Köln

These weeks/months, due to my project, I find myself again 4 days a week in the small and shitty lovely town of Rheinbach, somewhere in the west of Germany. Nobody really understands why one of the two main headquarters of the company had to be in this particular location but that’s beyond the point of this post.

In any case, I’ve been bringing my DSLR camera with me and I tried to do some small photo trips in the neighborhood. I was less than impressed by the potatoes fields around the town but there are 2 big cities within driving distance: Bonn and Köln. I’ve been to Bonn a couple of weeks ago, around the university area and it was not so bad. Yesterday I decided to drive to Köln and see if I can get on the observation deck of the “Köln Triangle” tower (103m high) and take some panorama pictures.

That’s the place. I kinda planned to go to the much taller TV tower but since a couple of years, the top platform is closed.

It’s only a 50 minute drive to Köln, most of it on the autobahn, so I started right after I got off work. 10 minutes later I got into a really bad snowstorm on the autobahn and my mood kinda dropped, there was no way I could take any pictures in that weather. But I didn’t have anything better to do so I pushed on and luckily I got out of the storm and found out there was none of the white crap in the city itself.

The tower has it’s own underground parking, which was cheap enough. I went up up, paid the 3 euros fee at a machine, got into the elevator, arrived on top and got out on the platform. Then got quickly back inside to actually close my jacket, put gloves on and some on my head ’cause it was cold as shit up there.

I quickly found out that this is not the ideal place for pictures. All around the platform edge there is a 3m tall glass fence and while you can see through it, of course, it’s not good for taking pictures because of  the reflections. There are also markings on the glass sections, with the building names which you can see in that particular direction. I  kinda expected a fence of sorts but I was hoping that with the help of the tripod, I could get above it. There is none of that, the visitors must be secure! The visitors must be watched too, there are security cameras all over that platform.

The view is indeed impressive, you can see the whole city from up there. And it’s probably even better when the sky is clear. I did take some pictures but due to the weather and glass reflections, they are not that great. First 4 are HDR pictures (made in Photomatix, 3 different exposures per picture), I tried to bring out some details.

I want to go up on the TV tower in Stuttgart, which has two observations decks at 150m and 153m and has a total height of 216m. But I have to wait for better weather.

Bad weather is back

Weather was a little bit warmer for a while (and by that I only mean couple of degrees above zero) but then it all went to hell again. This is what I was seeing yesterday from my office window:

Bad. Today it calmed down a bit and it looks like this:

I am tired of winter. I am tired of snow. I am tired of cold, wet, ice and cold wind. I am tired of negative temperatures. I don’t want much, just couple of degrees above zero.

Tonight I get home after 20:00h so there is no time to do anything. Tomorrow we have to go to all kind of places, shopping, etc. On sunday we have a bit of relax time but starting with monday, we’re at it again. I am still home for that day but it’s going to be a busy day.

In the morning I have to go to the old apartment, we arranged with a company to come and pick up the last of the heavy furniture pieces. Then I have to drive to the capital city of this Kreis where I will apply for my new driving license, because I can’t do it in my own village. Of course, it’s not free: 41 €. Then back to Hertz, where I rented again a van for a day. Then back home, pick up the mountain of trash bags, old electric equipment, old wood and so on. To the dumpsite place, back to Hertz and then finally at home. The day is probably over by then ;-) Great.

Winter is finally here

Bleh.

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And it seems it’s gonna last at least the whole next week, with low temperatures and more snow.