If you ask 1000 people if they would rather spend their vacation in Jamaica or the Sakha Republic, 999 people will say they would rather spend their vacation in Jamaica. 998 people will say this, because they haven't got the slightest idea as to where this Sakha Republic would be; and the one person that does know where it is, will most likely rather go to Jamaica, for one very simple reason.
The Sakha Republic is a Federal district in The Far Eastern Federal District (Eastern Siberia), and is probably best known for the village of Oymyakon where the average temperature in January is between -40°C to -50°C (as opposed to +40°C in Jamaica). The village is known as the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth, and on January 26, 1926, a temperature of −71.2°C was recorded.
"Wait a second... you said 999 people...". Well yes... because there is always that one person who would rather go to Oymyakon: me. I'm a total sucker for scenery. Sure, Jamaica has very nice beaches and nice views... but in my opinion they're nothing compared to the beauty of ice. Let me show you why.
As I was driving to the mall this morning in order to do some groceries, I noticed that everything was covered in tiny ice crystals, and immediately fell in love. I decided to take a small detour and make a little trip along the riverbeds of the Meuse River to make some snapshots.
Click here for the full album.
It's Saturday, the weather is shit... you're bored... what do you do? Hmmz... Aha! Yes, of course! Lets gather up the House Ajira clan(tm), and go visit a Christmas market!
We went to the Christmas Market at CentrO, which is the largest shopping mall in the whole of Europe. It's located in Oberhausen, Germany.
It was way too crowded, and therefore quite hot and sweaty, but it was fun. Lots of nice foods (bye-bye dieting...), some funny furry purses, smelly wooden balls, and other stuff you probably don't need, but hey who cares?
After strawling around, and stuffing our faces, we also visited the local cinema to watch "The day the Earth stood still". But this being in Germany, of course it meant that the movie was redubbed with German speech, which was a whole new experience on its own.
After installing the off-site storage server in the datacenter, my co-worker Jack noticed something strange looking across the street.
Apparently the statue is called "Son-O-House". It is crammed with small sensors and speakers that affect the sounds it makes. So the sounds change based on what the sensors detect. Art can be so weird, yet cool at the same time
Ah oui, la France... Comment j'aime la terre des vins et du fromage savoureux...
My parents always go to the Alsace and Vosges mountains on vacation, and bring home stories of mountains, waterfalls and vineyards. I just had to see it for myself.So this year, I promised my parents I would visit them for a couple of days while they are on vacation. My cousin Kevin decided to tag along, and so we left on Thursday morning. My satellite navigation system said that the quickest route (577 kilometer) there was via German, but since the gasoline is cheap in Luxembourg, we decided to drive via Belgium and Luxembourg.
My parents were camping in a town called Luttenbach, which is a small and serene village. Apparently it is so small that my navigation system didn't know about it. It was still early when I programmed my navigation system, and of course... Murphy never sleeps. So... my navigation system did exactly what it had to do and drove us perfectly towards the wondrous village of Lutterbach. By the time we found out that we were in the wrong village (Lutterbach instead of Luttenbach), we were approximately 120 km too far south. If you've ever driven in the mountains, you know that even a small 30 km trip can take up to an hour and a half, because of all the twists and turns you have to take... So our small 120 km "detour" caused us to arrive on the camping site at 20:00, instead of the planned 17:00. The route home was much quicker, hehe.
The full photo album of the trip can be found in the "photos" section. We drove there on Thursday, and returned home on Monday. A small report:
Friday.
Due to the small configuration mistake with the navigation system, we missed the route that my parents said would be super to drive: the Col de la Slucht. This route is famous amongst bicyclists, but according my parents there's plenty to see for car drivers as well. Since we had to buy some food for the night anyway, we decided to drive over the Col the la Slucht to a town called Gérardmer. My parents weren't bullshitting, and the views were indeed spectacular. We also visited two small waterfalls, but due to the rainy weather we didn't spend much time there. After eating a very nice pizza in a local restaurant we drove back to the camping.
Grocery time! Luttenbach is a small hamlet on the outskirts of a village called Munster, and on Saturdays there's market in Munster. Munster has two very distinct features: Munster cheese and storks. Storks? You mean the baby bombers? Yes, those storks! The village is crammed with them, and they're pretty much everywhere. One small note on Munster cheese, by the way... keep your nose closed! My god that stuff smells bad.
The highest mountain in the region is the Grand Ballon at 1423,7m. On the top are a small weather station and a restaurant with a nice view across the valley. Unfortunately for us, it was a bit cloudy, and we couldn't see very far. A cool thing that we did see was the water vapor rising up from the woods.
All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and I will definitely return there some time to check out more of the region.
When I'm driving home from my monthly IPL hair-removal session, I always stop for a bite at the KFC drive-through in Abcoude (NL).
Today, when I was enjoying my 3-piece meal, I noticed something awkward. On the patch of grass next to me, there were at least 100 black crows! What the hell? What's the deal here? Hmmz... I do like to dress in black... Maybe I'm some kind of Crow God, and they flock to worship their Deity...
Sorry for the lousy quality, I had to tweak the photos quite a bit to make them somewhat visible. They were quite blurry to start with.