once during the last days of december, a great fog panorama presented itself to us. the fog was close, but didn’t reach us yet:

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.

sunday, i decided to visit the pilatus, a 2100 m mountain next to lucerne. the weather was pretty foggy, and so was the trip up, at least in the beginning:

after traveling some time in such a gondola, i managed to escape the fog, and got a fantastic view on the sea of fog:

some panoramas:

some more impressions:

and some more panoramas:

finally, i left the mountain using the steepest cogwheel train:

today, i made a small excursion onto the ütliberg. again, it was very foggy, though it wasn’t really raining as last time. this time i took a lot more photos than last time, and also some panoramas. maybe i’m done with sorting out the stuff tomorrow, in which case i’ll upload some. for the moment, here’s a photo of myself: