• looking at mongoliad's http://bit.ly/aoNo96 T&Cs: wow, contributors assign away ALL rights and even have to assist in that, could be costly. #
• amazed at how creative ppl who should value free expression get so hooked to iPlonk gadgets/devices, one of the most restricted platforms #

• burn, baby, burn! CDs mit bildern der stiftschor-reise http://bit.ly/9w3Z45 brennen: 6 down, 9 to go #
• SVP portiert sägewerksbesitzer als BR-kandidat: da gibt's dann die ganz dünnen Bretter #
• ROFL http://vowe.net/archives/011694.html #

• LOL RT @lido_lee Im Falle des Falles ist richtig fallen alles! #weisheit #
• Hmph, heftiger regen in thalwil #

during sunday’s #twallfahrt i managed to take a couple of 5-step bracketed pictures, two of which i think produced some interesting results. the first one is the view from etzel pass towards einsiedeln:

at first i thought that it looks a bit weird, then i realized (and on my way home looked at the clouds with “different eyes”) that it does look like that.

the second one is a classical, an in-door shot in the church of the monastery of einsiedeln¹:

i kind of like both, but the second one is more the classical one and i like it best. what do you think?

• brr, schattig geworden in einsiedeln. und nass. und windig. #
• dhaitz_ch: vielleicht war ein #holzpfropf gemeint? #
• Abendessen, dann #twallfahrt bilder hochladen #
• great, #echofon twitter plugin for firefox completely broken on ubuntu 10.04, epic failure, time to find another one #
• #twallfahrt bilder jetzt endlich auch im flickr pool http://bit.ly/bMvO7Y, der rest auf http://bit.ly/d4FE9Q #

9:10 — ms d and i arrive at einsiedeln railway station, all kitted out in our walking gear, ready to go. walking past the train we spot our fellow pilgrims. yep, pilgrims: we are on our way to the starting point of the world’s first twitter pilgrimage, the #twallfahrt¹ from pfäffikon to einsiedeln. in the train we meet @decolores1, @konzertharfe, @sempreincorsaa also ready to go on the #twallfahrt. just before the train is about to depart at 9:13 we are joined in the last second by @abtmartin — good thing, too, as he is supposed to lead us on our pilgrimage

i’m looking forward to the first twitter pilgrimage which is at the same time my first pilgrimage on foot (last year’s pilgrimage was by bus, which somehow gives it a different twist, i think). @abtmartin is apparently still in the “geheimprojekt” stage of the #twallfahrt, as he is not really forthcoming with any information about what’s planned.

we get to pfäffikon on time, cross through the station tunnel and see the #twilgrims gathered — a bit short of the maximum number of 8000 mentioned on @pixelfreund‘s blog (about 7969 short, in fact) bit still a sizable group. as various #twilgrims let us know via twitter, that they are still on their way, it’s a bit past 10:00 that we start on our way from pfäffikon up to etzel pass (where we’ll have a lunch break) and then on to einsiedeln to the benedictine monastery there.

the weather, fortunately, is cool, a bit humid, but not too bad, and the hike up “1000 steps” to etzel pass is easy to walk. the clouds are just fantastic (as a subscribed member of the cloud appreciation society i find blue sky days boring) —

— just past the autobahn we stop for our first #twallfahrt station: @abtmartin tells us a bit about the area (and the history of the monastery of einsiedeln), but the main focus is on two short canons (both in twitter length) that we even manage to render in a half decent way (no trees falling down, no birds falling from the sky). up and up it goes with the next stations at restaurant luegeten and at the fork in the road where the road from schindeleggi-feusisberg joins. around noon we are (as planned) on the etzel pass where a #twallfahrt group pictures are taken, we have a our lunch break, the sf drs tv team does the interviews with @abtmartin and we relax in the sun.

at 13:00 the #twallfahrt re-commences and via teufelsbrück and galgenenhügel we get closer and closer to our destination: the monastery of einsiedeln (interrupted by a short break to give the sf drs tv team a better take on us walking down to einsiedeln). the last station on our pilgrimage is at the gangulf chapel where we meet up with those #twitterati that couldn’t make it for the whole #twallfahrt, practice our twitter-length canons once more and then fight our way through the chilbi crowds to the klosterplatz — where we are greeted by a flag bearer and a cross bearer who lead the way, with the bells of the monastery ringing for our #twallfahrt, through the main entrance into the monastery church!

as we are a bit behind schedule, we #enjoy an even more twitterish worship service than planned — the highlight certainly being the twitterific organ piece (which @boumi manage to capture)!

an apero in the southern court yard concludes this unique #twallfahrt pilgrimage!

all in all: a very interesting and stimulating experience, meeting very different folks and with a couple of good spiritual impulses.

would i participate again? yes, i guess, i would

if you are interested, here are some further links:

• sf drs did a fairly lengthy piece (some german required)
• the katholische internationale presseagentur did a very good article (again, some german required)
• twitter’s #twallfahrt page
• the #twallfahrt flckr pool
• my set of pictures on 50mm-traveller

• Im Zug von #isiedeln nach pfäffikon zur #twallfahrt @AbtMartin hat es auch gerade noch geschafft… #
• Pfäffikon Bahnhof: besammlung für die #twallfahrt #
• Warten auf den #twallfahrt Startschuss… http://tweetphoto.com/42108706 #
• 2. Station der #twallfahrt http://tweetphoto.com/42114204 #
• #twallfahrt rast nach gehbet auf dem etzelpass http://tweetphoto.com/42127726 #
• Es wurde aber auch noch miteinander geredet, auch wenn es manchmal nicht so aussah auf der #twallfahrt http://tweetphoto.com/42131236 #
• Fast am ziel der #twallfahrt http://tweetphoto.com/42145259 #
• #twallfahrt aero im klosterhof http://tweetphoto.com/42149982 #
• zurück von der #twallfahrt — super erlebnis: geistlich & auch gemeinschaftlich, herzlichen dank an @abtmartin! #
• wow, #twallfahrt unter den top 5 deutschen twitter top themen #
• #twallfahrt orgelspiel war speziell gut! #
• thought i'd never see the day that @jmdhh would join twitter… #
• bilder von der #twallfahrt bearbeiten, nebenbei abendessen machen, #sftageschau gucken (oh, wir sind im fernsehen) #
• super bericht! RT: @AbtMartin: #twallfahrt Bericht der KIPA: http://www.kipa-apic.ch/index.php?na=0,0,0,0,d&ki=211386 #

it’s taken a long time, but i finally managed to upload the pictures of our lake district vacation (back in may, yes…) to our photo website, the 50mm-traveller. for most of the pictures i used the exposure bracketing mode of my D700 (i.e., one picture taken at normal exposure, one a full stop below and the third a full stop above) together with the high-speed setting (5 pictures per second).

while sorting and enhancing the pictures in digikam i noticed that the latest version of digikam offered a blend bracketed images option and decided to give it a go. the experience was mixed: the plugin seems to be a bit on the unstable side of things, so saving to a PNG at the end of the process resulted in an ever increasing number of dialog box thrown at me, telling me that the work product could not be save because it already existed — it took a bit for me to realize that that was just a forcefully repeated lie: the picture had been saved, the plugin was just getting a bit confused, it seemed. otherwise the bracketed image blending tool worked rather well: it offered to align the photos i had taken, which was good, as i very very rarely carry a tripod with me and am just shooting from the hand. what was a bit of a “ok, now what” moment, was the final dialog: it offered a bunch of sliders and it’s not really obvious what each of them does. so i mucked around a bit, trying this and that.

here are two images that i quite like:

and

this next one looks nice in low resolution, but if you go to the full size version, you’ll notice that the alignment process didn’t really work out — and no surprise there: i was shooting that from a boat on the river thames in london, so quite a bit of movement there:

all in all, not too bad i think. stuff i want to try out: use the 5 bracket stop setting to get a wider range (-2 .. +2), perhaps invest in a power grip to boost the speed to 8 pics/sec.

• gespannt, wie #twallfahrt #isiedeln wird. noch nie eine wallfahrt mitgemacht, haben wir evangelischen ja nicht so wirklich… #

• upgraded subsonic to 4.0.1 and re-installed license #

• http://icio.us/ldceg3 #
• http://icio.us/a1d13a #
• http://icio.us/3zbyky #
• updated d2h.net to #wordpress 3.0.1 #
• Der kluge fährt im Zuge http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11062708 #

yesterday’s tagesanzeiger report on a parliamentary motion of the swiss conservatives right-wing, nationalist party SVP to prepare the annexation of all regions surrounding switzerland — no, today’s not the first of april.

interesting.

as the tagesanzeiger rightly observes that would add about 10 million germans to the population (plus almost another million german speaking citizens of alsace, vorarlberg, & bolzano) — just a couple of months ago the SVP, never afraid of playing the lowest available instruments of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, staged a campaign claiming that the ETH was being overtaken by german professors (skillfully representing sliced statistics to “prove” their point).

according to the tagesanzeiger, the german embassy in bern when asked for comment, was just laughing out loud. probably the best reaction to any of the SVP motions…

…except, perhaps there’s more behind this, as der schweizer narr writes: right-wing politicians in switzerland and elsewhere in europe are voicing their opininon that the EU is doomed to fail and that we are currently seeing the beginning of the end of the EU — the SVP motion could be interpreted to play the separatist tune and try and solicit resonance from similarly minded circles in those surrounding regions.

is there method to the madness?

my grandfather was a sea-faring man.¹

my grandfather was a sea-faring man, and, what is more, he helped create an island… an island that is still visible today.

he was employed by the North German Lloyd aka Norddeutscher Lloyd as an officer, his last ship was the steamship goslar. shortly before the outbreak of world war II the goslar was on its way back to germany and had just passed the panama canal when adolf the terrible declared war on poland. to avoid being captured by the british marine (who was patrolling the atlantic) and also avoid US ports (and the US coast guard) the crew of the goslar had disguised the ship as at first a russian merchant ship and later apparently even sailed under american flag and where slowly making their way along the north-east south american coast until they reached suriname, then a dutch colony, where they anchored during the night of september 5, 1939, and applied for asylum.

at first things seemed to have been fairly relaxed, with the officers of the goslar even being invited by the citizens of paramaribo, that, however, changed on may 10, 1940, when germany invaded holland. the captain of the goslar had the ship moved into the middle of the river suriname and instructed the crew to scuttle the ship in the middle of the river — there are different reports regarding the reasons, and unfortantely, my grandfather has long since died otherwise i could have asked him. one version of the story is that the goslar was sunk to prevent it from falling into allied hands, another version, reported in the june 27, 1943, edition of the st petersburg times, is that the goslar was sunk in the hopes of blocking the harbour and bringing the bauxite export to a standstill (or at least slowing it down). there is even an implied link to an attempted coup to overthrow the government of the dutch colony, as reported in the december 1, 1941 edition of the pittsburgh press according to which the goslar was scuttled as part of the attempted coup. perhaps all stories are just different sides of the same coin.

the crew of the goslar along with my grandfather was then interned in suriname as prisoners of war. apparently there were a couple attempts of escaping from the internment camp, but none of them successful.

the goslar was never raised. according to the report in the st peterburg times it actually helped improve the harbour and bits and pieces of it were re-cycled by the US troops then stationed in suriname. if you look at google maps, you can still see the goslar today!

(larger view)

so, in a way, my grandfather (and the crew of the goslar) created an iron island…

after a long day on the train — starting with the 8:43 ICE International train from cologne to brussels, then the Eurostar to london st pancras, followed by the virgin pendolino from london euston (yep, a short walk from there) to oxenholme lake district, and, the last train for today, the First Penine 185 class service to windermere — we have finally arrived at the riverside hotel in ambleside.

the riverside is a small hotel run by david and brenda milne a bit outside ambleside, right next to the river rothay on the quiet under loughrigg lane leading from ambleside to rydal. our first impression: a lovely, well-lead hotel in a quiet spot of ambleside. nice. also, we like our room right at the top of the house with a window towards the rothay river. unusual for a UK hotel: the shower really does work and is not just a trickling-when-i’m-grown-up-i’ll-be-a-real-shower which we’ve encountered so often elsewhere in the british isles. all very promising

dinner was at zeffirellis, a restaurant recommended by our friends p & w (as well as our host david) — a vegetarian italian restaurant with an interesting menu. the food is good, as are the drinks (red wine for mrs d, a theakston for me) and the waiters are really friendly.

so far, so good let’s see how this all turns out…

good night.

ever wondered what happens behind the scenes of touristic switzerland? ever wanted to know how the swiss manage to present one of the most beautiful places on earth in such impeccable order? ever interested in the music that drives the swiss?¹

wonder no more: here’s a rare behind the scenes look at switzerland:

now you know the true story…

thanks to the excellent wordpress mobile pack wordpress plugin i’m pleased to announce that d2h.net is now mobile enabled: if you visit it on your android or iDon’t, err, iPhone you’ll get a mobile browser-friendly version of our web site. also, http://m.d2h.net/ will take you to the mobile version directly as well.

oh, and you might have noticed, i’ve re-organized the site structure slightly, the blog is now directly at the root of the site.

easy salad:

• about 125g rucola leaves
• about 80-100g smoked salmon
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of whole-grained mustard
• salt
• lemon juice

cut or shred the salmon into little pieces. wash the rucola leaves in a colander and shake off the excessive water. mix the rucola, and the salmon pieces in a bowl. add the oil and the mustard along with a couple of squirts of the lemon juice. mix well. season well with salt.

add croûtons if you like.

the last day of our irish pilgrimage! after another good breakfast at the newgrange hotel we pack once more and enter our pilgrims bus — which this morning has grown in size: morris, our excellent driver, swapped our smaller bus yesterday evening for a bigger one as he’s going to pick up a group of 50 at dublin airport right after dropping us off.

the final “building blocks” of our pilgrimage are kells and the hill of tara.

after a short ride we get to the little town of kells and disembark. first stop: the large celtic cross that used to stand in the middle of a busy crossroads but has now been relocated a little outside the town center. it’s been damaged — whether that damage originates with that unlucky encounter with that “cumbersome schoolbus”¹ or has been inflicted earlier is hard to tell — but still interesting nevertheless.

from the cross we make our way up to the site of what used to be the monastery of kells and is now a normal church — a church with four high crosses and a replica of the book of kells, though!

next and last pilgrimage stop: the hill of tara — another site close to the river boyne. legend has it that tara was the seat of the high king of ireland, the árd rí na héireann. was is known as fact is that the hill of tara was the site of iron age hilltop enclosure as well as the site of a neolithic passage grave. the hill itself offers a nice view across county meath (including slane which we visited yesterday). its other prominent features are a tea room and two (2) souvenir shops…

the visit to tara concludes our pilgrimage, our next and final stop is dublin airport with most of our co-pilgrims flying back to frankfurt and düsseldorf in the afternoon, and with mrs d and i taking the aircoach bus into dublin as our flight back to zurich will not leave until tomorrow.

dublin airport is busy, and we just have moments to grab our luggage, say our “goodbyes” and then we are all of a sudden by ourselves again. after some initial trouble we manage to find the aircoach bus stop, buy a return ticket and are soon on our way into dublin city center. the ride takes about 40min (longer than the first time when we used that tunnel which the aircoach buses don’t).

our hotel, the o’callaghan davenport hotel is right around the corner of the marrion square north aircoach bus stop. the room is OK and we just drop our luggage off and make our way to trinity college to visit the book of kells exhibition.

we are, not surprisingly, not alone in our quest, lots of tourists (american but also german) along with bus loads of school kids. we manage to squeeze in and slowly make our way through the very interesting exhibition explaining the background of the book of kells but also how it probably was created. fascinating and well worth the money. also, a very nice closure of our pilgrimage

the library’s long room is nice but nothing to get really excited about: it’s a typical old library. i had hoped for more trinity college or even ireland related material to be on display but instead get treated to an exhibition about napoleon bonaparte. hmph.

after the cultural part we are in dire need of a tea and something to eat. following the recommendation of ms p we follow the signs in grafton street for the powerscourt shopping center where we have a very nice “high tea” in the old courtyard — any thoughts on returning for dinner are kind of squashed when around 17:15 the staff of the café start collecting the menu cards and closing down. on leaving we find out that 18:00 is closing time — worse than germany in the bad old days of the ladenschlußgesetz! and this is the capital or ireland!

our walk back to the hotel is interrupted and severely cut short by the onset of very heavy rain. luckily we do have our umbrellas with us, but by the time we reach our hotel we are still a bit wet.

being tired all of a sudden (anti-climax?) we decide to stay at the hotel for the evening and conclude our ireland adventure with a couple of pints of cidre and guinness in the hotel bar.

mrs d and i slept surprisingly well this night, given the fact that one of the main thorough-fares passes the hotel just a couple of meters away.¹ breakfast is efficient and good and the waitresses are actually quite friendly and even know about gluten-free food for mrs j.²

the weather has become rather irish: it’s raining when we set off for a walk in the boyne valley, and it’s treating us to several showers on the otherwise rather pittoresque walk. in contrast to the previous walks we are to go by ourselves in silence and since we return to the bus mrs d and i for once can walk as it pleases us instead of forming the tail-end. rather quickly the whole group disperses over the length of the path, and i rather enjoy the quietude and the breathtaking scenery.³

next stop is newgrange, or rather the brú na bóinne visitor centre and the knowth neolithic passage grave. mrs dr, who has so far been doing a fantastic job translating for our non-english speaking co-pilgrims, unfortunately is under the weather today and mr tambour inquires whether i could be of assistance. i agree on condition that i can make things up if i loose the plot — to which he laughingly agrees. so, to cut a long story short: i learn quite a bit about knowth and its history through the milleniums — our group is a bit surprised to learn that knowth and the other mounds nearby are in fact modelled after what science assumes to be advanced flying objects and probably served as intergalactic beacons similar to the lighthouses of the 19th and 20th century…

…ok, ok, just kidding i try my best to translate everything⁴ and seem to get the job done in a half-decent way.⁵ knowth is the largest passage grave site in the area and even contains over one third of all megalithic art in all western europe! it’s also quite special in that several different cultures made use of it through the milleniums. fascinating stuff. as is the fact that knowth predates the pyramids by about 500 years! i quite enjoy the visit to knowth and the brú na bóinne visitor centre and am quite impressed by it.

after lunch at the visitor center we are on our way once more — the weather is becoming increasingly more friendly — and, with a short stop at the site of the battle of the boyne, visit monasterboice and the hill of slane.

monasterboice is most famous for its high crosses and has a couple of rather well-preserved specimen. it’s also a “living” grave-yard: “living” in the sense that it’s still in use today.

the last stop today is the hill of slane where st patrick supposedly lit the first easter fire. today it’s a ruined church with a churchyard and no fire — but lots of rain all of a sudden gushing down on us and we rather hastily beat a retreat to our waiting bus.

all in all a rather interesting day, knowth impressed me the most, i’ve to say.⁶

after a rather good night and an equally good and relaxed breakfast¹ at hotel doolin we pack once more and embark on the long trip across ireland, going from the atlantic west coast all the way to navan. the weather is not as good as it was yesterday with clouds covering most of the sky.

we don’t just go to navan directly but instead take the scenic route. our first stop is at burren national park, the smallest of the 6 national parks in ireland and part of the larger area the burren: a karst landscape exhibiting the typical karst limestone pavement and also host for a number of megalithic tombs and portal dolmens — rather impressive. after some time to our own we continue through the rather barren looking landscape — mr tambour cites edmund ludlow, an english parlimentarian, who is supposed to have said during counter-guerilla operations in 1651–1652:

a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him
— [h2g2, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy]²

we stop at burren house near ballyvaughan for a tea, some shopping,³ and some decompression. it’s the last chance to see the atlantic on our pilgrimage as from now on we are going to go east again.

aside from a short lunch stop in one of the little towns on the way east we stay on our pilgrimage bus until we reach the monastery of clonmacnoise in the afternoon.

the monastery of clonmacnoise was founded by st ciaráran in 545 AD. it was strategically located on the main east–west land route through ireland at that time. by the 9th century it had become the center of religion, learning, craftsmanship, and trade in ireland and was in fact a european academic focal point at the time. it’s not hard to imagine that from places like clonmacnoise western civilization was indeed brought back to the continent (and, thus, saved) as thomas cahill writes in his book how the irish saved civilization.

after an audio–visual about clonmacnoise in the visitor’s center we go and explore the ruins of the monastery.

it’s in the early evening when we arrive at our hotel in navan, the newgrange hotel — which despite looking rather old is supposedly only three years old! interesting.

at dinner we are joined by mr kleemann, the owner of the travel agency that arranged the hotels and our bus. it transpires that mr kleemann is originally from franconia in northern bavaria. he seems rather excited to see us — unfortunately that excitement doesn’t carry over to sponsoring the drinks oh, well, it was worth a try

after dinner we invite ms r for a pint of guinness — it’s been, after all, my birthday

p.s.: navan is a rather special city name: it’s one of the few places having a palindromic name!