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Shortly after having spent three wonderful weeks in Africa, I’m about to head up north to Lapland to spend a week learning how to snowboard and hopefully take some awesome pictures of snowy landscapes and perhaps even reindeers! Yeah I know, learning how to snowboard close to your thirties is probably a bad idea, but better late than never. Besides, beating myself up, falling over and smashing against trees sounds just like the thing I need right now. I need to wake up!!

Things took a strange turn after I returned from my three week trip to Africa a month ago. At first, I was struck by the usual culture shock that I always go through after having returned from a trip outside of Europe. However, this time all the energy and excitement I seem to have gathered during my vacation dissipated almost instantly. Not only that, but I became ill shortly after I had returned to work and wondered if it was something I might have caught on my journey. Considering half of the people from my floor at the office were also ill, it must have been the common flu. This bug turned out to be a resilient one though and it only let go weeks after I had caught the initial symptoms. This illness further drained me of energy and now I seem to be caught in some sort of twilight zone where I can’t tell whether it’s night or day outside. Not surprising really, considering it’s dark almost all the time here in Finland!

While I was in Africa, I felt awake, full of energy and just generally in a good mood. The sun was shining, it was warm outside and it reminded me of how fortunate we are to live on this planet. After having flown back to the north, I find myself in the opposite state of mind. I’m constantly tiered, uninspired and I have a hard time keeping my biological clock in sync because of the darkness. Hence, I go to sleep late, wake up early to go to work and end up sleepwalking through the winter days as if my mind was in some sort of hibernation mode. This begs me to wonder: maybe the bears got it right. After all, why would anyone want to be awake during this period of the year when the sun hardly shines through the thick layers of clouds in the sky and the temperatures drop way below freezing? It’s a shame our technological development outran our physical evolution. I’m sure, given enough time, our bodies would have adapted somehow and skipped this part of the year like the bears do: by sleeping.

Well, I figured since I’m going to have to endure this curse, I might as well do something exciting. This weekend I’m off to Levi, a ski-resort in the middle of Lapland, full of wondrous activities for tourists and landscapes that will give anyone a chill. The resort features 44 slopes with the longest one measuring about 2,5 km. A third of them have lighting so it is possible to enjoy them even after the sun has gone down. And yes, this is Lapland we’re talking about, which means we’ll be getting around five or six hours of sun a day - if we’re lucky. I simply hope the skies will be clear so we can recharge our internal batteries enough to last through the dark afternoons and evenings.

Downhill skiing and snowboarding are just a part of the fun. There are also a lot of other activities one can do such as cross-country skiing on illuminated tracks that span over 28 km or if you’re a lazy person like me, you might be tempted to rent a snowmobile and go do a winter safari (I had a hard time believing it, but it actually does exists). I’m obviously still working through some withdrawls from my trip to Africa and so far having played Far Cry 2 and shown my pictures to a handful of people seem to have helped me get through the worse part.

I’ll be back the next week and I apologize for not having had the energy or motivation to tag half a thousand photos during this past month (that’s less than a quarter of the total amount of pictures I took during my trip!). I know I should have tried to cut the amount down to fifty or perhaps even a hundred, but I don’t want to leave anything out! I’ll be sure to spam the link to the album as soon as I’m done publishing all of them.

Wish me luck!

PS. While on the subject of Lapland, did I mention a little project I was involved in?

Day 1: The long flight begins

10:33 - Schipol Airport, Amsterdam

When I showed up at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport with two suitcases, a laptop bag and a backpack I knew I was toast. Luckily my KLM ticket allowed me to check-in two items and the rest I could carry with me on the plane. As usual I had stayed up all night, since there was no point in going to sleep for a few hours (packing took a bit longer than expected :D). The only downside to flying with KLM is that it leaves around six in the morning, which means you have to show up an hour or two before that. Having checked-in online, I was able to bypass the mile long queue. I passed out pretty much as soon as I sat down in the plane and slept happily most of the way to Amsterdam.

I ended up buying breakfast at the usual sandwich bar and got myself some surfing time from the KPN Communication Centre next to it. Since there’s about three hours to kill between flights, I figured I might as well write something and check my mails while waiting. As the sun slowly rises from the horizon, I realize I’m still tiered. Hopefully this fatigue won’t go away by the time I get on the next plane. It would be agonizing having to stay up for the rest of the trip considering I won’t be landing in Addis until ten in the evening. Wish me luck, this is going to be a rough ride

Day 1: The long flight begins (06.12.2008)

10:33 - Schipol Airport, Amsterdam

When I showed up at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport with two suitcases, a laptop bag and a backpack I knew I was toast. Luckily my KLM ticket allowed me to check-in two items and the rest I could carry with me on the plane. As usual I had stayed up all night, since there was no point in going to sleep for a few hours (packing took a bit longer than expected :D). The only downside to flying with KLM is that it leaves around six in the morning, which means you have to show up an hour or two before that. Having checked-in online, I was able to bypass the mile long queue. I passed out pretty much as soon as I sat down in the plane and slept happily most of the way to Amsterdam.

I ended up buying breakfast at the usual sandwich bar and got myself some surfing time from the KPN Communication Centre next to it. Since there’s about three hours to kill between flights, I figured I might as well write something and check my mails while waiting. As the sun slowly rises from the horizon, I realize I’m still tiered. Hopefully this fatigue won’t go away by the time I get on the next plane. It would be agonizing having to stay up for the rest of the trip considering I won’t be landing in Addis until ten in the evening. Wish me luck, this is going to be a rough ride

22:05 - Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa

After a long flight, we finally touched down at Bole Airport. The plane had been filled up to the last seat – a clear indication that this route is very popular. We stopped at Khartoum (Sudan) where half of the passangers got off and new ones came in. By the time we got to Addis, I could hardly feel my legs, but at least the worse part was over.

I waited for my luggage for well over half an hour and started worrying that they had ended up somewhere in South America again. They came through eventually and although they had gone through a severe beating, nothing had been broken.

You know you’ve come very far when you step outside and see the moon tilted in a different direction than what you’re used to back at home. It was a mild 20′c outside, a nice change from the chilly weather in Helsinki. Lot of exciting times ahead and I hope I’ll get a chance to write some more in the days to come!

I still find it hard to believe I will get a chance to visit Addis Ababa again. This will be the second time I spend Christmas in a nice sunny environment – something which probably every Finn dreams during the dark days of December!

Naturally I will be bringing along my Canon EOS 40D now equipped with a brand new 18-200mm EF-S lens. I even bought a circular polarizer for it which cost me a fortune since the filer thread is 72mm wide! It might not be a L-series lens, but under the circumstances it’s more than I could have hoped for. I bought it especially with this trip in mind, since it has sometimes been hard to get close to my subjects (such as lions or hippos) during my past visits to Ethiopia.

Speaking of which, I was looking through my stats on Flickr and saw that some of the pictures I took during my last trip were featured on a site covering basic facts about the Amharic language. Hopefully once I reprocess all my old print photographs, I’ll get a chance to compile all my African Exposure series in a nice big set and share them all in good quality. Unfortunately this will take some time as I’ll have to go through the original negatives and pick out all the photos I want the professional photo labs to scan. My own personal equipment is not capable of producing good digital results from these old formats, so bare with me!

I also bought a 32GB Compact Flash card recently and figured that it would cover my needs during my three week trip to Ethiopia and Tanzania. What do you think? My camera can’t even display the amount of photos it would be able to take even with the RAW+JPEG option turned on (the display only goes up to 999) so I think I’m all set! I’m dragging my laptop along just in case, but I’ll doubt I’ll have much use for it outside of Addis.

I’ll be returning sometime at the end of December with hopefully many beautiful pictures to share with you.

For those of you living in the Northern hemisphere, enjoy the winter (and snow if you have any). I’m off to the sunshine!

Phoenix2k

PS. Hajotkaa vaan koteihinne Ainoa oikea ratkaisu talvella on lähteä pimeyttä pakoon!