last week, i was attending the ants ix, which was held in nancy this time (two years ago, it was in banff). this year i also presented a poster. here are some impressions from the city:

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…)

on my way back from berggießhübel, i visited pirna a bit, where i found the monumentum of the grey busses, reminding of the aktion t4 by the nazis in order to murder mentally ill and otherwise handicapped people. this monumentum exists in two copies, one of them being stationary and one moving. the one in pirna is the moving one. here are a few picturs:

yesterday, i travelled to berggießhübel, near to dresden, to visit the marie louise stolln, an old ore mine which was turned into a show mine and opened for public in 2006. tours are very cheap (just five euros) and approximately one hour long. here are some impressions from the tour. (i wish i would have had more time for the photos, in particular having a tripod and no need to hurry, and no one running in my view. these photos are taken with iso 3200 and maximal aperture of my wideangle zoom, which is between f/3.5 and f/4.5 – i guess this explains the crappy quality…)

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.

some impressions from another visit to dresden.

today, i saw a remark on netzpolitik.org about a reportage by frontal21 titled der grosse bluff (direct video link here, will be online only the next few days). it covers the currently investigated extension of operation life span of nuclear power plants in germany, including the never-ending dicussion of ultimate waste storage in gorleben, and what is going on politically. in my opinion, its a real good reportage and you should watch it if you understand german (and it hasn’t been deleted).
another interesting link on this topic is the wikipedia article on deep geological repositories, in particular its list of such repositories and the following paragraph on safety and feasibility assessments.
future is sometimes really depressing.

while listening to a mike oldfield collection, i came across his cover of the william tell overture, a well-known classical piece by gioachino rossini. since i really like this song, you can watch it here, featuring many copies of mike:

if you want, you can listen to rossini’s piece on youtube.

sunrise.

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:

this time, we also did a trip to maligne lake. last time, we arrived in the early evening, with not much sun left, and shortly after we arrived a storm began to brew up, so we didn’t stay long. this time, i decided to take a boat trip to spirit island; spirit island is one of the most famous views from the canadian rocky mountains. shortly after the boat trip started, the weather began to turn bad, it started raining. but near the island it stopped again, and the sun came out. there were still some dark clouds at the sky, but besides that it was georgous. on the way back, it eventually started to rain again. well, at least here are some rain-free impressions; note that the first two shots are from medicine lake.

another trip we did was taking a walk at patricia lake, and then to some swamps and back. a nice 5 km walk with a lot of beautiful views, along the track no. 6. here are some impressions:

we did a short trip to pyramid island, a small island on pyramid lake. it features a path for a short walk, with beautiful views on the lake. a squirrel was there, too.