Bunnies in the yard. Scouting for a house. End of a blog.

I'm putting this blog on hold. My web presence is no longer centred around photos and stories of my foreign adventures. My foreign adventure has become everyday life and it rarely occurs to me to blog about it, which is not the same as to say it's boring. I could have blogged about the night-time visits of bunnies in our yard, our search for a suburbian house around Helsinki, but I won't and it's for no apparent reason. I trust my friends can locate me on facebook to keep up with the happenings up north and I'll start posting photos there.

Thanks for reading the occasional post here. This was post number 126, 22/2/2009, on blog 'the new adventures of stefe' started on 30/12/2006, brought to you from Holland, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Finland.

Pretty Winter Things

A pictorial compilation of Finnish winter fun-true, we can only spend 5 minutes outside at a time, but we make the most of it:

In Juankoski, our annual christmas retreat, the snow was at the perfect sculpting temperature (around 0 degrees Celsius) just after we arrived.


Then it got colder - perfect for skiing (pictures can't be made public in case I ever run for presidency).


Back in Helsinki, after the new year's celebrations in Turku, and after a further drop of the mercury to a stunning minus ten to twelve degrees, we take one of our 42 cars and drive to Nuuksio to stand on frozen water.


..and to warm ourselves with fire and sausage.

Pipari time

For the uninitiated: pipari(piparkakku)-time follows Glöggi time and is succeeded by Pepernoten time.

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[it's snowing]

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A bit over a year ago, I blogged from the Cote d'Azur that it was still too bloody hot down there, even deep into Autumn. Well, I got my change of climate fair and square with the little migration that followed that spell of sunshine. This morning I noted for the first time this season that the thermometer mounted just outside our window was stuck precisely at zero. That's No Degrees Celsius At All. Add a bit of wind chill and the fact that I haven't yet unpacked my winter coat, and you can figure what shade of blue I turned during the 5 minute bike ride to work. I'll brave the elements again tomorrow, but then I'll be opening the boxes of fur over the weekend and next time I appear outside I will hidden carefully in wads of clothing.

I just uploaded some pictures from our sunday morning walk in the parky area around our place. We spent the rest of the day thinking hot chocolate.

Pick of the month

Happy Hallowfest!

Goodbye Tuscany

I am about to leave Tuscany following a week of sciency conference. Bye bye 4 star hotel, copious amounts of food, and people from all over the world who know what I do for a living and, in most cases, understand it better than I do.

The conference ended early today, and stifling my stubborn case of the common cold, I took a walk down to Barga and back (up). I found myself some nice grappa so come along to Helsinki now, finnish friends (and others alike, if short on grappa), let's start the winter warm.

It was 24 degrees Celsius today, and I'm sitting outside typing this up even though it is eleven at night (the door to the conference room is locked but the wifi is left on and reaches at least this far). Bats are flying around and insects land on my screen. I hope the picture taken with my webcam gives you a feel for the place. Ciao - sniffing Stefe