a couple days after the previous stroll, i repeated the stroll. this time, there's a lot of snow!

in late may, we (again) visited val bregaglia for another very nice vacation. the weather was great, except on monday when it snowed. we stayed once more in vicosoprano. we did some hiking from soglio to castasegna, and from castasegna to chiavenna:

we also visited the mountain diavolezza close to pontresina. it was pretty warm up there, despite all the snow, though not as hot as at the base station.

it finally started snowing. well, already two days ago. but today, for the first time, it was sunny again! (and we started moving the snow away from the balcony and the pathways so the cats won’t take a dump there…)

this is how it looks like from out of a cat tree:

we spent part of this weekend in zermatt.

on friday, we took the cable cars up to the top of the klein matterhorn, up to 3880 meters above sea level. it’s an amazing trip! unfortunately, we weren’t very lucky with the weather, and from a certain high on we were essentially covered in clouds. there also was kind of a snowstorm going on, which made it quite unconfortable on the outside:

(we didn’t walk up to the summit; without a ski mask it was not that much fun walking through the essentially horizontally flying snow…)

on the other hand, we walked a bit through illuminated glacier:

here are two photos from the trip down:

at least, it was possible to see something from there, even though we couldn’t see the matterhorn at all. but well, on the second day we got a glimpse. there were still some clouds around (and the klein matterhorn was covered by them a lot of the time), but this time we went up the gornergrat to around 3100 meters above sea level. up there, we had some really great views!

later, when travelling back, instead of taking the direct route via visp and zurich, we decided to follow the glacier express trail a bit by taking the matterhorn-gotthard bahn from visp via göschenen to andermatt, and then proceeded home from there. the last photos above are from that trip.

two weeks ago, we tried out the bernina express panoramic train from chur to tirano, and afterwards the bernina express bus to lugano.

the beginning of the trip, from chur to st. moritz, is similar to the last part of the glacier express train ride (starting in zermatt), following the albula line, and then follows the bernina line via the bernina pass to italy, peaking at 2253 meters above sea level.

we were lucky and the weather was (once again) quite good – which was quite some luck: on the day before, where we originally wanted to go but didn’t got a reservation, it was raining like crazy. the panorama carriages were once again nice, though taking photos is still quite a challenge thanks to the reflections which are almost always there. but hey, we were there to enjoy the views, and not to make great photos. (that’s for some other time. there’s a lot of beauty out there, for example the morteratsch glacier which we could watch while driving by.)

anyway. the second main part of the trip, the express bus from tirano to lugano, wasn’t as good as we hoped – i always feel kind of squeezed in a bus and am looking forward to leave it :-). the views were nice, but the next time i’d still skip that part.

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: