recently, after lunch, we got two kinder surprises. both of them featured the same smurf, to our dismay. (which resulted in a nice idea for an exercise.) anyway, after playing around with them a little, the following scene appeared. only having a crappy mobile phone cam, we weren’t able to catch the scene in its full beauty, but at least, here are some crude approximations:

(sorry for the screwed up depth-of-field. my mobile phone isn’t exactly good with that.)

today, after a snowy morning, most of the snow melted away during the afternoon, and at early evening, even the sun came out. the weather was so beautiful that we took a walk.

we even met some easter bunnies:

monday and tuesday i was in basel, attending the speedup workshop, including a tutorial on intel threading building blocks and cilk plus. something i have to try out, by writing some lattice enumeration code with it, to see how it copes with it. especially the tutorial was definitely worth the time spend there.
but besides business, i walked around a bit in basel during monday’s lunch break, this time with my camera. this resulted in some nice photos, and some of these are here:

this sunday, i was in elm at the glarner alpchäs- und schabziger märt, a kind of folk festival where you can have fun, try and buy cheese, eat traditional food, listen to bands playing folk music, and as a highlight, watching an almabtrieb. during the latter event, the cows from the alms are driven back into the valley, where they are decorated and equipped with nice cowbells, and walked along the main street so the tourists can watch and take pictures ;-) below are some impressions from that day with wonderful weather, opposing the foggy, cool weather i left behind when leaving the zürich area…

in the last photo, you can see the martinsloch. we didn’t knew the sun was shining through that morning (around 9:33 o’clock), otherwise we probably would have been there earlier…

today, i did an excursion to the furka pass and the rhône glacier. i started at 05:45 in zürich, took the train to göschenen, and continued by postauto to the hotel belvédère.

from there, one can visit the ice grotto, a grotto hewn into the glacier. this was the first time i was inside a glacier, though not the first time being inside a artifical ice cave. there is a long twisted corridor, ending in a grotto. the walls often have lights inside, yielding spectacular effects. check out some impressions:

after that, i did a hike to the furka passhöhe. supposed to be a nice, easy hike, at least when you start at at the passhöhe. starting from hotel belvédère, the way is very steep in the beginning (instead of going steeply down at the end). here’s what my gps recorded for me.

the hike started at 2291 meters above sea level, climbed up to 2450 meters above sea level in around 700 meters, and peaked at 2486 meters above sea level near the end, and ended at 2427 meters above sea level after 2.97 kilometers. according to qlandkartegt, i climbed up 358 meters and walked down 222 meters during the whole trip. not bad for my training level… almost took me 2 1/2 hours. but it was really beautiful up there!

in case you want to do the trip in the same direction: the trail starts, seen from the glacier, behind the hotel. the sign is pretty easy to miss, and the trailhead is also easy to miss…

yesterday, i paid konstanz a short visit. here are some impressions:

currently, it sounds like i’m in a war zone. explosions outside, here and there, at random intervals. it already started to get more intensive a few days ago; though some explosions can be heard almost every few days.
but zürich is no war zone, of course. this is just the swiss national day.
i hope it’s over when i want to go to bed…
(it would be so much nicer if it would be a real firework and not just explosions…)

today i did a short excursion to the botanical garden in zürich. the sun was shining and i got some nice pictures. there also was a cat to pet, though after some time it walked away… anyway, it was a nice trip, and here are some of the results. the cat never was in the right position to take a nice photo, so unfortunately there is no photo of the cat…

today, i finally did a hike i already wanted to do for a long time: i visited the morteratsch glacier in the engadine. there is a train station nearby, called morteratsch. from there, a trail leads to the ice front. it used to be that the train station was at the ice front, but that was more than 100 years ago, and since then the glacier retreated quite a distance – almost two kilometers. here are a few impressions from the hike to the ice front:

shortly before i reached the ice front, and just a few moments before i could see anything, i heard a loud noice. some ice collapsing, something breaking off, i don’t know. happens all the time, and it is always a good idea to know what you are doing when going on a glacier. for example, never go too near to places where ice seems to break off :-) anyway, even though i only was at the very bottom of the glacier – i’ve seen much more of some glaciers in canada –, there were many interesting views of ice formations, of mixtures of ice, dirt, rocks and water. glaciers are so beautiful!

while looking through the photos, i found a polar bear hiding in one of the photos. can you find it?