so we joined in. We felt slightly over equipped (both survival-in-the-cold-wise and technology-wise).

At around 5am a guy in an orange reflective overall comes in and mumbles something in Norwegian—guess that means it's time for the convoy. Bad thing being over-equipped—unlike the others, we have to pack our things as fast as we can so that the convoy doesn't leave without us. We finally stop at a lay-by to get some more sleep.

We wake up around noon and carry on north, this time even enjoying the scenery during daytime. After watching a wonderful sunset—already with Lofoten scenery in the background—we arrive in Bognes. Uh, why does the road end here? Why is there just seawater in front of us? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?

(Illustrative photo, just from earlier on that day.)

When "planning", I vaguely checked my Euroatlas from 1996 which only has the north of Scandinavia in a 1:4500000 ratio and concluded "the E6 will take us all the way north". Yeah, but there's this bit where you actually have to take a ferry. And you even have a choice which one to take. So much for planning, the ferry to Lødingen departs in 15 minutes so we double check that it's the place we really want to go—hey, we don't even have to drive all the way to Narvik, this ferry will takes us where we want directly! Triple check. Wow!

On the ferry we even start properly planning where we'll be hiking during the next two days. (Read: randomly selecting a place on the map which looks like it will be nice. I have one more requirement—a clear view towards the north so we have a better chance of seeing the northern lights.) There's some sort of WiFi on the ferry and we manage to download a few articles like "10 best Lofoten hikes". Unfortunately, all of them refer to the summer. After arriving in Lødingen, we drive to the place where our chosen hiking trail leaves for the mountains to check if our plans coincide with reality—the trail seems walkable, but an outside temperature of nearly -20°C persuades us to drive somewhere back to sea level for the night, where it was much warmer. (Read: -10°C.) My north-facing requirement takes us to Gullesfjord which shows off a truly spectacular moonlit scenery... and also the first aurora.

Not particularly strong, but given the 2/10 activity forecast, very good. Some more planning for tomorrow:

Meanwhile, I set up the second camera for sequential shooting (a school project for the dome in the visualisation centre in Norrköping—a time-lapse video of the aurora—more on that in a separate post later on—like in May when I actually finish it). I placed the tripod on the seabank... but it's the seabank... and where's a sea, there's a tide. After some time my seabank became more of a seabed:

Well, what can you do: there's no wind, no waves, the camera has to be safe. Not that there would be a comfortable way of retrieving it anyway. And there's still a show going on in the skies to capture. At around 5AM, loud cracking noises coming from the sea wake me up—what the hell is that?

Not only did the tide come in, but the water froze—and as the sea level started falling again, the ice started cracking—which made some astonishing natural land-art in the morning.

Whilst having breakfast, fishing boats peacefully roam the fjord:

Because we woke up into the shade (the downside of facing north), we decide to pack quickly and move to a place lit by the morning sun—if the car starts, that is. Low temperatures, a half-empty tank and a non-ideal parking angle let some air into the fuel lines—not that I wouldn't be familiar with this problem, but it seemed to have been fixed so far, at least for the past two years. It just doesn't feel that good when this happens somewhere far beyond the Arctic Circle. The car starts eventually, and to be sure, we head to our favourite gas station in Lødingen to fill up the tank and pack for our mountain hike.

Smoked meat to survive in the mountains:

We manage to be on our trail by 2PM, what an achievement! But that's enough for part one.

By the way, Klára(2)'s version of the story is here (in Czech).

[dobrichovsky]

Surströmming

I've mentioned it many times already, so here's the real thing—um, still on your screens, well too bad—or, I guess that depends on your tastes and nose sensitivity.

This lovely Swedish delicacy is fermented Baltic herring. And it smells. It smells so bad you can't open it indoors, otherwise everything would smell of surströmming. I must say though, I expected much more—as in smell. Of course it smelt bad, but nowhere near as I thought after seeing all those Youtube videos of people nearly puking of the stench. I think there were two reasons why it didn't smell that much when we had it on our trip to Kiruna: first, it was cold—I haven't done any research on this, but I believe that you just don't smell things that well when it's cold; second, there was a slight breeze so the smell got cleared away quick—and me, opening the can, didn't get as much impact as the others sitting in the direction of the wind. Overall, I actually liked the fish very much! It is very salty and the taste is somewhat specific, you have to try that yourself. The downside is that the taste kind of stays in your throat for a couple of hours and if you touch the fish with your hands, they will keep smelling like surströming for a few hours as well, even if you thoroughly wash them.

And here is, finally, the long waited-for video:

[dobrichovsky]

Bunker in the Woods

So I go on a random bicycle ride. Direction—approximately northwest of Norrköping. And what do I find? A military bunker. Just there, right next to the road.

Inside it looks very well preserved—although the humidity is high, everything is in good shape, including a working blast door.

Just inside it looked a bit messy. But what the hell is (was) this for? It's just a sealable room that could sleep 10 people, with no gunports. I go and have a look around, but nothing militarily interesting, just a nice Swedish landscape view.

I set off further down the gravel road—and voilà, this looks like a large, at least 3 metres tall gate covered up by stones. Evidently not in use any more. A peek through the hole in the metal plates shows just piles of scraps.

On the other side of the road I notice more concrete—the sound of running water suggests this has (had) to do something with water supply.

After another 100 metres, suddenly LAMP POSTS appear in the woods, what the ...? Ha, and another big gate, this time not covered in rubble. It has a sign suggesting CCTV surveillance and what appears to be a 180° camera. So is this place in use after all?

The big gate is underneath—it didn't seem wise to take pictures in front of it. The poles you can see are flagpoles. Now this place appears to be BIG. I have no clue what it is (was), but probably just storage of some sort. At the top there are vents, but not really in good shape.

And it looks like there is a "masked" (as in not apparent from an aircraft) second entrance from the top as well.

The whole thing is just about here.

Anyways, I continued my ride which took me as far as the Stocksjön lake. A nice 57 kilometres in total for the afternoon.

[dobrichovsky]

Bastu

I'm sure most of you have seen some photos of the sauna in the woods earlier—bastu to be precise, that's the Swedish word for sauna—but you've never read about what the whole thing is about.

It's a sauna run by the Norrköping municipality, built more or less as a modified garden shed—like those they sell at Bauhaus. It gets heated up by a wood burning stove and wood is provided. (Usually... the last time we went there wasn't much wood left and the wood shed was locked.)

In order to go, all you do is call a number and tell them when you want to go to book a slot. I don't know how often Swedes actually go there, but we've never had a collision when booking. And yes, everything is for free.

It is located about 15 kilometres north of Norrköping at Glotternskogen. In the middle of nowhere, in the woods, at the lakeside of Ovre Glottern.

N 58.71200, E 16.20399 or here on Google maps.

It would be a nice bicycle ride, but since I'm nearly the only one with a bicycle here (among international students) we've always driven by car.

In January after quite a bit of snowfall we had to use snowchains as we were the first through. But guess what—the next time we went, unlike most other roads, this one, which doesn't really lead anywhere, it was ploughed through! But even if you drive, you have to walk a bit.

Surprisingly, lakes freeze when it gets below zero (not like now, it's been 5-9°C above zero for the last three weeks) but that makes the whole sauna experience a lot more exciting.

And instead of water, you use snowballs to increase the humidity inside.

The only downside is that... well it's cold... and there's no "chill out zone" to rest before going back into the sauna again. There's a wooden shelter with a fireplace just 50m away which would make for a comfortable overnight stay—and could as well act as a chill out zone in the summer.

In winter, it's down to just chilling under the ice.

In January, Christoph's friend came to visit and made a video of our trip to the sauna.

SWEDEN 2k14 - the naked experience from LaurenzFischer-See on Vimeo.

Details about the sauna and Glottern can be found on Norrköping's website.

[dobrichovsky]

Back here and there

Hello there! Guess what, I'm back—both in Norrköping and on the blog. The last post was... errr... ages ago, but then again, it's a bit weird to write blog posts about being in Sweden when you're back home for Christmas.

So I guess the purpose of this post should be to summarise what's been going on in the past month... and a half.

1. I wasn't that inactive concerning reporting stuff—I finally finished a roll of film I had put into my camera back in July and posted those pictures on Facebook. I have another unfinished roll in another camera, but you'll have to wait for that. Even if I do finish it quick, getting it developed will have to wait until I'm in the Czech Republic again—I wanted to make some prints before Christmas but I seriously did not find a place to do that here. So I imagine getting a roll of /colour/ film developed is nothing else than just no-go.

2. In December, we went to Kiruna for a few days. That's far north, past the Arctic circle. To see the Northern lights and such.

But I'll write a separate post about that. And we also had Surströmming. There's a video of that too.

3. Christmas holidays were a great break. Not doing anything important feels great :)

4. The journey back was a little adventurous as we nearly missed the ferry with Klára /she has also become part of the blogosphere, be sure to check out her blog /in Czech//. First we made ourselves a little detour into Berlin, as there is no indication on the signpost that you are approaching the Berliner Ring:

/image from Panoramio/

Coming from Berlin though, it clearly reads "Berliner Ring", how practical. Next there was a crash on the 11 Autobahn just a few kilometres off the Ring so we got stuck there for quite some time. Fortunately nobody really drives on the 11 and 20 Autobahn so it's possible to make up on the previous time loss quite nicely, but the last 100km to Sassnitz are no Autobahn and they are always painfully slow. But we had enough of a time reserve to fill up the tank just before Sassnitz (fuel is more expensive in Sweden) and arrive exactly 30 minutes before departure, which was the check-in time written on the ferry ticket. They closed the ramp to the ferry just like 10 minutes after we drove onto the ferry, maximum. We weren't last at least, but I guess it doesn't work the same as last calls do at airports... 4. I'm stocked up with beer again, 120 cans should last some time.

Last weekend the temperature dropped to something like -11°C (according to my extra precise digital thermometer of course)—and not to waste time when preparing for the exam I had on Monday /sure/, I did not take everything out from the car—I had quite a bad feeling when I realised that the temperature had dropped so low, because beer should freeze at around -4°C (according the the Interwebs). Fortunately, it wasn't frozen, not even partially, the only explanation I have so far is the snow covering the car acting as an insulator and slowing down the cooling process—because it had been freezing for 3 days already then—with temperatures definitely below -4°C. 5. As a tradition, I'm too lazy to be taking pictures concerning the weather from anywhere else than my balcony, so there you go, snow in Norrköping:

And that's a near-to miraculous thing in Europe this year, isn't it. But talking about snow, I'm still kind of surprised how winter road maintenance works here in Sweden: nothing happens. Since it started snowing, the state of the roads here would be considered as a "calamity" in central Europe. Back home, every year we bugger on about the fact that road maintenance crews always start maintaining the roads too late—so with the first snow, there is always this state of "calamity". But is it really a calamity? Here, it just seems to work fine like that. Driving couldn't be better. There's snow on the road, so what? In central Europe we are used to having roads heavily salted and carefully cleaned down to asphalt. There's been no salt on the roads here since it started snowing, not even on the E4 motorway. There was salt on the roads earlier—when I rode my bicycle to Linköping and back in November with temperatures around zero, but with no snow, the road was definitely salted—I tasted it very well when I was checking something on my bicycle having my bicycle headlamp in my mouth... Minor roads, where there is not enough traffic to "self clear" the snow, definitely get ploughed, even slightly gritted on  very steep ascents (not that there are that many here). Major roads occasionally get ploughed through as well, but seldom. Bicycle paths on the other hand, they get treated very well, getting even greater attention than roads do in central Europe. I guess that one of the reasons why this "no maintenance" concept can work here is that the temperature remains relatively constant—the last 10 days it has stayed below freezing—not necessarily much, just a few degrees most of the time—but it has remained so, with temperatures not varying very much between night and day. Back home, a temperature difference of more than 5°C is nothing uncommon—and when this is between -3°C and +3°C, the risk of black ice forming on the roads is just too big.

6. We've been to the municipal sauna again /the one in forest in the middle of nowhere/, but this time it was even more fun with the snow and ice. But seeing how long this post has become, I guess I'll leave the details to another post. You've seen the pictures on Facebook anyway. I went skiing this week as well, but you've seen a picture from that too.

7. The new semester starts today, [fill in your favourite interjection to describe that]!

[dobrichovsky]

A short

Hej! I'm sure you must have noticed that my posting activity has greatly decreased during the last month—yes I really do feel bad about it—but I've had quite a lot to do for school lately (and still do). At least blogging is one of the better forms of procrastination—I call it "active procrastination". But this post will be very short.

1. Snow There's been snow all over Europe in the past few weeks. Not in Norrköping. Today, finally, it started snowing. Nothing spectacular, it's not even 1 cm deep, but better than nothing—and it's below freezing so it's not melting (yet).

2. Lunch At the international welcome fair at the beginning of the semester, I won a free lunch voucher. About the first time I actually won anything in a prize draw. Unfortunately, the place to get the lunch is in Linköping, so it took me until yesterday to use the voucher. I went to Zodiaken te & nudelbar—and I must say the food was very good! You still get it in a paper box and it doesn't look that spectacular on the mobile photo—but it was a tasty green curry (pork, zucchini, peppers and coconut milk) with rice.

3. Posters I have now fully decorated my room with film posters I picked up at Cnema—the place we go to see Stubinen student screenings. I didn't really choose the posters—just took what there was—and I haven't even seen most of the films yet.

4. School Our goal in a workshop for one of my courses was "to attract new-comers in Sweden at for example the airport, visitors centre etc. to a visual explanation of the country they have arrived in". We made a slide-show inspired by the 20 things to know before moving to Sweden list—and one of the images we added was Surströmming:

Stay tuned for Surströmming, we should be opening the can for real soon!

[dobrichovsky]

Think After You See

So, I've come here to study right? So far I don't think I have written anything about school, well here it comes. Kind of. I present a short video I created for one of my courses—Visual Culture and Technology. Watch it first.

Confused? I'm not surprised :) so I'll enlighten you with a little background. First, the course can't be that easily described—even we didn't really know what it's about even after a month. The theme was 'The Future' (sounds straightforward). The first lecture was about artists, hackers and pirates. The second lecture was about science fiction and film. Then we watched the Tron (1982) movie and discussed it. More confusing eh?

For a seminar we were supposed to present our vision of the future—anything we wanted, anyway we wanted. When I thought about it, instead of coming up with tech toys and glorious horizons, I had to keep imagining how I don't want the future to look like.

This was supposed to lead us to 'a project'. Yes, 'a project'—it could have basically been anything we wanted. This was one of the goals of the course—because in computer science, even computer graphics, most of the time you are set with a problem, task, and your are there to do the programming, modelling, animation, compositing, whatever—we were supposed to start from the beginning.

So we have our Earth and it's full of problems that we know about, but they don't seem to be posing an imminent threat to us. Is that true? I don't think so. The threats are for real, even in our lives.

The world is big, it is impossible to see everything just through our own eyes—as it is hard to avoid seeing it through the media—any media in this sense—not necessarily just television. We want to stay well informed, but that's where it seems to end. Apart from that, we tend to interpret the information we get as 'that's normal, no reason to be worried'—and it's the way the information is presented to us—'It has happened. Period.' And there's been research on this.

So what was the goal of this video? To create questions. It absolutely doesn't solve anything. It even uses a medium to give us the message!

And what are the answers? What are we supposed to do in order for our world to survive? What am I, one in seven billion, supposed to do? Well that's up to you to think about.

Many thanks to all who participated in staring (and starring) at the television!

[dobrichovsky]

Norge

After crossing the Norwegian border, the temperature gauge kept going up and before we decided to stop for the night, it was as warm as 7°C. I expect 3 factors—we were losing altitude, we were closer to the coast and it had been snowing (but actually, it is the other way round—an increase in temperature allows snow to fall). We stopped at a rest place at the side of the road—Norway is full of those. It was raining, we didn't want to build the tent and there was a building that provided relatively good shelter—the wind was blowing from the right direction.

The shelter was not perfect—I was lying further away and felt just too many droplets landing on my sleeping bag so I decided to move. Just 50m away, into the entrance to an underground hydro power plant—a big concrete structure, but providing better shelter. I slept very well, and then at 8 o'clock in the morning, I was woken up by car headlights.

At first I was a little frightened—it was a power plant employee who had come to work—but he was smiling, wished me a good morning and asked me, whether I had slept well. He opened the gate and disappeared in the tunnel.

Jáchym went to have a "shower" under one of the many waterfalls around (it is hard not to have a waterfall in sight in Norway).

We packed and just before we were ready to go, the power plant employee had finished his work and stopped by—he asked us, if we wanted to have a look at the power plant. "Of course!"

The hydro power system here is quite complicated—most of the power plants are underground and water is taken there by pipes to ensure the deepest drop in altitude possible. According to the map, the power plants in this valley produce 350MW, that is roughly 1/6 of the power produced by the Temelín nuclear power plant.

We went to see the Nedre Nea power plant. It was only built in 1989; the worker told us that everything is more or less automatic and that they only come here once in a month, so it was quite a coincidence. He went there today because they had dirty water—which could damage the turbine.

It is very warm inside, the power generator produces quite some heat. And this is the turbine:

Before we drove on to Trondheim, the sky cleared and we got sunshine once again.

So, in Trondheim they have these colourful old buildings (actually, most of them only look old):

A big cathedral:

Modern art:

A fish market /I tried a fish burger and it was very tasty/:

A fortress:

From which there is a very nice view over Trondheim:

And, most importantly, A BICYCLE LIFT!

There it is in action:

It was time to head back. As we entered the mountains, it started raining again, and there was thick fog, the kind that you drive really really slowly because you can't see a thing. We turned onto a minor road to find a place to sleep and the weather was very kind to us—it stopped raining and only started again after we were prepared to go to sleep.

That was my last can of Czech beer.

In the morning we could at least see the other side of the valley. With more than 650km to go, we headed on. As I mentioned before, not all roads have asphalt:

Okay, this was a shortcut, but still. It took us to the foot of the rainbow though—you can find it at Sennsjøen.

That's all folks! It was a wonderful trip.

[dobrichovsky]

Fjällen

Hej! Last week I wanted to make a few updates to the blog, but that didn't exactly work out as expected. Instead, I travelled north, to the mountains at the Swedish-Norwegian border and beyond. It was hard to convince people that this is the right destination so in the end there were only two of us, but with the great flexibility of spending the (cold) nights outside wherever we desired. Sweden stretches far and wide (well, narrow) so anywhere you want to go, the journey won't be short. Our destination, Helagsfjället, the highest mountain in Sweden south of the polar circle was just around 700km away. We set off on Sunday in the afternoon, the outside temperature in Norrköping being around 5°C and rainy. Gradually the weather changed into a clear night with a moonlit landscape—there had been a full moon just a few days before. The temperature also dropped, the lowest recorded by the car thermometer was -17°C. Now I had never experienced weather like that—it was very dry, with more or less no snow lying around, just frost that constantly glittered through the night in the strong moonshine. I enjoyed the drive very much, and during the last 200km, I did not encounter a single car passing by. I always wondered why Swedes fitted their cars with extra headlights, now I perfectly know why. A few times during the journey I wanted to turn on my high beam to realise it was already on. Finally we arrived at Kläppen at about 2 o'clock in the morning, built the tent and went to sleep with the thermometer reading -14°C.

Kläppen is nothing else than just the end of the road with a large parking lot. We're in Sweden so you have to pay for parking of course, even in the middle of nowhere. In the morning it was only -7°C, but enough for our water to be gradually freezing away. We packed our things (which took us ages) and my co-traveller Jáchym and I set off for Helags just before noon.

The cold also had an effect on my camera gear—I wanted to take my Tokina 12-24mm f/4 wideangle lens for the landscapes, but found the aperture iris to be kind of stuck—I guess the grease they use isn't designed for freezing temperatures. My Nikon primes—the Nikkor AF 24mm f/2.8 D and the Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.4—worked perfectly though. Being limited to 24mm (on an APS-C sensor) I opted for stitching panoramas instead.

Just a kilometre or so on the way, you walk around quite a large number of huts scattered around. The peak uncovering itself there in the clouds, that's Helagsfjället:

A frozen lake.

These mountains are full of water, we kept crossing streams; in the summer the ground is probably very wet so you get these raised planks to walk on.

It's hard to compare these mountains to those in Central Europe, but they're a little bit like the higher parts of Krkonoše, just a little flatter and way more spread out (like at least 100x).

Most of the streams are frozen, which is convenient in a way—you can comfortably walk across.

We reached a kind of plateau, where the (southern) wind started to be more and more noticeable, but the view was even nicer.

This is Swedish winter trail marking:

And more frozen water.

The wind kept blowing stronger and stronger so it was evident that we would not conquer Helagsfjället and our hike ended at Fjällstation Helags.

It is a complex of mountain huts which offer hostel-like accommodation during the summer; in the winter only one is open and there you can spend the night and pay STF afterwards. The cabin is clean and luxurious with beds, electricity, and an equipped kitchen.

I seemed to me to be a little too much, but it was wiser to stay inside—we even felt the cabin shake in strong gusts of wind during the night.

If you don't have enough food with you, you can even use the food provided and leave cash behind according to the price list:

And then there's this wonderful stove—when looking for a new stove for our cottage in the Czech Republic, this was my absolute favourite, but it was a little too expensive for that purpose.

In the morning I went to get some water and discovered the stream to be frozen and blown over with snow since last night.

So I had to make a hole in the ice to get the water.

The wind wasn't as strong as in the night but it was supposed to start snowing during the day, so we headed back to the car. (We had planned it so anyway.) By the time we had come to the car, a few centimetres of new snow could have already been lying around; the temperature had also risen significantly, it was only about -3°C. We set off and I enjoyed nearly 200km of driving in the snow, but with new winter tyres—which is a real pleasure.

Some of the roads there aren't exactly asphalt roads, but that is in fact convenient, because as cars drive through, the gravel mixes with the snow and thus provides grip.

Overall I was quite surprised how fine and actually quick the driving was—not that I had never driven in snow before, but not for distances so long.

We headed for Norway, for Trondheim, so I will end this post at the Norwegian border. Stay tuned for the second part of the trip!

Jáchym also has a blog (in Czech), you can read his story on Blogspot.

[dobrichovsky]

Volby 2013

Volební servis—průběžný přepočet na mandáty v poslanecké sněmovně:

Sat Oct 26 20:00:51 CEST 2013 1 ČSSD: 50 mandátů 4 TOP 09: 26 mandátů 6 ODS: 16 mandátů 11 KDU-ČSL: 14 mandátů 17 Úsvit: 14 mandátů 20 ANO 2011: 47 mandátů 21 KSČM: 33 mandátů

Zdrojový skript: http://pastebin.com/DraMLWST

[dobrichovsky]

Autumn

Hi there! I haven't posted for quite some time, so this one will be short to get back into it. It's autumn, you can't deny it—leaves are turning brown and falling down, days are getting shorter and the temperature in the night occasionally drops below 0°C.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my room overlooks a park, and I just don't get tired of thinking how great the view is:

But what I want is to illustrate the quick change from summer to autumn, just with that view from my balcony. This is what it looked like when I arrived at the end of August:

A misty day, September 7th:

A rainy day, September 22nd:

A misty morning, October 2nd:

And right now:

You might have noticed that there are fruit trees in the park—an apple tree and a pear tree. Nobody seemed to have interest and the fruits started to fall down, which would be a waste, so we decided to pick a few.

But that's just a small portion of what the trees have to offer. I'm surprised—even the fruit trees that people have in their own gardens here seem to go unnoticed—just piles of apples on the ground, now probably starting to rot within the leaves.