WHITE ON WHITE

This winter is supposed to be a mild one, but weather conditions far too the East have put a stop to that: a mighty High over Siberia has stretched its wings to cover most of continental Europe, with some tendrils even reaching as far north as Stockholm.

When I woke up this morning, around 8 am, serene stillness was reigning over Hammarby Sound. White ice greeted white sky slowly turning pink, and the Sound was completely frozen over. The sun had not yet risen over the horizon, but soon it would appear to shed more warmth over the scenery. It was Sunday morning and no large boats had been trafficking the strait since Friday afternoon, preventing smaller boats from daring the thrip.

Whilst bathing in that white and peaceful splendor, I spared some thoughts for less fortunate people down south. Apparently, temperatures in the minus tens have been prevailing for some time as far south as the Balkans, leaving people down there wide open to the travails of extreme frost. Whilst these poor Southerners are freezing (some even to death) in their barely sheltered lodgings, here in Hammarby Sound we barely notice that it is minus 18° outside this white morning. My apartment is keeping a constant healthy 21° inside, whatever temperature may be hounding the air over the Sound.

Whilst I am contemplating this, time has passed and it is now already 9 am. The sun has briefly won over high fog and is shedding its splendor over the ice. Time to come to closure with this blog and hurry outside, to benefit from clear frosty air on my nose and ears!

FATHER FROST IS BACK!

Yesterday was quiet Saturday, so I lingered in bed for a while longer. When getting up, around 8.30, I realized that I had almost missed a charming scenery. All was calm, no gushes of wind to speak of. Ice was slowly forming on the waters, with Fog shrouding Hammarby Sound, waiting for me to document it for you trusted readers.

The day before had been relatively warm and humid. In the wee morning hours of this Saturday, the air must have gotten progressively cooler, condensing out the humidity into a myriad of tiny icicles forming the mist you are looking at. You have seen this type of picture before on the blog, you say? "Yes!", I have to admit it, but would like to add that foggy scenery stimulates my aesthetic senses, so you have to bear with me, whilst waiting for the fog to lift.

You will not be disappointed, since it indeed did lift a couple of hours later. You may ask yourself where all the icicles had disappeared to. Well, the picture below provides you with the answer. It was taken around 1.30 pm. As you can see, the fog had transformed itself into a needly carpet, covering ground and trees with its glittery whiteness. It was a pleasure to behold, far beyond the camera's ability to put it on screen. 

After this, starting during the following night, rare snowflakes began to drift down from a heaven completely calmed and completed the job. This morning, around 9.30, our cosy community was fully covered in white, foreboding the winter that had dallied for so long, but will now certainly stay with us throughout February, the coldest Winter month. Still, I expect this to be a normal Stockholm Winter, so tomorrow the snow will be gone again, or – which is worse – turned into mush. But this is the price to pay for not having to endure arctic conditions in our part of the world.

FOGGY BOTTOMS

After two loong cold winters, it seems that this one will be reverting to the long-term trend: generally humid days with intermittent snow or slush, soon to be gone again and replaced by periods of milder weather. November has hitherto been exceptionally warm, foreboding a relatively benign holiday season. With warm days and cool nights, fog is building up at dawn, to be dissolved only later in the day. When I stepped out on the balcony this morning at 11 AM, this enticing scenery met my admiring eyes. As you can see, I did not forget to document a picture for your benefit at the mystical date of 11.11.11. 

The scenery and foggy air reminded me somewhat of Summer mornings in San Francisco and Berkeley, when temperatures were not that much higher in the morning. There too, they could hover around 10 degrees C. Of course, later in the day, they would rise rather harshly towards the twenties and thirties, whereas it was not getting any warmer here in Hammarby Sjöstad today. The fog cleared off eventually and the late afternoon brought with it another nice scenery to admire. The setting sun illuminated, just before 4 PM, the clouds over Hammarby Sound in a kind of cosy Alpenglow that is rare to behold around here. 

I HAVE BEEN WAITING LONG TIME FOR THIS!

Rainbows are among the most endearing landscape motives to capture on film, but also the most difficult to render. You may recall that I had the good luck of seeing my first rainbow over Hammarby Sound already shortly after moving in, back in August 2009 (Rainbow over Hammarby Sound). But there was a certain dearth of those wonders of nature further along; let's face it, there has been no single picture of a rainbow since then. Well, I simply was never at home, or when at home, never looking out of the window, when these dramatic views appeared. They are not so rare, after all.

But this autumn I was doubly blessed. Already three weeks ago, the first lucky moment arrived, with not only one, but two of the beauties manifesting themselves at 4.20 PM. The second occasion came today, just half an hour later in the day. But that half an hour, together with the three weeks' delay, make quite a difference in the general appearance of the motive, don't you agree? As landscape photographer, you have to be grateful for whatever light is prevalent at the moment, and make the best of it in post-processing. But nothing compares with mother nature when it comes to proper dressing of a dramatic scenery!

CALM AFTER THE STORM

I woke up rather late today, on this calm and slightly hazed morning, after having slept only a few unruly hours.  More about the bad sleep later. Let's begin by enjoying the scenery, put on record around 8 AM! The air was completely still, not a sound to be heard, no boats, cars or buses disturbing the serene Sunday morning peace. The Sound felt fresh and anew again and I regained the feeling that life was good.

What a difference to the evening before! The business community of Hammarby Sjöstad had implemented its long-time plan to organise a "Harbour Festival" along Hammarby Sound. This turned out to be a pêle-mêle of tents, events for kids, sailing lessons and what have you, with a lot of ruckus along the unbuilt stretch of beach starting some 100 meters east of my apartment. During day-time, this was quite an enjoyable event, even if I did not have any special inclinations of participating in the crowdy pleasures. Problems started at sun-set, when a band started to play, to entertain an, after all limited, crowd of restaurant eaters and, in general, listeners on a small opening just below the old Luma factory. The music would not stop all evening, getting louder by the minute. Even after closing all my windows (each of them with three glasses and quite sound-proof) it was impossible to hear the television set. Huge waves of terrible noise wallowed across the sound, disturbing half of the population of the Southern Island opposite us, and was thrown back to us with a vengeance as a monumental echo from the buildings and hills you usually see on my pictures in this blog. 

It may interest you that Hammarby Sjöstad is proud to call itself the foremost example of environmentally sound management of all the boroughs of Stockholm, if not Sweden. It does not seem to have occurred to the arrangers of this outrageous evening event that reasonable calm is an important element in an environmentally sound city. It has to be considered as quite irresponsible to subject tens of thousands of peaceful inhabitants (on both sides of the Sound!) to noise far beyond the standards permitted even in heavily trafficked cities, just to impress on a limited crowd of active listeners who certainly can be counted only in the hundreds! It would have been very easy to turn down the loudspeakers to, say, half the volume used that night, leaving us other tens of thousands to have some reasonable quiet in our apartments.

There, this gave me the occasion to vent some anger! Let's finish this "tirade" with another serene morning picture, taken in the other direction. Fortunately the pandemonium went on only for two evenings; let's hope that sound reason will prevail in future, whatever festival would again be organized along Hammarby Sound.

CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN ...

Photo courtesy Stephie Lierzer Pichler

This is not a view from my kitchen window, you say? Well, I am forced to agree with you. Still, it IS a view and not a bad one either I think. Furthermore, a window IS involved, a window into the past, as well as into my soul.

In the picture, I am standing on the lofty ridge of Gleinalpe, the majestic divide between Upper and Lower Styria. You of course are well aware that Styria is one of the oldest Duchies in Austria. What on earth was I doing there, when instead I should be shooting nice pictures of Hammarby Sound for your benefit?

Yesterday was the last day of a prolonged hiking trip that had, 7 days earlier, started in Neudau, which lies in the Lafnitz Valley on the old border to Hungary. After days of steady trudging, drenched in drizzles and scorched by intermittent sunbursts, laboring uphills and downhills and treading treacherous mountain paths on steep declines, I was met, on the morning of this final day, by two nice ladies - Stephie, my godmother's daughter, and her friend Ingrid - who carried me in congenial triumph across the ultimate rises and on to the expedition's destination, Knittelfeld.

I trust you agree with me that a man, when reaching his 65 years or more, has to gain a perspective of his existence or, if you prefer, start writing the Chapter "Summing UP and Conclusions" in his great book of life. This preoccupies my mind a lot lately, following some forceful signals from way down in my subconscious.You may recall that last year was spent reminiscing the most dynamic and challenging years of my youth (Déjà vu - down memory lane in California). This year, already, I made a nostalgic journey to the Canaries, to relive a period of distress and its resolution later in life (A felicitous isle for a troubled soul). With the seven days of labour just accomplished, I went FAR BACK in time for once, re-experiencing a corresponding expedition in the very early days of my existence, more than 65 years hence.

My mother Maria Ems on her wedding day in early 1944, together with my godmother Steffi Lierzer

I was born in December 1944, in the last trembling days of the greatest European war of our times. Our village, Neudau, was still spared and my mother lived alone in our bakery, with my father on the front, somewhere in Bulgaria, she believed. But the clouds were darkening over the idyllic Lafnitz Valley. The German Army had built a last line of defense along the hills just across the river, the "Südostwall", hoping to stem, at long last, the hitherto irresistible onslaught of the Red Army masses. But in early spring of 1945, the night horizon towards the East took on a vermillion shade, the Earth started shaking and noise like of thundering cannons was keeping the trembling inhabitants of our humble hamlet in a permanent stage of fright and despair. Soon desolate remains of the German defense came stumbling down the hills and across the river and it became evident that the end was near.

My parents Maria and Emil Leopold Ems, as betrothed

In the stage of extreme fright and chaos that followed, my mother had no choice but to grab a few belongings in a bag, put me on her back and follow the lead of other fugitives westward over the foothills of Lower Styria. The first stage of her flight took her to Gleisdorf, the hometown of her parents (Johann and Leopoldine Resch) which was not yet invaded by the Russian forces. There was hope that the town would be spared the terrors of direct warfare, since German capitulation appeared imminent. And, indeed, armistice was declared on 7 May and we all started to feel relieved. On 8 May, the Red Army entered the city, seemingly orderly. But the calm proved false. After some shootings by fanatical German soldiers, who had remained hidden in the church tower, the Red commander declared the town free for plunder and bloodletting during two days.

How we all (barely) survived this terrible ordeal will have to be told another time. Suffice it to say that my mother felt obliged to flee again from the occupiers' threats and this time aimed at reaching Knittelfeld, in the mountains of Upper Styria, hoping to escape the red danger once and for all. Before the war, my grandfather had been stationed at the post office there and my mother's dearest childhood friend Steffi (also my godmother) was still living there on her parents' farm. After a hardy and dangerous hike across the mountains, Maria finally reached her destination, just to find that the Russians had arrived ahead of her, having taken a more comfortable route along the river Mur.

My mother and godmother as teenagers in Knittelfeld

Fortunately, the Soviets' bloodlust had abated some at that stage, so we managed to recuperate on Steffi's parents' farm. Soon after, in July that year, the Allieds reached an occupation agreement that left it to the Britains to occupy Styria, and the Russian troups had to withdraw back behind the river Lafnitz. About a month later, my father suddenly appeared at the farm, to the great relief of everyone, including myself I have to assume, and brought us back home to Neudau, where both parents lived out their days in an again peaceful Lafnitz Valley, taking care to forget the troubles of the past.

Now back to the present: Upon arriving in Knittelfeld, I had hoped to meet yet again, and have a long talk, with my godmother, who is the only one, but me, still alive to tell the tale. Surely, I presumed, she would be able to render the events of those days alive again and to complement my scarce bits of knowledge with her own memories. But this was not to be. At her advanced age, illness is getting the better of her and she has to spend, bravely, her remaining energy just to stay alive. But at least, we were able to see each other once again and to experience some precious moments of togetherness.

I am dedicating this post to two courageous women, always humble and nonpretentious, but always ready to live up to what it takes, even in times of extreme danger; in short, a shining example for us all.

THUNDERSTORM HAUNTING SOLSTICE DAY

In case you didn't know, today is the big day of the year, highly venerated since ancient times. In stone temples of yore, like Stonehenge and Ales Stenar (the Swedish counterpart; "Yes!", we have them here too) the very minute of the solstice was being carefully registered and ancient rites, long since forgotten, executed by high priests of venerable faith. Today, there would have been big disappointment in the crowd awaiting the event, if the monuments had been kept standing unaffected by the ages and the druids of yore still practicing. 

No sun is visible from my balcony as I am writing this. Instead, a terrible and sudden thunderstorm spoiled the magic of this yearly summer festivity, complete with flashes, thunder and even hailing. It is as if the weather gods did not agree with the way Europe is managing its affairs at the moment. European Council, "Beware!", best you get your house in order!

UPDATE AT 18.00 HOURS!

The sun is back! There is still hope for the druids, if not for European Affairs!