Sandra and I would like to wish you all a happy holiday season
during the end of the year and all the best for the New Year 2019!
Here's our
traditional Season's greetings card. This year I've been lazy to
write in the blog, so I'll use this opportunity to briefly look
back on what we've been up to in 2018.
Making a hole in the ice at the Saimaa lake.
I spent a good part of the winter and spring in Helsinki, enjoying
the city life as well as combining it with some IT work and other
projects. Sandra stayed mostly at home in Germany but came to
Finland for a couple of weeks in February and March. Together we
spent a few winter days at my father's cottage by the lake Saimaa,
cross-country skiing, having sauna and testing the new fireplace
which was installed during the previous summer.
View over the roofs of the town Füssen.
We both work part-time, which gives us quite a bit of flexibility
in planning our schedules. Sandra is employed as a laboratory
technician and I started in 2017 a new activity as a city guide in
Füssen, the nearest town. That's a great opportunity to use my
language skills and do a variety of different tours which I've
enjoyed quite a lot. This year I wasn't employed at the
Neuschwanstein Castle any more. It
was
a
good experience and I could consider working there again in the
future but two seasons was a good amount for now.
Classic mountain view on the Sadnig Höhenweg, Austrian Alps.
Our main holiday tour in the summer was a three and a half week hike
over the Alps in July-August, starting from Lake Königssee in
Germany and ending with a crossing of the Triglav National Park in
Slovenia. We crossed the Alps on
foot
once
before in 2010, but this was a quite different route. It was
based on the route described in the hiking book Salzburg - Trieste
by Christof Herrmann, but we adapted it according to weather and our
preferences along the way.
One of the cute marmots we saw on the way.
The first part of our hike took us through the Berchtesgaden
National Park, which is well known for its limestone rock
formations. Then we continued over several mountain ranges in
Austria, including parts of the Hohe Tauern National Park and the
Kreuzeck Group. The Kreuzeck mountains turned out to be one of our
favourite sections of the trip, with classic alpine views of rocky
peaks, grassy fields, pittoresque lakes, small mountain huts and
quite a few animals including marmots.
A capricorn in the Julian Alps.
After Austria we walked shortly on Italian soil before entering
Slovenia and the Julian Alps. There we had plenty of more limestone
rock and the most demanding sections of our trip, not only because
of the rough terrain but also because of the heat. The whole central
Europe was experiencing a heat wave and although the temperatures up
in 2000 meters of altitude were a bit cooler than in the valleys, it
still got pretty hot both during the days and in the fully packed
dormitories of the mountain huts at night.
Our highlights in the Julian Alps included sightings of majestic
capricorns at close range and admiring the Edelweiss flowers
blooming in large numbers. In most other parts of the Alps they've
almost disappeared and we hadn't seen one for many years.
In addition to the walk over the Alps, we were quite a bit on the
trails this year, including two nice hikes near Innsbruck. Our good
friend Peter lives there, is often willing to join us in our outdoor
activities and it's always a pleasure to visit him. On our last
visit we also went together to a concert
by Eivør,
which we can definitely recommend!
Sandra showing some of the mushrooms we picked in Finland in September.
Fireworks in Füssen on the New Years day, 2017.
In September we visited Finland again, which was a perfect timing
for the mushroom season. We have never picked so many chantarelles,
boletes and black trumpet mushrooms in two weeks. It was a challenge
to conserve and bring even about half of the catch with us to
Germany. One of our favourite dishes is potato dumplings with
mushroom sauce, which we've been preparing quite often during the
last few months.
This year we'll spend the Christmas Eve with the family of Sandra's
old friends who live in a village about 30 km from us. They have two
children and the grandparents will be joining as well, so it'll
probably be the most traditional Christmas we'd had for years. For
the New Year my parents and both of my brothers will come for a
visit. We're looking forward to that, mostly we meet in Helsinki and
my youngest brother Lari who lives in Canada we're anyway not seeing
very often.
