for the third time, i visited calgary’s zoo on this weekend. this time, i bought an annual pass, so i will go there a few more times this year. this is a very good opportunity to try out my new toy, a 400 mm telephoto lens.

red panda.

i began by visiting the red panda, watching him for quite a while.

siberian tiger.

after that, i went over to the siberian tigers.

black swan.

on some pond, a few black swans were floating.

snow leopard.

elephant.

an elephant, bathing himself with sand.

giraffe.

lion.

the lions were pretty sleepy. but at some point, one lion got up and walked around a bit.

grizzly bear.

the grizzly bear was sleepy as well, and so was the black bear which was more brown than black. but i got a nice paw shot

wolf.

the last times i was at the zoo, the wolves were rather sleepy. but this time, they were running around, playing, having fun. so i took the chance to take some pictures.

mountain goat.

miscellaneous.

some random impressions.

in the beginning of april, we did a trip to the bastei. i never got around uploading some of the photos. so, finally, here are a few impressions.

here are some impressions from a stop-over in schirgiswalde.

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.

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: