i’m currently staying in toronto, attending a conference at the fields institute. today’s afternoon was free, so i did a trip to the toronto islands. here are some impressions from the trip:
finally, a photo of myself, taken at the beach of ward’s island.
on december 8, 2008, i did another trip which i never wrote about so far. this time, i visited switzerland’s jungfraujoch, featuring europe’s highest train station at 3.454 meters above sea level. i did that trip on a monday to avoid the hordes of tourists wich invade the jungfraujoch in particular on weekends.
the first stop of the train inside the mountain is the eigernordwand station.
the second stop of the train inside the mountain is the eismeer station, giving a wonderful view on the lower grindelwald glacier.
note that the windows were steamy, which adds a neat glow to the scenery:
at the final station, jungfraujoch station, one enters a huge station. here are some views from one outside part of the station:
two panoramas; the first gives another view from the station, similar to the one above, and the second one shows in detail a metal rope which survived an ice storm:
inside the station, one can find several pieces of art, including an ice palace consisting completely of ice:
this time, on the other side of the station, where one can walk on snow:
another panoramic view:
finally, some views from the trip back to zürich:
today, i went on a second walk, this time north from my place. here are some impressions.
a beautiful view downwards onto a half-frozen river:
i don’t know how to describe this in words, but it’s simply beautiful. even though i don’t think this picture captures the full beauty the “ice flowers”, here it is:
since january 4th, i’m living in calgary now. here a few impressions from inside the place where i’m living this time:
and here a few impressions from a walk i took today. also compare them to these photos i took last may, as i ended in the same park i began with in last may. note that the current temperature got up to +14 degrees celsius right now (3 p.m.), this morning it was a bit less but still positive.
some ducks swimming in parts of the river which are not covered by ice:
finally, the place where i’m staying. very easy to recognize due to euler’s identity scratched into the concrete:
yesterday, i did a snow hike in engadine. first, i walked from guarda to lavin, and after that, i continued by train to saint moritz, and afterwards i returned home. the weather was awesome in the beginning, but after some time the sun hid behind some clouds, making it impossible to make good photos of the snow. too bad. the sight was still great, though.
today i went for a short walk to the irchelpark next to the campus where i’m working on. here are some impressions:
another panoramic view on the lake:
a panorama of most of the scenes in the previous pictures:
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 did another trip onto the üetliberg, enjoying the sunny day. here are some photos.
on the third day of the ants, we had half a day off. some of us took the chance to make a small hike to sundance canyon on that afternoon.
to reach the sundance canyon, one has to walk a bit through beautiful nature.
the first picture still belongs to the way to the canyon. the canyon itself is going upwards, a small river is floating downwards. it’s pretty steep, as you can see. when one reaches the top, one gets a pretty neat view.
the way back featured several other great views.
finally, we reached the banff hot springs, which are not in use anymore to ensure the living of the banff springs snail. this is a kind of snail which basically only lives at exactly this place.
after returning to the conference center (which involved a stop in banff and drinking some beer), we took a small walk to the bow river, from where one has a good view on the banff springs hotel.
another thing one can see from there are the bow falls, a pretty low (just a few meters) waterfall.
well, last but not least, a really big thanks to all involved in making this trip possible!
this week, i was attending the ants. that’s not a conference on ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence, but the eighth instance of the algorithmic number theory symphosium, held in banff, canada.
banff is situated in the canadian part of the rocky mountains, whence one has a pretty neat sight:
here are some impressions from the conference center facilities. the first is a shortcut to the dining hall, the second the professional develop center, and the third one a pathway inbetween:
the next two photos show a view from inside the professional develop center, where we were housed, and me together with my poster:
this conference has been really great. i had lots of fun, learned a lot, met a lot of nice folks (again). and some more.
