last night, it snowed again. so today, after shoveling more snow, we built a snowman. our cats had some fun, too:

the last snow is long gone. but a week ago, it started snowing again. last sunday, we went on a nice walk from hadlikon to hinwil. the weather was really beautiful!

as soon as we arrived home, it changed a bit, though: the sky turned grey. so after cleaning the stairs from the snow, we went back inside to join our cats in the warmth:

somewhen after christmas, it suddenly started snowing in switzerland. so when we returned from lappland, we could enjoy quite a lot of snow!

we weren’t the only ones enjoying it: the cats also like it. well, at least the young ones. some even jump into deep snow to catch a snowball! (sorry, no photos of that…)

too bad most of the snow has already melted again…

this christmas, we visited ivalo in finnish lapland. we had plenty of snow, it was freezing cold (between -13 and -30 degrees celsius), and the sky was often clear – perfect conditions for auroras!

during daytime, short as it was, we did an excursion to the siida museum in inari, to saariselkä, and via utsjoki to norway.

finally, here are some aurora animations:

on the east side of canada, we began our journey in toronto. from there, we directly continued to the town of niagara falls, ontario.

niagara falls.

in niagara falls, we saw the niagara falls. they are quite impressive. less impressive, though, is what was build around the falls. the town is essentially a big amusement park with two casinos (a third on the american side). no place i’d like to stay long at.

kingsville, windsor and detroit.

from niagara falls, we continued to kingsville. from there, we saw lake erie, and went on a trip to windsor, from where we could glance over to detroit.

toronto.

finally, we ended up in toronto. my third visit. we spent one day exploring toronto by bus (hop-on hop-off) and boat (around toronto islands). it was somewhat cloudy, with a lot of wind, so the view of cn tower changed between a large stick ending up in the clouds and seeing the full tower up to its tip. eventually, we went up the tower (we had a great dinner there). it was still cloudy, and most of the time we couldn’t see anything of the city. but the view was great, nonetheless: we experienced a wonderful sea of fog! (almost like in the swiss alps. yay!)

toronto zoo.

on one day in toronto, we chose to visit its zoo. the zoo itself is quite nice, and they currently have panda bears as visitors!

what’s not so great is actually getting to the zoo. from downtown toronto, you have to take the subway (if you’re not at the main west-east line, you have to change subway lines) and then continue by bus. we went to union station and tried to use a ticket vending machine, but it didn’t offer the zoo as a destination. so we lined up, and were finally told that we need two tickets: one for the train and another for the bus. turns out, union station is used both by subway and train, and obviously, we tried to use the wrong vending machine and lined up at the wrong counter. and obviously, why should two different transportation companies cooperate and make travelling accross the borders of the two systems easy to use (especially for tourists)? this isn’t switzerland (or germany), after all. yay. eventually, we arrived at the zoo (with still two changes, but fifteen minutes earler than we should have been there with subway and bus).

well, that was everything. in three weeks, we saw quite a lot of canada, and there’s still that extremely much more to see! for the next time we will be in canada (eventually; will still take some time :) ) we plan to explore the east somewhat more, in particular the parts not so densely populated as the area around toronto, like newfoundland and labrador and nova scotia. and of course also quebec, and also canada’s capital, ottawa.

yesterday, we visited the pizol. getting up was quite an adventure, though; we first travelled via train to bad ragaz, from where sbb.ch claimed bus 456 (a postauto) proceeds to the cable car station. unfortunately, as it turned out, the bus is only going during winter season. as we were waiting where it should leave, we noticed another small bus with “pizol” largely printed on it leaving at the designated time. the bus was hidden behind another postauto when we got out of the train station, so we only noticed it when it was leaving. since we weren’t the only ones standing at the postauto stop waiting for bus 456, we were a bit confused, and finally went to ask in the train station. turns out, they knew that the bus was still written on incorrectly and already passed the message on several times, but nothing happened. so we waited one hour for the next bus (walking would have taken around 40 minutes, but that’s not too much fun at over 30 degrees in the sun). well, when the (private) pizol bus finally came back, we also tried to inform the driver, who apparently never before heard about this problem. he also mentioned that from next year on, there will be a postauto also during summer… well, we hope that maybe now someone will put up a sign at the postauto stop that the bus is currently departing from somewhere else…

anyway, we finally took up the cable cars to laufböden, from where we wanted to walk the panorama trail (should be around 60 minutes). interestingly, the only sign up there pointing to the destination of the panorama trail said it would take 20 minutes. with no real different choice, we started walking that direction, until after 50 meters or so we found another sign, splitting up between the direct route (“standart-weg”) and the panorama trail. we continued the panoramic trail, though in the end we noticed we apparently screwed something up, as when we arrived at a lake inbetween, we saw that the panoramic trail leaving from there to our starting point left in another direction… whatever… anyway, we had a nice view, and up there the temperature was really nice and bearable. we also were able to put our feet into the lake, which was very refreshing. after circling the lake, we continued the trail to the pizolhütte where we had lunch, and finally proceeded down.

overall it was a very nice excursion, except that getting there (and also getting back to the train station) via public transport is apparently somewhat more complicated…

on friday evening, we had a really amazing sky over hinwil:

yesterday we visited the bernese oberland, to mürren. we first spontaneously took the cablecar up the schilthorn, known to many from the james bond movie on her majesty’s secret service. in fact, one terrace up there was built specifically for the film to allow a helicopter to land there. from the top of the schilthorn, one has a great view on the surrounding mountains, most prominently eiger, mönch and jungfrau. (a couple of years ago i was up there, visiting the jungfraujoch.)

afterwards, we took the cablecar back down to mürren, and took the funicular up to the allmendhubel. from there, we enjoyed the mountain view trail to the grütschalp train station. from the trail we had a great view on the big three mountains (eiger, mönch, jungfrau). it was a really nice hike with some diversion, from moorlands to ski slopes, forests to dry-stone walls and even some cows.

one and a half weeks ago, we visited the naturzentrum thurauen near flaach. the weather was wonderful, and after exploring the nature trail, enjoying all the frogs there and finally having a picnic, we continued to the rhine and continued via boat to eglisau.