Bubbles and sunsets

Every so often on a weekend stroll around town, I bring my camera, and every so often, weather and cicumstances conspire to offer me something to photograph. This winter has been a funny one, in stark contrast to last year and the turmoil in great Britain, winter so far in  my part of Austria has been decidedly mild. There's always time for a last minute sting in the tail of course, let's not forget that there was snow on the ground here in April last year. Nonetheless, a prolonged snap of subzero temperatures doesn't seem on the cards right now. Even when it did get below zero, my memories of the heat wave of last summer were enough for me to praise the fact that at least I am comfortable in my own home in subzero temperatures!

Today we have a short selection of nine photos, including from the insanely photogenic giant bubble blowing that happens at Heldenplatz in good weather (seriously, those giant things fly for hundreds of metres, the woman who does it must have mixed the absolute perfect bubble solution!). Also present is the Stephansdom, frankly not a sight I see that often these days but it still impresses, especially when bathed in orange in the sunset. The last couple of photos are from my favourite lookout spot in the whole of Vienna, the Leopoldsberg, which has already featured many times on this blog. The best views combined with the best atmosphere, I hadn't been up there for a while either and that was a mistake!

Now the christmas period is past and the snow appears to have been beaten off early this year, I really need to get back into the hiking habit, especially in order to feed the blog hordes with photos. Last weekend I walked many kilometres soaking up the sun, but only inside the city limits. Let's see if I can change that soon. Of course I still have the photos from utterly snowy Tirol to show you, look out for them soon!

Der Tom

The Banks of Loch Lomond

I have made it a New Year's tradition to travel to Glasgow, Scotland for hogmanay. Not necessarily because just being in Scotland lends the concept of the new year an extra glamour (though to be sure it does), but mostly because I have good friends there. One of the nicest things about traditions for me as a non-resident of the British Isles is it makes my movements predictable, so other friends also know where to find me! This year's hogmanay was no exception, celebrated with the requisite amount of beer and friends in a house in the scottish countryside, topped off with a delicious (and eminently traditional) dinner of mexican food.

Unfortunately for my host though, it is the lot of hardworking internet journalists that they must work sometimes, even in the days leading up to new year. Luckily, her dad and I are very similarly minded when it comes to outings (to whit, they should be outside, with countryside, and preferably wildlife) so we headed off to enjoy some of the great scottish countryside. After a last minute plan change due to a cancelled train, we ended up going to Loch Lomond, the large and famous Loch not far from Glasgow.

Scotland is a beautiful country, and of course never more so than when the sun is shining, especially considering the comparative rarity of this occurrence. So we were extremely lucky to have picked a sunny day! The pictures show the scenery better than I can describe, really. When walking in Scotland in winter you really get a sense of how far north it really is. The sun stays low towards the horizon, and everything is lush and wet and green. All the trees were covered in moss, lichen and fungus, a testament to cleaner air as well as a wet climate. The hills in the distance are green-brown with heather, and the highest even dotted with snow. A great walk to round off 2013 with!

Male Goosander

There were also a bunch of interesting birds to look at, including abundant goosander and siskins.


As usual, extra photos can be found by clicking here!

Der Tom

The Chilterns part 2: Boxing Day +1

My many friends made through scouting have had a tradition of sorts for several years now. As is the way of groups, as we have got older we have moved away and spread out across the country, and in some cases, the world. Nonetheless, christmas time is a rare time where many of us are back right where we first met, and can meet up again. Usually, we waste no time in heading for the nearest pub, but on the day after boxing day, named in the traditional calendar 'Boxing Day +1', we gather for a hike. Granted, the hike is to a pub, but... Anyway, it's always a lot of fun, and this year we collected 12 people, what may be a record!

The photos from this trip showcase the other face of the chilterns. When surrounded on all sides by resistant chalk, the landscape becomes paradoxically softer. Gone are the sharp scarps at the north edge of the chilterns. Instead, there are broad valleys separating rounded low wooded ridges. These areas are primarily used for farming, and the ploughed fields are littered with the grey and white shards of flint weathered out of the chalk. Although Buckinghamshire is very crowded and quite built up in comparison to the truly rural landscapes of other parts of Britain, if you step outside the village on foot, rather than by car, you can surprisingly rapidly lose the housing estates behind hedges and fall into a parallel, much more scenic world...

It is interesting just how different the landscape looks to that of the Wienerwald, depite the fact that both areas are essentially former countryside areas full of satellite villages and towns for a large city. Of course, the major difference is explained somewhere at the confluence of geography, history and geology... Enjoy the photos of the first part of the world I ever went hiking around!

Der Tom

The Chilterns part 1: Coombe Hill

Phew, lost the ability to transfer photos from my camera for a bit there, but now we're back on track!

The next few posts will be featuring a glamourous guest star, the country of the United Kingdom! They stem from my month long christmas trip to the country of my birth. I figured I spend so long giving Austria free advertising and picking only the nicest pictures of it for publication, I owe the british countryside the same favour!

This gallery of images is taken from the top of Coombe Hill. A 260m hill (that's big for southern england!) it occupies an imposing position overlooking the low lying Vale of Aylesbury, and as such boasts views far in excess of its small stature. The views are aided by the fact that Coombe hill is mostly chalk downland, close cropped grass maintained by grazing animals. This is an excellent example of one of the 'unnatural' natural environments 1000s of years of farming have created in Britain and indeed many parts of the world.

The Chilterns are a long range of resistant chalk hills situated NW-ish of London. Steep, grassy hillsides criss-crossed with sheep tracks and dotted with gorse and newly invading patches of trees are characteristic of the part of the world I grew up in. The soil on chalk is always thin, and there is always the odd creamy white patch of exposed chalk at a severley eroded area or under a newly fallen tree. Once on top of the chalk the scenery is less dramatic and more rolling, and a glimpse of the farmland away from the sharp scarp at the edge of the chalk will be seen in the next blog post, about a hike near my village.

Coombe Hill possesses a large monument to Buckinghamshire soldiers who died in the Boer war at the turn of the 20th century (not the empire's finest hour, to put it mildly), and according to wikipedia represents one of the earlier war memorials in the UK to actually be about the individual fallen soldiers rather than celebrating some great battle or general.

In fact, Coombe Hill is actually a rather odd name, Coombe supposedly meaning 'hollow' or 'valley' in the language of celtic Britain.

It is nice to showcase some photos of Coombe Hill, the destination for many many childhood walks, hikes, night hikes, kite flying expeditions, scout wide games and barbecues. I hope the British and non-British readers of the blog alike enjoy an insight into the scenery of the Chiltern hills!

Here's the full gallery

Der Tom

Rund um den Badener Lindkogel

The day before my birthday was a Sunday. I try and make it a rule to go hiking at least once a week, usually on Sunday, and I definitely hoped for good weather and an interesting walk for my 'birthday hike'. I picked one of the very few routes in my book of hikes around Vienna that I hadn't yet done. This small unassuming green book ranks among the absolute best purchases I have made in my several years here, and can be credited with really spurring me to get out and about and explore the leafy surroundings of Vienna.

This hike was yet another from the small spa town of Baden (in contrext basically this translates as 'Bath', there are multiple Baths in almost every country I think). The best part of the 14km trip (plus 4km return walk to the station) was that it started and ended in a castle! And not rubbish stately home castles either, proper ones with towers and walls! The two guard the mouth of a valley on the edge of the Vienna basin, and in a straight line lie less than 1km apart. From the top of the first we were treated to views of some absolutely gorgeous backlit cloud formations, with hints of blue sky to come.

Passing prehistoric caves, a cholera chapel, one wrong turn and a wild boar (my first sighting of one outside the boundaries of the Lainzer Tiergarten, and thus possibly my first properly 'wild' wild Boar) we finally wandered up to the second castle just at sundown, providing opportunities for some nice sunset shots across the valley. The second castle was a real joy to explore, the kind of ruin with many different levels, small holes to stoop through, dramatic views and crumbling masonry.

All in all a very successful hike on a lovely route, and one I am keen to repeat!

Here's the full photo gallery.

Der Tom

The beginning of winter

A brief post this, otherwise the backlog of photos taken over my month long stay in the UK will get far too large, not to mention other hikes completed before I even went there...

Here's a brief gallery of pictures showing Vienna at her best, on one or two of those gorgeous winter days when the clouds stay away and the low-slanting sun is allowed to do its magic work. You may notice a few appearances by my favourite building, the flakturm, because it looks fantastic at sundown and also because new camera is much better than old camera at capturing the sheer enormity of its presence!

The captions will be there for you if you crave more information!

Happy 2014,

Der Tom

Buchberg

I have been endeavouring to go hiking as much as possible in the autumn and early winter. I missed some of the best parts of autumn in September while gallivanting around greece, but I wasn't going to let the whole of the most beautiful and least hot season trickle away!

At the beginning of November we had the last of some pretty sunny and relatively warm weather, and today's images are taken from a hike taking advantage of the beautiful yellow, slanting winter sun. This hike was in the Wienerwald, but a little further west from Vienna than many of my hikes taken from my trusty hiking bible. Out this far, everything is definitely rural. The small town of Neulengbach at which we started the hike featured a pleasant old schloss, and while leaving the immediate surroundings of the town we passed a few horseriders and sunday walkers, as well as a horse paddock inexplicably next to a whole pile of mouldering ex-vienna transport buses...

The scenery of this hike reflected its location on the edge of the Wienerwald, just before the more open fields rolling down towards the Danube north of Vienna. The imposing, triangular lookout tower on the Buchberg, the destination of our walk, provided a fantastic view; out north over the rolling fields towards the Danube and Melk; southwest towards the capital of Niederoesterreich, St Poelten; and southeast towards the peaks of the limestone Alps, the striking (and by now actually snowy) Schneeberg among them.

Here you are then, a link to another small gallery of pictures of a hike in Austria. The scenery is a bit different in this one, and I'm really happy with some of these capturing the combination of undulating ground, the lines of the fields and the afternoon sun!

Der Tom