this year, we travelled to the nordseeküste for another time. we had a very nice time, and fortunately, it was much cooler than inland. just around 25—30 degrees instead of 30—40 degrees... we enjoyed the high water a lot (it started in the morning when we arrived, and ended in the late afternoon when we left ­— perfect!), but also the wadden sea.

we were also able to see this year's total lunar eclipse, though it took some time until it was possible to see the darkened moon through the clouds.

we visited dat otto huus, a museum dedicated to east frisian comedian otto waalkes.

afterwards, we continued to norden, where we visited the seehundstation norddeich, where abandoned harbor seal pups are raised until they can be released back into the wild.

today i saw moon, a 2009 science fiction movie. i’ve heard about the movie before, maybe seen a trailer, or maybe read a review, but i’ve never managed to see it until i found it on dvd on friday. it is about a guy working alone on a moon base, mining helium-3. close to his three year contract, he’s looking forward to return home, to his wive and daughter. he starts seeing things, until a fatal accident and someone’s too big curiosity brings everything out of control. leads to an unpleasant discovery. (if you want to know more, read the synopsis on wikipedia.) the movie is well made, and one particularly great part is the soundtrack, composed by clint mansell. parts of it became an earworm for me:

while staying near to ivalo, the first night was really, really beautiful. some kind of fog, illuminated by the full moon, and aurorae dancing on the sky. just incredible.

more (daylight) photos will follow later. and in case you didn’t notice, i updated part two and added a few more photos from the trip from kuusamo to ivalo.

yesterday, a total lunar eclipse (also known as a blood moon in german) occured. the next total one will be visible here in 2015, the previous one was in 2008. the one in 2008 was clouds only for me, as the one yesterday turned out to be as well. anyway, i spent the evening on the üetliberg, and took some nice photos, even though not of the moon.

sunset.

the first photos are from the sunset. in that direction, there weren’t too many clouds. only in the other direction, where the moon was supposed to rise, there were a lot of clouds.

zoomed zürich.

at least, i got some nice zoom shots of zürich. the second photo in the second row shows the eth and university main buildings.

üetliberg.

finally, here are two fisheye shots. the first shows a bit of the cloud cover, and the second one shows the uto kulm. i took the sunset photos from the look-out tower, and the latter ones from around the position that photo was taken. there was a lot of wind upstairs, and for the zürich photos i needed longer exposure times, which resulted in totally wiggled photos when i tried it from up there.

in march, we did a trip to finland, mostly to lappland.

riding a train up to rovaniemi.

starting in helsinki, we took a train up to rovaniemi. then, we took a bus to vikajärvi, a small municipal around 30 km north-east of rovaniemi.

staying in vikajärvi.

we stayed in a cottage right next to lake vikajärvi:

we had a lot of very soft, powdery snow there. enjoy some pictures of the cottage and its surroundings:

a night in vikajärvi.

here are some night photos, shot from the cottage to the outside. during daylight time, we never saw any animal, except birds somewhere in the sky. during night, we didn’t saw any animal as well, but we heard treacherous crackle from the surrounding woods and saw tracks of smaller and larger animals in the morning. for these reasons, we never really left the cottage during night.

we also had a good view on the moon:

a short visit to rovaniemi.

after a long stay in the cottage, we spend a few days in rovaniemi. we visited the artikum. the historic train is situated next to the railway station, and the last strange photo is from the lamp in our hotel room.

just made some photos of today’s lunar eclipse, after missing the last one. here are some of them:

note that the last one had a shutter speed of 70 seconds. the moon moved a lot during that, as you can see. two more pictures of the night: