New boots but.. there's no water, only ice.

I finally have some proper boots for windsurfing in cold weather: Atan Mistral Hot boots. With 7mm of neoprene covered by a layer of latex I think it will be enough to keep my feet from freezing. I just tried them for a while (at home) and they feel comfortable and very warm. I can't wait to try them but for that I have to wait: the only change of getting in the water is to go in the North Sea, as the several lakes and inner seas of Netherlands are filled with ice, and I don't feel like going alone to the North Sea. With this cold temperatures if something goes wrong your doomed.

The water is at 2°C so, without proper protection, a person has a time of survival measured of about 90 minutes. A thick wetsuit (as the one I'm wearing in this post) should extend that time quite a bit.

I start to understand why so many Dutch painters like to include the sky in their creations. Be it Goyen, Willem van de Velde the Elder, or a more recent van Gogh, Wijnand Nuijen, Jan Vermeer or so many others it easy to look at the fight between light and clouds, sun and shadow, and appreciate it and then, locking at the paintings, recognize the skill and ability of the artists.

I am reading Neal Stephenson book The System of the World, the third volume of the The Baroque Cycle (8 books published in three rather thick volumes) where a big part of the action takes place in the Netherlands, England and France. It's nice to be close to this places and let my imagination run. I'm also getting to know the history of this part of Europe a lot better. It's not uncommon for me to pause reading to research some more information of historical events or persons. If only studying history in school had been as much fun...

Carpathian mountains (2nd part)

Being in the mountains in winter I couldn't wait until I got to a ski track and went snowboarding. In Romania it's specially easy and cheap to rent equipment (one day rent for less than 10 euros), the tracks are well maintained, the scenery is great and if you're lucky you get fresh snow and sunny days. I was. I had both sun and snow fall during the day.

View Larger Map

If you use googleearth to have a look at the city of Predeal (Braşov) you'll see that South East of the city there ski resort with both black and red tracks as well as space for the beginners to play and learn. As the surface satellite images are from 2012 you will see the city covered in snow. It only gets better by being there.

Being close to the center of the city means that accessing the resort is easy and getting something to eat or drink is also just a question of deciding to take a break.

All things considered I think it's quite a good value for money to go to this Carpathian mountains if you want to enjoy winter sports. I have been to resorts in the Alps and considering the prices and the what you get this is really a good deal for those that have a restrictive budget.

The mountains of Vlad the Impaler (1st part)

Now about that trip to the Carpathian Mountains, where you can find some of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe, you can still have a close encounter with wild life such as brown bears, wolfs, wild goats, lynx, etc, and the place for a huge diversity of plants. It's also the winter sport location for most Romanians, with nice ski tracks, good food and drinks.

Of course if you want to enjoy the nature side of the mountains then winter is not the best of times. Everything is covered in a thick blanket of snow and life seams to be waiting for March to bring Spring. If, on the other hand, you want to enjoy the snow, then this winter is being absolutely superb. There was not one single day without fresh snow on the tracks and, because of all the warnings on the exited TV channels the tracks were far from crowded. Good!

We arrived in the mountains at night and we were greeted in hour hotel bedroom with wonderful view. The Sun was disappearing behind the snow and ice covered mountains but the sky was clear and with a deep shade of blue. Everything was still, no breeze, no sound. What a moment.

In the morning it was even more staggering. The light of the Sun, that was still behind the mountains for us in the valley, was hitting the mountains, tinting them with a red hue. What a sight!

Mornings were a bit on the chill side, with temperatures dropping to −21°C (as you can see in the screen shot at the bellow). That's really cold.

After a nice breakfast (Romanians do like their first meal of the day to be very filling, with scrambled eggs, different kinds of meats and cheese, vegetables, sweets, etc) we went for the closest ski track. I'll write about it in the next post. Now it's time to go back to learning something about doing applications for Android... the hardest part being the user interface (UI). It's not easy to get your ideas into a working and pretty interface.

Siberian weather in Bucharest

As you probably all know Eastern Europe winter has been very harsh. Blizzards, weeks of constant snowing, temperatures hardly rising above the −10 °C. Not the best weather for traveling... unless you enjoy adventure and hardships.

Of course me, being lucky as I am, had a wonderful weather while traveling in Romania. Even a trip to the Carpathians Mountains (I'll write and share some photos of this trip in a future post) went without any incident and was fun all around. Well... I did pay a bit for that luck with the return flight, that was canceled due to a technical failure in the airplane. Apart from that hiccup the vacation were superb.

In one of the days that the sun decided to come and make everything shining I took a walk in Park Herăstrău that instead of being covered with flowers as I have always seen it it was just a vista of never ending white blanket.

Even if there was no clouds and the Sun was in clear view it was still cold (something like −5°C) although it didn't feel that way when comparing to previous days.

By the way, anyone can identify the birds on the photo at the beginning of the this post? They look half frozen, the poor things. I noticed that people were trying to provide some food for the birds but with the snow falling almost continually from the sky it was very hard for the birds to find the food. It's a very hard winter for all, be it humans, animals or plants. I would guess that the crops in most of Europe will be negatively affected, bringing another hardship on people of this good old Continent. But we shall prevail.

Coldest of the winters

With the cold wave in Netherlands causing some disruptions in the public transport system we had some hiccups getting to Schiphol Airport - the electric catenary were frozen and filled with ice and that lead to issued with the pantograph system of the trains. In any case we managed to get in the airport in time and to suffer the absurd "security" checks that don't make me feel any safer and that just delayed the boarding so that the plane was already late to take off when everyone had finally boarded.

The plane then had to have the engines defrosted and the wings deiced. All that cause a delay of almost one hour. Nothing that the flight company could actually do anything about (they are not the ones coming up with irrelevant checks and are not responsible for the management of the airport). In the end I think we were lucky to fly as there were several flights that had to be canceled before and after we left.

The flight was as uneventful (I like them like that), apart from a aborted landing - I guess caused by the lack of visibility and cross wind - but after a bit of carousel all went well and we landed safe and sound (what a funny expression) and were greeted by a dog walking in the conveyor belt were passenger retrieve their luggage.

Again we were really lucky with being able to land in Bucharest as the weather has taken a turn for worse. When we arrived the air temperature was around −2°C now it has dropped to &minus&12°C with wind gusts reaching the 50 knots (92 Km/h). Not a nice weather for landing. Actually several (or all) flights are being canceled. Let's hope that by the 13th of this month the weather has improved enough for flights to resume.

Now since we are here I haven't ventured much outside. It's hard to go anywhere. We planned to go in a small trip to the mountains but it's almost impossible to leave Bucharest (by car, by train or by plane) and although the streets are quite clean of snow it's still a hard task to move the car. Cleaning the ice that form around it takes several minutes, then finding a parking place is a hard task when there is no snow but with every empty space becoming a landscape of ice and snow in no time it has become almost impossible to stop the car anywhere except the middle of the street - which is not a very good idea. Walking is always a possibility but the Accuweather RealFeel of −28°C is sure feels a lot better to stay indoors.

Nevertheless here are some photos (taken with the phone, so sorry for the lack of quality) so that you can have a idea of how it feels to be surrounded by this white stuff all around.

It is beautiful, in a very cold way.

This is for me the coldest winter I have ever lived and I'm not that young. In Portugal although it's not so cold it is very dry. It hasn't rained the entire month of January and February doesn't look like it's going to bring any change. The crops will suffer and that is something that the Portuguese people don't deserve on top of everything else that has been forced on them. Lets see what the future brings.

Frozen Weesp, now with snow

In the last post I promised to share some of the beauty of the snow in Weesp with you all. Well, I do have some photos but I think they don't do justice to how nice it actually was.

The frozen channels were transformed in long white avenues. In some of those natural skating rings kids were playing and skating. The kids and teens actually look like they were making the most of it, snow battles and other plays were happening everywhere.

The Aquamarin that I mentioned earlier was not only frozen but also covered in snow.

With nigh approaching and as the snow had stopped falling we went for some last day shopping in Almere and on the way back we went to my playground at Muiderberg and a good 250m of the water shore were frozen solid - solid enough for me to walk on it. My windsurf playground had transmuted into a wind-ice playground. Unfortunately I took no photos as I didn't had the camera with me and the phone camera is just horrible at night.

That night the temperatures in Weesp plummet to −12°C and that is quite cold on my book. In the morning, when leaving early to catch the flight to Bucharest, walking to the train station was a quite cold experience.

I'll tell more of the travel to Romania and how does it look and feel to be in a country that it's getting almost the full impact of the Siberian weather.

Frozen Weesp

Just to share some of the cold weather that is being felt through out Europe with the warm people in the South here are some photos I took yesterday.

I probably should have taken more photos but frozen fingers didn't help and I took the photos with the phone which I don't like much.

The first two photos are from the Aquamarin a interesting mix of leisure harbor and residential area. It was all frozen. Those poor boats must be taking a beating being compressed by the ice.

Today it's snowing a lot. I'll share some of it with you all later. It's beautiful.

KIA sandman

Now here's a nice commercial advertising for KIA cars (careful, link leads to a flash web page).

It's nice the come back in the end, to a family life. You wouldn't want espouses everywhere to be displeased…

Sunset at the North Sea

The weather in Netherlands has been cold but dry, with clear sky. Perfect to go and see the sun setting in a horizon defined by the North Sea. So to Wijk aan Zee we went and what a great Sunset we saw.

Wijk aan Zee is close to a huge industrial area (there's a huge steel factory there, a big harbor, some more heavy and light factoring facilities). Although we didn't linger in the village it looked like a really nice place to stay some days in a relaxing environment.

Unfortunately I am not a very good photographer, nor do I have a camera that can retrieve the beauty of the Sun in a sky totally void of clouds.

While staying in the peer and taking photos I noticed a Greenpeace boat, the Artic Sunrise, a name that I think was rather appropriate as the air temperature of −4°C were freezing my hands - I don't like to take photos with thick gloves so I usually take them off when taking photos.

Bon voyage where ever you mission takes you Greenpeace activists. And off to the sunset the heroes sailed…

This looks like a nice spot to windsurf. Hopefully, and due to the heavy industrial presence, it wont be very crowded during Summer. We'll see.