last week, i was in castro urdiales, a small costal town in northern spain. there, two conferences were held, namely the third workshop on mathematical cryptology and the third international conference on symbolic computation and cryptography. i attended both conferences and stayed a little longer over the weekend. after the first impressions i’ve uploaded last weekend, after arriving in castro, i gathered some more photos during this weekend. these were all taken in the city boundaries of castro urdiales, most of them close to the coast. castro is a really beautiful place, mainly crowded by spanish and french tourists and people living there (well, and conference attendants). the weather is pretty neat, especially for someone who doesn’t like heat too much as i do. also, swimming in the atlantic ocean is just great. it’s definitely a nice place to visit!

on saturday, we visited bern. we visited the sapperlot! exhibition on swiss dialects, walked around town, had icecream at the gelateria di berna, saw the bärengraben, walked along the aar. the weather was great, almost too hot. here are some impressions:

the following are panoramas from a thunderstorm happening almost two weeks ago. the first two panoramas were taken around three minutes apart, and the third one half an our later. the last one was taken on the late evening.

yesterday, a beautiful cloudy sky presented itself to us after a wonderful not-anymore-existent indian dinner (now also known as an improvised chäschüechli dinner).

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.

after leaving whitehorse, i traveled to the small town of haines junction, located near to the kluane national park. the trip to haines junction already presented beautiful scenery.

in haines junction, i stayed in a small but very nice cabin. if you’re interested in visiting haines junction and staying in a small cabin, featuring pretty much everything you need (except a bathroom, for which you have to leave the cabin and which you share), you might want to contact paddle wheel adventures.

my first trip starting in haines junction was north to the kluane lake, a rather large lake. here is a panoramic view:

this trip also resulted in a variety of beautiful shots:

on the trip back, i encountered the following lake, which i tried to catch in another panorama:

at the evening of that day, i noticed an aurora. unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy over haines junction, so i drove out of town. after a few kilometers, i got a much better sight.

the next day, i wanted to do some flightseeing of the kluane national park, as hiking is not really an option to do alone. at the airport, i was told to come back later, so i spend the time exploring the area south of haines junction.

finally, i drove back to the airport, and encountered a group of tourists which also wanted to do flightseeing. so we ended up filling two cessnas and flying over the mountains and glaciers:

this was really magnificent.

sunrise.

on saturday, i got up very early, namely at 5 am, to take a view photos of the rising sun from patricia lake. the sun was rising somewhere i couldn’t really see, but what i could see was its impact on the surroundings. i went back to bed around 7 am, sleeping another two hours. here are some impressions:

sunset.

on the evening, i also took pictures of the beautiful sunset, which beautifully lit up the clouds and the water:

another trip we did was taking a walk at patricia lake, and then to some swamps and back. a nice 5 km walk with a lot of beautiful views, along the track no. 6. here are some impressions:

last weekend, it was rather cold outside, and pretty white. i did a walk to the nose hill park, enjoying the beautiful snowscape as well as the icy wind. here are some impressions.