after being in tromsø, we continued to oslo. one of the first surprises met us close to our hotel. we already stayed there last year, but didn’t notice anything. this time, we noticed something greenish on the ground, which on a closer look turned out to be many tiny statues:

this piece of art is called the grass root square by do ho suh.

similar to last year, we had great weather. not on every day, though. here are some impressions from the rådhusplassen and the adjacent pier:

we also wanted to see oslo from the sea as well as more closely inspect the oslo fjord. unfortunately, the oslo fjord boats were not really running yet, and many of the boats around oslo itself were not running due to ice. nonetheless, two boats were operating (route #92 to nakholmen as well as the ferry to nesoddtangen). the following photos are from route #92:

after that, we explored oslo by bus, and then continued to tjuvholmen, which is almost finished by now. last year, i took one photo over there, which is not showing a lot since most things you could see were construction stuff. this time, there’s a lot more to see, for example the new buildings for the astrup fearnley museum of modern art:

(the snowman was on the boat to nakholmen. i just put it here because it fits better with the other portrait pictures.)

afterwards, we continued by ferry to nesoddtangen and back:

while being in tromsø, we did two longer excursions by car. driving on icy and snowy roads is not exactly our favorite thing, but since it is quite common in scandinavia (and also canada), we thought it might be not too bad. and in fact, it was quite ok, probably thanks a lot to the great winter tires our rental car had. most of the time we had no problems at all, only noticing that braking could take a little longer than usual. only in two situations we experienced trouble: one time, in a roundabout, the car started steering somewhat different than i intended it to go. well, i managed to take control of the situation, but it was not exactly good anymore :) the second situation was when turning the car, it ended up in a situation where we couldn’t drive forward anymore due to wheelspin. well, driving back a bit more and then steering differently solved that as well. alltogether, i would say driving in this conditions is not too bad, and after driving for some days, i felt quite safe.

kvaløya.

our first longer excursion led us to the island kvaløya, an island adjacent to tromsøya, the little island tromsø is located on. we started a bit late, when sunset already had begun (i.e. somewhen around 1 am). we basically circled the southern part of the island.

eastwards.

our second excursion led us east of tromsø. we began driving over to tromsø’s mainland and continuing to breivikeidet, from where we crossed the ullsfjorden via ferry to svensby in lyngen, and then continued to the east side. there, we followed the lyngen fjord southwards until we finally reached the southmost point of our voyage, nordkjosbotn. from there, we drove up north again, this time along the balsfjord, and finally continued back to tromsø.
this time, we started much earlier, and so also got some sunny views. unfortunately, most of the time, we were covered by clouds…

last weekend, we were in brand, austria. the weather was great, despite the mixed forecast.

lünersee.

on the first day, we visited the lünersee, a water reservoir for the lünerseewerk power plant. it is a beautiful mountain lake which can be accessed by a cable car. here are some photos:

dorfbahn/panoramabahn.

during summer, there are two cable cars in brand itself, namely the dorfbahn and the panoramabahn. the dorfbahn starts directly in the town, while the panoramabahn starts at the end of the dorfbahn and crosses a valley. the view is really magnificent! there is a nice and easy walking trail from the top of the panoramabahn back to the top of the dorfbahn, which we took. here are some impressions:

last week, i was in castro urdiales, a small costal town in northern spain. there, two conferences were held, namely the third workshop on mathematical cryptology and the third international conference on symbolic computation and cryptography. i attended both conferences and stayed a little longer over the weekend. after the first impressions i’ve uploaded last weekend, after arriving in castro, i gathered some more photos during this weekend. these were all taken in the city boundaries of castro urdiales, most of them close to the coast. castro is a really beautiful place, mainly crowded by spanish and french tourists and people living there (well, and conference attendants). the weather is pretty neat, especially for someone who doesn’t like heat too much as i do. also, swimming in the atlantic ocean is just great. it’s definitely a nice place to visit!

on saturday, we visited bern. we visited the sapperlot! exhibition on swiss dialects, walked around town, had icecream at the gelateria di berna, saw the bärengraben, walked along the aar. the weather was great, almost too hot. here are some impressions:

the following are panoramas from a thunderstorm happening almost two weeks ago. the first two panoramas were taken around three minutes apart, and the third one half an our later. the last one was taken on the late evening.

yesterday, a beautiful cloudy sky presented itself to us after a wonderful not-anymore-existent indian dinner (now also known as an improvised chäschüechli dinner).