Tag: hiking

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Quick Change of Seasons

A reasonably snowy winter with plenty of cross-country and touring skiing turned into spring within a few days (and about 100km).

The weekend before Easter some friends and I rented a cabin near Oppdal to go skiing and have a nice dinner together. The first day we skied to Gjevillvasshytta and back abd had a rich Raclette for dinner at our hut.
Because the weather was so nice, I decided to sleep outside in my winter sleeping bag, falling asleep under the stars (and two satellites moving in parallel, probably for 3D surface imaging) and waking up in the sunshine with a beautiful view of the snowy mountains.
The second day we skied near Innset, taking it more relaxed and trying out telemark style on a nice slope near our picnic spot.

  • Ready to Ski
  • Our hut
  • Gjevillvatnet
  • Raclette for Dinne
  • Waking up in the Sunshine
  • Skiing at Innset

Two days later a friend and I decided it was time to abandon winter and welcome spring, so we turned to the coast which due to the Gulf Stream enjoys a very mild climate. Not even 100km away from where we skied during the weekend, spring had already arrived and we went for a three-day hut-to-hut hiking trip in the hills of Tustna.

  • On the way to Tustna
  • On Skarven
  • The view from Skarven
  • Our cabin at Gullsteinvollen
  • Sunset over the Atlantic
  • Good morning
  • Beach holidays
  • Trollstua
  • Jørenvågvatnet
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What happened since May

June

Preparing for the move. With some resistance from the cat 😉 we managed to sell of a large portion of our furniture and also my car.
Gustav doesn't want to sell the bed. My old Yaris Improvised Wardrobe

Watching finn.no for a place to move to, we found a beautiful house in the forest at the outskirts of Trondheim. With the support of Expat Mid-Norway we got some more photos and quickly settled the contract.
House - view from driveway House - view from garden House - entry

July

13th: Farewell party at Café Hofgut Oberfeld
Farewell Cake Farewell Party at Hofgut Oberfeld

22nd: Doctor Exam
It's done! Snacks for everyone A ride in the 'Dr Wagen'

23th: The moving company picks up our boxes, 24th: Cleaning the flat, 25th: Flight to Trondheim
All our boxes are packed The Moving Truck Flight to Trondheim

August

We moved into our new home and explored our new surroundings. A small step for our cat but a giant leap for the mice in the area 😉 After searching for nearly a month, we found a nice used 4wd car.
Our boxes arrived Cat set free Bird not so free
Hiking and skiing trails right behind our house The view from Gråkallen My new car

September

I started working at MARINTEK in the SIMA team. The Norwegian Marine Technology Research Institute is located directly underneath the TV tower of Trondheim, Tyholt. In the SIMA team, we develop a workbench for the simulation of maritime applications. Various physics engines are integrated under the same hood and are made easily accessible to the user.
In the spare time, we went on exploring our new home and cleaned out an old shed on the property to make space for our bicycles.
Tyholt, near MARINTEK Cleaning out the shed Camping at Skjellbreia

October

For heating in winter we decided to use the fireplace more often and ordered some wood. The wood got delivered just in time for the first snow this year. 🙂 With snow all around us, it was definitely time to switch to winter tires.
The firewood got delivered The first snow this year The first snow this year
Time to switch to winter tires Beatiful sunrise on the way to the office Hiking in the snow

Now

Just got back from Eclipse Con Europe 2013 in Ludwigsburg, which I combined with visiting my mum, grandma (she turned 94!) and dad.
So far for now, we are looking forward to winter and plenty of snow! 🙂

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Bicycle Tour in Odenwald

Yesterday I went for a nice bicycle tour in this area. From Darmstadt to Bad König:

The long and steep part between Brensbach and Gumpersberg was definitely worth the beautiful view:

Many sweet little farmer villages and nice landscape, I really like this landscape of rolling hills and a mix of open fields and dark forest. On the way back, I took the local train “Odenwaldbahn” to the Lichtwiese campus where my office is) and cycled the last bit from there. I think some other time, I might try the bit from Bad König to Eberbach.

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California 1/2

As a colleague and I are presenting a paper at an international engineering conference in San Diego (IDETC09), we extended our stay by two weeks.
We arrived one week ahead in San Francisco and we will be leaving the US from Las Vegas a week after the conference.
So far the trip was really interesting. Starting in SF we stayed in a hostel (Green Tortoise), visiting some touristy places like Fishermens Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, which we even crossed.

From SF we took a rental car to Sequoia National Park, camping in those beautiful forests and going for a nice hike through the Giant Forest and even climbing the stairs up to Moro Rock. Staying in this amazing nature, we saw plenty of wildlife; birds, squirrels and deer. Just before leaving the park we even saw a black bear!

On our way back towards the pacific coast and San Diego, we went for a refreshing swim in a small river coming from the mountains we just crossed (we went up and down all the time, reaching altitudes as much as 2200m). With a short stopover in Ventura, we even spent a whole afternoon at the beach, watching the surfers ride the rolling waves.
 

So far for now, I guess I’ll write the next update when I get back home.
Cheers, Tim

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back home

Yea I know … it’s been a while since my last post.

Local Culture

I made it home well, right in time for quite a few late summer / autumn festivals. The first and biggest was the traditional Wasen, a few weeks later I visited the Fellbacher Herbst for the first time. A pretty nice wine festival in the heart of, you guessed it, Fellbach with live music and many booths selling local wine and food. The last local festival in that row was the Krautfest, a festival around Filderkraut, which is typical for the Filder region and only produced here.

Good old Friends

Two weeks after I returned back home some good friends from highschool times and I went to Switzerland. The first day and evening we spent in Basel, joining with one of our friends who had worked there for his studies. After we finally decided on a restaurant I had a really nice wild boar roast which I won’t forget for quite a while.
The second day we drove to Luzern and started hiking up the Pilatus with fog all around us, one could barely see 50m. Overall the elevation difference would have been 1600m in one day, but in my corrent condition I gave up at about 1000m and took the cable car to the top. There we had a reservation for the hotel and enjoyed a relaxed evening (the others were totally tired as the last 600m were the toughest part).
Sunday the fog had cleared and the view was really marvellous. After a brief sunbath we took the cable car back to the lower station where we had parked the car and spend the rest of the day browsing around the inner city of Luzern.

panoramic view from Pilatus

The Studymates

The last weekend of October my group of best friends from the aerospace studies in Stuttgart gathered in Hamburg. The first day had a bar crawl through the Schanzenviertel and along the Reeperbahn.
After everyone had recovered from the night before, we went down to the pier (Landungsbrücken) and took a boat trip around the warehouse district (Speicherstadt) and the harbour. After that we just walked around downtown a bit and found a really nice and small mexican restaurant where we managed to get a table for the nine of us. After a good meal and some Tequila we retreated to Oli’s place where most of us stayed and had a rather calm last evening.

My Grandma’s 88th Birthday

As we planned the gathering in Hamburg quite a bit ahead, I could arrange that it would be the same weekend as my grandmother’s 88th birthday. So Sunday I got up a bit earlier, took the bus to the main station to get a few fresh flowers and visited her. It is truely amazing how clear her mind is, everytime I really enjoy talking to her. As usual I ate quite a bit more than I had planned, but I guess that’s a universal fact for grandmas all over the world!