yesterday, i did a snow hike in engadine. first, i walked from guarda to lavin, and after that, i continued by train to saint moritz, and afterwards i returned home. the weather was awesome in the beginning, but after some time the sun hid behind some clouds, making it impossible to make good photos of the snow. too bad. the sight was still great, though.

today i went for a short walk to the irchelpark next to the campus where i’m working on. here are some impressions:

another panoramic view on the lake:

a panorama of most of the scenes in the previous pictures:

two weeks ago, i did a small round trip through switzerland. first, i took a train to bern:

then, i continued the old lötschberg trail to brig, and then continued to realp, where i did a small stop to wander around in the snow. finally, i continued over andermatt back to zurich.

well, i took these photos already in september, but i didn’t had time to upload them until now. so, here you’ll find some photos of the schlossgarten in oldenburg.

sunday, i decided to visit the pilatus, a 2100 m mountain next to lucerne. the weather was pretty foggy, and so was the trip up, at least in the beginning:

after traveling some time in such a gondola, i managed to escape the fog, and got a fantastic view on the sea of fog:

some panoramas:

some more impressions:

and some more panoramas:

finally, i left the mountain using the steepest cogwheel train:

today i tried the golden pass panoramics tour, going from zürich to lucerne to interlaken ost to zweisimmen to montreux. here are some impressions:

on saturday, i visited the rock 2008, a one-day festival held on königstein fortress, located in the beautiful landscape of the saxon switzerland, together with a friend. here are some pictures from the fortress:

after strolling around the fortress interior a bit, we walked near to the stage to watch the first band, krieger, a german hard rock band. usually, the first band(s) playing on a festival have the ungrateful job of killing some time, while most of the crowd hopes they’ll stop soon. often, they aren’t exactly experienced or aren’t too good. but not krieger; they played a pretty solid kind of hard rock, maybe not exactly my style, but it was good and we enjoyed it. some photos:

after krieger, a short break took place when the stage was prepared for lacrimas profundere, a german gothic metal band. the break went on pretty fast, and the band entered the stage. i haven’t heard them before, just their name. i think i have to listen to some of their albums before i can give a better judgement, but they sounded pretty good. a photo:

a very noticeable thing about this festival was that all stage reconstructions were done very fast, and the sound quality was really good all the time. i haven’t seen this combination ever before; often, it seems that the reconstruction times were eternal and the sound quality still really bad.
another admireable thing was the strict adheration of the time table. the first two bands had like 30 minutes, and the whole festival was planned to be over by around 23 o’clock, and so they managed to do. even though the doors opened a few minutes later than planned. (well, please admit it, have you ever experienced some festival or concert without any delay?)
anyway, the third band was schandmaul, a german medieval metal band. i know a bunch of people who like them a lot, but this doesn’t change the fact that i managed to not know a lot of them except a few songs, maybe. schandmaul did a very nice show. they managed to get the last bits of the party rocking and rolling. definitely a very good live band. some photos:

then, finally, it was time for the big stars of the evening, the finnish cello rockers apocalyptica. i’ve already seen them last november in zürich, and they were one of the main reasons why i travelled so far for this festival. the stage design was as usual: four large metal chairs, formed like skulls, with a huge drumkit in the middle:

their performance was, as usual, excellent. it’s always amazing how eicca and perttu manage to combine heavy head banging with playing their cellos perfectly. unfortunately, antero wasn’t playing with a burning cello this time, though. besides that, they managed to let the crowd freak out, and played lots of great songs, including some of my very favorites like prologue (apprehension) from reflections and the norwegian black metal classichall of the mountain king from cult, featuring paavo stomping around the stage while playing the mountain king. simply great. here are some photos:

after maybe one and a half hour, everything was over. we took a peek at the merchandizing booth, where the guys from lacrimas profundere were waiting for their fans to talk, being photographed, autographing and talking. then, we took the bus down to the city of königstein and walked back to our hostel, where its owner, lutz, was waiting for the concert attendees at a nice bonfire.
well, i think this concert/festival qualifies for being one of the best i’ll attend this year. the technical stuff was marvellous, the timing good (except that at least lacrimas profundere should have played a bit longer and, well, apocalyptica could have played the whole day anyway :-) ). all four bands were ranging from good to excellent, and in particular the last two made the crowd go crazy. (even though i still don’t get it why on earth one wants to have a mosh pit while a gothic metal band is playing. but then, hell, kiddies aren’t exactly predictable…)

just made some photos of today’s lunar eclipse, after missing the last one. here are some of them:

note that the last one had a shutter speed of 70 seconds. the moon moved a lot during that, as you can see. two more pictures of the night:

today, i did another trip onto the üetliberg, enjoying the sunny day. here are some photos.

this weekend was rather busy. on friday, i got a visitor from bremen, and we did another boattrip on the zürich lake:

after that, we continued to lake constance to attend a friend’s birthday party. during that, we spend some time at the lake:

maybe the following photo summarizes the whole weekend in the best way:

yet another fantastic weekend, unfortunately being over by now.