Spring

A view of the Feldberg summit taken on my probably last cross country ski tour of the season on Saturday ... and some of my favourite spring flowers.

blaue Wiese

The blue meadow in the Schloßgarten in Karlsruhe is in full bloom again. This year I took some pictures of it in the sunshine.

ducks

swimming on Titisee (a lake in the Black Forest).

dog-tired II

I must confess that I took inspiration from Talon for this post (title & picture).
That's a dog I saw in the autumn in Bucharest and it looks like I feel right now. Today is the 5th day that I spend in bed sick from some virus... the fever and the cough don't seem to want to leave me :(

weekend in Staufen im Breisgau

The castle ruin seen from our hotel room.

The view from the castle ruin where we made a picknick. The mountains in the background are the Vosges.

Crack in a wall in the historical center. Staufen has major problems because it is rising every day - until now it has risen 30 cms. The rising happens because of a drilling operation that was conducted to provide geothermal energy; the drilling brought water to an anhydrite layer that is expanding because of the contact with the water.

Wetterbuchen

I have posted pictures of these wind-shaped trees on the Schauinsland mountain before. They were taken in the summer - now you can see one of the trees in the winter, covered in snow.

- 15° C

Despite the freezing cold (-15 ° C) I went skiing again this morning.
The "80 km" sign is part of the "Fernskiwanderweg Schonach-Belchen", a 100-km-tour through the Black Forest which is marked by the orange symbol (to be seen in the picture, too). I have never done all of the 100 kms - just parts of it.
That's the only picture I took - it was too cold to stop more...

traffic sign

Today I went cross country skiing for the first time this winter...

freezing fjord

in Ersfjordbotn (where we stayed 2 nights and got to see the aurora)

in the port

...

we didn't travel that far north - but this bread we bought had Svalbard in its name :)

9:35 am

One fascinating aspect of the polar night was the special light. There was something magical about it - it's like an extended blue hour.