after being in seppenrade/lüdinghausen a few weeks ago, we continued first to münster and then to bielefeld, the non-existing city. the weather in bielefeld wasn’t as great as on the days before. in fact, on the only day we spend there in full, it mostly rained. anyway, we had a nice stay there. here are some impressions from bielefeld:

two years ago, i already was in bielefeld, and we had much better weather back then. that trip resulted in quite some nice photos, which so far i haven’t uploaded in this blog. i was somewhat surprised when i wanted to link to them and didn’t find them, so i went through them again and made a selection to add to this post. here are the impressions:

the museum is the historical museum; in 2010, it was also hosting a firefighters exhibition. the castle is the sparrenberg castle.

yesterday, we visisted solothurn. the weather was mixed, with nice, sunny periods, cloudy periods and rainy periods. here are some impressions:

after visiting tierpark goldau, we hiked to the boat landing in goldau (which is 3 km away from the park) and went on a boat trip to zug.

if you love chocolate, then order a “eisschokolade”. it is not exactly what i would call a “eisschokolade”, but definitely the best chocolate sundae i ever had.

in the tierpark goldau, we also saw wildcat kittens. they were playing. just. so. cute.

yesterday, we visited the natur- and tierpark goldau. the weather was perfect, and we really enjoyed the visit. here are a few impressions:

in these photos, you can see red-crested pochards, whooper swans, syrian brown bears, european wolves, roe deer, wildcats, eurasian lynx and alpine ibexes.

last week, we were in seppenrade. luckily for us, the weather was much better than expected. it was sunny, with few clouds, and warm. our first trip was to reckelsum, a bauernschaft near seppenrade. here are some impressions:

our second trip was to lüdinghausen, in particular to the burg vischering:

this weekend, i was in oslo. the second time i was in norway, and the first time i visited its capital.
the weather was perfect – mostly sunny, only few clouds – and i had a great guide! (thanks again!) we’ve visited the holmenkollen ski jump, tried the best apple cake in oslo, visited the oslo opera house, paid a quick visit to the central campus of the university of oslo and to the royal palace, enjoyed the city hall place (radhusplassen), the akershus castle, visited the newest part of tjuvholmen, the vigeland sculpture park. we also visited a great second hand store, which resulted in me leaving with a stack of used cds.
below, you can find impressions from all these places (except the second hand store):

yesterday i made a trip to arosa, taking the cable car up to weisshorn and walking down around 750 m (total elevation difference); it was essentially this hike, except that i stopped at prätschli as the sun began to hide behind the mountains and as i missed the turn somewhen before which lead to maran. anyway, it was a great day for a hike, with clear sky, a bright sun (i had to use my sunglasses; something i haven’t needed in lappland ;-) ), and lots of snow.
several parts of the trail were pretty steep, for example the very beginning, which was a bit scary at first. at these moments, i really wished i had some kind of stick, and was somewhat afraid to slip and slide down. but nothing went wrong, i got down safely and without slipping. i had lunch at the sattelhütte, and did a lot of small stops to take photos. well, the whole thing took me much longer than the anticipated 2 1/2 hours, but who cares. :-)

the way back was a little more adventurous. the idea was to take the regional train from arosa to chur, and then changing into an intercity to basel, jumping out in zurich. i was sleepy (the night wasn’t very long, getting up at 5 and going to bed at 1 isn’t a good combination) and dozed off several time. at one point i noticed we were still at the same point as before i dozed off the last time, but then dozed off again. eventually i realized we were sitting in the darkness, the only light coming from the other train standing next to ours. i started to get awake a bit, and to listen to the other people in the coach, to find out what’s going on. well, nobody really knew, until the conductor walked by outside and someone in my coach opened up a window and asked him. apparently, the locomotive had a defect. eventually they got light working again, though no heating, and we even started rolling a few meters, probably to enable the other train to continue, as the end of our train was apparently blocking its way. after some more waiting, almost one hour after we stopped there in the first place, a second train came up from chur and we changed into that one, which after little more waiting took us down to chur. with somewhat more than one hour of delay, and our intercity to zurich having just left the train station, i ended up in an interregio train to basel via zurich, which took like half an hour longer than the intercity. so, with around 1 1/2 hours of delay, i finally got home. at least, we had some fun in the darkness in that coach, and also later on with light and on the new train; it’s great to sit among nice people :-)

(and no, i didn’t write that text into the snow. and there was more text, like hearts and names and stuff. didn’t took pictures of these, though.)

flying southward. seeing more of the sun than during the last two weeks. such beauty.

one reason why i like the north so much are northern lights: aurora borealis. lappland is a good place to see them, as is northern canada. thanks to the cloud cover, i missed several great auroras (judging from shots people did in this area during these days), but i still saw something. the first set of aurorae appeared when i was outside of guesthouse husky, during one night:

while visiting inari with some other guests staying at the guesthouse, we met andy keen, an aurora hunter and photographer. he gave us a lift back to ivalo, and told us a bit about his history and his fascination on auroras. well, two days later, one other guest and me went on an aurora hunting trip with andy. unfortunatley, we weren’t lucky enough to get a full-blown aurora. but we still saw something, at least! for that, andy drove us somewhere north of inari, near to a lake, where we had a great view over the lake in the direction of norway. the moon was shining bright, and without the stars it almost seemed like daylight. (i guess without the moon the aurorae would have looked more intense as well…) here are some impressions from the lake:

we later continued to another very nice spot, of which i already showed two photos here, and on the way back we stopped on a bridge where we got another wonderful view. (the last four photos of the previous post show these locations.) unfortunatley, both times without auroras. but that’s the problem of aurora hunting, you’re depending a lot on luck. (according to murphy’s law, there probably was a wonderful intense aurora as soon as we were in bed ;-) )
if you’re ever around this area and want to see auroras, do not have a car (to escape the clouds) or just don’t know what to look for, ask andy. he’s a nice guy :-) and it’s nice to be able to start dozing off while someone drives you home in the middle of the night…