Snowballfight ...

... even in summer
Just thought I'd post a picture of myself once in a while since usually I am behind the camera.
This one is stolen from Artyom but I'm sure he'll forgive me.

White Mountains

I had this sudden urge to blog something about Alaska. So here some pictures of a ski trip in the White Mountains. The plan was to ski 20 miles a day but we expected some tracks - there weren't any so from time to time I sank into the snow up to my hips - ok I'm short but still. The night we stayed ouside with a fantastic aurora. The trip was quite tough but really nice.

 

P.S. The camera at that time was not really good so please excuse the picture quality

I need...

... that book: 

'Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.' 

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Thanks Enno for leaving books next to the toilet although the habit of reading while 4 other people might need the bathroom is not a good one ;) 

Oslo in 'winter' ...

...is warm and cold and cold and warm. There is snow which melts and freezes and sometimes I wonder if it is safer to ice scate to work than to walk. The sidewalks are covered with a thick ice sheet and the little gravel thrown on it doesn't really help that much.

Helsinki

It is one of these summer evenings with this special golden light you can only experience in the North. Being in the city for the first time, I am sitting on a small pillar on Senate Square in front of Helsinki Cathedral. While soaking in the atmosphere and watching the tourists taking pictures and a few locals strolling around, I am looking at the tourist guides in order to figure out what I could still see that evening and how to combine it with getting some food. Suddenly there is this man next to me, long gray hair, glasses, looking quite intellectual, asking me if he could help me finding my way. The answer was more or less: no thanks. I do not really feel like chitchat and company but he wants to know which country I am from. When he hears that I am from Germany, he suddenly looks extremely anxious, takes out a mansucript and tells me that he is writing a book and the person who helps him with his German is on vacation so if it would be possible to correct only a few sentences for him he would be so glad. I'm slightly confused about the fact that he has this manuscript with him and why he writes in German but well, why not having a look. The mansucript is handwritten and looks like every sentence has been scratched out and rewritten several times so I am quite amazed how he still finds the correct sentence. The topic is something about how many troops the Russian and Germans had in the Second World War. As he gets quite excited how fast this correction goes, I expect somebody with a camera showing up any time and telling me that this is a joke. We go through about 3 pages then he asks me what I do in Helsinki. Well, I am here for just one evening, tomorrow I will go on a field trip to Karelia, I'm a geologist. A geologist? That is fantastic I always wanted to know how the world works but I never had enough time to read it all so I am hoping you can give me a short lesson - I'll invite you to some drink! Generally, if you are alone in another city and a man invites you for a drink, nowadays you have to become careful. It is sad but I would never want to be in a dangerous situation. So I am a little reluctant and tell him that I just wanted to find something to eat and then get some good night's sleep. Well, we can surely find a place with food for you - there is one nice place I know of. Fine, there are still people on the streets and after all it is a public place, so we move on. Unfortunately the restaurant he has in mind, is closed already and it seems to be hard to find a place which still offers food at around 9 pm on a Sunday evening. So here I am, walking though Helsinki with a complete stranger who tells me that he was an architect and grew up in Austria. Finally we find a place and we get some food - I try to give him a short introduction about geology but he seems to be disappointed that I cannot answer all his questions within the short time. At the table next to us, there is a group of American and Australian students and the architect start a cross table conversation with them. The food is good and he insists to pay but for some reason his card does not work. Well, so I pay in cash and we stop by a bancomat so he can get the cash and give it to me.
Finally, it's time to say bye he asks for my name and tells me that I remind him of some girl in a tribe in Siberia who had also that look as if she understands the world and he only wished that he was younger. I feel a bit awkward and walk back to the hostel, thinking that I maybe shouldn't have been that rude and at least exchanged addresses but in this world you don't know whom to trust anymore.

Bye Rockies

Not a good pictures but hey ... out of the plane and against the sun and after all
the Rockies !!!

Botanical Garden at UBC