today, i finally did a hike i already wanted to do for a long time: i visited the morteratsch glacier in the engadine. there is a train station nearby, called morteratsch. from there, a trail leads to the ice front. it used to be that the train station was at the ice front, but that was more than 100 years ago, and since then the glacier retreated quite a distance – almost two kilometers. here are a few impressions from the hike to the ice front:

shortly before i reached the ice front, and just a few moments before i could see anything, i heard a loud noice. some ice collapsing, something breaking off, i don’t know. happens all the time, and it is always a good idea to know what you are doing when going on a glacier. for example, never go too near to places where ice seems to break off :-) anyway, even though i only was at the very bottom of the glacier – i’ve seen much more of some glaciers in canada –, there were many interesting views of ice formations, of mixtures of ice, dirt, rocks and water. glaciers are so beautiful!

while looking through the photos, i found a polar bear hiding in one of the photos. can you find it?

this night, i decided to walk around a bit and take photos. i first walked through the irchelpark to the irchel campus, then continued up to the edge of the forest on the zürichberg, and after that i walked back towards the campus, where i met a black cat, and finally continued into the irchelpark. i started somewhen past 2 am and returned back home after 6:30.

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.

this long weekend i was staying at my parent’s place. here are some impressions, both from my parent’s garden, as well as from a bike tour to olfen.

garden.

surroundings.

in these pictures, you can see, among other things, konik horses and heck cattle. i wish i would have had my longer telephoto lens with me…

yesterday, my mind came up with a good excuse to make a strawberry cake, so i went shopping, bought a cake pan, some strawberries, and other necessary ingredients, and this morning i began crafting a strawberry cake:

it tasted pretty good, in my opinion. i could have eaten much more of it, if my colleagues wouldn’t have helped me… anyway, here are two strawberry cake macros, which might make you even more hungry :-)

this weekend, i attended revision, a demoparty. revision is the successor of breakpoint, which in turn is the successor of mekka & symphosium. these events were held over easter from 1997 on, and i attended a few of them (between 2001 and 2005).
after the end of the breakpoint era last year, the revision was moved from bingen to saarbrücken, germany. a city i haven’t been in for quite some time. the party was held in the e-werk, an old power plant.

the weather was really good, it was sunny most of the time except a thunderstorm one evening and a few rain drops. this time, i stayed in a hotel and didn’t sleep under the tables, which resulted in much more sleep for me, except that breakfast at the hotel was pretty early compared to the times i usually ended up in bed asleep. but at least i got decent sleep and didn’t look like a zombie after two days.
it was really nice to meet some friends again, most of them after a long time, in particular trigger, kojote, t$, dynamite, and some more.

the following photos show a bit of what was happening. the first and third photo shows people watching a compo (unfortunatley you cannot see anything on the bigscreen, otherwise everything else would have not been really visible), and the fourth shows the underground hallway to the restrooms.

one afternoon i went on a walk with kojote, looking at some interesting buildings in the neighborhood. here are some impressions:

overall, i have to say that it was partially exhausting, but nonetheless another nice experience. the next time i’ll just stay some of the days, i guess. maybe i’ll drop by at the buenzli this year, since it is not very far from here.

this week, i attended the seventh international workshop on coding and cryptography, held in paris at the institut henri poincaré. besides the three hour visit to paris in 2007, this was my first real visit to this city. the weather was nice, it was sunny though not too warm, and from times to times a bit cloudy (like on the free afternoon). i mainly roamed through the latin quarter up to the seine, the louvre being essentially the farest point away i’ve been at. i had my small camera with me on some of these trips, so here are some impressions.

i also went for a walk during night, once with a camera and once without.

out of the following three churches, namely the saint-étienne-du-mont, the notre dame de paris and the panthéon, i entered the panthéon and inspected notre dame in more detail. unfortuntely, i didn’t really find out when i could enter the saint-étienne-du-mont…

the following shots are from notre dame.

the last shots are from the panthéon and its crypt.

ps: if you want to eat at an excellent place in paris, try out the les papilles.

today i decided to do a little walk out in the night, including taking some photos. i walked a bit through the irchelpark. here are some impressions:

i had the chance to listen to a frog concert, accompanied by some music coming from people having a party in the park.

the weather is really nice at the moment, especially during night: you can walk around in a t-shirt without freezing. (and, opposed to during the day, without sweating as well.)

this saturday, i happend to end up in herford enjoying the beautiful, almost too warm weather. in herford, we first took a look at the marta museum. it’s architecture design is pretty interesting, except for the back side, which is white, flat and absolutely boring. we didn’t went into the exhibition though, just looked at the public parts of the building.

after that, we walked a bit around the historic center, which has some really nice buildings, and had some ice cream later on.

while doing the glass shot for project 52, i also made the following cork screw shot:

finally, here’s an overview photo of some of the glasses, including the maple leaf bottle used in the glass shot. four of the bottles in the picture are mine, the others belong to a friend of mine. if you want, you can start guessing :-)