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.

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.

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

fernweh.

this topic could be so easy if archive photos would be allowed. like in the last year, i visited many stunning places which i’d love to see again right now:

the photos were taken near vikajärvi, haines junction, keno and mayo, and yellowknife (from left to right, top to bottom). the message of these photos is plain and simple: i’d like to be far, far more north! somewhere near the arctic circle, or even north of it.

unfortunately, i couldn’t make it north. instead, i went south, and up by train, to recover a photography combining two aspects of northern travel: snow and railways.

technical details: 1/1000s, f/8, 32mm, iso 200.

(this photo is in fact older than the topic. originally i wanted to near to that place again, to take more photos, also for use for project 52. unfortunately, i was too busy and too sick to do this.)

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…)

this weekend, i payed yellowknife a second visit. this time, during winter, with snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. and more aurora viewings.

here’s a first impression i got on the first day. it was taken at 14:20, and you can see that the sun was already pretty near to the horizon. the sunset is around 15:30, and goes down to 15:00 during winter’s shortest days. sunrise was around 9:30 the time i was there; it goes up to 10:00 during the shortest days.

i was staying in the narwal bed and breakfast, a small bed and breakfast located near the great slave lake, meaning i could just walk on the frozen lake and hopefully see some nice auroras during nighttime. here’s a nighttime impression, without an aurora but with clouds:

during the days, i often walked around and on the frame lake. lots of memories came up. it was often cloudy with breaks. here are some nice impressions:

finally, on the second and third night, the sky was mostly clear. and both nights featured auroras! the second night had a not very bright one, at least while i was outside, but the third and last night had some really great ones. here are a few impressions:

finally, here’s a video i recorded, consisting of 484 frames, each shot having an exposure time of one second. the movie is played back with six frames per second, i.e. you get a time lapse:

(this is a html5 video tag, so hopefully it works. otherwise, you can directly try the mpeg 4 variant and the ogg theora variant.)

my last leg of the yukon trip led me to mayo, “the coldest and hottest place in the yukon”. (the lowest temperature ever measured was -62 degrees celsius.)

in mayo i had my first bear encounter. when driving in the direction of keno, i saw a bear near the street, and stopped to take some pictures. the bear was far away (around 100 m), but i still managed to get at least some good shots (at least, after extracting a small portion of the photos).

this was the first and last bear encounter i had. strangely, since i would have expected to see more bears. i already saw more near to banff and jasper. on the first full day, i drove up to keno, and tried one of mike’s pizzas in the keno city snack bar. if you are in the area, you should do the same, his pizzas are really good! (after all, he is italian.) from keno, i drove up to the famous signpost, and then continued to mayo lake and minto lake.

the next day, i again drove up to keno, after paying the mcquesten river a short visit. unfortunately, mike wasn’t around, so i couldn’t eat more pizza. but i drove to hansson lake and mcquesten lake instead, and was awarded with more beautiful sights.

on the third day, the weather turned bad. it was pretty cloudy most of the day, so i decided to visit the binet house interpretive center and just relax. the binet house features some nice stuffed animals:

after spending two full days in haines junction, i continued to dawson, the northernmost point of my journey. (i originally thought about driving up the dempster highway to inuvik, but this is not an easy drive, and besides that, most rental car contracts do not allow you to drive on that highway.) i did this drive in two legs. the first leg was to drive up to carmacks.

i slept in carmacks and continued to dawson on the next day.

arriving in dawson, i quickly found my lodge, the dawson city bed’n breakfast. one of the best places i ever stayed at! if you ever go to dawson, you should consider staying there! on the first evening, i saw signs of another aurora, and drove out of town to get an unobstructed view.

on the first full day in dawson, i decided to drive up the top of the world highway to the us border. this highway goes along the ridges of mountains and makes you feel to be up pretty high, so to speak “at the top of the world”. this highway is one of the not so easy ones, since it is not paved for most parts. but nonetheless, the view is worth it.

after returning, i drove up the midnight dome and took a shot of the ss keno.

on the next day, i decided to do some of the parks canada historical tours; after all, it was the last day of such tours for this year. i started with a tour of the dredge no. 4, a gold mining dredge.

its interiour features many interesting things to photograph:

after visiting the dredge, i drove to the discovery claim and walked around a bit.

following that, i attended a tour through the historic part of the city.

finally, i roamed aboard the ss keno.

on my last full day in dawson, i decided to drive in the mining area. there’s still a lot of active mining going on; it’s really interesting to see the landscape, changing between the typical beautiful yukon landscape and more moon-like landscapes, making you feel rather alien.

unfortunately, i had to leave dawson the next day, heading to mayo. unfortunately, since my lodge was really one of the best places i ever stayed at. (i can’t stop repeating that, sorry.) the good thing is, i got two uncle scrooge comics playing in yukon as a souvenir.

after leaving whitehorse, i traveled to the small town of haines junction, located near to the kluane national park. the trip to haines junction already presented beautiful scenery.

in haines junction, i stayed in a small but very nice cabin. if you’re interested in visiting haines junction and staying in a small cabin, featuring pretty much everything you need (except a bathroom, for which you have to leave the cabin and which you share), you might want to contact paddle wheel adventures.

my first trip starting in haines junction was north to the kluane lake, a rather large lake. here is a panoramic view:

this trip also resulted in a variety of beautiful shots:

on the trip back, i encountered the following lake, which i tried to catch in another panorama:

at the evening of that day, i noticed an aurora. unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy over haines junction, so i drove out of town. after a few kilometers, i got a much better sight.

the next day, i wanted to do some flightseeing of the kluane national park, as hiking is not really an option to do alone. at the airport, i was told to come back later, so i spend the time exploring the area south of haines junction.

finally, i drove back to the airport, and encountered a group of tourists which also wanted to do flightseeing. so we ended up filling two cessnas and flying over the mountains and glaciers:

this was really magnificent.

the last two weeks, i traveled the yukon, canadas smallest northern territory. my trip began and ended in whitehorse, yukon’s capital and now largest city. hundret years ago, during the klondike gold rush, dawson, my third destination, was the largest city and capital of the yukon.

my first stay in whitehorse began with a bit of rain and continued with beautiful weather.

returning to whitehorse at the end of my trip, the beautiful weather was exchanged with snow and rain.