Category Archives: Travel

Going for a walk

The weather has been quite nice during the past week, so André and I ventured on two walks during the weekend. On Saturday, we encountered a couple of swallowtail butterflies (Schwalbenschwanz), which are supposed to be quite rare in central Europe. It was the first time I’ve seen them, but André saw one in our garden earlier this year.

Schwalbenschwanz

On Sunday I took a photo of the village in which we live. As you can see, it’s very small, only about 50 houses, and it’s surrounded by fields and pastures.

Dorf

As a bonus, here are some wildflowers growing next to a field. The red one is a poppy (Mohnblume), and the blue ones are cornflowers or bluebottles (Kornblumen).

Mohn und Kornblumen

Click the photos for bigger versions.

Happy Easter!

In Germany we celebrate two days of Easter (Sunday and Monday), so technically I’m not too late. Yesterday we were busy hiking the Baybachtal (link to German site), and after 20 km (12.5 miles) I was too exhausted to post.

As you can tell from the lack of updates, I’ve been very busy during the last couple of weeks. This was mostly school-related, but during the last week we finally started working on our garden in earnest, which had been neglected by the previous tenants. I can’t quite offer before and after photos, but I do happen to have a picture of the surprising amount of snow we got on March 22. Luckily we still had the snow tires on our cars, but a neighbour didn’t and managed to get stuck right in front of our driveway at 7 am, just when André and I were trying to leave for work.

snow in spring

Fortunately the snow (all 20 cm or 8 inches of it) only lasted for two days, and after that, the weather has improved considerably. It’s been warm and sunny for the last week, and the temperatures have reached 20°C (almost 70°F) over the weekend. The same area of our garden looks like this today:

easter 2007

The flowering bush in front of our neighbour’s walnut tree, by the way, is a Ribes sanguineum, or Flowering Currant (Zierjohannisbeere in German). The bumblebees just love it.

Travelling with little luggage

This site is probably going to be useful before my next trip: One Bag is Doug Dyment‘s advice on how to travel with just a carry-on bag (or just a small bag, in case you’re not going by plane) and what and how to pack. His site contains an annotated packing list. Dyment’s tips are useful even if one doesn’t want to pack quite so radically minimalistic as he does.

And for the even more minimalistic travelers Dyment links to Anders Ansar who challenges himself by taking zero bags on his trips, though he cheats somewhat by having big pockets sewn into his trousers.

(News) Flash

You should really keep paying attention to the speed limit while pondering why the heck someone flashes their brights at you even though your headlights can’t possibly be broken because you just had the car checked at the garage the previous day.

It turns out that you remember the other reason why some drivers flash their brights at you in Germany a few seconds later when a blinding red flash indicates that you have just been photographed by the police: The driver was trying to tell you that there’s a speed trap around the corner.

This is what happens if you’re taking the scenic route through the Rhine valley instead of using the autobahn for your way home from work as usual. At least I was only going a little bit over the speed limit; we shall see if I get a ticket or not.

(Related: Why did you flash your brights at me tonight?, Headlight Vocabulary.)

A small step for man…

Washington Post: The Saga Of the Lost Space – Tapes
NASA Is Stumped in Search For Videos of 1969 Moonwalk.

“As Neil Armstrong prepared to take his “one small step” onto the moon in July 1969, a specially hardened video camera tucked into the lander’s door clicked on to capture that first human contact with the lunar surface. […] Millions of television viewers around the world saw those fuzzy, moving images and were amazed, even mesmerized. What they didn’t know was that the Apollo 11 camera had actually sent back video far crisper and more dramatic — spectacular images that, remarkably, only a handful of people have ever seen. […]

The original, high-quality lunar tapes were soon stored and forgotten. Only in recent years was the agency reminded of what it once had — clean and crisp first-man-on-the-moon video images that could be especially valuable now that NASA is planning a return trip. About 36 years after the tapes went into storage, NASA was suddenly eager to have them. There was just one problem: The tapes were nowhere to be found.”

I think it would be really exciting if they manage to find the tapes after all, though the chances seem to be slim. I’d certainly like to watch the footage.

Link via Garret.