Time flies

Time flies when you are having fun, and that is also the case here. It is already Friday, beginning of the third weekend and almost 3 weeks here. So it’s time to write something new on my blog :)

I am not going to describe every day since my last blog, which would be a long and boring story. Most days in the week look like this, 6.30-7.00 I wake up and around 8 I am at the office. Then I start with some data. Around 9-10 I go in the field to one of the sites and do soil respiration measurements, measuring the amount of CO2 coming out of the ground. Around 14-15 I am back at the office and download the data into my computer and get everything into an excel file. And around 17-18 I go back to my room. Then I will cook my own dinner or when I don’t feel like cooking, go into the village and eat in a restaurant. After that watch a movie or series and go to sleep around 22. That’s a bit different to my rhythm I used to have :P but when you wake up every day around 5.30 of the sunlight getting in your room it is ok. And also in the evening there is not so much to do here.

But it is more exiting to tell about the weekends. Then I am free and can do whatever I want. In the area around here there is plenty to do and see. In a 30km radius from Tatranska Lomnica (TL) there are +/- 250 geocaches to be found :), in every city or village but even at almost every mountain top here. The first Saturday I went to Poprad. I walked around the whole day from geocache to geocache. Most geocaches are at nice or interesting places so in the mean while I get to know the city as well. Unfortunately on Sunday it was raining so I couldn’t go walking somewhere. In the morning I went to the museum of Tatra National Park (same building as my office). And the afternoon spend on reading and watching movies in my room.

Last weekend on Saturday I decided it was time for some serious hiking in the mountains. First I went to Skalnate Pleso a glacier lake at 1751m a.s.l. , TL is at 850m so 900m up. When I left in the morning at 7.00 there was no cloud at the sky but at 9.00 when I was almost there I heard the first thunder rolling in the mountains, really amazing how fast that can go. At 9.30 I was at skalnate pleso and soon after that rain started to fall. Luckily there was a restaurant where I could hide, and just like the other Slovak tourists drink a beer. Around 11.30 I could continue walking first into a valley with nice waterfalls and later down to Stary Smokovec. And from there back to TL where I ended around 18.00 in a restaurant after 5 geocaches and walking 27km. On Sunday I slept out a bit (9.00 feels like sleeping out now :P ). Then I went to the Arboretum, there they have a collection of most of the plant and tree species of the park. After that I tried to finish a multi cache but had to go back because a thunderstorm was coming. In the afternoon I did the Pramenisko educational path, it leads you through a mountain wet alder forest, a strictly protected habitat.

I planned to go this weekend to Slovensky Raj NP (Slovak Paradise), but there is heavy rain expected for Saturday and a little rain on Sunday. So I will go there next weekend.

The rest of my time here I won’t be measuring CO2 all the time. From June there will be another Slovak student helping and also the son of my supervisor is going to help during his summer vacation. I am also going to do some vegetation mapping, go in the field with researchers tracking bears, go with botanists above the tree line searching for rare plant species, the bark beetle problem. Besides that I am also asked to drink once a week coffee with the directors of the park so they can improve their English and share some of my knowledge of statistics (at least I had advanced statistics and ecological methods I and II :P ). And who knows what else comes up here.

For all that I described above, pictures can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/eshuishenk/Slovakia
The photos are updated almost daily, especially after the weekends :)

Soon I will drop my first own Travel Bug with the goal to travel to Wageningen, let’s see who is first back in Wageningen, me or the TB. http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=3273399