Former inner-german border

Some of my best friends and myself used the nice weather today, we went on a trip to the area of the former inner-german border (border east <> west germany). We have been somewhere between the cities Meiningen and Mellrichstadt.

There was an art-exhibition with sculptures and luckily I could take take some interesting pictures there. Here you can view some of them:

Danmark in Winter

I spent some days in Danmark, for relaxing only. Three days on Island Rømø in the Northern Sea, including a one-day-trip to the german island Sylt, south of Rømø.

Then another three days at the most northern coast of danmark, in Hirtshals and Skagen, where Nothern Sea and Baltic Sea come together.

There was a heavy snow storm during the last three days, with wind speeds 150km/h and more and wind chill factor of -20C and colder. It was the first time for me to walk through snow at the beach.
The days there were very relaxing, one could feel a lot of nature during long walks at the beach, regardless of the weather conditions ;)

I have some pictures, of course:

Mega Magnet

Have you seen already the amazingly large mega magnet ATLAS?

It's one of the big experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) made by the CERN institute.

I found this news very interessting and wanted to share it.
Read for yourself: Powering up ATLAS's mega magnet

Or have a look at more pictures of the ATLAS experiment.

One week Sofia

Last week I was in Sofia, Bulgaria, having some good meetings and working on our projects for the company. What was amazing in Sofia? Taxi-driving for example: Public transportation in Sofia is done either by bus or by taxi, there are only a few trams in the center.

On streets in Germany everything is well organized, in Sofia you almost always search for the roadmarkings. Consequence is that, if there is some space in between those two cars in front of you, you just go in between. But we had very experienced drivers, so we survived it :)

The daily meetings were good, the dinners in the evening even more. There are some very nice restaurants, if someone ever goes over there, I can make some recommendations:

• Restaurant Vodenitsata (at the foothills of Votisha mountain), you should not miss the firedancing ceremony in the evening!
• Restaurant Hadjidraganovite kashti with traditional Bulgarian cuisine
  

Mountainbiking in Croatia

Here just a short report on our inselhuepfen-tour, that we had some days ago.
Well, "we" is: Patrick, Tobias and me.



We went to Croatia and entered a boat called Adonis:


The trip was split up mainly into two parts: Boat + Mountainbikes. A very nice combination. The boat took us from island to island, another one almost every day. Then we were 'exploring' the islands with the bikes:


The third picture in the row above shows the island that we've visited on our second day: Cres.

Although it was October, we had absolutly outstanding weather conditions: sunshine all the time (ok, not during the night ;), temperatures between 20°C-25°C, and not even one raindrop! Because of this, we could sleep on deck, having a great view on the starry sky and waking up with the sunrise. The historical buildings in the old cities look really great in the light of the rising sun:


I took some city-pictures during daylight, too ;) and even in the night:


And important to tell: We've met many friendly people, because we were not alone on the boat! The boat has rooms for ~20 guest, but we were only 11 guests + 2 guides and 4 crewmembers (captain, sailor, cook, steward). It was a very relaxed athmostphere, and we had lots of fun all the day. Here a picture showing the complete mountainbike team:


The mountainbike tours were arranged very well. We've seen nice locations and had great views on the countryside. And the short breaks for a coffee or cappucchino gave some time to rest:



[1st pic: 1-2 thousand year old olive trees. 2nd pic: a village with only three inhabitants, and you can see two of them. 3rd pic: the small coffee shops look beautiful and they serve delicious coffee.]

Luckily we did not just cycle in high speed thru the nature, so we had the chance to see some region-specific animals:




Just some nice pictures now:




On our last day (we left the boat already) we took the chance to visit Plitvicka jezera (Plitvice Lakes National Park).



The next day we had our flight back to Germany. The flight was scheduled for ~12h30pm local time, but due to some reasons the flight was late for more then 6 hours. Fortunatly the weather was still fine (sunshine) and the small airport had some kind of sun veranda, so we could sit there all the day, in the sun, drinking beer and/or coffee and talk with the other people waiting on the plane, too. In the end we arrived very relaxed at home. Next day we were already back into business...

Thanks to the friendly people (other guests, guides, crew), it was a nice week! I can strongly recommend it!

Ok, the final picture: