Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!

I must be maybe setting excessive expectations on myself: this should be in my plans a year devoted to prepare something worth of being told to my nephews, if I'll ever have any. Let's start it cautiously. It's getting every day colder and I'm no longer willing to suffer that much for riding below zero.

New Year's Eve

A good start

A good, great start of the year could not happen without a short bicycle ride around the Thaler countryside, just behind the corner. A warm day, unusually warm, so much that I had to get rid of balaclava and gloves. Snow is melting but the weather forecast for January have already anticipated a new white blanket coming. I have to treasure these last days of vacation. Soon after a though and challenging time is waiting for me. 

Waiting for better times

To deceive and pass the wait for the long night and the ritual new year's eve dinner, I convinced my son Flavio to take an aperitif walk on the snow, letting him taking my DSLR for some photos, thus taking advantage of an unexpected day of sun.

I'm not a good teacher. I simply let him use it and make trials. I only took care of informing him that I'll be here, willing to give him explanations, whenever he had questions to put. He answered that he already googled some topics and got the answer he was looking for. I must confess that I felt somehow proud of it.

Regarding the title: after all that happened this year, looking at its last sunset, should it have been otherwise?

(this was taken with my mobile cam)

For the very last day of the year I wanted to put up some numbers to recap the closing year on this pages. I've been able to post 213 times, including this one. That means a ration of about 0.6, almost two posts every three days. No tricks. I simply started using the blog as the mirror of my IG account, duplicating here (and when possible commenting) those pictures that I deemed worth of memory. 

New Year's Day on the Road

Let's begin this new year in the best of all possible ways: on the road. And what better than waking up early on the very first day, after going bed not too late, having a quick refreshing shower and putting our luggage on the car?

We have spent the last evening of the year together with friends in Saronno, our former life town. I was missing from there since our relocation to Graz and must admit I had something like a knot down in the throat, while passing through the town, to reach our destination. That's why I didn't insist too much this morning for a stop in the city's main square for breakfast. We arrived with the dark and went away before anyone else could spot us, in stealth mode. Too many things to be done are waiting for us in Graz. Still, before heading our boat to east, we stopped at Lainate for our last cornetto e cappuccino for a while.

I've been passing right in front of this building for sixteen years, without stopping one time. I had to become a tourist to do it.

The New Year's Day

The arrival of the new year has been announced with unmistakable signs. A multitude of multi-shaped ice crystals surround every surface. To my bad luck, this time I went out without the proper gears and the mobile is not that much helpful in such extreme conditions. I realize only now that I stretched the B&W filtering over the limit.