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.

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

architektur.

i like old buildings. in particular, fortified places, like castles, might they be still intact or broken into pieces. this photo is from turun linna, turku’s castle, a view into the courtyard. please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/80s, f/8, 18mm, iso 400.

the last days, i’ve been travelling back south, arriving at helsinki airport tomorrow to fly back to zürich. when i started driving south in lapland, it was still ruska time:

(these shots are from the first time i the clouds broke open and let sunlight through on my way south, after having seen a dense cloud cover for the last whatever many days.) the farther south i got, the less colorful the landscape got. but then, there were other interesting things to see.

vikajärvi.

on my way north, i drove directly from kemijärvi to sodankylä, hence missing vikajärvi, the town i stayed in for 10 days last year in march. but on my way back south, with my first stop-over being kemi, the best way was going straight through vikajärvi. i couldn’t resist to get a better view of some places during fall:

compare the first photo to this one, and the place where i shot the last two photos is depicted here. everything looks quite different, eh?

kemi.

my first stop-over was kemi, finland’s northernmost city at a coast to an ocean. (it is located at the bothnian bay.) here are a few impressions from a stroll to the old harbor:

lumijoki: bay of bothnia.

continuing the next day to vaasa, i did a stop in varjakka near lumijoki to get another, more beachy view on the bothnian bay:

unfortunately, the weather got bad around that point, as on the way to varjakka and back there were a lot of nice views…

(lumijoki lies in pohjois-pohjanmaa, which roughly translates to northern northland. considering that there is a lot more north of it, the name is quite a fail :) )

öja.

somewhere before vaasa, i took a small detour and visited the island öja. unfortunatley, the weather was still not very exciting…

from vaasa i continued further south to turku.

turun linna.

when arriving in turku, i was too early to check in into my hotel, so i drove in the direction of the harbor to see some sea. but then i saw turku’s castle and decided to take a closer look at it. the castle was built over 700 years ago and is still mostly intact. one can nowadays walk through a maze of rooms and enjoy many great views, on both medieval and renaissance parts, and there is also a prehistoric exhibition running. it’s definitely a great place to visit! here are some impressions:

turun tuomiokirkko and surroundings.

after dropping my stuff off at the hotel and refreshing myself, i went to see the tuomiokirkko and its surroundings. here are some impressions:

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…

during end of may, i attended a conference held in the beautiful city of leuven, belgium. the conference was held at the arenberg castle, located in a beautiful park. here are some impressions:

the arenberg castle and its park.

leuven by night.

these photos are impressions from a city tour we had one night.

leuven by day.

here are some more impressions of leuven taken during the free afternoon.

on christmas, my girlfriend and i visited lüdinghausen, my home town. we visited two castles, burg lüdinghausen and burg vischering, and my old school, the st. antonius gymnasium. here are some impressions.

location.

they are all located relatively near to each other, as the map here shows.

the first castle: burg lüdinghausen.

my old school: the st. antonius gymnasium.

the second castle: burg vischering.

in case you wonder: the right photo in the second row depicts a pranger. one can actually try out this one :)