Entries tagged as snow
Winter once more and "The road not taken"
Tuesday, March 7. 2006
There has been a broad throwback from an uprising spring (with almost 10°C) to a winter wonderland. So I used a picture I shot on my way from Truppach to Bamberg last sunday to create a new header picture. I know it is quite dark, and I also tweaked the colour of the navigation, but there is also some light. Gonna take the way to the light
. Looking at this picture I see a lonely road and some distant woods. Road/wood/winter reminds me to a poem by Robert Frost, which I won't keep from you.
The road not taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A rough start into the week
Wednesday, January 18. 2006
Monday and Tuesday were definitely two of those days, which I can look back to and tap my own shoulders, that I made it through them. The main plot for them has been laid out on Sunday afternoon. I had decided not to do some sightseeing in Zürich with our party crowd, and stayed at “home” to go through the exercise sheets I have to asses for my Anwendungspakete-tutorial. This decision was strategically important, to give me a little buffer for Monday (and it probably saved me some 80 Franken, which five of my friends hat to pay for fare-dodging in Zürich). After dropping Tanja in Stuttgart, and having trouble with the Navigation-System in Christian’s car, we arrived Bamberg as late as quarter to midnight, I just fell into my bed and slept until late Monday morning. Luckily I managed to finish the assessment of the exercise sheets before noon. But the preparation for my GBIS-Tutorial could have been better… However, Jochen and I did a decent job, and the raised problem will be easily solved next Monday. After the tutorial I had a meeting with Susann scheduled, where she wanted to help me on my SPSS problems for my U3 seminar. Unluckily, she was busy at that time, luckily she referred me to Nadja who is even more into SPSS. That meeting solved a few issues, but also opened a lot of new question. Afterwards I had to hurry for my Anwendungspakete-tutorial. Although the new exercise sheet was out, most of the people were only interested to hear their assessment, and left immediately after getting their results. The remaining evening was stuffed with to dos, too. Visiting the futuredays lecture about nano technologies, meet my new flatmate Juliane, prepare my talk for the U3 Seminar, visit Tim’s birthday party. Somehow I managed to deal with everything and the beer at the Luitpold café, were Tim was celebrating was well earned. Anna later convinced me to join the party crowd, which was moving to the Live Club. Regarding my talk on Tuesday morning this was not a very good idea – but in the retrospective I would not have had the chance to meet this girl… Anyway. No tequila next Monday! And no reason to meet cold ducks again this year.
Tuesday morning I got up at nine, and got ready for my seminar. I was there on time, and the atmosphere was good. I managed to become last presenting, and did quite well. The devastating critic I expected did not take place. Following up dinner was another seminar, which went quite well, too. At this point I was quite exhausted, but I had scheduled a appointment with Georg to exchange last weekends pictures, so I could not drive home yet.
At around 5pm I finally started for Truppach, where I was going with my brother’s car in order to collect my desk. In the morning driving through dense snow with a bycicle was not too much fun. Now driving home over a closed blanket of snow with a rear-wheel drive was no fun, too. But after one hour of driving I reached my parents home. After a good dinner I couldn’t do much more than a little chit-chat, email correspondence and went to bed early.
Review on Skiing in Tirol!
Sunday, January 15. 2006
I finally managed to get my pictures of my last holiday online, and I won’t keep a short review on the holiday from you.
This first paragraph was written on the coach to Tirol: I'm currently sitting inside the coach which will bring us to Imst (Austria) and try to get comfy with the English keyboard layout of my PDA keyboard. Didn't use this gadget for quite a while now. In Malaysia it was quite a companion on the road - but in Germany I'm carrying around my notebook anyway. Right now we had a short break at the Rasthof Holledau and we are about to plan tomorrow’s trip through the skiing area of ISCHGL!! Tim has checked the weather conditions for tomorrow, and the forecast is really promising - plenty of snow and sunshine!! So we are planning to use the long downhill slope to Samnaun, do some downhill skiing there and then return to Austrian soil to ride some of the more demanding slopes and to go for decent Apres Ski afterwards!
Day1 – Ischgl
Since I’ve already spent about 14 days of skiing in Ischgl, and it is the area, where I really learnt skiing some years out time there can be regarded a home game. Arriving on the slope the snow was great, temperature wasn’t too cold and the sun was shining bright. Although we had to get warm with skiing again (at least Martin and me, who didn’t have the chance to practice our skills this season yet) we chose a few demanding slopes for the beginning. But we didn’t go too fast on them. After spending the morning on the Austrian side of the skiing area, we went down the downhill run to Samnaun. We took our traditional way into the village, and this year there was plenty of snow – so I didn’t hurt my skiing equipment to much while skiing down on a parking lot .
In the afternoon we gave a try to the Swiss part of the skiing area, and riding down on “wide red highways” was some fun, too.
We hit the bus on time to stow away our skiing equipment, and then made our way into “downtown Ischgl” to go for some Aprés Ski drinks. The “Trofana Alm” was already completely overcrowded, so we only could catch a place at the snow bar. We only had two hours to party there, but more wouldn’t have done any good (at least not for my wallet - one beer with 0,3l content was 4 EUR).
Day2 – Serfaus
Since the snow conditions were really bad here in 2005, we didn’t have a chance to explore this skiing area the previous year. So we were really anxious to explore the area. The skiing area is split into to main parts: Serfaus and Fiss/Ladis. In the morning we headed for the slopes of Serfaus, and decided to give Fiss/Ladis a try in the afternoon. Again the weather was clearly on our side and we had bright sunshine for the whole day. But in the morning not all of the slopes lay at the sun, so we headed for the sunny slopes first. We were really astonished how few people were skiing in Serfaus – we had some wide red highway slopes completely for ourselves. With great conditions we were speeding down the slopes a lot and were really busy in gathering kilometers on the ski runs. To reach the area of Fiss/Ladis we had to get back down to Serfaus, and I really got to admit, that the slope which led us down through a forest could be in any picture book.
Day3 – Hochzeiger
Our last day skiing came too fast. Since our coach planned to leave Tirol before hitting the big traffic jams, we only had time until 3pm to enjoy the weather and the slopes. But of course we managed to enjoy every minute.