we were in brand for a second time. this time, we went for skiing, relaxing and taking photos.

well, unfortunately, there wasn’t much snow around when we were there, especially in the valley. many ski tracks were closed, but for beginners as me, this didn’t really matter. (except on one day, when due to upcoming storm they had to close some of the beginner’s tracks as well. :-) ) it was only on the day before we left that it began to snow, and on the day we left suddenly even the valley was covered in a winterly white, which we could watch from inside the bus…

anyway, what i’m doing on skis is now closer to what people would call skiing, and i’ve been able to practice almost every day – so it wasn’t bad after all. unfortunatly, the “taking photos” part of our trip suffered due to that and the small amount of snow. still, here are a couple of nice photos i took:

(on the second photo, you can see the lünersee dam.)

recently we were in knie’s kinderzoo in rapperswil. judging from the huge amount of families, apparently a very attractive destination. and from judging the kids, they seem to like it a lot. here are some impressions:

this weekend, the apv zo visited the wildpark bruderhaus in winterthur. the weather was great, and except for the lynxes, we saw all animals we planned to see: sika deer and fallow deer, european bisons, wild boars, red deer, przewalski’s horses and gray wolves.

a couple of weeks ago, the meadow behind our house was freshly mowed, and our cats were playing. it was beautiful weather, and i grabbed my camera to watch them playing a bit:

nowadays, there are quite some fair trade products customers can choose when buying stuff. there’s fair chocolate, fair bananas, fair t-shirts, etc. one common denominator of these products is that they consist of not too many things, that they are not too complex. essentially for all kind of products which are too complex – think of electronics – virtually no fair products exist. and in fact, producing a 100% fair electronic device is essentially impossible without a huge amount of ressources available. there are just too many different tasks to ensure.
but fortunately, there are some projects which at least try. most notably, there are two projects i want to write about today. first, there’s the german faire maus, a (somewhat) fair mouse. the precise list of pieces need to assemble one can be found here, together with information what problems can arise in their production, which problems are (essentially) solved for the fair mouse, and which are still unsolved. so, while not 100% fair, at least the process is very transparent and it is possible to identity points where the process is still not exactly fair.
another project is the fairphone, a project from the netherlands trying to produce a fairer smartphone. compared to a simple mouse, a smartphone is way more complex, and depends on a much larger range of different parts. well, as a consequence, it is also much harder to make it fair. the fairphone project still tries hard. besides fair, they also try to be very transparent about where everything is from and under which conditions it was obtained/created. for example, there’s conflict-free tin from a congolese mine involved.
the fairphone project is currently trying to get enough advance orders to produce the first batch of fairphones. they need 5000 orders, and so far, they just got around 1640. the number is increasing now and then, but i’m wondering if it will reach the required 5000 early enough. in september, the fairphone team wants to inform about a possible delivery date, which will hopefully be in october. so if you’re planning to get a (new) smartphone somewhen in the near future, you should think about supporting that project. the price of 325 euros is quite in range, and you’re supporting a good cause. (and if it doesn’t work out, you’ll get your money back somewhen in fall.)
actually, i just ordered one fairphone last week. (well, and also two fair mouses.) not that i suddenly like the idea of having a smartphone (i still don’t), but then, i can still install linux on it – after all, i will be allowed to do that, as opposed to most other smartphones which you don’t really own when buying them. (isn’t that another reason?)

today, after the rain stopped and the weather eventually turned out to be beautiful, we decided spontaneously to take the dvzo steam locomotive ride from hinwil via bäretswil to bauma. due to some technical problems the train ride took somewhat longer than planned, but since the weather was nice, we didn’t mind that at all. here are some impressions from the trip:

it’s still less than a year since we first saw some little kitten, and some months less before they joined us at our place – one of them, miukumauku, at our home, and the other two at our neighbours’. last weekend, on the day we returned from tyrol, it was the not-anymore-kitten’s first birthday!

(it was not so simple to get all three of them into one picture and make them look at the camera. in fact, they never did that when i was ready to take a picture. so i ended up looking for shots where they were not half busy eating or presenting their butts, but somehow looking nice.)

we don’t think they actually noticed that this day was somewhat special for them, but then, who cares if there’s food and good weather:

so we watched them play for some time, trying to catch each other, crawling through the grass, looking for food, etc.

finally, here’s a nice portrait shot of miukumauku:

two weeks ago, i was in bergen, attending the international workshop on coding and cryptography (the last one was in paris, which i also attended). unfortunately, bergen presented itself from its well-known rainy side. when i arrived (by train from oslo), it was raining. most of the days it was raining, and if not, it was cloudy. the only two exceptions where wednesday afternoon, when the sun almost came out (one could see it through the clouds). on that afternoon, we had a boat tour scheduled. the boat went four three hours, and one could observe how beautiful everything would look like with sun:

like half an hour after arriving back in bergen, it continued to rain… on thursday evening, the conference dinner was planned. it was happening on the fløyen, where we drove up with the bløibanen. a usually beautiful place, but on that thursday, the sight was not so splendid, as the following panorama picture of bergen shows:

well, finally, on friday, the weather became really beautiful. while it didn’t stay dry during the whole day – there were some short showers now and then – it was sunny with a few clouds most of the day. and it was possible to run around with just a t-shirt and trousers. finally! :) i explored the city, the famous bryggen, the bergenhus fortress, went up the fløyen another time – again with the funicular –, walked down on foot, and enjoyed a nice evening before flying back on saturday. enjoy some of the photos i took on friday:

on the second weekend of april, we returned to oslo for a long weekend. unfortunately, the weather was not as great as in february (and also last february), but at least on saturday afternoon, the weather finally got presentable. thus, all my photos are from that afternoon.

we first visited the holmenkollen ski jump. while it was still quite cloudy, there were at least some holes in the clouds somewhere in the distance. also on that day, there was a zip-line event happening, where you could whizz down the ski jump on a zip-line. (it was already sold out, so we didn’t had any chance to do this, even in case we would have liked to.)

later on we continued to the restaurant frognerseteren, where we wanted to eat something. we found out that the chef is swiss and had a nice chat with him. later on, the clouds finally ripped open above us, and the sun came through:

afterwards, we continued to the vigeland sculpture park, which we enjoyed together with a great sunset:

on the next day, i continued by train to bergen on one of the world’s most beautiful train tracks. unfortunately, the weather was not very appealing, whence i spent most of the time working and reading.

on the weekend before easter we were in kaiserslautern. the main reason for our visit was to attend a team meeting for matheraum, but then we also visited rebekka and m. i haven’t seen rebekka for … i don’t know how many years now. (ignoring a “train incident” where she saw me, but i didn’t saw her while changing trains in mannhein or so.) definitely longer as this blog exists, i.e. before 2007. anyway. even though the weather wasn’t too great most of the weekend, we were lucky to get a glimpse of kaiserslautern with sun on both friday and sunday (on sunday we met rebekka and m.).

on saturday, we went to the japanese garden. while inside at least it didn’t snow (it waited until we left), but the weather wasn’t very great and also the cherry blossom didn’t bloom yet. still, it was a nice experience:

next time i’ll go there, there should better be sun and cherry blossoms :-)