Lakes

Really hot weather these weeks in Germany. It seems the summer finally decided to come in force and we have temperatures of 30C or more each day. At work I am somewhat lucky, we are in the northern part of the building and the heat is not that bad. I know for a fact that on the other side of the building they have in the rooms temperatures with quite a few degrees more. It’s an oven.

As usual, whenever I can I try to do some photo walks each week and since we visited that lake the previous weekend, I thought I should see what lakes are there within reasonable driving distance from Munich. It turns out there are quite a few.

There is a chain of lakes some 50km outside Munich so I went there before the sunset, so I can have better light. And less heat. This was not one of my better ideas because there was no easy way to get to the lake shore. When I finally found a way, I also found a camping spot with lots of them camping buses and lots of people. But the worse part were the mosquitoes. I could not believe how many they were. As soon as I would stop to set the tripod up or to make a picture, I would literally get attacked. I am all for sacrifices in the name of art but this was way too much, only the first two pictures are from there because I decided to cut my loses and leave before I become a bloody pulp.

I did some more research and the next day I went to Walchensee, one of the deepest and biggest alpine lakes in Germany. The lake is some 70km south of Munich, in the Bavarian Alps and this was a much better idea. It didn’t even take so long to get there, took me more to get out of the city than to drive the 70km since there is one of them no-speed-limit autobahns going south right towards the Alps. Oh, and there were no mosquitoes whatsoever. Not even one of the little punks.

The place is simply beautiful, the weather and the light were perfect and everything looked so serene and peaceful. There is a road going almost all the way around the lake so I just drove around, stopping every now and then to make some pictures. I left when the sun went below the mountain ridges. So here they are, the images:

Nature

It seems that summer finally came to our part of the world too. Last weekend we had really nice weather, although a bit on the hot side. So in the late afternoon on sunday we went to the nearby small town of Adelberg where not far from it, there is a lake in the middle of a rather thick forest.

There is a path going all around the lake, it took us almost 2 hours to walk it but I would say it was well worth it:

Tegernsee lake

Last week I went on a short trip to the Tegernsee lake which is south of Munich.  The lake is somewhat big and the whole region looks very nice. It has a couple of small villages around it and everything looks very pretty and clean. I took some pictures, of course (each images takes you to its dArt page where you can click for a bigger view):

Things are not very cheap around there but I guess that was to be expected.

[Picture Upload] Fire sunset

Clicking the image takes you to its Deviantart page. There you can see the full view or hit the Download link for a big version.

Back from vacation

I am not dead, I was just gone in vacation and we came back this weekend. Unfortunately. As always, it was way too short and I wish we could’ve stayed at least another week.

As I was saying before, we spent a week on Römö, an island on the Denmark’s west coast. We were lucky this time, the holiday home we rented was much better than the last 2, and cheaper I might add. And on top of that we had beautiful weather, only sunny days and a temperature of 19C throughout the week. The house was kinda isolated which is exactly how we want it. Some pictures of it:

Besides the mattress which was slightly old and the shower area in the bathroom, which was slightly small, I would say that overall it was quite nice and it had pretty much everything we needed. And it had lots and lots of lights inside, the owner must’ve had some sort of light fetish. But I can’t really complain about that.

We didn’t do much during the week, which was the whole point of the vacation. We went there to get away from people and just relax. For couple of days we also rented 2 bikes from a local rental place. To my surprise and mild   annoyance, it was quite difficult to fit them both in the Passat, even with both backseats down. The space inside looked huge but .. it wasn’t. In any case, it was really nice. I haven’t rode on a bike in a very long time but like they say, this is not something you forget. I felt like a kid again. And after 3 days even my butt stopped hurting from the really hard seat. The rest of the time we just walked around, went through the woods, “climbed” on the highest hill on the island (which is like 19m or so) or just soaked up the sun on the porch:

Almost every single night it was totally cloudless and since there is close to no light pollution here, the sky looks absolutely beautiful. There are so many stars and you can even see the wisps of the Milky Way. This time I came prepared with this:

When you look at the stars through those binoculars you really can’t believe how many they are. You can even make out the moons of Jupiter, which was above the horizon the whole week. I really wish I had a telescope with me.

One thing which didn’t really amuse us was how expensive things are in Denmark. We did have to go shopping for food and stuff couple of times and things are simply ridiculous. Everything was 30, 40% all the way up to 100% more expensive than in Germany: food, drinks, household items, etc. And this is at a supermarket, not at some place for tourists. Because if you talk about things for tourists, then it gets obscenely expensive. 18 euros for 2 smallish coffees and 2 sandwiches ? You even pay if you want them to slice your bread at a bakery! Things are expensive to begin with because VAT in Denmark is 25% but that still does not explain the prices. I wonder how much money the average person makes. I think next time we just take the 1h drive to the border and buy what we need from a german supermarket.

We also went to the huge beach on the west side of the island and witnessed a really pretty sunset:

But yeah, all good things come to an end so on saturday morning we left for home. It was a somewhat long drive the we just took our time and we arrived at The Cave around 9pm. At least our bed is much better ;-) And we have internet!