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.

a couple of weeks ago, we visited oslo. yet another time. the weather was suprisingly good, we had a lot of sun but it wasn’t too hot.

we spend some time in the city…

… did some island hopping, walking on both lindøya and hovedøya, and inspecting in particular hovedøya abbey, …

… visisted the norwegian maritime museum on bygdøy, …

… lake sognsvann, …

… and the botanical garden tøyenhagen.

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:

yesterday, we visited the pizol. getting up was quite an adventure, though; we first travelled via train to bad ragaz, from where sbb.ch claimed bus 456 (a postauto) proceeds to the cable car station. unfortunately, as it turned out, the bus is only going during winter season. as we were waiting where it should leave, we noticed another small bus with “pizol” largely printed on it leaving at the designated time. the bus was hidden behind another postauto when we got out of the train station, so we only noticed it when it was leaving. since we weren’t the only ones standing at the postauto stop waiting for bus 456, we were a bit confused, and finally went to ask in the train station. turns out, they knew that the bus was still written on incorrectly and already passed the message on several times, but nothing happened. so we waited one hour for the next bus (walking would have taken around 40 minutes, but that’s not too much fun at over 30 degrees in the sun). well, when the (private) pizol bus finally came back, we also tried to inform the driver, who apparently never before heard about this problem. he also mentioned that from next year on, there will be a postauto also during summer… well, we hope that maybe now someone will put up a sign at the postauto stop that the bus is currently departing from somewhere else…

anyway, we finally took up the cable cars to laufböden, from where we wanted to walk the panorama trail (should be around 60 minutes). interestingly, the only sign up there pointing to the destination of the panorama trail said it would take 20 minutes. with no real different choice, we started walking that direction, until after 50 meters or so we found another sign, splitting up between the direct route (“standart-weg”) and the panorama trail. we continued the panoramic trail, though in the end we noticed we apparently screwed something up, as when we arrived at a lake inbetween, we saw that the panoramic trail leaving from there to our starting point left in another direction… whatever… anyway, we had a nice view, and up there the temperature was really nice and bearable. we also were able to put our feet into the lake, which was very refreshing. after circling the lake, we continued the trail to the pizolhütte where we had lunch, and finally proceeded down.

overall it was a very nice excursion, except that getting there (and also getting back to the train station) via public transport is apparently somewhat more complicated…

finally, after arriving in bergen, we were lucky to spend one full sunny day in bergen! this is quite extraordinary, since in bergen it is usually either winter or its raining. and since it wasn’t winter, we were quite surprised to see such a huge amount of sunshine.

we took the chance to visit ulriken, bergen’s largest mountain (643 meters over sea level) which can visited without walking up by yourself.

on the way back south, we visited tromsø for a second time. there, we attended a concert in the ishavskatedralen:

the next day, we had the chance of exploring the vesterålen island by bus. we first visited the trondenes church, where also the weather began to get worse: it started snowing. and later, hailing. both with a lot of wind, and sometimes pretty much horizontally. the island is really beautiful, eventually we have to go back and explore the nature in more detail. some hours later, we arrived in stokmarknes, where we had a chance to visit the hurtigruten museum. part of the museum is the complete ms finnmarken, parts of which can be freely explored. below, you can also find a photo from its bridge.

the next day we again crossed the arctic circle, this time southbound.

again one day later, we visited the (surprisingly) beautiful town of rørvik. it is quite a nice little town, with some quite beautiful places:

from rørvik we proceeded south, straight to bergen.

the next day, we visited the island magerøya, the northernmost piece of the european continent. after boarding in honningsvåg, we were brought by bus to the north cape, the (almost) northernmost corner of europe. on the trip, the weather was awesome, but when we arrived it began to be cloudy. but well, that’s magerøya, where you can have all four seasons in one day, as our (excellent!) guide said. here are some impressions:

i took the last photo from within the bus driving back, when the wind was blowing snow over the road, enlightened by the sun. it was a great view, and we were happy that we didn’t had to drive!

the next day, we visited kirkenes. from there, we took a bustrip to the russian border. there’s nothing much to see, except a cute husky cub. from there, we continued to bjørnevatn, a mining town close to kirkenes, hosting one end of the northernmost railway (which connects kirkenes and bjørnevatn, and which main purpose is to transport iron ore, workers and tools). afterwards, we took a closer look at the langfjord, before we returned to kirkenes to get a view over the town:

the day after, we approached hammerfest. the weather began to get better, and we had a good time on the sun deck:

finally, we had a chance of visiting and exploring hammerfest. in hammerfest, we found among other things a nice bookstore, cramped to the top with books with narrow paths between them. such a great place! we could have spend days going through there (well, me somewhat less, as most books were in norwegian)!

the night after leaving tromsø, we finally had proper and fully awesome northern lights!

here are also three videos i created. they consist of 1316, 496 and 433 single photos, respectively, each with an exposure time of one second (the first video) respectively two seconds (the last two videos). sorry for the jumps here and there, sometimes my camera makes a little break after rapidly taking a bunch of photos.

the next day, we left the ship early to explore harstad a little, a small town on the vesterålen island. there, we finally had a lot of signs of winter: icy roads. while the snow itself was mostly gone, all the melting and freezing created an icy cover of especially the side roads (the main roads were mostly clear). in harstad, we also met another hurtigruten ship, the ms polarlys.

while leaving harstad, we saw the grytøya mountains, covered in snow; you can see them on the right in the first panorama. the second panorama shows the southern part of senja with lemmingvær covering the right front side.

from vesterålen, we proceeded to our next big stop, tromsø. while approaching tromsø from the south, we came accross kvaløya, an island west of tromsøya we’ve been driving on last year. here is a photo of the coastline:

in tromsø, we took the chance to take the fjellheisen cable car up to the storsteinen. last year, the cable car didn’t operate due to a mechanical problem. up there, there was enough snow (and ice!) and we had a really good view over tromsøya, tromsø and the surrounding mountain ranges:

the next day we crossed the arctic circle. despite being in the far north, there still weren’t too many signs of winter, except a bit of snow higher up. nonetheless, with beautiful weather, it was really beautiful.

during the afternoon we visited bodø, the capital of nordland:

we also visited bodø’s railway station, being the end of the line: to get further north, one has to take the bus (or boat or plane).

finally, another shot of our boat:

this day, i also had the chance to photograph the sun diving into the ocean:

later the evening, we visited svolvær, the capital of the lofoten islands. there, we visited the magic ice ice exhibition:

the third night in a row there was an announcement of northern lights being visible. this time, there actually was something to see. still not as bright as i’ve seen it before, but beautiful nonetheless: