a very interesting thing are the trams in nancy. they use one rail instead of two, and work even without it. sounds better then it is, though, if you read this. (the tram in the direction of loria was broken, so we had to use a bus… the nice thing is, the busses in nancy have several screens to show information – but fail to show things like the route, the destination, the time, the next stops, or any other useful information. there is also nothing announced via speakers, so you really have to know where you are, where you are going, and constantly watch out to catch the names of the stops, and better know some of the stops before your stop…)

one word on reaching the show mine: the official website as well as the flyer only mention going there by car. but obviously you can also reach it by means of public transport. namely, you can use the vvo page to find a trip to the station “kurhaus” in berggießhübel. from that stop, the mine is just a few minutes walk away. note that the bus back to pirna only goes once per hour, or even less, so make sure to check the connections for your way back so you won’t miss the bus by less than one minute as i did today.
and, in case you’re claustrophobic: just don’t go. it’s really tight down there.

on saturday, i got up very early, namely at 5 am, to take a view photos of the rising sun from patricia lake. the sun was rising somewhere i couldn’t really see, but what i could see was its impact on the surroundings. i went back to bed around 7 am, sleeping another two hours. here are some impressions:

sunset.

on the evening, i also took pictures of the beautiful sunset, which beautifully lit up the clouds and the water:

we stayed in some bungalows near to lake patricia. here are some impressions from the lake:

wildlife.

during our stay in jasper, we also encountered some wildlife besides to the wulf and the mountain goats we saw on the trip here:

in case you’re more interested in the ruin, and understand german, you might want to read this article.

the arenberg castle and its park.

leuven by night.

these photos are impressions from a city tour we had one night.

leuven by day.

here are some more impressions of leuven taken during the free afternoon.

railway, power and memory.

we started at the central railway station, crossed the spree and walked up to the german chancellery and the reichstag, and continued to the holocaust memorial.

global stone project.

after that, we continued into the direction of the tiergarten and found the global stone project.

tiergarten, composers and the soviet war memorial.

we continued through the tiergarten, were we saw, among a lot of beautiful nature, a memorial for beethoven, haydn and mozart and the soviet war memorial.

trash.

besides beautiful nature, the tiergarten also features: trash. both “real” trash, as well as intellectual trash (see the bench’s inscriptions).

the memorial church.

our trip ended at the memorial church, which was bombed during the second world war and not rebuild. unfortunately, they build a modern version of the church right next to it, which blocks the view on the old one and, in my opionion, is not exactly beautiful.

it is also possible to enter the ground floor of the ruins of the old church.

after the stay in rovaniemi, we took the train back to helsinki and stayed a few days there as well. besides a concert of moonsorrow and korpiklaani, we visited some churches: the uspenski cathedral, the helsingin tuomiokirkko, as well as the temppeliaukio church. we were extremely happy to visit the temppeliaukio church when it was almost empty, which is apparently very unusual.

frozen harbor.

even though it was raining and the snow was melting, there was a lot of ice left in the harbor and rivers. here is a small impression of its beauty:

and here are some more pictures from the harbor area:

the sibelius monument.

we also visited the sibelius monument, a beautiful piece of modern art dedicated to the finnish composer jean sibelius. enjoy some impressions:

riding a train up to rovaniemi.

starting in helsinki, we took a train up to rovaniemi. then, we took a bus to vikajärvi, a small municipal around 30 km north-east of rovaniemi.

staying in vikajärvi.

we stayed in a cottage right next to lake vikajärvi:

we had a lot of very soft, powdery snow there. enjoy some pictures of the cottage and its surroundings:

a night in vikajärvi.

here are some night photos, shot from the cottage to the outside. during daylight time, we never saw any animal, except birds somewhere in the sky. during night, we didn’t saw any animal as well, but we heard treacherous crackle from the surrounding woods and saw tracks of smaller and larger animals in the morning. for these reasons, we never really left the cottage during night.

we also had a good view on the moon:

a short visit to rovaniemi.

after a long stay in the cottage, we spend a few days in rovaniemi. we visited the artikum. the historic train is situated next to the railway station, and the last strange photo is from the lamp in our hotel room.

osnabrück, covered in snow.

new year’s eve.

osnabrück, outside the train station.

a historic train in leipzig.

location.

they are all located relatively near to each other:

the first castle: burg lüdinghausen.

my old school: the st. antonius gymnasium.

the second castle: burg vischering.

in case you wonder: the right photo in the second row depicts a pranger. one can actually try out this one :)

omnium gatherum.

insomnium.

during the concert of insomnium, members of the other bands showed up on the stage, and equiped insomnium‘s singer niilo with a funny hat and a sign saying “korpiklaani”. he eventually removed the hat by banging his head:

swallow the sun.

during swallow the sun‘s performance, members of the other bands had fun installing a pink dildo first at the keyboard and then, later, at the singer’s microphone:

as opposed to the korpiklaani “hat”, the dildo stayed there for the rest of the concert.

astoria river bridge and athabasca river.

a beautiful lake and the athabasca falls.

mountains, and the columbia icefield.

our car, and the upper waterfowl lake.

the bow lake and the crowfoot glacier.

lake louise.

the zoo contains a dinosaur part, which i didn’t really commented on last time. it features a landscape which is supposed to look like back then, and a few dinosaur models. some of these models look really unrealistic, or more funny. the following photos also feature some of those: