for the last three days i was visiting hamburg with my brother and my aunt&uncle.
actually, they’re my goti and her husband. but ‘goti’ is a kindof regional word and limited to some parts of tyrol. so it’s hard to find a translation better than ‘female godfather’ (which in this case includes being my aunt)…
but that sounds too much like italy and the mafia :-)

wow, being precise is exhausting!

anyway, we went up there on thursday overnight and arrived in the morning.
sightseeing included the world’s largest model railway, the beautiful church of st. michael, the historical hanseatic speicherstadt, the botanical garden, the plane-arium (i prefer the southpark-version leaving out the ‘t’… ;-)), a harbour tour, and much more.
i can’t believe how much we managed to do&see in the past few days!

it was an amazing trip! we had lots of fun and did cool stuff!
hamburg’s a beautiful city with (mostly) friendly citiziens. i especially liked the way of combining new&old regarding construction. plus, i love brick buildings, and hamburg’s full of them.

photos will be posted within the next 24 hours!
see some 360°x360° pictures in the mean time.

***update***
[view photos: trip to hamburg, part 1]
[view photos: trip to hamburg, part 2]
[view photos: trip to hamburg, part 3]

so tuesday was pretty cool!

we decided to do a family hike to the mountains, from home.
the trip included thaurer alm, vintl alm and rumer alm (that’s three alps, for those who wonder)…
we were out from 09:30 ’till 16:30, and it was great!
good to breathe the fresh mountain’s air and enjoy our wonderful landscape once again.
and even after doing no sports for over 2 months (due to working and being tired after it), and not so much sports before that, there seems to be no muscle ache… at all!

in the evening, i was hanging out with fabio&nadja.
after a kind-of bad start (being mistaken for an “i’m-deaf-and-mute-so-please-buy-my-key-fobs”-guy by the waitress, for example), we really had a fun time.
especially when taking holiday-photos in our home-town ;-)
i didn’t have time to put those online, yet… but they will be there!
***update***
pictures are there now – see below

oh, and there’s some technical news, too:
this is the first time i’m using password protection for personal photos. i’m not sure if i will keep that up, i just feel more comfortable knowing who watches certain “me”- and “family”-photos. so if a password is required, you can either request one for that date (per email so far), or skip it and see the other ones…

i’m off to hamburg now!

[view photos: hiking]
[view photos: hometown tourists]

i just returned from the casino.
for some reason i never went there, although i’ve been allowed to for more than one and a half year…

it was nice, even though i lost my money rightaway.
unlike certain people, who even FOUND respectable amounts of money on the floor,
or others who apparently discovered the perfect bet (a 66 per cent chance that worked out)…
still, it was a fun night!

anyway, i don’t think i’m gonna spend any more money on gambling.
there – my rational tendency breaches through again :-)

lately i told some of you about the first big and stationary resident of my pond.
today i managed to get a good shot of him:
meet: the male southern hawker dragonfly in action

[view photo]

in the course of the day, i’m finally going to post some photos that i’ve been putting off for some time now…

subjects will include nature (fungus, caterpillars) and the city.

just to let you know ;-)

***update***
so those are the new ones:
    [2004-08-19 swallowtail caterpillars]
    [2004-08-27 innsbruck at night (2)]
    [2004-09-02 puffballs]

yesterday was the second wedding that our vocal ensemble “cantus borg” was supposed to sing at. it took place in fritzens this time.

it was amazing!
again, i enjoyed it so much – i think i’ll finally need to get into a choir that has regular rehearsals and concerts.
i feel so much more alive after singing, it’s just great!

plus, now i know we really produce a nice sound. you can’t tell when you’re singing yourself, but i tape-recorded us yesterday, and it sounds a lot better than i thought it would!
(taking account that my little mp3-player wasn’t originally designed for cd-quality-recordings)

i even took some pictures, this time!

[listen to samples]
cantate domino (w.a. mozart) – zip [mp3], 184KB
lass mi bei dir sein… (tyrolean folk song) – zip [mp3], 442KB

[view photos]

when i was taking a short walk today i stumbled across a vespiary.

they’re usually not agressive animals, only when they feel threatened, so i decided to take some pictures…
i was able to get as near as 10cm (4 in) to the burrow with my camera, and although the wasps were getting curious, they let me take pictures without stinging…

[view photos]