"Mongolia is kind of close, right?" Story about an attempt to ski everywhere in the world where there's snow. And in some places where there isn't. On and off-piste skiing on all continents, skiing into craters of live volcanoes, caving, climbing, photography, and travel.
Found this in the Finnair Schengen-side lounge at HEL. Not bad.
I asked ChatGPT about this:
"It's possible that the blue balls hanging from the white Christmas tree in the Finnair lounge at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport are a nod to Finnair's color scheme, as blue is one of the airline's main colors. Additionally, blue and white are also the colors of the Finnish flag, so it could also be a reference to the country's national colors."
Boring answer, in my opinion :-)
For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2022 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
Their official name is Koziniec-Ski Sp. z o.o. Czarna Góra - Stacja Narciarska, but I have no idea what any of that means. But they appeared with their lights and ski lifts on from the wet darkness of miserable drive through rain and sleet as we were nearing Zakopane on our return trip from Slovakia. And I needed to ski properly in Poland. In 2011 I was on a through trip and managed to hike up a closed ski hill. Nice, but now I when had an opportunity to ski on an actual open and lit ski slope, I needed to take it!
No matter that it was raining cats and dogs. I also didn't see anyone else, and why would there be anyone else, given the weather? But I took my waterproof jacket and run to knock on the windows of the office building. No, they were not closed yet but had been thinking of closing. But as I explained my mission of skiing in different places, and needing to collect an open ski resort in Poland, they laughed very hard and sold me a ticket -- for the price the card, not even paying anything for the skiing. So I took the lift and skied a wonderful run (see below) in the rain. And felt much better, having gotten another day of skiing in :-)
I had a rare opportunity to fly Air Serbia. Not quite Aeroflot level ... but I wouldn't trust them :-) Just kidding it was ok.
For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2022 by Jari Arkko, one picture by Flightradar24. All rights reserved.
I had an idea to for once visit a swimming pool somewhere yesterday. Pre-pandemic, I might have gone swimming several times a week. The pandemic interrupted that, but even after the pandemic issues are mostly gone, I don't find myself going too often. I've only been to Finnish swimming pools couple of times a year recently. Maybe being too busy, or trying to use the time for walking. Anyway, missing a lot. But what a nice treat the visit to the Matinkylä swimming pools were!
I was not even aware that there was a new swimming hall. It opened in April 2022, and it is a beauty! It works well, is spacious and has most of the things I'd like to have in a swimming hall. There's a 50 meter big pool (27 degrees), an "activity" pool (30 degrees), kiddie pool, and my personal favorite, the cold pool (7 degrees). Very nice!
Although it was funny to compare this to our recent visit to Poland's Zakopane Aqua Park (link to the article here). First off, they had outdoor pools, one at 36 degrees and another larger one at 33 degrees. And everybody spoke Polish ... just like in Matinkylä sauna, due to some weird co-incidence. But it is very nice that the expats enjoy the saunas and pools in Finland -- I've noticed that they are pretty frequent users in many of these kinds of facilities. A good friend of mine does ice swimming, too, also an expat. Us lazy and scared natives are much less eager to do ice swimming :-)
This hall is also very nice because it is open late even on weekends. Most public swimming pools in my area (as well as in Finland more generally) close at 5pm. Matinkylä's new hall closes at 8pm.
Tony Hagerlund has, of course, reviewed the new pools here. The official Espoo city pages about the hall project and their halls are here and here. There's also a news article from the local newspaper Länsiväylä and about the tech inside in Rakennuslehti.
For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take photos of other saunagoers or swimmers and visit when there is simply no one else or the facility has been closed or booked only for me.
Ski maintenance needed. Make that double! (And maybe on the rocks?)
I've been using my lightweight Blizzard Zero G 85s almost exclusively for my skiing. They are not my rock skis, but they've taken a beating - in the melting glaciers of Hintertux summer skiing to sketchy early seeing slopes. Time to take them to the service, last time was sometime last spring I think. I also took another pair also for service from the family, not being maintained in couple of years.
And of course, I'm using my trusted Ski Service shop for the maintenance.
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos, videos, and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko.
Wow, another cave country! Slovakia is I think my 28th country where I've been underground. Belianska Jaskyňa is the largest cave open to the public in the Tatra Mountain region in northern Slovakia. At the length of 3681 meters it is quite big. And, remarkably the tour actually is quite long, rising over a hundred meters in vertical as well inside the cave. And almost two kilometers long! One of the best walking cave tours I've been on.
This was our bad weather day excursion on our Poland - Slovakia trip. Although it turned out that we chose the wrong road to cross the mountains from Zakopane to Slovakia, and it felt a bit .. slippery with the not-so-great winter tires in the rental car. But we made it ok, taking it slow in a line of cars passing through.
But back to the cave. Belianska is roughly at coordinates N 49.22886 E 20.31144 on a side of a steep valley hill. It is not directly accessible by car and needs a half an hour hike from the parking lots in the village. We parked here, but there are many options nearby. Expect to pay a bit for the parking.
Like the inside tour in the cave, the hiking path also rises 128 meters, and may not be easy if you have any health issues.
At the cave site itself there's a ticket booth (bring cash), restrooms, tables and cover from the rain. And they sell some souvenirs. Entrance is just 12€ for adults, and that's well worth it given the long tour. A permit for photograph costs some extra, which I obviously took.
The entrance to the cave is at the bottom of the cave, and the tour keeps climbing up on stairs through this massive cave. You'll see lit pools of water, stalactites, stalagmites, dripstone, colorful stone, smaller corridors and massively big halls.
The cave was discovered in the 1700s, and opened as a show cave in the 1800s. So an old, and well-known place.
All in all a wonderful place to visit. Much recommended.
More information about the cave can be found from the Slovakian caving association's page, and from Wikipedia. The cave is 3641 meters long.
Here's a video:
And some more pictures:
You can reach the cave by 25-minute hike up the hill. At the end of the walk you will enter a gate and ticket sales building, and eventually the cave itself.
Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
Pećina Beli Kop is a small cave in Sremski Karlovci, in mid-western Serbia, northwest of Belgrade. The coordinates are N 45.13654 E 19.85772. The cave sits under a sandstone cliff that appears to have eroded, forming the cave. The cave floor is actually a large sandpit itself, and difficult to walk up and down.
The cave is at the backyard of a small church or monastery. If you visit the cave, do visit the church as well.
I also wondered about the origins of the cave, could it be a quarry, perhaps used for getting the stone for the monastery? But there are not cut marks in the cave. So maybe natural? At least that is what I have tentatively concluded.
There's very little information elsewhere in the Internet about this cave. You can read the Google Maps entry, or the monastery's wikipedia page.
I of course took a 3D scan of the cave, see below for a picture. The model can be access here in GLTF, Blender, and STL formats. But it is easiest rotated on your own browser if you click this link.
I also made a small video about the cave using Blender, the 3D processing tool:
Blender is not the easiest tool to use for first timers (or more experienced users for that matter). Here's how to make a fly-through video in Blender:
In your Blender model, you need to configure or create a camera object and a light object, and attach them together. The light will provide light as the camera travels through the model in the animation we are about to set up. Attaching two objects together happens via select the light, then the camera, pressing Ctrl - P and then choosing the "Object (Keep Transform)" choice in the menu.
Select the camera, light, and your 3D model. Then in the 3D view, press the key "i" once, and a menu about key frame configuration should appear. Choose "Location & Rotation".
Once the above is all set up, use the Shift-F to enter the fly through mode (you may need to configure Blender to recognize the Shift-F).
In Fly Through mode, use 'w' to go forward, 's' to go backward, and 'a' or 'd' to pan sideways. Press 'i' to insert a fixed frame for your animation. You will only need a few fixed frames, Blender will interpolate your position for moving between the fixed frames.
Click on Render Animation to produce an animation image sequence. This will output a number of image files in the directory specified in the output part of the Blender tool settings in the right side of the Blender window.
With the set of images you can use, for instance, Quicktime to import them and then save them as a video file.
As you may know, I have also written a piece of software, Cave Outliner, that takes 3D models as inputs and draws. Another example of the use of this software can be found in my article about the Austrian Schneefleckhöhle cave. That article has also the instructions on how to make 3D cave scans, and how to use the Cave Outliner to generate maps from them. Here's the resulting map from Pecina Beli Kop:
Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2022 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
A ski vacation would be nothing without a visit to hot pools and saunas! This time we visited the Zakopane Aqua Park in Poland. And obviously in the mountain town of Zakopane.
I did not know what to expect, really. This was a big facility that we had passed by on our travels. It is right in the center of Zakopane, and there's surprisingly small number of spas in the city itself -- though more if you're willing to travel half an hour or an hour out.
It turned out to be an inexpensive community swimming pool merged with hot springs and saunas and few other extras. The main attraction for us were the outdoor hot pools -- one very large one at 33 degrees, and a smaller at 36 degrees (Celsius). They were not crowded, and they were just right in the -5 degrees weather and the darkness of the evening. Wonderful!
Another potential attraction would have been the saunas, but we run out of time to visit them, and it would have been a small hassle to enter as well -- the all-you-can-use tickets were sold out, so we'd have had to pay extra, I guess with our bracelets. And go back to the dressing rooms to get towels that weren't provided by the house. Anyway, I'm sure it would have been great saunas! Maybe next time.
The main drawback on our visit (January 5 evening) was that the facility was quite crowded. I also like the Finnish swimming pool style where your dressing rooms and lockers are in one place, gender-separated, and it is easy to undress and put your stuff away. In many other places you have a joint area for lockers and different small cabins for changing clothes. This results in a need to transport your clothing and other belongings around the facility. Perhaps I could get used to it, but at least this time it felt a bit like extra effort, along with figuring out how these particular lockers worked, what the ticket variants were, etc.
For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take photos of other saunagoers or swimmers and visit when there is simply no one else or the facility has been closed or booked only for me.
After our original flight was cancelled, I ended up leaving Kraków by taking LOT to Warsaw, and then onto a Finnair evening flight. Sorting out the situation was a hassle, but in the end we got home.
(The hassle: The delay was 11 hours. But I also needed to spend three hours on the phone trying to sort out our travel. And a few more to try to check in to replacement flights, which didn't succeed at first And in the end we were split to different flights -- even after we had been confirmed to be together on flights we wanted. One end of Finnair has no clue what the other end is doing, overriding changes that were already made. I'm usually very appreciative of Finnair, but ... the experience today was dreadful. Cancellations can happen. But it was too difficult to sort out the situation afterwards. Of course, this is obviously still first world problems. It needs to be said that we got home, safely, and during the same day. Kudos for that.)
I also got to try out the Fantazja lounge at Warsaw's Chopin airport. It was very, very good. Dark rooms with almost lie-flat seats for resting... green plants and modern white interior mix.
And sausages:
Leaving Kraków (see also the opening picture):
Landing in Warsaw:
For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
When returning from our trip to the Polish mountain regions, we flew out of Kraków's airport. We ended up waiting in the Business Lounge. It turned out that the wait was actually quite long. Our plane circled near the airport for 90 minutes, waiting for the fog to to dissipate.
In the end the fog did not dissipate early enough, the plane went to an alternate airport, and headed back without any of the passengers. Six other planes due to arrive that day had a similar issue. More on what happened for us in my other blog article.
However, back to the lounge! How was it? We entered through the main departure level, so it was easy to get to. And it was a clean lounge with plenty of space, power ports, and some drinks and snacks. Nothing spectacular, but a welcome resting place.
But the whole arrangement felt still a bit odd. There was a small set of amenities (just few drinks) on the upper level, but very little seating (close to the staff). Stairs took you to another level downstairs, with plenty of more space.
And there was one counter for again some amenities, yet in hidden in another corner was the main counter for snacks and drinks. Had we not bothered to scout out the entire place, we might not have even found the main counter.
Is this a lounge space that was originally designed for multiple lounges, now only used by one? Or is this simply a question of offering some close by drinks for everyone, while the main offering is in one place? I don't know. Maybe some signage would have helped.
For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko, one picture by Flightradar24. All rights reserved.
