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).

flying southward. seeing more of the sun than during the last two weeks. such beauty.

the following photos were taking during night. some of them look like taken at daylight, wouldn’t there be stars at the sky… especially with full moon, the snowscape is just so bright.
the photos in the second row show the guesthouse husky, and the left photo in the third row is from näverniemi lomakylä. the last two rows are somewhere north of inari, the other rows are near to the guesthouse and/or the lomakylä.

(you can get the large version by clicking here directly.)

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:

i recently read that there was a study which showed that in germany, the weather is statistical significantly worse on weekends. well, if i compare the last two day’s sky—filled with clouds—to today’s sky—bright light—, i’d say that’s right. well, on the evening, shortly before it became dark (but, well, there was still way more light than on the two previous days), i took a small walk through the neighborhood and shot some photos. here are some of the results.

birds.

i agan managed to catch a flying bird; see the three pictures to the right. i’m not sure whether the one on the left is the same (or of the same kind) as the one on the right…

nature.

zoom.

i also made a few zooms. two of them i think are especially good. the first is this one:

the second is this one:

yesterday, we had the third rendition of the try to bring the north western german tradition kohlfahrt (literally: cabbage tour; a description in english can be found here) to switzerland. (actually i missed the two previous renditions…)

i’d guess that for everyone except the people living in north west germany, it must seem utterly strange to see a group of people going around with a hand cart, playing a strange game involving two balls rolling around, and drinking hard and soft booze all the time. whatever. we had fun.

actually, this was probably the first kohlfahrt featuring a view on the alps! (at the first rendition, one couldn’t see the alps from the place where it took place, and even though the second was at the same place than this time, the weather was too bad apparently…) here are two shots of our view on the alps:

finally a view on the beautiful sunset we were able to watch:

after returning from bordeaux, the return having been quite adventurous, i traveled trough the alps into the ticino, to the monte generoso. here are some photos from the train ride.