04:11 Sun.
22 Dec, 2013

It was -15 degrees

Day 136 , 11 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-1 °C
Partly Cloudy
9:53 am
1:03 pm

Two weeks ago there was a Christmas market in the old town (Gammelstad). We decided to go there by foot like in the orientation week. The only difference was that now there was snow everywhere and it was around 35 degrees colder (it was -16 to be exact). We decided to start at 10 o’clock since sun rose at that time. In the summer it took us about 2 hours to get there, so timing was perfect, since market was open from 12 to 16 o’clock.

Tree tops showering in sunlight
Tree tops showering in sunlight

Once we started walking we didn’t feel cold anymore, though exposed long hair froze up, to a nice white shade. Thankfully I don’t have long hair, even so, I put on both a warm hat and a hoodie, from my jacket. Because I thought path was going to be flooded with people, I wore normal pants, since I wasn’t expecting much snow on the road. Later this turned out to be a grave mistake.

First hour went by fast, while were walking through the forest. To my surprise we were first to go there, as there were no other tracks in the snow.

When it’s this cold, snow doesn’t stick together when it falls on the ground (at least I think it’s because of this) instead it’s like light dust and if you kick it a snow cloud goes up into the air. It looks amazing.

When we reached the bird tower we decided to take a “shortcut” over the frozen lake. Shortcut is in quotes because even in theory it isn’t shorter. But the fun part was that we could go over the lake, so we took it anyway.

As we were making our way toward the lake, we found just how hard it is to walk on the marshy land that surrounds lakes and rivers up here. For some reason ground doesn’t freeze and snow builds up, so when you step onto it you go knees deep and there is a lot of swamp vegetation that you have to navigate in order to reach the lake.

After we were on the lake, we were making good progress again. Sun was already (well it’s like this all the time) low on horizon, it was more like dawn/twilight, despite being only 11.30 AM. Fun thing with a sun so low is the length of ones shadow. Our shadows must have been at least 15 meters long, on a flat lake surface.

After crossing the lake, we found out, that there is a highway separating us from the other side, where the old town is. Here we could have turned around, but instead we decided for a more exciting option of continuing down the highway until we would cross path with the “real” trail.

Our progress slowed down dramatically, we weren’t on a lake anymore but were walking through a deeply snowed marshy land. For some reason, despite not wearing waterproof pants, I was leading first through the deep snow. As I later learned (nah I actually knew this before :P), it is much easier to follow someone on such terrain, since he flattens the snow and makes a path in it. After about half an hour of walking we reached a small shaft under the highway connecting lakes on both sides. The shaft was small, maybe around 0.5m in diameter and half of it was filled with frozen water from the lakes. After much deliberation, whether we should go through it or not, we split into two groups, one continued beside highway, mine decided to go down under.

Preparing to cross the highway through the underground half frozen drain pipe, connecting both lakes.
Preparing to cross the highway through the underground half frozen drain pipe, connecting both lakes.

Again I was the first one to go, the tunnel was so small I had to take my backpack from my back, lay down on my belly and push it in front of me. After first few meters of really careful movement and intense listening if ice was cracking I got more courage and continued faster. A friend passed me a flashlight so I could better evaluate depth of ice. When I turned it on I found myself face to face with frozen fish just about 5 cm under the ice (my face). I almost screamed, but there was not much I could do but continue. Even with the flashlight it was hard to tell how deep the ice was, I have a feeling that it was frozen through and through. After about 5 minutes I was on the other side. It took me 5 minutes to crawl through a 50m shaft. Ice was so slippery that it was impossible to push yourself forward, that’s why I had to cling to the ceiling and walls, really weird to see, like a Spiderman.

On the other side we were greeted with another lake and about 0.5km of marshy land in the direction of the town. After about 15 minutes of struggling through the snow I suddenly felt my leg sink deeper than usually. The snow came almost to my waste and as I was trying to pull my leg out when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my leg. It was water. For some reason water wasn’t frozen on that spot, probably because of deep snow cover providing sufficient insulation. As soon as I freed my leg out, pants up to my knees went stone hard as water froze instantly on a -15 degrees cold air. And like if that wouldn’t be enough icy cold water also went into my shoe. Despite them being waterproof they can’t prevent water from going in from the top.

But wait, there is more. Like if that wouldn’t be enough… Just after few steps the other leg followed. So there I was in the middle of nowhere, with freezing cold water in my shoes, frozen pants and with sun already gone. I felt like I was in the middle of Antarctica.

I have never experienced anything like it, the pain didn’t go away as it normally does, when you touch something cold. It was burning like someone spilled boiling water on my legs. The worst part is there was nothing I could do, except continue toward the old town (the closest civilisation). Even after 45 minutes, when we finally reached the market, my legs were still in pain. It was then, when I got really scared, that I would get frostbites from all the cold.

Frozen pants up to knees.
Frozen pants up to knees.

At the market, I got a chance to take the shoes off. Despite expecting water to pour out, everything appeared surprisingly dry. Even socks were only moist at worst. I’m still thankful that I bought the best shoes I could find, they probably saved my feet from a nasty frostbites.

The market was much smaller than I expected. Merchants were selling all sorts of stuff, from trinkets, statues of dwarfs and elves, some kind of sweet Swedish bread, moose meet and many more.

Christmas market at Gammelstad
Christmas market at Gammelstad

After short trip around the market, we decided to take a bus home, since it was already pitch black, my legs were frozen and we had a farewell dinner to prepare for.

Despite market being disappointingly small, the journey was one of a kind and like usually it’s the about the journey not destination.

18:31 Sat.
21 Dec, 2013

For this year

Day 135 , 12 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-3 °C
Cloudy
9:53 am
1:03 pm

Yesterday we did our last great push and finally finished our project. Now I can say I’ve build my own working Skype with chat and video conferencing, Microsoft watch out, you’re going out of business!

I’m still not done with the course though. I need to write my “home exam” but I’ve decided that I’ll do that after I come home. The due date is till 20th January so I’ll have enough time to finish it, and after that I will have an oral exam over Skype. I can already see my grandma coming into frame just at the moment of the exam…

In other news; after long deliberation, if I should still continue working, after I come home, I was forced to decide yesterday, when I received invitation from my old boss to come there after New Year’s. I’ve finally decided to let it pass, last year was too intense in regards of work and school. This year I’ll take it easier. I’ve left an option open to get there though, I may choose my topic for master’s thesis about something they will need. It could be good motivation to get paid for doing school work although I’m not sure they can offer me interesting enough topic. We’ll see how it will go … I think my topic of interest has started to drift from AI (artificial intelligence) to Multimedia (Games/Entertainment).

01:06 Wed.
18 Dec, 2013

End is here

Day 132 , 15 remain
Lulea , Sweden
1 °C
Clear
9:51 am
1:03 pm

Haven’t written anything in a while, not because I don’t have anything to write about but because I’ve been incredibly busy last few days (weeks). I had a project presentation last Monday, seminar presentation this Monday and we are rushing as fast as we can to finish our last project as soon as possible. We were hoping we will finish it until today, when one of group mates is leaving Lulea, but sadly we missed this deadline.

As usually when you are in a hurry nothing works as it should and I’ve got yet another confirmation to avoid 3rd party APIs when it comes to programming. Not that we choose to use it, it was mandatory, but still the thing is less documented that the code I write, it only works on my computer, so instead of programming simultaneously with 3 people, only 1 is programming and the other two are looking at my screen giving suggestions and comments.

Anyway I’m so fed up with it that I just want to finish minimal requirements and get a pass on it, instead of working on those extra features to get better grade.

In other news as you may have guessed majority of people is leaving this week. So usually when you see people around they all look kind of sad, be it for leaving Lulea or leaving all newly acquired friends behind.

For me it’s something in between. My time has not yet came, though some of my friends will leave shortly. Unlike majority of others I have Veronika’s visit coming next week, which is really keeping my spirits up and adding views to blog’s statistics, since I’m checking every few hours how much is it still left on the timer that I’ve posted in one of the previous posts.

Lately we’ve had some really nasty weather here. It’s gotten surprisingly hot, around 0 or even 1 degree, so snow is starting to melt, on the other hand it has snowed really hard in previous few days so now we have ice and snow everywhere. Thankfully Swedes are putting gravel on the ice so it’s not that slipper and they are doing this almost in real time, I saw one truck sprinkling little rocks yesterday at 4 am in the morning (what I was doing up at that time is a story for another post).

Hm so this is becoming quite boring, wall of text with no pictures again. Today we had our last training of hockey so here is a picture from there.

Our hockey team - well most of it at least. Last picture on last training we had.
Our hockey team – well most of it at least. Last picture on last training we had.

One more thing before I forgot. Today I’ve sold my hockey equipment and bike to a friend, who is going to resell it in next semester. So from now on I’ll be walking a lot again.

12:33 Sun.
8 Dec, 2013

Coldest I've ever been in my life.

Day 122 , 25 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-19 °C
Fair
9:30 am
1:14 pm

Finally, today my Slovenian record for lowest temperature was finally broken. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time.

Symbolic picture from yesterday's hike 11:32h (more on this in next post).
Symbolic picture from yesterday’s hike 11:32h (more on this in next post).

Update (19.15h). I’ve just received news that some exchange students went to Kiruna today. It was -35 there today. Maybe I shouldn’t be laughing but they are stuck there now. Their car froze (they actually couldn’t get inside) and when they finally did they found that battery is dead. If my information is correct they will spend the night in ice hotel there.

23:57 Sat.
7 Dec, 2013

Living the good life

Day 121 , 26 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-16 °C
Fair
9:15 am
1:35 pm

Ok, so this week I was helping at International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM), here at LTU.

So what exactly was I doing? Well first two days I was mainly at the reception helping with registration of newly arrives and showing them around. I was also allowed to go to listen to whichever presentation I wanted and of course all the food and drinks were free for us.

I’ve managed to listen to keynote presentation by Google and I think it was really good. He showed some nice applications we’ll be able to see in near future and of course didn’t forget to show us all the new Google toys aka Nexus 5, Google glasses etc…

For each day of conference we got a coupons that covered all expenses in central restaurant, for lunch. Almost all volunteers (students) were finally able to try the most expensive dish from the menu, with all the extra drinks and stuff (which normally costs around 10€). I think this was the first time since I came here in Lulea that I had pork and some other kinds of meat. Usually I only eat fish or chicken since other kinds cost more than 30€/ kg (and you can’t buy less than 1kg).

Here in Sweden they have a tradition of having so called “Fika” every few hours. Hm how could I explain this? It’s something similar to English Tea (time) though it can happen any time of the day. So every 1.5h of conference we got Fika, which included cakes, drinks, sandwiches, cookies, etc…

So despite being volunteer and not getting paid, I saved around 100€ in this week on food and drinks alone (since I didn’t eat/buy anything at home), and probably gained few kg (of winter isolation 😀 ).

We also got invited to welcoming event in 4* hotel downtown. Needless to say it was awesome.

Overall it was really great experience and I’m happy I’ve been given an opportunity to be involved. I’ve been able to listen to some very good presentations, meet and talked with a lot of new people including presenters. And lastly if I’m not mistaken we are going to get recommendation letter from professor next week. All in all it was great!

Me listening to Google's presentation. Photo by: Benjamin Planche
Me listening to Google’s presentation. Photo by: Benjamin Planche