during end of may, i attended a conference held in the beautiful city of leuven, belgium. the conference was held at the arenberg castle, located in a beautiful park. here are some impressions:
these photos are impressions from a city tour we had one night.
here are some more impressions of leuven taken during the free afternoon.
a few days ago, we happened to be in berlin for a few hours. we did a small touristy tour and visited some famous places. here are some impressions.
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.
after that, we continued into the direction of the tiergarten and found the global stone project.
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.
besides beautiful nature, the tiergarten also features: trash. both “real” trash, as well as intellectual trash (see the bench’s inscriptions).
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.
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:
we also visited the sibelius monument, a beautiful piece of modern art dedicated to the finnish composer jean sibelius. enjoy some impressions:
in march, we did a trip to finland, mostly to lappland.
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.
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:
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:
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.
for new year’s eve, we traveled to oldenburg. on the way back and forth, we saw some interesting things in osnabrück. finally, on the way to dresden, we saw a historic train of the deutsche reichsbahn in leipzig. here are some impressions.
on one of the last days, we did a small trip to calgary’s nose hill park, where i have been before as well. here are a few impressions:
one of the most beautiful parts of our trip was the drive south the icefields parkway, connecting jasper to lake louise. here are a few impressions from our stops. we wanted to drive up mount edith cavell as well, but the road was closed.
after two days in vancouver, we rented a car and drove up to the beautiful town of jasper. from there, we visited, among others, patricia lake, pyramid lake and maligne lake, whose photos can be found below as well as a photo taken at a rest stop somewhere north of kamloops.
after yellowknife, we flew to vancouver. things you can see in the photos are the steam clock, vancouver city, stanley park, a spider, views from the capilano bridge and its park, and a sunset at the pacific ocean’s beach.
another day, we did a trip to the great slave lake, a huge lake (its area takes 7% of germany’s area, or two thirds of switzerland’s area).
