The lakes are open and the leftover snow hides in some dark patches in the forests. The birches have started stretching out their leaves, butterflies flutter around and it doesn’t get dark anymore in the night. It’s like winter never happened, but the blog reveals that it did happen although I think it was too short. But that’s no real news.
This is probably the last winter article for long, for now it’s spring.
I think many of the German blog readers know the Magazine Nordis. From today issue 6/2018 is available in many newsagent’s and bookshops. This issue is very special to me, because it contains my first printed travel report ever.
While I have written more than a thousand articles online I never tried to write for magazines. Until this year.
In January – just days before I started my six-week winter journey – I asked Nordis if they were interested in an article about the Varanger peninsula. I got a positive response and an offer to write a four-pager the very same day.
In summer I started to chose and edit pictures, planned the content and finally started writing my debut article in the world of print. It got the title “Winterliches Varanger” (wintery Varanger).
Quite a challenge when outside temperatures approach +30 °C. Anyway I had many photos and a lot of memories to cool me down.
So, if you want to read an article of mine, that’s (a) offline and (b) in German you’re welcome to buy the new Nordis and tell me what you think.
Did I read the article in the Nordis by myself? To be honest, not yet. I read it too many times while editing and proof-reading. I had the same when recording as a jazz pianist. It took some time until I could listen to the result.
This article is part of the series “2018-02: Ski tour near Kvikkjokk”.
I’m starting a ski tour tomorrow and therefore will be without computer, without electricity and probably without internet as well. The blog will hibernate for a while.
See you soon, in around two weeks …
Day ½ of the winter journey 2018
Good morning.
This is how my sleeping room looked like yesterday:
As you may guess, I’m about to travel.
The journey had already started yesterday. After packing everything into the car (now equipped with a roof box) Annika and I travelled to Solberget where we arrived 23:50.
3 hours, 45 minutes drive. The first half: E4 and some trucks almost impossible to pass. Both boring and tiring. The second half: winter wonderland with a snowy road (we were the very only car), snow covered trees, some reindeers, at least five elks, full moon and polar light.
Today we’ll visit the market in Jokkmokk. The first event in my 6-7-week-journey.
A foretaste of what is to come: market in Jokkmokk — a bit of Solberget — a ski tour with a German friend – Kirkenes together with Annika and much more …
Sometimes I’ll be online and write articles and show photos in this blog, sometimes I won’t.
Anyway, stay tuned …
/Olaf
Finally my brand-new photo website is online!
At least the first version …
It’s far away from being complete. In future I want to offer an online shop for prints, but it will take a while until I’ll find time for that. And there are more photos to show. I’ll add them one by one.
Anyway you’re very welcome to visit the photo website and take a look by yourself.
Here you go:
Just a short note about the technique. I have to admit that I was a bit lazy with testing the new blog. It should work quite well but there are a lot of untested combinations. If you find a bug or a glitch or have other problems with the blog please drop me a line. I’ll try to fix the problem if it’s not linked to Internet Exporer 6 or 7.
Thank you.
/Olaf
Hello. I am Olaf Schneider, a German jazz musician, web developer and photographer having been living in Northern Sweden since April 2010.
It’s September 2014 and I just started a new blog. The main focus will be the great outdoors in Northern Scandinavia: about travelling, landscape, nature, weather and being outside afoot, with skis or kayak, but probably there’ll be many other articles, too: about swedish culture, events, photography, cute kittens and other bits and pieces. And a lot of pictures because I love outdoor photography!
I hope you’ll enjoy way up north. I’m looking forward to your numerous comments.
Have fun!
/Olaf
Some of you might already know me in person or my German blog nordwärts, where I wrote more than 800 articles and published more than 3500 photos You’ll may ask “Why another blog?”
nordwärts is German. There’re many Swedes that can speak a bit of German and understand more than they would admit. But only few of them can read it quite fluently. So I thought about writing nordwärts in German and Swedish. But beside of the increased time exposure writing bilingual I got more and more contact to people that neither speak Swedish or German whether they are from Finland or Dubai. Therefore I decided to write in English. (Yes, I’ll definitely make many mistakes.)
Four and a half years ago my new life in Northern Sweden was all amazingly new and exotic to me: The first snow in October, the Swedish language and culture, the reindeers on the inland roads. But many things got quite normal now. Still I adore my life in Northern Sweden, but it’s not new to me longer. I started writing about playing music on nordwärts or other things that are not at all Sweden-related. Should I write a public diary for the rest of my life? Probably not. Therefore I decided to shift focus away from “my (not so) new life in Sweden” to other topics as mentioned above.
I love change. That’s all me!