20:00 Sun.
25 Oct, 2020

Last stage in Portugal

,
°C
12:00 am
12:00 am

We arrived to Pontes de Limas something past 8pm, again, we were luckily, the Alberuge there closes at 9. At first, we were really happy, at least we made it, but then we realized, we won’t be able to go out for dinner, since they will close the albergue in less than half an hour (literary they lock you in). So in the end, after a lot of persuasion, Jakob convinced me to run with him to the close by Liddle, that was still open, and just in the distance where we thought we could make it there and back in time. So after the whole day of walking, we conjured just enough strength for the 3 km run, and made it back in time with about 5 minutes to spare. I’m telling you, pasta never tasted so good than that day.

Ponte de lima. Not surprisingly, the town has a bridge.

The next day was supposed to be a hard leg of the journey, we were suppose to walk on a “hill”, so we played it safe and started early (well, early compared to previous and later days, at around 9). After navigating out of the city, we were soon faced with a picturesque, yet flooded path. It took us almost an hour to navigate through it. At first we were jumping over the rocks from edge to edge but then toward the end Aljoša and Jakob smartly took off their shoes and just walked through the water. I for some reason really wanted to find the “dry” path, so after about 15 minutes of trying I finally stepped ankles deep into the marsh, yeey, my socks and shoes were wet for the rest of the day.

After the initial ordeal with wet footwear  our spirits soon lifted as we started walking through beautiful landscape and slowly ascending the hill. The weather again was perfect and the hill was not steep (or high) at all. Somewhere in the middle, when we were resting an interesting old man, came to talk to us. He was very friendly, yet couldn’t speak a word in English nor Spanish (Jakob knows Spanish). Yet that didn’t bother him, he just kept talking. At one point we think he asked if I’m the son of Jakob, haha I guess that felt nice (for me at least), but we probably misinterpreted that part.

Wet socks? Not a problem, just dry them on the backpack.

Before noon we were already at the top of the hill, way ahead of the schedule. We took a short break, playing some cards and sunbathing on the warm winter sun. In the early afternoon we reached Albergue.

Since the day was quite easy, I decided to go for a quick run before dinner.

The following day was supposed to be an easy one, we were to make it either to Valenca (Portugal) or the neighboring city Tui (Spain). Since Spain is a bit more expensive than Portugal, and we were in no hurry we decided to stop at Valenca. Again we walked through picturesque forests and rural areas, the walk was especially easy, since it was mostly downhill. We reached the Albergue before 1pm, so we actually had to wait for it to be opened.

After we checked in Jakob and Aljoša decided to go explore the city a bit. Valenca is an old fort city, designed abit similarly as Palmanova (Italy), in a star shaped fortification, yet I believe it’s even more fortified as latter. I decided to go for a “quick” run on nearby hill, that towered above the city. While the run was quite intense, the hill was about 400m high, the view from the top was worth it. I could see as far as the sea, the sun was shinning and on top of the hill there were some horses running around (with no enclosure) munching on the grass.

Preparing for a run. Despite walking for several hours, it was extremely refreshing to go for a run a bit.

In the evening, all three of us took another walk through the old town, which was completely empty then (a bit scary) and then found a restaurant that served Pilgrim’s menu. We are actually not sure what we ate, it was some kind of fish (bacalao?) and potatoes, looked like they put the scraps of food that were left over from the day together and served it to us, but it was surprisingly good. I think this was one of the general idea of this kind of menus, kitchens just used some leftover ingredients and prepared some really low cost meals. With it, of course, we had some wine.

Wine in Portugal (as well Spain) needs another post all together, but I’ll try to squeeze it in here. It is so unbelievable cheap that it defies logic. You actually have a very decent choice of (local) wines in the supermarket that cost less than 2€ per bottle (yes, glass bottles with actual corque). I think I even saw one that was 0.80 € or something. I don’t understand, how this is, the glass, transport and water in it must cost more than a €. Anyway the prices of wine in the restaurants are not much higher. The cost was usually no more than 5€/bottle, or was even included in the meal price (which was 5-10€). I’m not some wine connoisseur, but the wine tasted quite ok, and even Aljoša and Jakob, who know much more about wine than I do, agreed that they are surprisingly good, not even for the price, but in general, they taste good.

23:38 Sun.
22 Dec, 2013

Time to say goodbye

Day 136 , 11 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-6 °C
Light Snow
9:53 am
1:03 pm

Last Friday we had our last dinner together before everyone left. This was organized by us in our apartment and is not to be mistaken with farewell dinner from previous post. =)

As usually each of us prepared his own dish. I finally got a chance to taste paella from Mikel. I must say I was looking forward to this for a long time and it was worth the wait. Besides paella I got a tried salmon with cream, some French dish I forgot the name of, chicken, really spicy Chinese soup, wheat and last but not least my dumplings (Štruklji).

Another broth made by Chinese pals, this one even hotter than the previous one.
Another broth made by Chinese pals, this one even hotter than the previous one.

As usually, food was good except my dumplings, which have merged into one gigantic dumpling when I left them in a pot for too long. =)

Time to eat some delicious food.
Time to eat some delicious food.

At the end someone actually brought up real champagne. It must have cost a fortune up here. This was the first time I’ve tried it and it was good, appropriate for the occasion.

It wouldn't be true dinner without genuine French Champagne.
It wouldn’t be true dinner without genuine French Champagne.

Despite burst of laughter between intense chatter you could feel that sad sub-tone where everyone knew this is the last time we will be together. At the end we took our final picture together and that was the last time I saw most of them. Now they are already thousands km away… hopefully I’ll be able to visit some in the future.

I will miss you!
I will miss you!
12:44 Sun.
22 Dec, 2013

Last time together

Day 136 , 11 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-8 °C
Foggy
9:38 am
1:27 pm

After coming home from Christmas market I only had 1 hour to defrost and get ready for a farewell dinner. Even though, I put hair dryer into my shoes as soon as I came home, I didn’t manage to get them dry in time so I had to wear my summer shoes. It look really weird and felt extremely cold, since they are below ankles, not to mention that evening was record low -19 degrees.

This time the dinner was in STUK not central restaurant, so it was half the price of welcome dinner. When we arrived we had a chance to mingle a bit with people and then we were seated. The program was fun again, this time a lot of students volunteered to do sketch shows so everything was almost 4 hours long.

Again we heard women choir singing us some Christmas songs, but we all agreed the best part was when the slide show with pictures from our stay here started rolling. Whole room was full of emotion, you could feel everyone being a bit sad since the end of our adventure was near. I don’t know anyone that is happy to go home and everyone would love to extend their stay for at least one semester if they could.

The food was ok. The fun part was with waitresses. Since STUK is student’s bar/club/restaurant it is managed by students. All the waitresses were students but for some reason, they were all acting like a professional restaurant. And by that I mean at the beginning of each course they all (around 10 waitresses) came out at the same time. Then they waited at the beginning of the tables until one of them gave signal to start. Even later on when they took our dishes back they always came from the right side etc… Really interesting to see.

Desert
Desert

After the dinner and shows we had party at STUK. How was it I don’t know, since I went home to defrost some more. Besides I don’t like clubbing that much.

Daft punk show during the farewell dinner
Daft punk show during the farewell dinner

This dinner was beginning of the end, it was the last time we all got together and it is sad that I won’t see some many of them ever again.

Mikel, Allen and Jean
Mikel, Allen and Jean
03:30 Mon.
25 Nov, 2013

Helsinki & St. Petersburg

Day 109 , 38 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-2 °C
Fair
8:47 am
1:46 pm

Long way down

After I finished my home exam, I had approximately 1 hour to finish packing. Soon after I was on my way to central bus station with my roommate Mikel. When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that our bus was double decker. I’ve never rode on one so I was really excited about it, we got a sit in the upper floor at the front window. View was great as we started driving up toward northern coast, through vast forest, numerous lakes and rivers.

After about 3 hours we arrived to Tornio – town on the border between Sweden and Finland. It was already 7 pm here, since Finland is 1h+ in regards to CET. Soon after we boarded another bus and were off to Kemi, from where we had train to Helsinki. As we were entering a bus we could already notice we were not in Sweden anymore. How? Well bus driver didn’t spoke English. While in Sweden nearly everyone (from my experience everyone) speaks English in Finland only younger and more educated generations speak it. Besides price was in €.

After waiting few hours at the train station, which was luckily opened, train arrived. It was really big and long train with double decker sleeping wagons. Since we were on a tight budget, we booked seats, which weren’t as cosy as beds, but much better than seats on bus.

Helsinki

After 10 hours of restless sleep we woke up to a cold and clear morning in the outskirts of Helsinki. We arrived to central train station at 9 am, took some tourist maps and went exploring the city right after.

Helsinki train station
Helsinki train station

Around noon we decided to go eat something and yeah where else do you go, if you don’t know any restaurant then McDonald’s? After paying 7€ for standard BigMac menu, we were reminded how expensive Scandinavia is. While in Sweden prices are even higher, you don’t feel them as much since they are in SEK, but in Finland as you know they have €.

After lunch we continued walking around old city centre. I think at the end we saw all interesting buildings and landmarks in the centre, so toward 3’o clock we walked toward harbour where our ship was waiting.

While we were boarding the ship we met some other exchange students that booked the same trip as us. As it turns out they were mainly Spanish (hooray for my roommate who’s from Spain as well 🙂 ). As we later learned the trip was mostly booked by exchange students that are currently studying in Helsinki. As far as I know we were the only two from Sweden.

After boarding the ship we found our room, it was small, as expected. It was for 4 persons, and had a bathroom. It was about 9m^2, which makes it almost smaller than the bathroom I have here in Sweden. : )

Ship

The ship was relatively big. It had 8 floors, from which only 3 were used for sleeping cabins, others contained 3 bars/restaurants, cinema, “disco”/club, casino, swimming pool, sauna, fitness and most importantly duty free shop; most importantly because they’re kind of famous. We actually mentioned them when we were studying Nordic country in my Geography class in 6th grade of primary school.

As you can guess prices are n times lower than Finland or Sweden. For example 1l of vodka costs 4.6€. In Sweden I have no idea, since you can’t even buy alcohol above 4% in normal stores, but I would guess it’s around 20€. (As I’m writing this I’ve checked and cheapest vodka is 188 SEK, here is link to the only shop that sells alcohol here, if anyone is interested Systembolaget). One more thing that might be interesting here is that the store (whole ship) was accepting three currencies €, SEK and RUB with some really bad conversion rates for € and SEK (usually +0.5€).

Ok enough about shop. Evening or should I say night ended up talking/hanging with people we met there. It was really fun and hours flew by fast.

Russia

We docked at St. Petersburg at 9’am local time. Bear in mind that Russia doesn’t have winter/summer time so it’s another 2 hours + from Finland. I don’t remember at what time we went to sleep but in the morning I was almost dead. After disembarking we had to go through border control, where I got my first stamp in my passport. Border control was much stricter, than usually when you cross border somewhere in EU (before we were in Schengen), as expected for leaving EU.

Harbor where we landed.
Harbor where we landed.

I was officially in Russia. And first impressions were … hmm exactly what you see when you type “in Russia” in to Google. When we left harbour building it was still dark, at 9’o clock, sky was covered in clouds, harbour building looked like “general soviet Russian building”, big, grey block of contrite, a band was playing some traditional (I guess) Russian songs in front of it, yes it was Russia just as I imagined it. : )

St. Petersburg

After everyone passed border control we boarded a bus and went on a city tour. “Soviet” style soon disappeared, though I couldn’t but chuckle when I saw submarines and battle ships in city canals and later on train full of tanks.

City is about 300 years old, it was built by Peter the Great and was at that time capital of Russia. Because of this there are around 500 (if I remember correctly) palaces in the city. Everything is big, with different building styles, starting with barroc … this isn’t interesting so let’s just see some pictures. Besides if someone is really interested he or she can google it. =)

After few hours of city touring we arrived to our hotel, on the main street. I was really impressed with hotel room, it was nicely equipped, with a big bathroom. I didn’t have much time to admire it thought as we just dropped our suitcases and went on a hunt for food. It’s maybe cliché but we ended up in McDonald’s again. After struggling to order, for about 5minutes (no-one speaks English there), we ended up with something that looked like large menu, 0.8l of Coca-Cola, big French frieze, and what must have been burger that’s twice the size of normal McDonald’s burger. We paid around 4.6€ for this.

After lunch we went back to our hotel, where we slept until evening, when we had next activity planned. Whole trip was designed around different excursion that you could book, I and Mikel booked everything, so in the evening we were off to traditional “Russian dinner”. Meal was nice, though I’m quite sure they could have given us something more traditional :). While we ate a Russian “group” was singing and performing some “Russian” games, songs and dances for our entertainment. After the dinner we went back to our hotel, where we fell asleep in not more than 2 minutes.

Next day we woke up around 9’o clock, it was still pitch black outside. We went to a buffet-breakfast in the hotel dining room, where we ate for 3 days back and front. After an hour of feasting, we had next excursion planned. This time we went to outskirts of the city to visit Catherine’s palace.

After palace tour was over we were free to stroll in the park behind palace. There we met a Russian teacher of English with her class from Moscow. I’m mentioning this because she was really surprised to hear (young) people talking in English there. Furthermore the whole class wanted to take a picture with us. I mean come one, we don’t look that different than Russians. 😀

After about two hours we went back to the bus. As we were walking back we saw 4 or 5 couples that were about to get married. Never before have I seen that many grooms and brides in one place or even in one day.

When we came back to the hotel, we had free time until evening. Some people were hungry so we went searching for a restaurant that’s not McDonalds. I was still full from breakfast so I decided to take something to drink.

Super refreshing fruit smoothie made from different fruits in layers.
Super refreshing fruit smoothie made from different fruits in layers.

As you may guess it was some sort of smoothie, but in contrast to usual one where all the fruits are mixed together (and there is at least 80% of banana in it), here each fruit was separated, and there was no banana in any of them. Furthermore the mash wash thicker than in regular smoothie, all in all it was really good. If I remember correctly it costs around 2€ and I was full afterwards as if I ate at least 5 of each fruit.

After lunch, we went for a walk through the city, trying to find some landmarks we missed on previous excursions. One thing I noticed while walking around was just how full of people the city streets were. Yes, it was the main street, but still, people were everywhere. Second thing was their driving ethnics, to say it shortly: not good, everyone were beeping, driving over speed limit, red lights etc. We were also warned to really watch when going over the street, supposedly drivers don’t stop event on crosswalks.

Obelisk
Obelisk
Cathedral
Cathedral

While I’m talking about cars, as a Slovenian, I always tend to try and estimate wealth of population by judging their cars. This being said, I unintentionally took notice of what people were driving and it was all over the place. From old Zastava to new Ferraris and Porches. The only thing missing, to make it more Russian, was a tank driving down the main street.

In the evening we had another excursion planned. Limo ride through the city. About 24 people signed to this excursions, so at 23.30 two limos were waiting for us in front of the hotel. One for 8 people and one for 16. We got in the bigger one. It was that hummer limo thingie … for me it looks less luxurious than normal one, but inside it was much more spacious.

Inside we were greeted with some bubbling wine that actually didn’t taste bad, it was kind of sweet, nothing like what we usually drink for New Year’s. I’m not sure what we are usually drinking in Slovenian, but as far as I remember, every wine I ever tasted was bitter and/or sour, thought I haven’t tasted that many kinds in the end.

Hummer limo
Hummer limo

After about an hour of driving, partying, taking millions of photos, we made our final stop (we had some stops before) in front of the biggest night club in the city. Majority of people went inside, I decided it will be better if I go to hotel and catch on some much needed sleep. From what I’ve later learned I didn’t missed much. Club wasn’t that big, there were Russians everywhere (I’m not sure what they (students) expected that they will find some Eskimos or something inside? 😀 ) and they danced weirdly.

Group photo
Group photo

Last day morning, routine was same as the day before. Shower, big breakfast, excursion. This day we went to Hermitage museum. It’s the biggest museum in (Russia if not Europe). They told us that if you spent 9 seconds at each exhibit, it would take you 15 years to see them all.

Hermitage
Hermitage

Anyway the museum was …. eh museum. It was interesting first 25 minutes, then you get bored of seeing thousands of pictures, vases, busts etc. It kind of reminded me of the time I visited Louvre. Really big museum that you are too tired to visit whole, so you get bored quite soon. After two or three hours of guided tour of museum, we finally found a bench where we could sit/sleep and wait for the next excursion, exactly like Louvre 6 years ago.

Hermitage throne
Hermitage throne

For our last excursion we visited 3 famous cathedrals in the city. As you may know, Russians have a special way of building cathedrals, with lots of towers and colours. Everyone knows how that famous cathedral in Moscow looks like.

Cathedrals were really big (tall). Decorated with mosaic all over the walls. Every other thing was coated with (real) gold. I’ll share one fun fact that our tour guide told us: How can you tell the name of cathedral? When you look toward pictures around altar, the first picture to the right is always Jesus, the second one tells you the name.

With this excursion we have finished our visit of St. Petersburg. We then slowly drove back to our ship, where we spent night similarly as before. This time a day had extra 2 hours (remember Russia is CET +3) which was good for much needed rest.

In the morning we arrived to raining Helsinki. We (me and Mikel) bid farewell to our new friends, but not before we helped some smuggle some cigarettes off the ship. In retrospect I’m kind of sad I didn’t remembered to do it myself, on the ship you can buy a pack of cigarettes for 2€, in Helsinki they are 5€. The problem is you can only bring 1 big (?) package of them per person. So per one big pack you can actually earn 30€ (since I don’t smoke I don’t know how many packs does a big one include, I’m guessing that 10?).

Helsinki Numero Due

When we (me and Mikel) were planning this trip we were always counting on nice weather. A bit too optimistic for this place on Earth, since it’s raining almost every day. Because of this, we didn’t know what to do whole day, since we didn’t want to go sightseeing while it was raining. We ended up going to the train station where we waited 3 hours for rain to stop. It was noon and rain was still pouring, we were bored as hell and hungry, that is why we decided to go out and try to find something to eat, that’s not McDonalds. We ended up walking across the street in to a big shopping mall complex that was interlink with underground tunnels, spanning over large area of city centre.

We were walking around this mall for about two hours, trying to find a nice restaurant. When we finally agreed to going to an Italian restaurant. The waitress greeted us with big smile and was really enthusiastic to explain their daily menus etc. I’m not sure if she is generally this nice, or they rarely get customers (restaurant was well hidden in the furthest corner underground).

As we were eating we noticed that decorations in the restaurant are nothing like usually Italian style, but look more like Egyptian. Later we learned that the Italian restaurant was 5 meters to the left, and we really were in something that looked like Egyptian restaurant, though food was normal (nothing exotic). I had salmon and Mikel had chicken, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure, if it’s because we were really hungry or because it really was good, the dish tasted amazing. Everything was great, potatoes didn’t felt like frozen ones you get from McDonalds, fish was greatly cooked, seasoning was there, I even ate the “green” stuff (read as vegetables) that I usually leave. The meal all together (with Coca-Cola, salad-bar and main dish) costs around 13€, depending on what you choose for main dish. All in all I think it was worth every cent of it.

Sadly I don’t remember the name of the restaurant. If you are in Helsinki and want to check it out, it’s underground somewhere around here Google Maps. After entering at main entrance, go to the lowest floor, continue toward west, alongside bus station, near the end of hallway turn left (I think there is Lidel at the corner), continue forward, go up half floor and turn right at something that looks like restaurant. If you follow my great instructions you can’t miss it. =)

After lunch we went through the mall again. This time we found a spot where we were in reach of Wi-Fi, so we stayed there for few hours. After we got bored of that, we went outside where as it has stopped raining. We decided to go on a quick tour of the city again, this time it was night.

We took some pictures of the city and went back to the train station, there we waited 4 very very long and boring hours, until our train arrived. This was the end of our visit of Helsinki.

Longer Way up

Finally we were on our way back, but not for long. As soon as conductor came to check our tickets, he had a problem with our student cards. Now when I think about it, we were naïve to think Swedish student ID’s will be accepted in Finland, but at least on our way down nobody checked them.

First problem was figuring out what the conductor even wants from us as he didn’t spoke english. Later on he actually found some students who translated for him. Anyway, we had to pay difference to adult’s ticket, which was double the price as a student’s ticket. The “translators” later told us that we were actually lucky, since he could have charged us first 80€ penalty for bringing wrong document/ticket and then make us buy new ticket t.i. not considering what we already paid for student one. Though I wouldn’t count myself lucky. Another friend from here, went with the same train few days before us unnoticed with a Swedish student card in both directions.

After restless sleep we woke up to an icy cold morning in the middle of nowhere with snow everywhere and train standing still. There was some announcements over train’s speakers but they were in Finnish. Somebody later told us that the train has broken down, so we were stuck there for an additional hour.

When we finally arrived we were pretty late. It was cold outside, around -10, with lots of snow. Totally different landscape, that what I remember from the way down. Thankfully we just caught the bus from Kemi to Torni, before it left. When we wanted to pay for it we found out that it didn’t accept credit cards, luckily bus driver allowed us to ride for free, which was really nice of him and felt good after overpaid train tickets.

In Troni we changed to double decker buss for Luela and we were off. Again we found the front sits in the first floor and this time it was still daylight outside, so the view was amazing. At around 13’o clock we were back to Lulea. Our trip was over, the only thing left was going to sleep to catch up for lack of sleep in the past days.

Some fun things that I didn’t know where to include in the text above

    • As Russian is in the same language group as Slovenian, I was able to understand and speak surprisingly a lot of it. Well understand is an overstatement since they spoke to fast in most cases, but if I have pronunciation written down (as I can’t read Cyrillic) I understand surprisingly a lot.
    • Everything in Russia is much cheaper than in Sweden, even cheaper than in Slovenia. For example take a look on the lower picture of oil prices. Remember 1€ is around 43 RUB, do you remember when was the last time you paid 0.8€ for 1l of gas? 🙂
      Oil prices in Russia
      Oil prices in Russia
        • I’m still not sure if this is genius or not. When you enter a store (usually gift shop) they give you free vodka shot at the entrance. They probably figured out, that customers spent more if they are drunk; that’s why genius. 🙂
        • Nobody speaks English.
      • Take a look at some must know sentences in Russian that the agency provided us with. 🙂
        Some Russian words
        Some Russian words
          • From 1 AM to 5 AM all the draw bridges in St. Petersburg are lifted, so if you are on the wrong island at that time, you’re stuck there until morning as there is no other way to get across.
          • Vodka is almost cheaper than water. They sell it in all shapes and sizes, and they actually have more choice for different kind of vodka than water.
        • When I bought something in store, I got 10 Rubi cents back in return. That’s like 0.002€. 😀

There are some MORE PHOTOS in gallery, so check them out.

00:29 Sun.
22 Sep, 2013

The "long" night ahead

Day 45 , 102 remain
Lulea , Sweden
11 °C
Partly Cloudy
6:08 am
6:36 pm

This week was very intensive in regards to school work. I couldn’t have waited for the weekend to come. Yesterday I slept for almost 12 hours, compensation for work until 2AM during week.

Yesterday evening (Saturday) we had a dinner with friends. We had 4 main dishes, French, Spanish and two Chinese as each one prepared dish from his country. I think Slovenian cuisine will be on the menu in two weeks although I still don’t know what I should cook. I’ll be very happy and thankful for any suggestions you can give me on what is a good Slovenian dish. 🙂 Anyway the food was really good and it was fun to taste what people in the other countries eat.

Here is Spanish dish. It’s fried potatoes with eggs. It looks like and is prepared somewhat similar to pancakes, but tastes nothing alike.

Mikel made us spanish pancake, well it's fried eggs and potatoes. :)
Mikel made us spanish pancake, well it’s fried eggs and potatoes mixed together. 🙂
French dish made by Jean, contains potatoes, cheese ham and lots of fat. :D
French dish made by Jean, contains potatoes, cheese ham and lots of fat. 😀
Chinese rice by Lin, made with rice and sea fruits.
Chinese rice by Lin, made with rice and sea fruits.
Spicy as hell Chinese broth made by Allen and Leff
Spicy as hell Chinese broth made by Allen and Leff
Chicken leg from the broth
Chicken leg from the broth

All together (except chicken which took longest to cook). (We didn’t burned the table, if someone is wondering)

Needles to say we were full as a drum (old Slovenian saying :))
Needles to say we were full as a drum (old Slovenian saying :))

Since I’m talking about food a fun fact … I bought some salad in local market few days ago. The salad was in some kind of bag (like bag for bread), you could only see the top of it (salad), so you knew it was a salad. The surprise came when I was at home and took salad out of the bag. It actually came with a pot. I’m not sure why is this, are you supposed to grow your own salad from now on, or is it just to keep it fresh a bit longer? Anyway just to make sure, I have a pot on the window, maybe I’ll grow some salad from now on, who knows. 🙂

Cultivating my salad
Cultivating my salad

September Equinox

Today (Sunday) is autumn equinox. This means that the day will be of equal length as night. Until now I had longer days than Slovenia (or majority of world for what it’s worth). From now on, days will continue to get shorter and shorter until only 2 hours of daylight in late December. Although I’m fond of seeing how it is to live only by artificial light, I’m starting to regret my decision of departure in first semester. I think it would be better if I went after New Year’s. If that were true I would arrive when the days are short and leave in June when there is daylight all day long.