today, after the rain stopped and the weather eventually turned out to be beautiful, we decided spontaneously to take the dvzo steam locomotive ride from hinwil via bäretswil to bauma. due to some technical problems the train ride took somewhat longer than planned, but since the weather was nice, we didn’t mind that at all. here are some impressions from the trip:
it’s still less than a year since we first saw some little kitten, and some months less before they joined us at our place – one of them, miukumauku, at our home, and the other two at our neighbours’. last weekend, on the day we returned from tyrol, it was the not-anymore-kitten’s first birthday!
(it was not so simple to get all three of them into one picture and make them look at the camera. in fact, they never did that when i was ready to take a picture. so i ended up looking for shots where they were not half busy eating or presenting their butts, but somehow looking nice.)
we don’t think they actually noticed that this day was somewhat special for them, but then, who cares if there’s food and good weather:
so we watched them play for some time, trying to catch each other, crawling through the grass, looking for food, etc.
finally, here’s a nice portrait shot of miukumauku:
some weeks ago, we went to see ohne rolf in engelberg. unfortunately for us, the weather sucked during our short stay. that’s why there are essentially on photos excep this one taken outside the schaukäserei:
on our way back, we hopped on a boat in lucerne and crossed lake lucerne until we finally arrived in flüelen. from there, we returned home via train. here are some snapshots from the nice boat trip, which was mostly uneventful except the last hop, where a group of drunken turnverein members entered the boat…
(the city you can see is brunnen.)
in the previous weeks, i forgot to upload some cat photos twice. some of the photos turned out really nice, so i don’t want to withhold them:
the first occasion was on march 30th, where we caught two of our cats sitting inside drying sheets:
(“look how cute we are. you surely won’t mind that we leave some hair on the freshly washed sheets, don’t you?”)
the second occasion was on may 1st, when we were outside and our cats were playing on the meadow. well, miukumauku was playing, and the other was just following me around:
last weekend, we were in south tyrol. we arrived on thursday via postauto via the ofenpass, and the first thing we did was visiting glurns for a couple of hours. glurns is a small municipality with many medieval remains:
afterwards, we continued to merano, where we stayed until sunday. unfortunately, on friday, the weather began to be pretty bad; it was raining a lot and most of the time, the sky was gray. only on saturday it started to brighten up. on saturday we took the chair lift up to tirol and from there continued up to hochmuth. the sky was still pretty cloudy, but after some time, it started to brighten up. some clouds began to rise past, and after returning back to tirol, suddenly the sky began to really clear up. we walked part of the apfelweg and part of the weinweg, and finally returned to merano via chair lift. this time, with the weather beautiful, the view from the chair lift was just gorgeous. finally, we walked to the passer river and followed it to our hotel. see some photos here:
two weeks ago, i was in bergen, attending the international workshop on coding and cryptography (the last one was in paris, which i also attended). unfortunately, bergen presented itself from its well-known rainy side. when i arrived (by train from oslo), it was raining. most of the days it was raining, and if not, it was cloudy. the only two exceptions where wednesday afternoon, when the sun almost came out (one could see it through the clouds). on that afternoon, we had a boat tour scheduled. the boat went four three hours, and one could observe how beautiful everything would look like with sun:
like half an hour after arriving back in bergen, it continued to rain… on thursday evening, the conference dinner was planned. it was happening on the fløyen, where we drove up with the bløibanen. a usually beautiful place, but on that thursday, the sight was not so splendid, as the following panorama picture of bergen shows:
well, finally, on friday, the weather became really beautiful. while it didn’t stay dry during the whole day – there were some short showers now and then – it was sunny with a few clouds most of the day. and it was possible to run around with just a t-shirt and trousers. finally! :) i explored the city, the famous bryggen, the bergenhus fortress, went up the fløyen another time – again with the funicular –, walked down on foot, and enjoyed a nice evening before flying back on saturday. enjoy some of the photos i took on friday:
on the second weekend of april, we returned to oslo for a long weekend. unfortunately, the weather was not as great as in february (and also last february), but at least on saturday afternoon, the weather finally got presentable. thus, all my photos are from that afternoon.
we first visited the holmenkollen ski jump. while it was still quite cloudy, there were at least some holes in the clouds somewhere in the distance. also on that day, there was a zip-line event happening, where you could whizz down the ski jump on a zip-line. (it was already sold out, so we didn’t had any chance to do this, even in case we would have liked to.)
later on we continued to the restaurant frognerseteren, where we wanted to eat something. we found out that the chef is swiss and had a nice chat with him. later on, the clouds finally ripped open above us, and the sun came through:
afterwards, we continued to the vigeland sculpture park, which we enjoyed together with a great sunset:
on the next day, i continued by train to bergen on one of the world’s most beautiful train tracks. unfortunately, the weather was not very appealing, whence i spent most of the time working and reading.
on the weekend before easter we were in kaiserslautern. the main reason for our visit was to attend a team meeting for matheraum, but then we also visited rebekka and m. i haven’t seen rebekka for … i don’t know how many years now. (ignoring a “train incident” where she saw me, but i didn’t saw her while changing trains in mannhein or so.) definitely longer as this blog exists, i.e. before 2007. anyway. even though the weather wasn’t too great most of the weekend, we were lucky to get a glimpse of kaiserslautern with sun on both friday and sunday (on sunday we met rebekka and m.).
on saturday, we went to the japanese garden. while inside at least it didn’t snow (it waited until we left), but the weather wasn’t very great and also the cherry blossom didn’t bloom yet. still, it was a nice experience:
next time i’ll go there, there should better be sun and cherry blossoms :-)
i have to admit that i haven’t been really updating my blog for quite some time now, even though there was a lot i wanted to add. now that i finally have a bit of spare time, i want to add at least some of these things.
after being on muottas muragl, we continued to the other end of switzerland, namely to the small village of broc, where the chocolate producer cailler is located. there, we signed up for a course on making pralines.
we first drank a nice hot chocolate in the cafeteria:
after that, we explored the shop, before finally our course began. at the beginning of the course, we began to prepare the filling.
for that, we started heating chocolate (cailler cuisine of course ;-) ) with a bit of cream, and later added some butter. that was put into the fridge to cool down. while it cooled down, we took a look at the available garnishments:
(the alcohol should be added when melting the chocolate. we decided against it since you have to decide between all your pralines having alcohol or none.) after some time, we put the chocolate cream into an icing bag and created little heaps (i’m tempted to write turds – the similarity was quite obvious). these were cooled again, until we transformed them using our hands to balls. these were cooled down again, and we were provided with chocolate for the shell. (producing that one yourself is quite tedious work, since you have to invest quite some time to preserve the glossy look. i guess at cailler they have machines for that.) we then put garnishments into pots and started to produce pralines. here are some results:
the process of getting to this point was to take a ball of filling, put it into the shell chocolate bowl, turn it around there, extract it and bath it in the garnishment bowl:
afterwards, the pralines had to be cooled another time. we then were provided with packaging and decoration material:
afterwards, we went on a tour while our pralines were staying in the fridge. after the tour, you end up in a room where you can try all pralines produced by cailler, and you can eat as much was you want. finally, we picked up our pralines and began to return home. it was a great and tasty experience!
