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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

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Switzerland

This is a Swiss swan, on the Rhine River at Basel.

Today I have had problems accessing Bloglines, which I use to keep in touch with a number of blogs (and news sites that have RSS feeds).  It makes me wonder if I have become too dependent on this one aggregation tool, especially since Bloglines was recently acquired by Ask Jeeves.

Apparently they are planning to integrate Bloglines into their MyJeeves and Excite.com products.  And no doubt they will introduce advertising.

And you thought all spiders had 8 legs?  Seems this is not the case in Switzerland.

Gregorian New Year greetings to everyone. After a 6 hour drive (plus stoppage-, and Channel tunnel-time) we made it back to Oxted.  On the way I managed to shed my wallet of most of its Euros. I don’t think bluemeanie was as lucky. However I have too many Swiss francs left. 

Firework time ...

As you can see conditions were clear in Leysin this morning with no mist and a lot less cloud over the opposite mountains than yesterday. It was about -2C outside, and after breakfast we packed the car, checked out of the hotel and then headed off to the village where we arbed around for an hour or so.  Then we hit the road back to Haguenau.  It was amazing to see the cars streaming up the hill in the opposite direction as we left Leysin. The main parking areas in the town were full of skiers, and they opened extra parking at the sports centre (serviced with a shuttle bus to the cable-car station).

After just over four hours of driving (and a bit more elapsed time) we were in Haguenau, and extremely hungry.  Which is when we discovered that it is impossible to find a restaurant open at 4 PM, unless it is McDo or a Turkish kebab shop.  Eventually we drove off to Strasbourg where we caught an Italian supper and then a movie - Ocean’s 12, VOST (Version Originale Sous-Titre).

Here’s the same view as the last entry, showing the lights of the town of Aigle in the valley below. The conditions were very clear today and we could even see Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) from the top cable car station, although le Mont Blanc was shrouded in clouds .  Tomorrow we leave Leysin and head back to Haguenau again.  According to the receptionist the roads should be better gritted by then, but next time we come I am bringing chains!

This morning the snow had stopped falling, and it started clearing. We even had breakfast in the sunshine. We were exhausted this morning and struggled to get moving.  Then I found I couldn’t get the car up the icy road to the cable-car station. In the end we went back to the hotel and took the shuttle bus. We followed the same routine as yesterday: two lessons with Keiko with a short break in between. The conditions were fantastic and she took us down different pistes than we had been down yesterday.  The only downside was the amount of traffic on the mountain.

While we were skiing this afternoon on the mountain it snowed steadily. At first it was only snowing on top of the mountain, but by the time we made our last ascent at 3pm it had started snowing in the village.  This photo shows the same view as this morning, but reflects the different conditions at this time. 

This is the view I woke up to this morning in Leysin. Visibility was not good as there was mist but this cleared in mid-morning.  After breakfast we made our way into the village and did a bit of shopping. Bluemeanie needed some snow-boots as she was slipping wildly in her flimsy shoes. Then we went to Jacky Sports to hire some skis, and then made our way to the Ski School to meet up with Keiko.  We had two lessons on the mountain with her, with an hour�s break in-between. (She had another lesson but this was convenient for us as we went to the restaurant on top of the mountain for an ovalmaltine/coffee break). 

When we (Carles, Ash, Marcus and myself) were on our snowboard trip at Engelberg earlier this year, we stayed in a family and youth hostel. In the hostel was this strange poster which I took a photo of.  I have changed the wording on the poster, to follow the theme of Hopkin Lost frog.

This month 18 people so far have come to my blog searching on the phrase “Hopkin Green Frog” (or similar).  One poor soul used the search-phrase “what is the deal with the hopkin lost frog?”.  In case he or she or someone else comes back with the same question, let me give an explanation (as I understand it).

There are these people who collect “found objects” such as flyers, lost property, etc. They take a photograph of each item they collect and publish it in a magazine and on a website such as this.  One of the things found was a quaint hand-drawn flyer that advertised a lost frog. Presumably it was drawn by a child, called Terry.  From this particular item another web-site was spawned (using it as a meme). 

Go to lost frog and click on each photo to progress to the next one. 

Edit: Well third time lucky, and this image was accepted on Lostfrog (it’s image #83 at the moment). 
News comes that the meme has been unravelled. Terry is a 16 year old with autism, Hopkin is a McDonalds Toy. (I found the link via Boing Boing).

Here’s another of these odd-looking buildings that have mushroomed all over the place in Dornach. Apparently you should be able to tell, by looking at the building, what it’s purpose is. For some buildings this is made easier by the little placard on the outside which says something like “book publishing” or “natural sciences”.  Not having read the placard on this one I am still trying to work out this one.

This is deep inside the belly of the Goetheanum at Dornach. Eva and I slipped into it on Sunday afternoon during an interval of Faust in between several guided tours to have a look at the stained-glass windows.  These were not at their most impressive as it was not very bright and sunny outside.

There are about 8 large stained-glass windows, and the design inside the building is distinctly, um, anthroposophical. The art on the ceiling is distinctly new agey, but it was apparently painted during Steiner’s lifetime according to his own design. The seats in the auditorium are rather plain, and I worked out that there were 25 rows with 40 seats in almost every row. So the hall seats about 1000.

This, incidentally, is the second Goetheanum. The first one was built of wood and it burnt down.

The above photo shows the reverse of the photo yesterday. Here we are looking down from the terrace of the Goetheanum at the house where Eva stays.

The architecture is very interesting in Dornach. I read here that

Anthroposophical architecture is a response to nature, natural forms and growth patterns. Geo-metric design or rectangular/square shapes isinappropriate. Instead a more organic approach isapplied, hard angles are removed and interconnect-ing planes dissolve into curves

There is a short background piece on Steiner’s Goetheanum in this review.

Here is a photo of another building next to the Goetheanum:


I particularly liked the wild flowers on all the verges and open spaces. I think you can just about make out the glorious yellows and whites in these photos.

Today I drove down to Dornach (just south of Basel, Switzerland) to visit Eva. When I arrived and stopped my car this was the first view of the Goetheanum. Eva seems well, although a number of people said that she looked tired today. I felt tired, even though I managed a siesta in between our walks around the town. The architecture is interesting: I will try to take some photos tomorrow. This evening we had supper in an anthoposophical restaurant (biodynamic food), and tomorrow are going to an art exhibition in Basel.

The cows above are Swiss cows. The story below is about American cows.

I am on an environmental pluck at the moment. Ever since I read in le petit blog de mewn about the incident at nearby Fessenheim nuclear power station, I have experienced an inexplicable pain in my leg. I think one could be starting to develop in my back and stomach too. 

You may laugh, but I have been reading a number of articles in the past year about how all our assumptions about safe levels of radiation (and what levels of radiation cause cancer) have been dangerously wrong (on the low side), as the scientiests made some errors in their interpretation of the statistics of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

So on to more cheery subjects, and what could be more cheery than what we eat, and what is eaten by the animals that we eat?  Some scary news about this is headlined:

Expanded ‘Mad Cow’ Safeguards Announced to Strengthen Existing Firewalls Against BSE Transmission

But when you read the article you wonder about these “existing firewalls”, if the new regulations only now ban the following from human food. Firstly,

-- Any material from “downer” cattle. ("Downer" cattle are animals that cannot walk.)

-- Any material from “dead” cattle. ("Dead" cattle are cattle that die on the farm (i.e. before reaching the slaughter plant);

-- Specified Risk Materials (SRMs) that are known to harbor the highest concentrations of the infectious agent for BSE, such as the brain, skull, eyes, and spinal cord of cattle 30 months or older, and a portion of the small intestine and tonsils from all cattle, regardless of their age or health; and

-- The product known as mechanically separated beef, a product which may contain SRMs. Meat obtained by Advanced Meat Recovery (an automated system for cutting meat from bones), may be used since USDA regulations do not allow the presence of SRMs in this product.

So this is what people have been eating all the time!  The article goes on to say that secondly,

the rule will also ban the use of “poultry litter” as a feed ingredient for ruminant animals. Poultry litter consists of bedding, spilled feed, feathers, and fecal matter that are collected from living quarters where poultry is raised. This material is then used in cattle feed in some areas of the country where cattle and large poultry raising operations are located near each other. Poultry feed may legally contain protein that is prohibited in ruminant feed, such as bovine meat and bone meal. The concern is that spillage of poultry feed in the chicken house occurs and that poultry feed (which may contain protein prohibited in ruminant feed) is then collected as part of the “poultry litter” and added to ruminant feed.

Thirdly,

the rule will ban the use of “plate waste” as a feed ingredient for ruminants. Plate waste consists of uneaten meat and other meat scraps that are currently collected from some large restaurant operations and rendered into meat and bone meal for animal feed. The use of “plate waste” confounds FDA’s ability to analyze ruminant feeds for the presence of prohibited proteins, compromising the Agency’s ability to fully enforce the animal feed rule.

And fourthly,

the rule will further minimize the possibility of cross-contamination of ruminant and non-ruminant animal feed by requiring equipment, facilities or production lines to be dedicated to non-ruminant animal feeds if they use protein that is prohibited in ruminant feed. Currently, some equipment, facilities and production lines process or handle prohibited and non-prohibited materials and make both ruminant and non-ruminant feed—a practice which could lead to cross-contamination.

This is shocking. Thank dog I’m a vegetarian.

Well, I was browsing the Internet a bit this evening, and came across the Daily Mail-o-matic headline generator. Am I being random? Well doesn’t our media tend to blow up triviala into the most sensational stuff, and then totally downplay real environmental risks that we face?

Continuing the Swiss theme of this week, the picture above is from our trip to Leysin last year, taken at the top of the Berneuse mountain with Ai (the garlic clove shaped peaks) in the background. From left to right are myself, bluemeanie, dylan and pinkie.

I flew back to the UK this evening. It was good to see bluemeanie and pinkie again - I hadn’t seen them since before Christmas. I think they have grown. I was supposed to give Ash a lift from work into Haguenau, but after waiting a while for him in the office, and then for 10 minutes in the parking lot I realised that if I waited any longer I would miss the plane. And afterall, he had till about 11pm to make his way up to Frankfurt for his plane…

I have been playing around with the scrabble generator. The best version I can get from one of my “names” is a 20. Not bad.

Pholph’s Scrabble Generator My Scrabble� Score is: 20. What is your score? Get it here.

I was interested to see that my weblog software censored the English translation of the American word rooster yesterday. Probably there is a setting that I can adjust somewhere, when I can be bothered, which can clear up such a misunderstanding. In any case, above is a better photo of the mountain, which is called hahnberg because it resembles a rooster.

At midday today, Miguel, Ash, Carles and I had our first German lesson with Danielle. I think it went well and I am regretting not starting German lessons earlier. Hopefully I will make fast progress over the next couple of months. 

This evening seven of us went back to the Gockelburg restaurant near Karlsrue (where we were on 16 Dec 2003). It was raining, so I didn’t take any outdoor pictures. I took a video in the restaurant, and may be able to cull some stills from it though.

I have been trying out a few of the many LOTR personality tests. I quite liked this one:

Celeborn If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Celeborn, Elf, King of Lothlorien, husband of Galadriel and grandfather of Arwen. In the movie, I am played by Marton Csokas. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

But I also liked the hobbitlore one which is based on the books’ characters rather than the films’. It also uses the Myers-Briggs/Keirsey Personality Tests. The first time I did it I came up with the following:

You are most like
Frodo Baggins, Son of Drogo

With many acquaitenances, Frodo is deeply attached to a few people, like Bilbo, Aragorn, Gandalf, and Sam. His high ethics come out in his treatment of Gollum and Saruman. Frodo has pity on Gollum and believes that change can occur.
You have a strong personal morality. You are committed to relationships and their growth. You tend to be an idealist, believing the best of the world around you. Time alone is important and solitary activities refresh you. You have a tendency to introspection. While providing compassion and being considerate, you may have the tendency of being soft-hearted or even “too emotional” You like keeping your options open. Closure is probably not one of your strong suits.

The Orcs display the evil side of this personality with their lengthy torture methods.

Traits: Empathic, benevolent, looking to the future. On the dark side you could be sadistic.

Torture? Sadism? Yeah! Try it yourself, here.