Det er tid for del to av historien om min sommerferie i 2010! On aika toisen osan tarina kesäloma vuonna 2010! Det är dags för del två av berättelsen om min sommarsemester i 2010! It is time for part two of my 2010 summer holiday write-up. At the end of week one, bad weather had stranded us on the island of Senja. The story picks up on the morning of day eight…

Day 8: Hamn – Bleik

… where we woke up to somewhat better weather than what we went to bed with the night before. We received word shortly after 9am that the ferry from Andenes had once again left port, expecting to arrive in Gryllefjord around 11am. With a good hour to kill, I went for a bit of rock climbing near the hotel to snap a few pictures of the fjord and the wind-surfing gulls.

Once in Gryllefjord, the waters looked acceptably calm and the ferry big enough for a safe crossing. Indeed, the first fifteen minutes were as smooth as can be, but as we left the protective land behind us, the waves got bigger and meaner. This was okay as long as they came from straight ahead, so the ferry was only going up and down, but before long the waves were going in every direction, and so was the ferry. In seamen’s terms, this is pitching, rolling and yawing; in my terms, this is unpleasant, uncomfortable and disagreeable. I was very glad when we docked in Andenes without having lost my breakfast.

The whale safari, planned for the afternoon, got cancelled. As understandable as that was given the conditions at sea, it was another disappointment for the group. Andenes has little to offer for entertainment on a rainy afternoon, and believe me, I looked for it. I walked along the beach for half an hour, trying to appreciate the mountains on one side and a smattering of little island on the other, but the thick clouds and the persistent drizzle kept getting in the way.

The day’s saving moment came at night. Our Norwegian neighbour in Bleik, where we stayed the night in three houses, had been so successful at fishing that day that he offered us a cod. After this lovely late-night snack, we finished the day with drinks in the local pub.

The Bergs Fjord near Hamn on the island of Senja.

A gull hovering in the wind at Hamn.

The cod we received from our Norwegian neighbour in Bleik.

Day 9: Bleik – Abisko

Another travel day. The scenery of fjords under cloudy skies was by now familiar to us, so we spent most of the bus ride to Narvik playing cards. With the driver keeping a good pace down the curvy Norwegian coastal roads, this offered several challenges one doesn’t encounter when playing cards at home. We arrived in Narvik as thoroughly shaken as our pack of cards.

Narvik is the northernmost city in Norway with a railway connection to the rest of the country. Dating back to the early 1900s, the railway was originally built to transport iron ore from the mines at Kiruna (see Day 12) to the port of Narvik. It’s still mainly used for ore transport today, but also sees passenger traffic by way of an overnight train between Narvik and the Swedish capital of Stockholm. We took this train from Narvik to Abisko National Park in Sweden. It was a spectacular ride with breathtaking views down the Rombaken Fjord as we wound our way up into the mountains spanning the Norwegian-Swedish border.

Abisko National Park spans an area of 77 square kilometers on the southern shore of Lake Torne, the seventh largest lake in Sweden. The beauty of the lake, the Abisko River and the surrounding mountains was a welcome sight after the bleakness of Bleik. The sunshine and a temperature of some 20 degrees centigrade were also much appreciated. Not wanting to waste any of that, we went for a quick hike at the Abisko gorge. At night, we enjoyed our first sunset in ten days. Mind you, that wasn’t simply the first time we saw the sun go down. It was the first time it went down at all since the last night at home before the holiday started. The Arctic is a special place indeed.

View down the Rombaken Fjord from the train between Narvik and Abisko	Passing an ore train.	A bright red railway station.
View from the train: the western end of Lake Torne.	The Abisko gorge.	The Abisko gorge.

Day 10: Abisko

Abisko National Park is an excellent place for hiking. It is the starting point of the Kungsleden, a 440 km trail through Sweden’s arctic wilderness, and there are plenty of other named and unnamed trails. Five of us set out on a roundtrip of about 18 km, first following the Kungsleden along the Abisko River, then following a side river east, and finally looping back to the hotel. The picture below, of the Abisko valley, shows the approximate route. The hotel is in the bottom left and the Abisko River runs from right to left; we walked in a counter-clockwise direction.

The various trails are rather poorly marked—except for the Kungsleden—so half of the time we weren’t sure we were going the right way, but we nonetheless managed to follow the route we wanted to. (Reading out my GPS logger at home confirmed this.) The first part, down the Kungsleden, was easy going and a good warm-up for the more challenging part along the side river. There, the trail was often no more than a foot wide and sometimes disappeared altogether when the ground turned rocky. There was a direction marker at the point where we had to turn left and head back to the hotel, but it stood a hundred meters down that new trail instead of at the intersection of the two trails.

We stopped for lunch on a vast open plain with magnificent views in every direction: see the top center and top right pictures below. It’s a wonderful feeling, knowing you’re the only people for at least a kilometer in every direction, in a wilderness as unspoiled as you’re likely to find anywhere in Europe, looking out on snow-capped mountains on one side and an endless lake on the other. The temperature was perfect, the sun had just the right intensity, the ground was dry and soft, and mosquitoes were nowhere to be found. I could have sat there all day to enjoy the simple beauty of it all.

Of course, we got up again at some point, refreshed and ready to tackle the second half of the hike. After crossing the open plain, we walked through birch and coniferous forests for the rest of the way, with enough hills and ponds and sudden clearings to keep it from getting repetitive. We got back to the hotel after a total of six hours and fifteen minutes, tired and sore, but nothing that a hot shower couldn’t wash away. We sat outside for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying a cold drink in the sun and watching a group of sparrows go about their playful business. At night, the sunset over Lake Torne was a splendid end to a splendid day.

The Abisko River along the Kungsleden.	Me during the lunch break.	The others right after the lunch break.
Dwarf birch trees.	Excellent weather for a hike.	The twin peaks east of Abisko National Park.
A sparrow outside the hotel.	Another sparrow.	Sunset over Lake Torne.

Day 11: Abisko – Kiruna

Our train out of Abisko didn’t leave until late in the afternoon, so we went for another hike today. We took the cable car up from Abisko to Njulla Mountain and hiked the last two kilometers to the top, where we were treated to wide views over Lake Torne and the surrounding mountains. The panorama below shows the lake’s upper 25 kilometers; the remaining 45 stretch off in the distance at the right.

The train ride from Abisko to Kiruna was pleasant enough, but not nearly as spectacular as the ride from Narvik to Abisko. Kiruna’s raison d’être is a huge slab of iron ore that has been mined continuously since 1900. In a twist of irony, the city itself is now getting in the way of further mining. However, we didn’t hear that until the next day, so I’m not going into details right now. Instead, I’ll say that our hotel in Kiruna looked pretty normal from the outside, but was rather peculiar on the inside. Every room was a different shape and size, the corridors twisted and turned like a snake on hot sand, and there were many more doors than necessary. It was the kind of place where you expect secret passages to a treasure chamber, a parallel dimension or Russia. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lewis Caroll spent time there while writing Alice in Wonderland.

Day 12: Kiruna

So, about that iron ore… Simply put, there’s a humungously huge slab of iron ore sitting in the ground near Kiruna. Back around 1900, when the Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara mining corporation (LKAB) got to work on mining the ore, it protruded from the surrounding land in the form of a mountain called Kiirunavaara. Studies have since revealed that the ore slab is four kilometers long and a hundred meters thick, and extends down for at least two kilometers. Now here’s the twist: the slab sits at an angle. Consider the schematic on the right. The green bit is the ore slab, viewed edge-on. The top few hundred meters have already been mined, leaving an overhanging wall of rock (black). Kiruna sits somewhere on top of that black part. It’s not in any danger right now of loosing its footing, but if mining operations continue for a few years, Kiruna is going to fall down one building at a time. Because there’s so much iron ore still to be mined, the decision has been made to relocate the entire city. This multi-billion dollar operation will be paid by LKAB. They’ll gladly do so, because the remaining iron ore is worth it many times over.

We were told all of this when we visited the mine. If you think this involves rickety elevators, narrow passages and low ceilings, think again. In the Kiruna mine, elevators are only used to haul ore to the surface. Workers and visitors go down by car or bus, following one of many paved tunnels that go several hundred meters below ground. As visitors, we didn’t see any actual ore mining up close. Instead, we had to make do with a tour guide who wouldn’t have been out of place as a drill sergeant in the army. He was an engaging story teller, stressing the scale of LKAB’s operations by inserting words like humongous, colossal and gigantic into every other sentence. On top of that, he knew the ore business inside-out, and was able to explain some fairly difficult processes in simple terms. (Having given several astronomy lectures to a general audience, I know how difficult it is to explain complicated stuff to non-experts.) My only major complaint of the whole visit was that it was too short, so that we had to rush through the final parts before the bus took us back to the surface.

A machine for vertical drilling.

A machine for horizontal drilling.

A machine to haul ore from the mining shafts to the elevators.

Day 13: Kiruna – Rovaniemi

On the final full day of our trip, we went back to Finland. En route we stopped at a moose farm, because so far only one person in our group had seen a live moose. (Most Scandinavian moose live below the Arctic Circle. Above, reindeer are more common.) My impression of moose after seeing them on this farm: a kind of large, clumsy cows with big antlers.

Rovaniemi is the administrative capital and commercial center of Finnish Lapland. It’s famous to some degree for Alvar Aalto, Lordi, the world’s northernmost McDonald’s, and Santa Claus. The latter is called Joulupukki in Finnish, which literally translates as Yule Goat. He lives in Santa Claus Village, or Joulupukin Pajakylä, a few kilometers north of Rovaniemi, right on the Arctic Circle. Visitors can meet Santa in his office for a chat and for pictures. A picture with Santa costs about thirty euros, which explains how he can pay for all those presents at Christmas. Surrounding Santa’s office are chains of souvenir shops, selling the usual array of items that, once back home, you discover you didn’t really want after all. It’s such a revolting display of cheap commercialism, such a shameless tourist trap, that I loved it.

Rovaniemi itself didn’t come across as very attractive. It had handsome enough buildings, a central square of the right size, plenty of pubs and restaurants, and parks and rivers, but it had no vibe. It felt dead. Come to think of it, all of the cities on this trip did. Maybe it’s an Arctic thing. Maybe cities just don’t work in the Arctic the way they do further south. All I know is that whenever we entered a city these two weeks, I was always eager to leave again and get back to nature, back to that unspoiled wilderness that still makes up most of the Arctic. I hope it will continue to do so for many generations to come.

A female moose.

A male moose.

Santa’s Office in Santa Claus Village, right on the Arctic Circle.

Day 14: Rovaniemi – Amsterdam

And thus came a wonderful holiday to an end. I loved the Arctic, with its bright nights, its unique flora and fauna, its Sami history, its majestic fjords, and its vast forests and lakes. I hope to be back one day—if I do, it may well be in winter, to experience a very different Arctic. For now, Norway, Finland and Sweden, I thank you for your beauty and hospitality. Takk! Kiitos! Tack!

My 2010 summer holiday took place in the northern parts of Scandinavia^*, with “northern” in this case meaning “above the Arctic Circle”. Knowing that the Arctic Circle passes through Alaska, the Yukon, Hudson Bay, Greenland and Siberia, this might sound like a winter holiday in summer, but it’s not that bad. The Gulf Stream makes the climate in Northern Europe much milder than it is at the same latitude on other continents. Daytime summer temperature are typically between 15 and 20 degrees centigrade—by no means hot, but just fine for hiking and sightseeing.

The holiday, booked through the Djoser organization, was in the form of a group tour by bus (with parts by train and ferry), with flights from the Netherlands to Finland and back. The group of 17 spanned a wide range of ages, from 27 to 72, and came from all over the Netherlands, making for a pleasantly rich mix. The map on the right shows the route we followed (also available at Google Maps). Starting from Inari in Finnish Lapland (the flag), we first went to the northernmost point of Europe, then descended down the Norwegian coast, and finally cut through Sweden to end up in Rovaniemi.

Below follows a day-by-day account of the first week, spiced up with a bunch of pictures (click to enlarge). If you want more pictures, go visit the full album. For stories of the second week, step through the door on your right.

^* Actually, that’s not entirely true, because Finland isn’t really part of Scandinavia. However, it’s often taken to be, and I’ll follow that convention here. If anything, it’s easier to type “Northern Scandinavia” than “Northern Finland, Norway and Sweden”.

Day 1: Amsterdam – Inari

A mostly uneventful first day to start things off. We flew Finnair from Amsterdam to the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and from there to the small arctic town of Ivalo. Cool feature on the Finnair planes: cameras mounted in the hull—one looking straight down, the other looking straight ahead—which were fed into the plane’s entertainment system. The view ahead during the final approach and landing was particularly engaging.

Ivalo’s airport is a small enough affair that they don’t bother much with gates. The plane simply pulled up next to the terminal, a staircase was pushed up, and we were sort of left on our own to cross the tarmac and find the baggage carousel.

We got aboard our spacious bus (45 seats for 17 travelers) and drove to our hotel in Inari, where we finished the day with dinner and a round of introductions. Oh, and we saw our first reindeer less than five minutes out of the airport. Many more would follow in the days to come.

Day 2: Inari

If you say Finland, you say forests and lakes, and you say Lapland. You might also say Sápmi, which is the same as Lapland, except the Sami people consider the names Lapps and Lapland derogatory. It’s similar to the Inuit/Eskimo and Black/Negro distinctions, I suppose. Anyhow, we got to see plenty of all things Finland on our first full day up north. In the morning we visited the Siida Museum, which focuses mainly on the Sami culture and history, and also somewhat on the arctic in general. Good stuff all around.

After a cosy lunch we went for a boat trip on Lake Inari, the third largest lake in Finland and the largest lake in Sápmi. I’ll remember it for the endless expanses of water and coniferous forest, and also for the thoroughly weird new-age music played on board. We got off for a brief visit to Ukonsaari, an island holy to the Sami, though by now probably entirely desecrated by loads of tourists. The view from the top of Ukonsaari would have been impressive under clear skies.

The boat took us back to the mainland for a 7 km hike over easy terrain. At least, that’s what the brochure said. In reality, it was more like a 9 km hike over very uneven terrain. That in itself wouldn’t have been too bad, but Finland’s endless forests and lakes get repetitive quickly. The final eight kilometers offered no more variation than the first one.

Back at the hotel, the sun made an appearance across the Juutua River, and I spent a pleasant hour photographing various bits and pieces of scenery.

A decorated Sami drum in the Siida Museum.	A Sami tipi at the Siida Museum. The cultural and historical similarities between the Sami and the Native Americans are striking.	View across Lake Inari from the island of Ukonsaari.
The Juutua River running behind our hotel in Inari.	Trees on the Juutua River bank.	Flowers on the Juutua River bank.

Day 3: Inari – Repvåg

Time to head further north, to the tiny fishing village of Repvåg in Norway, some 50 km short of Europe’s northernmost point. The road from Inari to Repvåg took us past the Sameting, or the Sami Parliament, in the Norwegian town of Karasjok. The Sameting building was inspired by a Sami tipi, a fitting but hardly original way of doing architecture in Northern Scandinavia if the number of tipi-inspired buildings is anything to go by. I think we even saw some tipi-inspired tipis.

Repvåg itself was even tinier than I had expected. It was raining most of the time, which made the place look more dreary and run-down than it probably was. For lack of better entertainment, we went for a short hike across the part-rocky, part-swampy peninsula that Repvåg sits on. The main course at dinner was fish, and, being in a fishing village, this sounded promising. Unfortunately, it was some anonymous white fish in a crust of breadcrumbs under a mysterious substance called “fish sauce”. I never discovered whether this meant sauce made of fish or for fish. Regardless, it sort of went well with the side dish of carrots and potatoes.

The hotel was located in an old fish processing plant, but many of the rooms weren’t. My room was essentially a converted construction trailer, which had all the charm of an actual construction trailer on a rainy shopping mall parking lot. Its most remarkable feature was that it rocked gently in the storm that blew overnight.

Sameting.

The village of Repvåg.

Fog drifting in from sea near Repvåg.

Day 4: Repvåg – North Cape – Alta

Having not quite blown off Repvåg’s peninsula overnight, we got up early to beat the day’s tourist rush at the North Cape. Rising 300 meters from sea and being connected to the rest of the world via a two-lane road, this cliff serves as a scenic and convenient marker for the northernmost point of Europe. The real northernmost point of Europe lies about four kilometers to the west and a kilometer and a half further north. However, being called Knivskjellodden, this point has considerably less marketing potential toward foreign tourists. Also, there’s no impressive cliff at Knivskjellodden, nor a two-lane road. Nitpickers might furthermore point out that both the North Cape and Knivskjellodden are on an island, so the actual real northernmost point of Europe is Cape Nordkinn, some 60 km east of the North Cape. Although boasting a quite impressive cliff, it’s even less accessible than Knivskjellodden, so it attracts few humans beyond the occasional reindeer herder.

Access to the North Cape comes at a price of some 25 euros per person, which I can only hope is put to good use in preserving the local flora, fauna and rocks. We encountered such dense fog that I could hardly see the rocks I walked on, much less whether they were well preserved or not. On top of that there was a very stiff wind blowing, sufficient to knock a man over, and nearly sufficient to blow the North Cape—sheer cliff and two-lane road and all—over to Cape Nordkinn. Amazingly, one of my travel companions managed to take a picture of me on the North Cape monument without either of us being blown into the Barents Sea.

On our way back south we encountered a small herd of reindeer at a safe position for the bus to pull over, so we spent a good ten minutes trying to get them to pose for our cameras. The weather improved with every kilometre away from the North Cape, and by the time we reached our hotel in the village of Gargia (outside the city of Alta), it felt like summer again. The hotel was run by a chap named Paul, who was also (in his own words) the head chef, waitress and cleaning lady. His two main passions were sled dogs and tourists. He seemed to care for both with equal amounts of affection and enthusiasm. Add to that his top-notch cooking (a wonderful reindeer stew and the best salmon I’ve ever had) and the beautiful location, and the Gargia Fjellstue was easily my favourite hotel of the entire trip.

Heavy fog on the island of Magerøya, en route to the North Cape.	Me at the North Cape.	The fog-enshrouded Children Of The Earth monument at the North Cape.
The Porsanger Fjord.	The Porsanger Fjord.	A reindeer at the side of the road from Honningsvåg to Olderfjord.

Day 5: Alta

The main tourist attraction in the city of Alta is the Alta Museum, dedicated to the prehistoric rock carvings found along the shore of the nearby fjord. Named the European Museum of the Year back in 1993, it’s still pretty much everything a museum should be: focused, engaging, accessible, reasonably priced, well maintained, and so on. The rock carvings are restored to what they are believed to have looked like originally. A guide book—available in a multitude of languages, including Dutch—offers some general background on the carvings and on the people that made them, and describes each panel of carvings in great detail. It takes a 5 km hike to see all the panels, and with the weather cooperating for a change, this was every bit a pleasant activity.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped by the Canyon Huskies sled dog farm to see these powerful dogs up close. Capable of pulling sleds for hundreds of kilometers in temperatures that even a polar bear wouldn’t brave, it’s understandable they were a bit restless tied to poles. However, most of it was just an energetic playfulness, a desire to go out and have fun. Apparently they like running through the snow so much that when you tie them to a sled, you’d better got aboard quickly, or they’ll just take off on their own. The farm also had a handful of puppies, which scored very high on the cute and cuddly scale. The one below made for one of my favorite animal pictures ever.

Rock carving of a pregnant reindeer female at the Alta Museum.

One of the adult dogs at Canyon Huskies.

One of the puppies at Canyon Huskies. Doesn’t it just break your heart…?

Day 6: Alta – Tromsø

Not much to report about this day. A good chunk of it was spent en route from Alta to the city of Tromsø. We stopped for coffee at the Gildetun pass for a splendid view over the Kvænangen Fjord under mostly clear skies. It’s at times and places like these that Norway’s beauty really comes through. Another such time and place: when we encountered a herd of reindeer on the road along the Alta Fjord.

In Tromsø we visited the Arctic Cathedral, which looks sort of like an iceberg (though, somehow, it was probably inspired by a Sami tipi) and also a lot like the protestant church in my parents’ town. The latter is probably coincidence, the former probably not. Still, as much as I liked the Arctic Cathedral, it couldn’t match the natural beauty of the Norwegian fjords.

Reindeer on the road along the Alta Fjord.

Kvænangen Fjord seen from Gildetun.

The Arctic Cathedral in Tromsø.

Day 7: Tromsø – Hamn

Leaving Tromsø the next morning, we discovered a bit of road engineering I didn’t know existed anywhere in the world: underground roundabouts. Most of Tromsø lies on the island of Tromsøya. The easiest way to cross from east to west is to take one of the tunnels running underneath the island’s mountain ridge. Now, rather than having a few separate tunnels, the Tromsøya road authorities figured it would be a good idea to connect all of them with additional tunnels, and to use full-sized underground roundabouts as intersections. Marvellous!

Emerging on the other side, we crossed a bridge to the island of Kvaløya and continued on west to the town of Brensholmen, where we would take a ferry to island of Senja. I say would, because the ferry was out with engine failure. With some luck, the ferry company said, it would go again around 5pm. Obviously, we didn’t want to wait eight hours and run the risk the ferry still wouldn’t go. Besides, we had another ferry to catch on the other side of Senja, from Gryllefjord to Andenes, where we would spend the next two nights. Even if the Brensholmen ferry went at 5pm, we wouldn’t catch the last ferry from Gryllefjord.

So, instead of a half hour by ferry and another hour and a half by bus, we had to go the long way around and spend over five hours by bus to get to Gryllefjord. We arrived a little after 5pm, well in time for the 7pm ferry. Just to be on the safe side, our tour guide checked with the ferry company, who confirmed that the ferry had just left Andenes for Gryllefjord, and that its engines were doing fine.

We headed into a nearby coffee shop to await the ferry’s arrival. The owner overheard us talking about the problems with the other ferry and, having heard the full story, looked at us with a straight face and said, “Didn’t you hear that the ferry from Andenes just turned back because of bad weather? There won’t be a ferry from Gryllefjord anymore tonight.” We laughed and told her she shouldn’t make fun of our malady. “No, I’m serious,” she said.

And she was.

This time, going the long way around by bus wasn’t an option, so our tour guide faced the challenge of finding rooms for nineteen people on short notice in a remote part of the world. Fortunately, a hotel in Hamn, fifteen minutes outside of Gryllefjord, was able to accomodate us all. Even more fortunately, these rooms were much nicer and more beautifully situated than the ones we would have had in Andenes. Now we just had to hope the weather would improve, so we could still make it to Andenes in time for tomorrow’s whale safari.

As it happened, the weather did improve enough for the ferry to resume its service, but only barely. I thought I had a rough time on a ferry from Belgium to England many years ago, but that was smooth sailing compared to what we got the next morning. How bad was it? Find out behind this door…

Following my summer holiday to Finland, Sweden and Norway (stories coming soon!), it’s time for an update of the map that shows the countries I’ve visited over the years (click to enlarge). The map is colour-coded according to the reason I went there: gold stands for business, blue for pleasure, and purple for both. In case a country consists of disconnected pieces of land, I only painted the area or areas I actually went. The list of countries follows below the map.

Austria
Belgium
Chile
China
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Mauritius
Netherlands
Norway
Portugal
South Africa
Spain
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
United States

The second batch of pictures from my US tour is up for viewing (or at Picasa Web). This batch covers the Los Angeles area, including Hollywood Boulevard, Dodger Stadium, Beverly Hills, Topanga and Malibu Creek State Parks, and Santa Monica.

I’ve put the first batch of pictures from my US tour online, covering Austin and Phoenix. Click here to view them within my website, or here to view them at Picasa Web Albums. I didn’t take any pictures in Ann Arbor, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it has a very handsome campus and downtown area. No pictures from the Grand Canyon either, because today’s tour got cancelled due to all the snow and closed roads around Flagstaff.

Following a beautiful morning in Austin, TX (sunny, 20+ °C), I flew into a major storm in Phoenix, AZ. For a while, it actually looked like I wasn’t flying into Phoenix at all, given the weather conditions. But we did, so I got to experience what it feels to land in 25 mph crosswinds, with gusts up to 35 mph. Not too much fun, I’ll tell you.

From the airport to the hotel, I shared a shuttle with two guys whose flights out of Phoenix got cancelled. Indeed, inbound and outbound flights got cancelled all over the board. Mine was one of the few that still got in this afternoon. The shuttle driver had been watching incoming flights for a while, and had seen many aborted landings. Made me feel good that we touched down on the first attempt.

I’m in my hotel now, comfortably sheltered against the wind and rain, and watching the news on tv. They’re calling it the storm of the century; given that it’s the worst storm since at least 1993, that moniker is correct, albeit a tad premature. Phoenix is getting record amounts of rain, apparently the most in a single day since people started keeping track. Further north, the city of Flagstaff is getting a feet or two of snow. Elsewhere, the abundant precipitation is causing floods, and that’s expected to get worse over the next few days.

I was going to go on a bus tour to the Grand Canyon tomorrow, but it’s exceedingly unlikely that that will still happen. Authorities are strongly advising people not to travel. If the tour company decides to go on with the tour, I’ll assume it’s safe enough and I’ll go. If they cancel, I guess I’ll be stuck in my hotel for a day, because I’m sure as hell not gonna rent a car and go anywhere on my own. It’s too bad I’ll miss out on the Grand Canyon, but that’s the way life is sometimes.

My tradition of visiting the United States in January continues into the new decade. As the years pass, the number of destinations increases. In 2008, the business part of the trip only included Granville, OH. Last year, I also visited Columbus, OH and Ann Arbor, MI. This time, the two Ohio destinations are replaced by four new places: Austin, TX; Pasadena, CA; Cambridge, MA; and Washington, DC. I’ll also have a day and a half in Phoenix, AZ, but no business will be done there – the result of some logistical issues in planning the whole deal.

The purpose of this trip? To present my research at some of the top US astronomy institutes, and to talk about the possibilities for a postdoc position somewhere.

I’m off to a good start, with a pleasant flight from Amsterdam to Detroit (insofar as sitting in a cramped seat for 8.5 hours is ever pleasant), a quick transfer to my hotel in Ann Arbor, and a comfortable room in that hotel. Following the Christmas incident, security prior to boarding was tighter than ever. No body scan yet, but a full pat-down for every passenger, more stringent passport control, and a brief interrogation as to the purpose of the trip. The flight itself was unremarkable, except that it struck me as odd that the window shutters were closed almost the whole time. I don’t recall that being the case in 2008 and 2009.

Once out of the airport in Detroit, it was clear that I was in the US. The half-hour drive from the airport to Ann Arbor runs through the typical urban sprawl, with an overabundance of asphalt, billboards, gas stations and food courts. The hotel (Quality Inn & Suites, just off the US23 highway) is anonymous, but the girl at the reception was friendly, the room looks fine, and there’s free wi-fi.

I’ll be at the University of Michigan for the next day and a half, with a talk scheduled for Tuesday. I had a great time at UMich last year, and I look forward to repeating that experience.

I spent a few days in London earlier this week, attending the annual meeting of the Astrophysical Chemistry Group (APCG) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Hosted by the University College London, the topic of the meeting was computational astrochemistry. That’s pretty much what I do on a daily basis, and indeed there were a number of talks very relevant to my own research. Unfortunately, the meeting ran a bit chaotically. It was shifted from Leeds to London at the last minute, giving the organizers too little time to get everything properly arranged. Also, it felt like some services at the university were still on a holiday break, a problem that previous APCG meetings also suffered from.

Anyway, despite some organizational problems (and a broken heating system on the first day, with temperatures outside around freezing), the meeting was certainly useful. I met some old friends from the UK and elsewhere and got to make a few new ones. On the second (and final) day I gave a 25-minute presentation of my own research, which was met with enthusiastic reactions from several people.

The meeting ended late Wednesday afternoon, so I had the rest of the day to do some sightseeing. It was over ten years since my last visit to London, and back then I only saw a small part of the city. I took the subway (a.k.a. tube or underground) to Trafelgar Square, where both fountains would have been frozen over if people hadn’t been breaking the ice all the time. Heading south, I passed by Downing Street (with the Prime Minister’s residence at No. 10) to arrive at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. After a brief stop at Westminster Abbey, I crossed Westminster Bridge and had a quick bite at Waterloo Station. Refueled, I took a ride in the London Eye. This 135-metres tall ferris wheel (the largest in the world) takes about half an hour to complete a full circle. The view from the top across nightly London is truly magnificent.

Back on the ground, I took the tube towards London Bridge and walked along the Thames’ south embankment to the Tower Bridge. Crossing it, I followed the street past the Tower of London and carried on towards the Bank of England. I got back onto the underground for a quick ride to my final destination: St. Paul’s Cathedral. This one was a bit of a disappointment. Beautiful and large though it is, at night from the outside it doesn’t look all that spectactular. So, after a quick walk about, I headed back to the hotel. After all, I did have an early flight to catch the next day.

Pictures can be found here.

My computer clock shows 2:49 as I begin typing this post. That is to say, eleven-to-three on Friday morning (indeed, more like pre-morning) in London. My day started over 21 hours ago, at 5.30, in that city. It is now coming to an end several thousand kilometres to the west, in the small town of Granville, Ohio, where the local time is 21:49. It’s been a day of travelling interspersed with lots of waiting. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, I still don’t really feel tired.

My day ran something like this:

05:30 (GMT): The alarm goes off. I’m instantly awake and ready to get up—a clear sign that today’s a special day, because when my alarm goes off at 07:00 on normal work days, I still very much feel like getting another hour of sleep.

05:55: I check out of the hotel and lug my 25+ kilos of luggage (one suitcase and one backpack) onto a quiet London street for a short walk to the nearest underground station. The London underground is a splendid way of getting around, except when there are power outages or other problems, as has happened already thrice this year. Things are fine today on my line, and I’m soon zipping towards Heathrow.

07:05: Heathrow Airport. I already checked in online the other night, so I’m well on time to check in my suitcase for the 08:50 flight. Security is a breeze, leaving me plenty of time for some breakfast.

08:50: In an unusual case of timeliness, we depart at almost exactly the scheduled moment. The weather is good all the way to Detroit, the captain tells us, and we’re expected to land half an hour early.

11:45 (EST): We must have had some extra push, because we actually arrive forty minutes early. Great! Now I’ll have a layover of almost four hours.

13:40: Almost two hours after arriving in Detroit, I’m finally at the gate where my connecting flight to Columbus is scheduled to depart. Immigration took forever, mostly due to half a dozen Chinese and Arabian people being unable to properly complete the immigration form. The immigration officer looked positively relieved when I got to her counter and had everything in order. Getting my suitcase rechecked and myself through security again also was anything but a quick affair, but it seemed like only a few minutes compared to the infinite slowness at the immigration desk.

14:20: The 15:26 flight to Columbus is delayed because the incoming plane hasn’t arrived yet. The new scheduled departure time is 15:47, with the plane only expected to arrive at four-something. Clearly, that’s not going to work.

16:15: We board the plane. The departure time by now is listed at 16:30. Some red lights go off during pre-flight checks, and our captain informs us it may take some time, as all mechanics are already busy fixing other planes.

17:45: After sitting idly on board for an hour and a half, we are sent back into the terminal building. I’m not sure whether they’re still trying to fix the original problem, or something else came up, but clearly the plane isn’t going to fly to Columbus anytime soon. Back inside the terminal, we are sent off to another gate to be booked onto another plane.

18:30: We’re boarding a slightly larger plane with a different flight number, but with the same destination and the same group of people. By 18:47, we leave the gate to be de-iced and take off for Columbus.

19:52: We hit the tarmac at Columbus Airport, three hours and eighteen minutes after we should have. Steve Doty, my host here for the next three weeks or so, soon arrives to pick me up and bring me to the Bed & Breakfast in Granville.

22:31: After stopping at the local supermarket for some groceries, I check into the B&B and hook up to the wireless internet to check the latest gossip from home and write this post. (You’ll notice that I’m not particularly quick at writing these things. Actually, it’s already 22:32 at this point, and it’ll probably be 22:33 by the time I jot down the final period.) Now that that’s done, let me get some sleep. More stories (including London, and what I was doing there) tomorrow.

I don’t like soccer.

It’s a boring game. After watching twenty-two men chasing a ball for ninety minutes, you’d be lucky if they scored thrice. In 306 games in the Dutch Eredivisie this year, the average was 3.12 goals per game. That’s roughly one goal every half hour, or less if you include the half-time break. Major League Baseball teams managed 9.60 runs per game in the 2007 regular season. Granted, baseball games take longer, but not more than three times as long.

Normally, it’s quite possible to avoid soccer, but every other summer there’s a European Championship or a World Championship. During those three or four weeks, it’s as if there’s nothing but soccer. It’s on every tv channel, in every newspaper, on every website. Homes and bars and stores turn orange. Even people turn orange, and Planet Earth might as well be a giant soccer ball.

Most annoyingly, nobody seems to be allowed not to like soccer for the duration of the tournament. The soccer craze is forced upon you, whether you like it or not. You have to watch the games and talk about them the next day. That’s society’s fault, though, not the game’s.

Indeed, it’s no different this time. The European Championship started last week and it’s everywhere. Just two more weeks, and I’ll be free again until June 11th, 2010.

Still…

I watched the Netherlands’ first game on Monday, against reigning World Champs Italy, and I have to confess I enjoyed it. The score was certainly pleasing enough: 3-0 in our favour. Beforehand, a draw was considered an optimistic prediction. Our squad played their best game in years, Italy their worst. And yes, I watched it in its entirety, and I wasn’t bored. (Well, perhaps a little bit at some point during the second half. I continued to watch with one eye, while reading a magazine with the other.)

Of course, I didn’t have much else to do that night. I was visiting my thesis advisor in Garching this week. That’s a nice little German town. Nice, and very quiet. I thought I might as well watch the game for a while.

Yesterday, during supper, Croatia were beating Germany. That was fun as well, if for a different reason. The German commentator was so terribly desperate that I almost felt sorry for him. It’s only a game!

The Netherlands’ second game is on right now, against France. It’s two thirds through the first half and, much to my surprise, we’ve got a 1-0 lead. Perhaps I should turn on my television. I might enjoy it
again…

[Update: We beat France 4-1 to secure first place in Group C, the "Group of Death" with World Champions Italy and WC runners-up France, and we haven't even played the third and final game yet. Group of Death indeed! It'll be the death of Italy or France, or both if we let Romania win on Tuesday.]