today, i did an excursion to the furka pass and the rhône glacier. i started at 05:45 in zürich, took the train to göschenen, and continued by postauto to the hotel belvédère.

from there, one can visit the ice grotto, a grotto hewn into the glacier. this was the first time i was inside a glacier, though not the first time being inside a artifical ice cave. there is a long twisted corridor, ending in a grotto. the walls often have lights inside, yielding spectacular effects. check out some impressions:

after that, i did a hike to the furka passhöhe. supposed to be a nice, easy hike, at least when you start at at the passhöhe. starting from hotel belvédère, the way is very steep in the beginning (instead of going steeply down at the end). here’s what my gps recorded for me.

the hike started at 2291 meters above sea level, climbed up to 2450 meters above sea level in around 700 meters, and peaked at 2486 meters above sea level near the end, and ended at 2427 meters above sea level after 2.97 kilometers. according to qlandkartegt, i climbed up 358 meters and walked down 222 meters during the whole trip. not bad for my training level… almost took me 2 1/2 hours. but it was really beautiful up there!

in case you want to do the trip in the same direction: the trail starts, seen from the glacier, behind the hotel. the sign is pretty easy to miss, and the trailhead is also easy to miss…

this long weekend i was staying at my parent’s place. here are some impressions, both from my parent’s garden, as well as from a bike tour to olfen.

garden.

surroundings.

in these pictures, you can see, among other things, konik horses and heck cattle. i wish i would have had my longer telephoto lens with me…

yesterday i was told by t. that there is a direct flight from zürich to calgary, offered by edelweiss air. (they fly to calgary each friday, return each monday.) today i checked their website and found out that they also offer flights to vancouver, anchorage, whitehorse, and also two scandinavian destinations, umea (in sweden) and kittilä (in finland), as well as keflavik airport on iceland. most of these flights are only offered during special seasons, though.
so maybe i have to try them out :-)

this weekend, i attended revision, a demoparty. revision is the successor of breakpoint, which in turn is the successor of mekka & symphosium. these events were held over easter from 1997 on, and i attended a few of them (between 2001 and 2005).
after the end of the breakpoint era last year, the revision was moved from bingen to saarbrücken, germany. a city i haven’t been in for quite some time. the party was held in the e-werk, an old power plant.

the weather was really good, it was sunny most of the time except a thunderstorm one evening and a few rain drops. this time, i stayed in a hotel and didn’t sleep under the tables, which resulted in much more sleep for me, except that breakfast at the hotel was pretty early compared to the times i usually ended up in bed asleep. but at least i got decent sleep and didn’t look like a zombie after two days.
it was really nice to meet some friends again, most of them after a long time, in particular trigger, kojote, t$, dynamite, and some more.

the following photos show a bit of what was happening. the first and third photo shows people watching a compo (unfortunatley you cannot see anything on the bigscreen, otherwise everything else would have not been really visible), and the fourth shows the underground hallway to the restrooms.

one afternoon i went on a walk with kojote, looking at some interesting buildings in the neighborhood. here are some impressions:

overall, i have to say that it was partially exhausting, but nonetheless another nice experience. the next time i’ll just stay some of the days, i guess. maybe i’ll drop by at the buenzli this year, since it is not very far from here.

this week, i attended the seventh international workshop on coding and cryptography, held in paris at the institut henri poincaré. besides the three hour visit to paris in 2007, this was my first real visit to this city. the weather was nice, it was sunny though not too warm, and from times to times a bit cloudy (like on the free afternoon). i mainly roamed through the latin quarter up to the seine, the louvre being essentially the farest point away i’ve been at. i had my small camera with me on some of these trips, so here are some impressions.

i also went for a walk during night, once with a camera and once without.

out of the following three churches, namely the saint-étienne-du-mont, the notre dame de paris and the panthéon, i entered the panthéon and inspected notre dame in more detail. unfortuntely, i didn’t really find out when i could enter the saint-étienne-du-mont…

the following shots are from notre dame.

the last shots are from the panthéon and its crypt.

ps: if you want to eat at an excellent place in paris, try out the les papilles.

this saturday, i happend to end up in herford enjoying the beautiful, almost too warm weather. in herford, we first took a look at the marta museum. it’s architecture design is pretty interesting, except for the back side, which is white, flat and absolutely boring. we didn’t went into the exhibition though, just looked at the public parts of the building.

after that, we walked a bit around the historic center, which has some really nice buildings, and had some ice cream later on.

yesterday, i spent over 15 hours on various trains in switzerland. i started at 6 am at the main station in zürich and proceeded to zermatt via visp. in zermatt, i explored the city a bit in the 45 minutes i had, and got back to the train station to get on the glacier express, departing 10 am, which eventually led me to st. moritz. the glacier express is one of the famous panoramic train lines in switzerland, similar to the golden pass panoramics tour i did a couple of years ago, leading through the alps, peaking in oberalbpass at 2033 meters above sea level. the weather was mostly beautiful, except a lot of fog around chur. i had the three course meal on the train, it was really good. (there are also vegetarian choices.) finally, in disentis, there was a fasnacht parade going on.

i took some photos on the trip. unfortunately, one cannot open the windows of the glacier express, whence there are always some more or less ugly reflections lurking around. here are some of the better shots:

if you want to take a lot of photos, better take a usual train, since on these routes they often have windows which can be opened. i might do that somewhen soon, at least for the part from andermatt to disentis.

besides the inability to open the windows, the trip is great! if you have a chance, do it. it’s probably also very interesting during summer, and also during winter when there’s more snow than this year…

yesterday, i again used my ga to explore a bit of switzerland (and italy). i decided to use an offer by the sbb to drive up the cimetta, a mountain next to locarno at the lago maggiore. the weather report for most of switzerland wasn’t very good yesterday, except for the ticino, whence i ended up there. at ground level it was rather foggy, but when climbing up the mountain by cable car i eventually got out of the sea of fog. around the cardada station, the final destination of said cable car, wasn’t too much snow, but still enough left to take a lot of snow photos! later i took the chair lift up to the top and had lunch there, as well as took out my laptop (which i carried with me all the time… i really need to get a netbook!) and worked a bit. that was a funny moment, sitting over 1600 meters over sea level, surrounded by snow, while programming. i guess i have to do that more often :-)

later, i took the cable car back down to locarno and explored the city a bit. here are some impressions, including the madonna del sasso and the castello visconteo:

finally, i took the train to domodossola, operated by fart (ferrovie autolinee regionali ticinesi). the train ride is really beautiful. unfortunately, i had to shoot all photos through the window, which resulted in not so great ones… anyway, there are a few i really like:

i didn’t stay in domodossola, due to being tired and its getting dark outside, so i hopped onto the next train to brig, going through the simplon tunnel (about whose construction i read a novel called simplon some years ago). eventually, 14 hours after my departure, i arrived back in zürich.

yesterday, as i already mentioned here, i did a boat trip on lake zürich. this time, part of the long round trip, leading me to rapperswil. there, i explored the area of the monestry and the castle a bit, and returned to zürich and took the train up the üetliberg to catch sunset. unfortunately, already during the boat trip the weather got worse, i.e. it got cloudy, and so there wasn’t much left from the sunset…

last weekend, i did a hike through the roseg valley with anmut and nik. the weather was stunning, it was warm (t-shirt time!), sunny, not many clouds. and, of course, snow. not as much as there’s supposed to be that time of the year, but still enough to be happy :-)

here are some impressions from the hike and the rest at the roseg glacier restaurant:

(and yes, most of these photos would have been perfect for project 52 a month ago…)