I thought this snap of the Swiss village of Elgg was rather artistic, shown here through the blurry trees:
Swiss and Switzerland
It’s not about the Albanian’s!
Every year there is a street festival in Winterthur called the Albanifest. Here’s a snap, but it really doesn’t do the festival justice:
In fact, the Albanifest is the largest yearly street festival in all of Europe! There are well over 100 stands from local restaurants, dozens and dozens of temporary halls for music and dancing, and it’s visited by well over 100,000 people!
Interestingly, I originally thought this festival was to honor the population of Albanians who live in Switzerland. In fact, it’s name honors this fellow:
That’s St. Alban, one of the patron saints of the city of Winterthur!
Early summer in Rapperswil
No excuses – just plain ugly
I love Switzerland! I moved here years ago, and I’ve never looked back. The people – the culture – the various dialects of a language known as Alemannic (a more evolved version of High German) – there are a lot of things to love!
I’ve also tried my best in this blog to showcase Swiss artists, such as this blog of Seven Magic Mountains shows:
Well, some things I’m not going to defend – or even try. Visitors from long haul flights arrival in Qatar tired and cramped and jet-lagged, and as they de-plane the last vestiges of their good spirits and energy are violently exterminated by a hideously ugly monstrosity that awaits them – a work of art so grotesque that it is worse (if you can believe it!) than the many cases of French bubble architecture:
This hideous monstrosity is called the Lamp Bear, and its the creation of a Swiss artist, whose name I will not mention to protect his reputation. After all – perhaps this was the result if his patrons refused to properly remunerate him.
The amazing thing is that this artist’s website is full of truly incredible visual art. Which perhaps goes to show you: unless you are Michaelangelo (and you probably aren’t because he is dead) then if you are a visual artist please don’t dabble in sculpture, much less Statue-of-Liberty scale sculpture.
Basel Badischer Bahnhof
The Swiss city of Basel is something of an international enigma, since it sits within walking distance to no less than two countries (France and Germany) and a confederation (Switzerland). Here you will find not one train station, but two: the Swiss main train station operated by my former employer, the Swiss Federal Railways; and the Basel Badischer Bahnhof, opened in 1855 and operated by the German Federal Railways.
Montreux trees
I took this snap in color, but due to the overcast weather it came out rather stunning, I think, in a faux black and white:
Montreux art
The coast of the Swiss town of Montreux is known for many interesting sculptures, and in the wintry Swiss winter this one really comes into its own:
Winterthur Crane – 2
Continuing the series,
Lake Geneva
To me, Lake Geneva is the most spectacular and breathtaking of all the Swiss lakes. It’s truly massive in size, and at least looking south into France from Switzerland it’s backstopped by some of the most awe inspiring Alps you can imagine.
Here is a panoramic shot of Lake Geneva, just north of Montreux and looking south:
The hypodermic dispensors of Switzerland
I’ve heard about them for years and years and years, but I only saw one for the first time at a train station in Sargans,
I tried to buy a syringe – as far as I know, anyone can buy one, and I really need something like that for cleaning out a fancy fountain pen that I have – but sadly the machine was empty when I tried.
Super Moon Trifecta! Wolf, snow, and worm
Many people don’t know this, but each full moon in a year has a unique name. The full moons in January, February, and March are known as the Wolf Full Moon, Snow Full Moon, and Worm Full Moon, respectively.
Well, for the last time in zillions of years the first three full moon’s of 2019 are also so-called super full moons, when the moon approaches so close to the earth that even the International Space Station is in danger of a collision!
I was privileged to have the accident of catching all three Super Full Moons on film for 2019. This is the January Super Wolf Full Moon,
This is the February Super Snow Full Moon, snapped from my apartment:
And this is the March Super Worm Full Moon, snapped from downtown Winterthur:
Ferry on Lake Constance (Bodenseefähre)
A ferry is plying its trade on Lake Constance between Friedrichshafen in South German and Romanshorn in North Switzerland:
The amazing ferries on Lake Zürich
One of the truly wonderful things about Switzerland is that their wonderful lakes are plied by even more wonderful ferries, as this snap on Zürisee shows,
Old Timer Tram – is that really what it’s called?
The big cities in Switzerland like Zürich and Bern keep a small number of their old, antiquated street cars in good functioning order, then from time to time put them into limited use.
This is a snap of the “Old Timer” tram in Basel – and it raises a very good question:
Is there no phrase in German – or in the more advanced, evolved language of Basel (know as Alemannic) – besides “Old Timer?”
The amazing SUPER MOON – one month later
Continuing the series, I was lucky enough to accidentally capture not only the first full moon of 2019 over Saigon (called the Wolf Moon) – but in fact, it was a super moon.
Well, one month later there was another super moon, as you’ll see in the snap below. But . . . let me put this into perspective for you. I took this snap in the early afternoon, and in normal circumstances it would be so faint as to be invisible in the sky. Being a super moon, this was was nearly blinding!
Not top secret – but very few people have seen this or ever will
This is the highly restricted “operations” building at Zürich airport (ZRH), where pilots brief their crews and certain nameless government protection organizations carry out certain unmentionable tasks
As part of my job at Swissport I was involved in a complicated IT transformation project that impacted the IT infrastructure at the airport – so I would come here regularly for meetings.
Train station at Spiez
I thought this was a fairly artful way to capture the brilliance of the train station in Spiez,
The amazing automatic popcorn machines of Switzerland and Germany
We’re under attack! It seems these machines are now literally all over Southern Germany and Northern Switzerland! By which I mean, to date, I’ve seen two of them: one in Friedrichshafen (Germany) and one in Winterthur (Switzerland) – the latter at my local grocery store, no less.
They work like this. You deposit either a 2 EUR coin (if you are in Germany) or a two 2 CHF coins (if you are in Switzerland),
and in just 2 minutes you’ll have a little paper container of freshly popped popcorn (sweet or salty, your choice).
How does it taste? I found the kernels to be better that what you’d get at home with microwave popcorn, but not quite as good as the popcorn they serve at movies. And there was a faint taste of oil – but a type of oil I’m not used to tasting. It wasn’t bad, just different.
Thun Swan
A swan stretching its wings on a very chilly morning on Lake Thun, deep in the Berner Oberland
Appenzell Cow
Even in the very rural Swiss country of Appenzell, try as you might, you just can’t take a bad photograph of a good cow:
Einstein Museum in Bern
For a brief while I lived just a few hundred meters from here,
Nobody really knows how Switzerland’s capital city Bern got its name, but the favorite story that the locals tell goes like this: a long time ago the King was looking for a good name for the city, so he sent a team of hunters into the surrounding woods, promising to name the city after the first animal that a hunter could kill and bring back. That animal happened to be a bear, so ever since then the city has been named Bern – or, as it is known in the local Alemannic language (a more evolved form of German), Bäärn.
Where the Aare meets Bern
Beautiful snap of the mighty Aare River, transporting huge volumes of melting snow from the Swiss Alps towards the North Sea, as it enters the medieval city of Bern,
The Mighty Niesen Supervolcano in Winter
This is a scene of the mighty Niesen supervolcano, lying dormant in Winter. This was the view from my apartment when I lived in the Swiss hamlet of Oberhofen am Thunersee.
There are only around 20 known super-volcanoes in the world. Most scientists concur that the next eruption of this supervolcano will extinguish all life in Europe.
Thun Flowers
Continuing the series, here are some flowers at the Saturday morning street market in Thun,
When backs are better than fronts – 6
Continuing the series, it is quite usual in architecture for the front side of an object (the facade) to be the most embellished and visually interesting.
But sometimes that doesn’t happen.
In a recent blog I provided a good example of this by the amazing, incredible, almost unbelievable Wülflinger Unterführung – a passageway at the Winterthur train station whose very existence is clouded in intense mystery, and whose tiny design and very steep steps would prevent it from being implemented today:
Well, if you find yourself in Winterthur – and if you are NOT afraid to enter deep, dark places, then you will be greeted by an amazing example of “backs are better than fronts.”
Because this is no ordinary passageway! It is lined with railroad-related works of art, such as this:
And this:
