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.

18:42 Thu.
14 Nov, 2013

And still kicking

Day 98 , 49 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-9 °C
Fair
8:07 am
2:20 pm

It’s been a while since my last post. Last week I was busy with my last assignment from 1st quarter. I finished it on Monday morning (8 AM), after whole night marathon. The worst (best?) part was that when I presented it to professor, few hour later, he didn’t even checked if it works or not, he just looked at some graphs in my report and that was it. Huh I could have saved whole night of programming and just “faked” the results. Though all in all it wasn’t that bad.

In this assignment we were playing/working with some “big” toys. We were using Amazon server farms to create distributed applications. We were actually using real servers, the same ones that NASA uses to calculate new path for mars rovers, for example. As here, you are charged according to how much you use, by rough calculations, on Monday night (alone) I spent around 200$. Thank god that university paid for it. 🙂

It’s really nice if university has a bigger budget and can provide you with some “real” tools that you’ll be using later on when you’ll get a job. Sadly I don’t think in Slovenia something like this would be possible.

So this was on Monday, as you may guess I spent the rest of the day sleeping. As I stated in previous post we finally got about 20cm of snow. Besides being really nice to look at this brings some problems along the way. Tuesday I spent whole day looking for snow shoes in big “shopping” area about 30 (bike) min away from me. Sadly I couldn’t find anything good (looking) enough to buy. On the other hand I did find a shoe from ALPINA. I was really surprised to see it there, firstly I thought they went bankrupted, secondly its first Slovenian brand I’ve seen since coming here. I would sooner expect to see some kind of Slovenian food product instead of shoes up here.

In the end I ended up buying new gloves that should be warm enough for -30 and some tape for my hockey stick (it later turned out that I bought wrong tape, so I had to buy new one today).

When you are riding a bike in this weather you can really feel cold, if you don’t have good enough equipment. Firstly bike sit is usually frozen, if you are lucky wheel is still turning and you can start pedalling without kicking ice from wheels for 5minutes. After few minutes you start feeling cold air coming through gloves (if they are not air sealed, that is), shortly after you pants, below knees, start to freeze (despite mud protector, tiny bits of snow fly off the wheel on to your legs) and lastly you lose feeling in your feet. This can all be avoided if you have good and warm clothing from head to hills of course.

Roads never get cleared of snow.
Roads never get cleared of snow.

Earlier this month I volunteered to help at a computer conference that will be held here at LTU at beginning of December. Yesterday we had our first meeting before conference. I’m telling you this, because professor, who is in charge for preparations, paid for our lunch in a restaurant where we had the meeting. I was really surprised about this, we were 10 people, and each meal costs around 10€.

Later that evening we prepared surprise party for a friend. It was really fun and again lots of people prepared some of their (home country) dishes. In retrospect, I spent whole day eating.

Today I went shopping again. This time to city centre. First thing I bought was correct tape for my hockey stick, secondly I finally found some good snow boots that I will probably buy tomorrow, I just need to check another store before to be sure those are the best.

I also need to get a haircut (2 months ago). I’ve been delaying this for so long because of the price. I was complaining to some Swede about the price of hair dresses and he said that hair dresses in Lulea are run in cartel. Haha it’s really funny when you say it like this, on the other hand when you hear price… every hairdresser in town charges exactly 500 SEK (around 50€), and this is not for women, it’s men’s.

Sunset over the frozen lake
Sunset over the frozen lake
13:30 Thu.
7 Nov, 2013

Lots of it

Day 91 , 56 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-4 °C
Fair
7:41 am
2:44 pm

Just a quick update with some interesting facts. First one, I have one big assignment due Monday, so it looks like my big post about the trip will get postponed. Second one it has been snowing a lot last few days.

As I mentioned in previous post, there was snow when we arrived back from the trip. Tuesday night it was snowing a lot, so on Wednesday we all woke up to about 30cm of snow. The fun part was going to school at 8am with 20cm of snow on the sidewalk. For some reason I thought it will be faster if I take a bike. In the end I reached school after 20 minutes, many people that were walking were there before me and yeah it is really tiresome to pedal in that amount of snow. To top it off my bike froze like 3 times, every time you leave it out for an hour or so it freezes.

Anyway enough of complaining, in fact it’s quite fun to have this amount of snow, I really like it. The scenery has changed completely, it feels like Christmas already.

View from my window at 2pm.
View from my window at 2pm.
University covered in snow.
University covered in snow.
Frozen lake behind LTU
Frozen lake behind LTU
21:20 Wed.
23 Oct, 2013

End of first quarter.

Day 76 , 71 remain
Lulea , Sweden
1 °C
Cloudy
7:50 am
4:39 pm

Even though I still don’t know exact date of departure, I’ve inevitably reached half of my incredible journey. So far it has been everything and more what I expected from this adventure.

Today I had my last course in this quarter. What does that mean? Well now I have an “examination week”, where we have exams from courses we have taken in previous quarter. Luckily the courses I’ve taken don’t have exams but so called “home exam”. This is supposed to be exam that you solve at home, though it’s more like a project than exam. In one course it’s about 5-6 pages long project where we have to plan something, basically the same as we were doing during classes. We have about 2 weeks to solve this one. At the other course exam will be published on 30th and we will have 5 hours to solve it. This one should be a bit more similar to “normal” exams with theoretical questions.

I’ll post more about this after examination period. In other news: Nothing new in the North. =) Last few days were bit warmer, sadly melting all the snow. The other day I went on a “ski” hill to get a view over sunset. It was around -6 or -8 when I was taking pictures, my hand (without glove for handling camera) almost froze. View was amazing, you can notice how much sun has moved from summer pictures at my arrival.

Sunset over snowy hill.
Sunset over snowy hill.
Panorama from the nearby hill
Panorama from the nearby hill
10:27 Fri.
18 Oct, 2013

Finally here, yeah!

Day 71 , 76 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-4 °C
Fair
7:33 am
4:56 pm

So yes, we finally have snow here! It’s not much, yet but enough to cover roads. What is interesting is that even though snowflakes were tinny when snowing, they stuck to the ground as glue. Normally in Slovenia, if they are so small, they just melt.

Snow on the parking lot behind my buidling
Snow on the parking lot behind my building

Even though it’s enormously fun driving (bike) on the snow, I fell two times already. Nothing serious more like stepping/sitting off bike, but I was on the grounds after it. Second problem, which is much worst is that while I’m driving, snow gets stuck under my rear mud protector. Because everything is so cold it doesn’t melt, despite constant grinding of the wheel, but gets thicker and thicker. So what’s the problem with that, you may ask? Well it acts like a brake, a really good brake. I had to press pedals really hard to go downhill, while going uphill is impossible. I’m not sure what to do if this continues, probably I’ll rip mud protector off.

Lake starting to freeze
Lake starting to freeze