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…

here’s my project 52 shot for the thirteenth week. the topic was

fundstück.

i found something very beautiful. a black cloud, eating up the sun. well, in fact, that’s not what i found, but what it looks like. it’s a beautiful sunset, taken from the top of the üetliberg, the local mountain of zürich. please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/640s, f/25, 400mm, iso 200.

this afternoon i did a quick trip to the üetliberg.

eventually i was able to watch a very beautiful sunset. here are some excerpts:

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.

yesterday, as i already mentioned here, i did a boat trip on lake zürich. this time, part of the long round trip, leading me to rapperswil. there, i explored the area of the monestry and the castle a bit, and returned to zürich and took the train up the üetliberg to catch sunset. unfortunately, already during the boat trip the weather got worse, i.e. it got cloudy, and so there wasn’t much left from the sunset…

last weekend, i did a hike through the roseg valley with anmut and nik. the weather was stunning, it was warm (t-shirt time!), sunny, not many clouds. and, of course, snow. not as much as there’s supposed to be that time of the year, but still enough to be happy :-)

here are some impressions from the hike and the rest at the roseg glacier restaurant:

(and yes, most of these photos would have been perfect for project 52 a month ago…)

today i decided to finally do a trip to the fish creek provincial park, conveniently located in southern calgary, whence reachable by c-train. well. as long as you use the canyon meadows stop and not the fish creek-lacombe stop, even though the latter name sounds like it is closer. here are some impressions.

i guess i should have went there during fall. with colored leafs this probably looks more interesting. but it’s still nice, though many trails are currently closed.

when i read yesterday that today, two red panda cubs would be presented to the public, i decided to pay calgary zoo another visit. here are some impressions of the really cute two little ones:

after that, i decided to pay the dinosaur section another visit, since i heard that it was heavily updated. indeed, things changed. there were a lot new dinosaur models, looking much better, which were even animated – they move and roar.

even though, there are still some artifacts from the past available, and artifacts due to low water:

anyway. i guess i’ve seen enough of the dinosaur section. there are other, more interesting parts of the zoo to see :)