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.