2016 Travel Journal – Day 14, 15, 16 & 17

Keep travelling …

Day 14 – The wet weather did not stop me enjoying my day at the Zoo in Arth Goldau, Switzerland, which features many indigenous species. And on the evening of the same day I was invited by good friends to a superb dinner at their home. We started with pate de foie-gras de canard with brioche and Austrian red wine salt, followed by an Asian vichyssoise with five spices duck breast. As the main course we had thinly slices veal filets with port wine tomato cream sauce and lentil pancakes and we finished the meal with a rhubarb sorbet, rhubarb vanilla yoghurt timbale, chocolate covered strawberries on a strawberry coulis, accompanies by grand mangier and cherry amaretti. A night to remember!

Day 15 – My yearly visit to the Zoo in Basel, Switzerland, which is located in the center of town; this zoo is providing a beautiful oasis to relax.

Day 16 – On the way to meet more Swiss friends in Sempach, Switzerland, I stopped at the Schloss (Castle) Heidegg. It is a beautiful place in the middle of a vineyard with an amazing rose garden. The large collection of roses was started after a visit of Germany’s first post-war-chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, in 1951. He remarked during his visit at the castle, that a place as beautiful as this should have roses!

Good friends, who have recently visited me at Thanda, invited me for an evening at their home in Switzerland. Their house is one of the most spectacular and most unusual private places I have ever visited. It manages to be very modern, but very comfortable at the same time!

Day 17 – After a few days travel I now am back at my parents place in Germany. Heavy rains all day make me very envious (as we could use all this water at home in South Africa), but I enjoy sitting on the covered 🙂 terrace, having a drink and reading a book.

2016 Travel Journal – Day 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13

A few more exciting days in Europe. I visited the Zürich Zoo, I enjoyed Gregorian Vespers Chants and beautiful architecture at the Einsiedeln Abbey, I had more excellent lunches and dinners with friends and family, and I have visited my ‘2000-2007 home town’ of Zofingen in Switzerland over the weekend.

Enjoy the images – more to come!

2016 Travel Journal – Day 6, 7 & 8

A special day in Germany, celebrating my dad’s birthday. Three days with many lunches and dinners joining family and friend, and two short visits to a small zoo near Lucerne and a wild game park near my former home town of Zofingen in Switzerland.

Enjoy the images – more to come soon!

Getting There – 2016 Travel Journal – Day 3 & 4

These are a few pictures taken with my iPhone 6 Plus from my window seat on the airplane – Johannesburg at night and Switzerland at dawn.


… and a quick selfie on the plane before I went to sleep! – 10 hour and 30 minutes flight directly from Johannesburg to Zurich, but no time difference 🙂

Before departure
Before departure

Travel Journal 2016 – Day 1

First day of this year’s annual leave trip. I drove from Thanda to Pretoria to visit very good friends before departing for Europe on Wednesday.
It was a beautiful day and I was quite surprised when I passed a shallow lake with hundreds of Flamingos!

Contrasts

Warm – Cold | Rough – Smooth | Right – Left | Happy – Sad | Cramped – Spacious

A day of contrasts – Coming from the cold of a German autumn to the warm temperatures of a Pretoria summer – changing from the smooth ride of my dad’s Renault to my rather rugged Fortuner – moving from the right side of the road to the left – being happy to be back in South Africa and being a bit sad to have to leave my family and friends in Europe – enjoying the space in the Gautrain from Johannesburg Airport to Pretoria after the 11 hour ‘torture’ in a economy plane seat, which is far to small for me:-)

Well, I love change and these contrasts are rather invigorating. The hot shower, a Peking Duck for lunch and my mum’s poppy seed cake for desert helps to improve the spirit even further!
From tomorrow Wildlife will be back on the ‘posting menu’ 🙂

PS: Today’s pictures show me on the Gautrain.


  

An iPhone travel journal – Day 9 – The Last Day

Wednesday – The Last Leaves

After an excellent lunch with my older brother and my parents in Switzerland I took a few Autumn images on the way to Germany. This tree is loosing its leaves fast as Autumn turns into Winter. And I will be leaving Europe in a few hours. See you next year!

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An iPhone travel journal – EXTRAS

I have only published one iPhone image per day on my travel blog. Some of you have asked me if these are all the pictures I took. Well, here are some of the EXTRAS.

Today, I will be flying back to South Africa. I am a bit sad of leaving Europe and my Family already, but I am also looking forward to getting back to South Africa and home to Thanda. I am planning to return in May 2016.

I hope you enjoyed this short travel blog, which turned a bit into a ‘great eating in Europe’ blog :-). It was interesting to work exclusively with my iPhone 6 Plus. It gives one a lot of freedom (not carrying a lot of equipment and having great editing tools instantly available), but it also showed me the limitations. A good experience.

I will post the last pictures of this trip this afternoon!

An iPhone travel journal – Day 8

Tuesday – German “Wildlife”

I thought a German cow would make a nice “Wildlife” image on one of my travel blog days. My younger brother and I went for a drive into the Black Forest this morning to find a suitable subject. I really like this portrait of a young cow, which I shot on our trip.

For lunch we met up with our parents to eat one of my favorite dishes in a traditional German restaurant: Rehruecken mit Spaetzle, Rotkraut, Preiselbeeren und glasierten Maroni (Rack of venison, small dumplings, red cabbage, cranberries and honey-glazed chestnuts). For desert we had another favorite of mine called ‘meringue glace’ (Vanilla ice cream with freshly whipped cream and very light meringue from the Swiss Emmental).

And after another relaxing afternoon I went for an early dinner (a German sausage salad) with a friend in Bad Saeckingen. In case you think that this trip is a bit of an eating-marathon, then I would say that you are correct – but I enjoy every minute of it 🙂

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More to come …

What a sound!

 

 
One of my uncles bought this old tube radio in 1954. It is still in working order and has a great sound! But here is an interesting question: Why did he buy the radio – a very expensive item – in 1954? He had a very good reason – the answer will be on the next post 🙂