last week, i was in castro urdiales, a small costal town in northern spain. there, two conferences were held, namely the third workshop on mathematical cryptology and the third international conference on symbolic computation and cryptography. i attended both conferences and stayed a little longer over the weekend. after the first impressions i’ve uploaded last weekend, after arriving in castro, i gathered some more photos during this weekend. these were all taken in the city boundaries of castro urdiales, most of them close to the coast. castro is a really beautiful place, mainly crowded by spanish and french tourists and people living there (well, and conference attendants). the weather is pretty neat, especially for someone who doesn’t like heat too much as i do. also, swimming in the atlantic ocean is just great. it’s definitely a nice place to visit!

on saturday, we visited bern. we visited the sapperlot! exhibition on swiss dialects, walked around town, had icecream at the gelateria di berna, saw the bärengraben, walked along the aar. the weather was great, almost too hot. here are some impressions:

we spend this weekend in obersaxen in graubünden, switzerland. we had perfect hiking and photo weather most of the time (sometimes even both at the same time ;-) ), and got some very nice views. here you can find some of them:

day one.

day two.

day three.

after being in seppenrade/lüdinghausen a few weeks ago, we continued first to münster and then to bielefeld, the non-existing city. the weather in bielefeld wasn’t as great as on the days before. in fact, on the only day we spend there in full, it mostly rained. anyway, we had a nice stay there. here are some impressions from bielefeld:

two years ago, i already was in bielefeld, and we had much better weather back then. that trip resulted in quite some nice photos, which so far i haven’t uploaded in this blog. i was somewhat surprised when i wanted to link to them and didn’t find them, so i went through them again and made a selection to add to this post. here are the impressions:

the museum is the historical museum; in 2010, it was also hosting a firefighters exhibition. the castle is the sparrenberg castle.

yesterday, we visisted solothurn. the weather was mixed, with nice, sunny periods, cloudy periods and rainy periods. here are some impressions:

after visiting tierpark goldau, we hiked to the boat landing in goldau (which is 3 km away from the park) and went on a boat trip to zug.

if you love chocolate, then order a “eisschokolade”. it is not exactly what i would call a “eisschokolade”, but definitely the best chocolate sundae i ever had.

yesterday, we visited the natur- and tierpark goldau. the weather was perfect, and we really enjoyed the visit. here are a few impressions:

in these photos, you can see red-crested pochards, whooper swans, syrian brown bears, european wolves, roe deer, wildcats, eurasian lynx and alpine ibexes.

last week, we were in seppenrade. luckily for us, the weather was much better than expected. it was sunny, with few clouds, and warm. our first trip was to reckelsum, a bauernschaft near seppenrade. here are some impressions:

our second trip was to lüdinghausen, in particular to the burg vischering:

this weekend, i was in oslo. the second time i was in norway, and the first time i visited its capital.
the weather was perfect – mostly sunny, only few clouds – and i had a great guide! (thanks again!) we’ve visited the holmenkollen ski jump, tried the best apple cake in oslo, visited the oslo opera house, paid a quick visit to the central campus of the university of oslo and to the royal palace, enjoyed the city hall place (radhusplassen), the akershus castle, visited the newest part of tjuvholmen, the vigeland sculpture park. we also visited a great second hand store, which resulted in me leaving with a stack of used cds.
below, you can find impressions from all these places (except the second hand store):