This week we caught several trains through the Balkan region: up from the coast to Belgrade, and overnight into Budapest. A relaxing, well-paced adventure, and an opportunity to meet people, eat fresh boreks and see some beautiful country.
But the route we took, particularly from Belgrade to Budapest, is not always a grand old railway sojourn. It’s an escape route for those fleeing war. In both cities we saw hundreds of Syrian refugees sleeping in parks and train stations, families, children, with not much more than a backpack, a plastic bag, and if they were lucky, a tent. Some may stay in Serbia or Hungary, but many will continue on, into Germany or Austria, where family members are and there is more chance of setting up a new life.
We heard many opinions on the refugee crisis on our travels, from a man on a tram in Belgrade proudly telling us that about the free buses the Serbian government was providing to help as much as they could, to a retired Australian man we overheard saying that ‘Europe was finished’ due to the influx of those seeking asylum. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on this complicated topic by any means, surely Europe would be ‘finished’ if it ignored the health and safety of these people who are journeying, not to make the most of their summer time, but to save their own lives.
For some silly reason the Adriatic always sounded like a magical sea to me, like it’s located on the moon or in the land of Narnia. But here it is, still clear and blue under a moody summer storm.
A quick photo from Milan’s World Expo, where the theme is ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. A place full of architecture, selfie sticks, tired feet and blatant avoidance of the complex issue of feeding the world sustainably in the future.
In the background, the Qatar pavillion. The foreground, the equally sized pavillion for that glorious country committed to healthy eating, McDonalds. Image taken at a juice and fruit cafe that was shunted to the back. All the buildings were cool though!
Summer time (in Tortosa)
And the living is easy.
Fish are jumping, (honestly, I saw one this morning) And the cotton is ‘Cause the mercury’s high.
Your daddy’s The food’s still rich,
And your mama’s the beach is good looking
So hush, little baby long to-do list, don’t you cry.Continue reading “The week of summer time”
I am pleased to inform you that your paper has been accepted for publication.”
Huzzah! Is there any sweeter sentence in the scientific world?! Maybe “the results are significant at the 99.9% confidence level (p<0.01)”. But the opening line from this email I recently received is definitely up there.
The accepted paper is the last publication to come directly out of my PhD thesis, an adaptation of the final chapter that brought together several datasets I developed and tried to answer a big question using my historical instrumental data: how has the El Niño–Southern Oscillation influence on southeastern Australian rainfall varied since European settlement?
This post contains a lot of links to scientific articles that may be paywalled, or just as bad, really technical. Just let me know if you need a copy of any of them, or if they don’t make sense.
Ah, teleconnection. What a word. Much like ‘madrugada‘ does not have a translation into English, or ’serendipity‘ does not have a Spanish equivalent, teleconnection is a term that is hard to translate into normal words without it losing some of its beauty.
But let me have a try. Essentially, teleconnections are the connections between weather and climate in one place, and weather and climate in another. No, that’s not it. A teleconnection is the remote influence of large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. No that’s worse. It’s the effect that the climate in one place can have somewhere else. It’s teleconnection.Continue reading “Teleco-what now?”
The first sign was the flags. Blue and yellow, red and white, on street corners all around the old quarter. Next, they were on the bridge, and the main street. After that, deep red velvet banners were drawn along the balconies of our little Carrer. The following morning we awoke to sails draped across plazas. Then red and yellow flags and banners appeared, hung from one end of town to the other. And on Thurdsay 100 market stalls, bars, taverns, and tressle tables sprouted overnight, along with several discreet islands of portaloos. When the portaloos come out, you know something big is happening.
With such anticipation-building decorations, Tortosa prepared itself for its biggest party of the year, and we steadied ourselves to go from one festival to another, very different party. This week Tortosa is celebrating its 20th Festa del Renaixament, a four day extravaganza of all things 16th century. The town has completely been transformed. The air is full of the smell of BBQ and the sound of drums, people are dressed up in 1700s garb (from peasants to lords), and performance groups, giants, eagles and gargoyles are roaming the streets. It is amazing. The old fortifications at the back of town are also included: for the rest of the year the old walls are pretty much abandoned, but at the moment they are playing hosts to all night taverns and concerts. Incredible.
As we are living in the old part of town, we’re right in the thick of it. Sleeping before 2am is not really an option, giving us plenty of opportunities to explore. Here are just some of the sights we’ve seen!
The festival opened with a bangThe Tortosa Abanderados (flag throwning troup)The smallest AbanderadoThe lords and ladies in their fineryTortosa’s giants parade past our houseOne of the crowded plazasOne of the street performancesHuman gargoyles on the CathedralA whirling dervish (he span for 30 minutes!)The FalconerOne of the parrillas selling all sorts of BBQed treatsA plaza on Thursday afternoonThe same plaza on Friday night
Before we left Australia, a friend of a friend squealed when I told her we were moving to the south of Catalonia. ‘Oh, near Tarragona? You really should to go to Benicàssim!’ FIB, Festival Internacional de Benicàssim, is a music festival in the coastal town of, you guessed it, Benicàssim, about an hour south of Tortosa.
FIB has played host to a fantastic array of bands since its inception in the late 90s, including Oasis, The Chemical Brothers, Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen, and millions of others. When I looked into the festival, I completely agreed with my friend’s friend. We SHOULD go to Benicàssim. And so in January we bought two early-bird tickets, 130€ for four days of camping, fun, sun and sound. FIB? Bring it on…
It is now only two sleeps before we set off to Benicàssim, and my excitement has turned to mild terror. The heatwave continues, and the thought of sleeping in our cheap tent for four nights has me imagining what it is like to live inside a plastic bag in an abandoned bin. The program has been released, and all of the headliners are starting at 1am or later. One AM! Surely I’m too old for that. My lack of festival fashion has me concerned that the youngsters will boo us out of the crowd. How are we going to get through this, let alone enjoy it??
Yesterday
We survived! We are filthy, and exhausted, and will probably never drink tequila-flavoured beer again, but Benicàssim was a great weekend. Here are some highlights and lowlights, along with some of those obligatory stage photos that you take at festivals, even though they always turn out dreadful…
Highlights
The people! The crowd was 45% Spanish, 50% UK and 5% miscellaneous, and most of the people we met were lovely. Big shout out to the two 19 year-old Irish boys who had come straight from San Fermín in Pamplona, and still had the energy to be so polite that their mothers would have been proud.
The age distribution. Although the majority of the FIBers seemed to be between 18 and 24 (who can really tell these days) we saw some fabulous old rockers, and a number of families with little kids. You know it’s a good festival when people feel comfortable enough to bring the whole family, or keep coming back.
Cold showers. I’ve always hated a cold shower, but these open air, communal wash troughs were actually a delight to visit in the afternoon, to refresh yourself before an evening of music.
A cold shower with a cool view
Routine. Swim, Nap, Dance, Repeat. It was surprisingly easy to get into this gentle rhythm, once we were out of the tent. We would catch the bus down to the beach, have a swim, sleep a bit, maybe move into the shade of the glorious Nap Castle (actually a 16th century tower in the centre of Benicàssim) for a kip, then back to the campsite for some more relaxing, a shower, a tinto de verano, and then off to the festival (5 minutes walk from camp). This routine made it possible to make it to the 1am shows without too much trouble. The 4am DJs on the other hand…
The famous Nap Castle, where exhausted festival goers rest peacefully in the shade, protected from the unrelenting sun.
The number of bands with awesome female singers and musicians: Jamie T, Crystal Fighters, Clean Bandit, Hamsandwich, Portishead, Florence, MØ, Darwin Deez and plenty of others.
Crystal Fighters
Watching Noel Gallagher from a hill at the back of the festival with all the locals because you can get to the hill for free.
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, from quite far away.
Damon Albans making a fan’s night by asking her onstage to sing Blur’s hit Parklife. She knew every word and was amazing.
Frank Turner’s adorable attempt at speaking Catalan to his audience, made up of 98% English people.
The people. The majority were wonderful, but there’s always a few. Obnoxious (and sunburnt) English lads being gross, really loud drunken Spaniards yelling ‘DORMIR’ at 5am, and those guys, you know those Stone Men, in crowds, who never dance, even though that seems like more effort than actually dancing? Yeah, those guys.
The tattoo distribution. This isn’t really a lowlight, but it did make me feel very boring to not have any tattoos, when everyone else seemed to have at least five. Evil clowns, dream catchers, old churches, ornate ethnic designs, inspirational slogans in every language, you name it, they inked it.
Sound troubles on the last night, meaning one stage ran 15-20 minutes late. That is an indication of how well run the festival was, that people were getting annoyed about bands running to Spanish time.
No free drinking water. Well, there was “free” “water” but it tasted like a warm, dirty swimming pool.
But that’s it. Highlights definitely outweighed the lowlights, and we had a rocking time. Thanks for the tip Sarah! Would love to see you again next year FIB, although we might spring for a hotel with AC in 2016.
Last week was hot. And this week…still hot. Our old bedroom is now the Bed Frame Room, as the mattress permanently lives in the living room under the fan. Use of the oven is forbidden. I’m on a four-day ice-cream streak. And our clothes are drying in about 90 minutes on the line.
So we take to the sea.
The beaches near Terres de L’Ebre are actually quite lovely and pretty close to Tortosa. A 30 minute bus or train trip will get you to a swimming spot, or if you have enough energy you can keep walking or riding until you find a beach all to yourself.
A great walk mentioned by this excellent book is a section of the GR (Gran Recorrido) 92, which snakes from the top of Catalonia all the way to the bottom of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, hugging the sea all the way. One morning a few weeks ago we set out to conquer 17km of this 583km pilgrimage, from L’Ametlla del Mar to L’Ampolla.
The walk was long, and hot, and took us the best part of 6 hours (including swimming stops), but we saw some beautiful water and amazing Catalan coastline. Hiking really is a group activity here, and so we passed, and were passed by, many packs of flour-wearing, pole-wielding walking groups. We were even lucky enough to spot a g-string-wearing abuela trudging along with her backpack. Quite the sight! It’s a bit different from Australia, where people hike to enjoy the serenity.
Some hidden and not so hidden beaches we’ve come across.
We’ve marked our favourite beaches (and the ones with promising camping hideaways) to get us through the rest of the summer.
Another cooling activity this weekend was the XV Piraguada Popular en Defense de L’Ebre, or a paddle down the river in protest of the plans to divert much of the Ebro River into irrigation, threatening the ecosystem of the river and its important delta. The trip was also part of Big Jump, a European-wide day of river celebration. We have been keen to see the river from water height since we arrived, and jumped at the chance to paddle the 10km from Xerta to Tortosa yesterday.
After a short bus trip to Xerta, we found the kayaks waiting for us. More than 150 people took part, as well as a few adorable and brave dogs. The event was launched with a few fireworks (at 9:30am, of course), and included a considerate morning-tea stop after about an hour for bacon sandwiches and beer.
We cruised down the river, ogling the birds, the estuarine ecosystems and the sadly regular piles of rubbish. The Ebro River is the longest river in Spain, and the fourth largest river that feeds into the Mediterranean, although it was very shallow in parts today. In fact we were told that the dam managers up river had to let extra water out so that we could paddle.
We eventually reached Tortosa in about 3.5 hours, including a couple of water fights and swimming stops. After nearly eight months walking along the Ebro every day, it was lovely to finally be in it! Although I am not sure how healthy the water really is – we have been warned against eating any fish we may catch due to high levels of mercury. The motley crew of demonstrators then banded together and paddled through the town en masse, before wading into the water to show just how low the water levels are.
Wearing bathers around the house, sleeping in the living room under the fan, covering windows with wet towels, giving up on the balcony plants, staying at work until late because that’s where the AC is, eating watermelon for dinner kind of hot.
A heatwave is currently gripping Europe with its sweaty paws, breaking records all over the place and driving people to the beach in massive numbers. Helpful timing for the Our Common Future Under Climate Change conference happening in Paris right now.
The temperature in Tortosa has not dropped below 20º since the 26th of June, and maximum temperatures are ranging between 30 and 39ºC. It’s these high minimum temperatures that can be the real killer, particularly for the elderly and vulnerable who do not have access to AC.
I was going to try and write about the science of this crazy heat, but a) my computer (and myself) do not work well in high temperatures and b) this article from The Conversation explains what is going on, with neat pictures too.
Essentially a high-pressure system has parked itself over western Europe, suppressing clouds and diverting any low pressure system that might want to meander this way. It is also being fed warm air from the south thanks to high pressure in the upper parts of the atmosphere. Just read the article, they explain it much better.
In Australia, heatwaves occur in a similar way, when the jet stream and a surface high pressure system push warm air down from the middle of the country. However in Europe, the warm air comes up from Africa, instead of down from the red centre.
One interesting part of that article that I was not aware of is the Spanish Plume. The warm air travels up from Africa, over the Iberian Peninsula where it gets even hotter and drier. From there it ends up near the UK, where it meets cooler air coming down from the north. This results in some terrific thunderstorms.
We were lucky enough to experience both the middle and the edge of the giant pillow of hot air this week. For the first half of the week we melted in our non-air-conditioned apartment, eating ice cream and trying to think of cold things.
The Tortosa forecast. It has not changed much since this photo was taken.
In the second half we were in Ireland for the wedding of some lovely friends. I’ve never been so happy to wear a scarf! Western Ireland was brisk and showery, which may be characteristic of the Atlantic climate, and on our return to Dublin we saw some ripper cumulonimbus clouds which I now realise may have been the edge of the warm air. We even went through a town that had completely lost power thanks to the storms.
In contrast, the grey and lush Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry.
Now we are back in the heat, daydreaming about green fields and trying to keep cool. There is no respite in sight, with the Spanish Meteorological Agency predicting similar temperatures for at least the next week. Please look after yourself Tortosins, and your neighbours. See you at the beach.
lindenashcroft.com 