here’s my project 52 shot for the tenth week. the topic was

fernweh.

this topic could be so easy if archive photos would be allowed. like in the last year, i visited many stunning places which i’d love to see again right now:

the photos were taken near vikajärvi, haines junction, keno and mayo, and yellowknife (from left to right, top to bottom). the message of these photos is plain and simple: i’d like to be far, far more north! somewhere near the arctic circle, or even north of it.

unfortunately, i couldn’t make it north. instead, i went south, and up by train, to recover a photography combining two aspects of northern travel: snow and railways.

technical details: 1/1000s, f/8, 32mm, iso 200.

(this photo is in fact older than the topic. originally i wanted to near to that place again, to take more photos, also for use for project 52. unfortunately, i was too busy and too sick to do this.)

this afternoon i did a quick trip to the üetliberg.

eventually i was able to watch a very beautiful sunset. here are some excerpts:

tonight i attended a performance of the trans-siberian orchestra here in zürich, where they played their 2000 album beethoven’s last night in its entirely, and some more songs, among them one of my favorites, grieg’s hall of the mountain king. it was an awesome show, really worth its money. i’m still surprised that i didn’t heard about this band before… i took a few pics with my mobile phone; the quality sucks, but you can get an idea of how it looked like:

interestingly, there are already the first recordings online on youtube:

unfortunately, jon oliva couldn’t make it for this tour…

a week ago i attended a concert at the z-7. the first time since over two years. this concert featured five bands, starting at 18:30. i took the train to arrive at the hall at 19:00, and the first band was already done. the second was done pretty fast as well, but nonetheless this wasn’t a good start since the last train was leaving around midnight and i had to plan in a certain time to reach the train station. (in addition, the last train ride which doesn’t involve walking at least half an hour through zürich leaves around 23:00.)
anyway. i didn’t like the second band very much (maybe less than the first, if i’d heard more of the first band…) the third band, psychotic waltz, a progressive metal band from california, was pretty nice. i haven’t heard of them, which isn’t that much a surprise since they disbanded around 1998, and only recently came back together. i guess i have to check out more of their music at some point later.
after psychotic waltz, one of my most favorite bands entered the stage: nevermore. this is the second time i ever saw them. they played for one hour, including many songs from one of my favorite albums, dead heart from a dead world. unfortunately they didn’t continue playing for another hour or so :-) i really miss the good old times when concerts had at most two or maybe three bands, and the bands had much more time to play…
finally, symphony x started playing. i’ve already seen them twice, in 2007 and 2008. unfortunately, i could only listen to maybe half their set, since i had to leave for the train… they played a bit stuff from their upcoming album, iconoclast. let’s see how the whole thing will sound…
this concert was really nice… except that i had to leave before it was done. i really hade this trent to throw that many bands together, and i’m saying this at more and more concerts – since it’s happening really often, and is really annoying. something very positive about this concert is that the z-7 is now smokefree! there’s still a bit of smoke coming in from outside, but the air inside is much better than it was two years ago. this way, going to concerts is much more fun!

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…

here’s my project 52 shot for the seventh week. the topic was

alles rot!

since i don’t have a red filter, i had to think of something. something i could do without investing too much time and money. (i had a great idea which violates at least one of these two points.) while doing another boat trip on lake zürich today, i noticed that some walls inside the boat were red and reflecting: the perfect setting for a photo in red! the result shows me, a bit of lake zürich’s water and parts of the zürich gold coast. please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/20s, f/10, 50mm, iso 200.

the trip also resulted in another “reddish” photo collection, which i like but which fits less well than the above photo. here it is:

here are a few more impressions from the irchelpark at dawn.

my favorite photo is the following one:

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…)