Wintertijd

Kinereth - The Sea of Galilee

Many believe this is where Jesus walked on water, and the popular joke among the locals is "you can still visit the path of boulders on which he did". Kinereth is the only sweet water lake of Israel, and supplies a lot of water. It's a lovely area, close to Kfar Nachum I wrote about.

This picture was taken in the city of Tveriyya, otherwise known as Tiberias. It's a bit of a shit hole, but then it does feature a gorgeous lake, very good fresh fish and an annual Bluegrass festival.

Sachneh

Instead of swimming pools or the beach, which have their respective disadvantages of chloride and sand, in Israel you can go to the Kibbutz Sachneh which is a natural well that got pimped somewhat. As a bonus there are ruins of the Crusader castle Belvoir nearby, but that's another story.

Kfar Nachum II

Earlier I wrote about this priest I met in Capernaum, and this is the environment he works in.

The fields of flowers across the road:

The church he presides over:

And the Galilee by night:

Arno @ Santa Cruz

Apart from being one of my dearest friends, he's got the talent to look deliciously gay. Even though he isn't, albeit not for lack of trying.

Bahai Gardens II

By Night as seen from the German Colony.

Bahai Gardens, Haifa, Israel

By daytime as viewed from the top half.

Ceasarea, Israel

My Boy, ~8 months.

Eilat, Israel

Espel, Noordoostpolder, Netherlands

Giethoorn: The Venice of the North

Bumfuck, North Carolina

Didn't have a lot of time to drive around and do a lot of photography, but this cornfield cum country road combo seemed to epitomize the surroundings of Charlotte...

Charlotte, North Carolina

As seen from a moving vehicle.... It's not the greatest photo ever, but I just liked the spires and the light.

Lombard Street, San Francisco

"The Crookedest Street in the World" is what they call it. Lombard street. The funny thing is that this street is a couple of miles long, but the "Crookedest" bit is just one block that features 8 hair pin turns designed to decrease the steepness of the decline it's on.

Americans are, admittedly, kinda funny that way. You build a street that is straight as an arrow for miles, put a couple of turns in and call it the "something something" of the WORLD. Of course. I wonder what world though. Probably the people that named it thus never set foot in Old Jerusalem, Yafo, Akko, Nazareth or, for that matter, any ol' European city with its roots in the dark ages. Hell, just drive through Fjord country in Norway, and... well... you get the picture.

Having said that, seeing the Japanese go nuts with their cameras on this stretch of road is more than vaguely amusing.

Santa Cruz III

Sweden, Mälardalen.

San Francisco, Hashbury

Only in Hashbury will you find that many hippies and alternative people. Södermalm in Stockholm reminds of it, but then they usually put communism in their hippieness. I didn't see many red flags in Hashbury. Being a farm boy, I look at this enclave and think to myself that they ought to get a life though, with their peace signs, pot, "World Discussion Tables" and Organic pepper.

Hate hippies. Always have, always will. With or without the communism. To quote George Thoroughgood: Get a haircut and get a real job.

San Francisco, Castro and 18th.

And then they say that San Francisco is the Gay Capital of the world. All I found there was a lot of gay flags, but the vibe (if you can call it that on a Monday) was decidedly pedestrian or even vanilla. Amsterdam is so much more gay. Sorry, folks.

Downtown San Francisco, Market Street.

And of course, courtesy of Arno manning the camera, the obligatory "I was there"-shot.

Golden Gate

Daniel, four months.

Highway 1, the Coast.

The Bazaar of Nazareth

Everyone's gone to the movies

San Francisco Bay

Santa Cruz II

Music on Haight Street

Santa Cruz

Kefar Nachum

Near the historic site of Capernaum there is a pink and white Greek orthodox church to which I took my mother and sister once. There, we were met by this extremely friendly polyglot priest.

We talked, and he gave mother a CD with classical music because they shared an interest. Months later, Arno and I returned to this spot, and he remembered us. So Arno and I joined him for a coffee and discussed the ways of the world in his kitchen. It's a beautiful site with a wise and friendly man. I should go back. I still have an open invitation.

Dead Sea...

Although it beats me why anyone in their right mind would think they would need a floatation device in the form of a surfing board in the dead sea. There are no waves, you can't possibly sink and the wind isn't there either really. It's hot, and 400+ meters below the sea level. That's about all there is to say.

Oh... That, and the fact that it's real fun bobbing up and down on that thing.

Stephen Simmonds reinstated...

I put up the Stephen Simmonds gallery again. It can also be found on the left.

To be honest, I see how much I've learned about photography in the last two years when I look at that album. Compare it to the Idan Raichel gig's photos and I think the work has improved greatly.

But then, that's just me.

Idan Raichel Project, Last one...

I promise it's the last entry on the Idan Raichel Project. It's just that I get a kick out of available light concert photos. I wish more people made photos like that instead of using those god-awful flash units.

Now of course I took quite a few more photos during that gig, so I have taken the liberty of creating a gallery for those. It can be found on the side-bar with all the other galleries.

But for those that really want to click here, that is of course possible too.

Idan Raichel Project: Animal Loves Drums!

Seriously, does this remind you people of the muppet show?

Idan Raichel Project: The Man Himself

What can I say? Profile isn't the best look for Idan, but I couldn't get the bloke looking straight forward.

Then again, the whole dread lock & huge-woolen-hat fashion statement doestn't exactly help the guy.

Which always makes me wonder, why do all of these peace-love-and-understanding people always have to look so terribly alternative and unshaven? Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind peace-love-and-understanding people at all. But why do they have to wear it on their sleeves like that? Kinda irks me everytime I see 'm.

George Thorogood would say "Get a haircut and get a real job". Granted, the dude is very talented, so the real job he's already got. But a haircut I wouldn't mind.

'Cause way I see it if you ain't black you shouldn't be thinking about dreads. Speaking of black: which photo is better, the color version or the black and white one? To tell me, you'd have to mail me because the comments are still broken.

Idan Raichel Project: The Hot Chick

I told you I would get back to you about Cabra Casey, The Hot Chick (tm).

On top of being drop-dead gorgeous, she can sing too. It's to the point where the more up-tempo African songs are really the high-lights of the concerts and albums.

I guess this touches on the nature of my problem with The Idan Raichel Project. They try to be eclectic, but they will never be in a genre of their own like Steely Dan. I would much prefer a more clean-cut Ethiopian CD with Cabra Casey or any African artist for that matter.

Burning candles...

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a staunch atheist. I really dislike organized religion in general and monotheism in particular. Still, whenever I find myself in a Church, like the Cathedral of Uppsala in this case, I feel an urge to burn a candle. In the past I did this only for my grandmother, but ever since my dad died, she's got company.

Idan Raichel Project

Today, HP organized a "fun day" as they call it in Israel. A day at the beach with food and drink and leisure activities, followed by a dinner and a gig. Responsible for the gig this time was a group called The Idan Raichel Project. While interesting musically, the group's music has a mild tendency to put me to sleep in the long run. This time however, I had a camera and had access to the stage, so I could entertain myself. Don't get me wrong. The music is very good, spans different continents (Middle Eastern Arabic and Jewish styles, Ethiopian styles and a singer from Suriname with his distinct take on things) and is very well executed. It's just that it a bit too slow and ballad-oriented for my taste. They're just not James Brown or Chet Baker, as it were.

However, since this was a company party they had hired a photographer to shoot the day, and the resident camera geeks (Yours truly included) were all there to strut their stuff. The common denominator being that they all use expensive Cameras and Flash-units, and cheaper lenses. I was the only one with a huge, 1.5 kilo heavy piece of expensive glass mounted on a cheap-ass body with no flash. Naturally this drew some attention from aforementioned aficionados, so I got two different offers to borrow their flash-units. I saw them thinking "poor bastard". But I told them I don't use flash. Ever. If there's not enough light to take the picture, I generally don't. Here are three reasons why:

Now the last picture is of The Hot Chick (TM) of the ensemble. An Ethiopian singer called Cabra Casey. More on her later, of course.

Tel Aviv Sunset II

The closer you get to the equator, the less the effect the summer respectively winter have on the length of the days. That much I knew since I was 10 and had a geography class. The one thing this class didn't prepare me for is the speed at which the sun sets.

Once that sucker starts going down, you have mere minutes to make a picture. Not, like in Sweden, hours and days. Anyway, the beach in Tel Aviv is just a small stretch of the odd 400 kilometers of Mediterranean beach Israel has to offer.

Tavor stream

Israel is mainly a collection of things that look yellow. The houses, the roads, the sand, the rocks, it's all yellow. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised to see that the valley surrounding Tavor stream near Mount Tavor (or Tabor, depending on how you are used to spelling it) is a beautiful, lush green landscape. At least, in May it still is.

And yes, that speck on the top right is not dust on the lens. It's a bird of prey of some kind. You have those there.

Guitar Hero

In Sweden, we visited my friend Bud and his family. Hugo, the whippersnapper of the family, still spends a lot of time playing guitar and is getting pretty l33t at it.

This is the boy. A poster boy for the alternative punk-ish looking movement, complete with jeans hanging halfway down his crotch, of course.

Jerusalem

When people come to visit me, I make a point out of visiting Old Jerusalem. It's not a place I would like to live, but it's a great place to visit. The picture below was taken in the Arab quarter at sundown. The small streets get dark and damp, and quite frankly I like the Arabs in spite of their aggressive "special price only for you my friend" sales tactics. They offer you very good coffee and small talk if you're open to them.

In Jerusalem, the question Bazaar or Cathedral was settled in favour of the Bazaar many centuries ago. Although beware of what you buy. A friend was cold and found a gray puma sweatshirt he disliked less than most offerings. The salesman pulled out a grey sweatshirt and had commenced printing the Puma logo on it in front of our eyes had we not stopped him. He was surprised to find people that preferred the thing without any logo.

Obviously my friend got screwed as far as the price was concerned. :-D

Akko

Akko is an Arabic town 40 clicks north of Haifa. It's a harbour town with a very charming market, good sea-food and fresh fish. Furthermore they serve an Arab pastry called Knafe or Knafi. It's a mixture of goat cheese and a very sweet topping. It's heavy, but fantastic. Kinda reminds of the sticky sweetness of Baklava. But I digress. This photo is of the harbour of Akko.

Dead Sea

Speaking of desert, you see pretty funky traffic signs on the way to the dead sea.

Eilat II

This one, Hilla took. We were out driving 4x4 Rangers in the desert just North of Eilat.

Lyon

Beautiful in the dark, Lyon is.

Cremieu II

We ate in a Creperie that also served crepes with savory fillings. So I had a salty one with Jambon Cru, sundried tomatoes and four kinds of cheese (Emmenthal, a local one, Mozarella and another local one), and one with apple, cinnamon, vanilla ice-cream, maple syrup and whipped cream. They were both fantastic. If you're ever in Cremieu, visit this place.

Secondly, the waitress was fantastic. Once you've been to France a couple of times, you start to appreciate the ones that speak English. This one did an entertaining, heavily accented but superb rendition of the entire menu in English.

And, without asking she had kept track of six different bills because she figured we were Corporates. Damn fine service experience, if you ask me.

Cremieu I

My employer sent me to a training centre close to Lyon, in Isle D'Abeau. Close to that in turn, is the medieval town Cremieu.

This town is a sleepy French village where the locals are not in a hurry, and the streets are quiet.

I was surprised not to see old guys with a baret playing pétanque (jeu des boules) in the town square.

Eilat

When we were in Eilat last fall, we did some off-road driving with a Polaris Ranger. This was a heap of fun. We crossed through parts of the desert surrounding Eilat, and had pure, unadulterated fun humping and bumping on slopes, dirt tracks and sandy curves.

Naturally, the views were amazing in certain places. We stopped near a breeding place for Pelicans in the desert, and I took the photo above. The mountain ridge in the background is a Jordanian mountain ridge.

Bet Shemesh Caves

There's an area South-West of Jerusalem called Bet Shemesh. House of the Sun, literally translated. This is a beautiful area with forests, the burial site of Samson, loads of spots for a barbeque or a picnic, and one cave filled with Stalactites and Stalagmites. The picture below is taken in there. It's a miraculous place.

By the way, Comments are not working at the moment. I'm trying to troubleshoot that problem, so bear with me. Until further notice, if you want to talk back, you'll have to mail me.

Something Fishy

As seen in Eilat.

We call 'm birds, not bitches

I woke up one day in the old apartment, and saw this right outside the door. Go figure. Parrots in the wild.

Dr. Shakshuka

Dr. Shakshuka serves the best Shakshuka in the country. It's located in a dodgy looking part of Yafo.

Shakshuka is made like this:

Put some olive oil in a pan and heat it. Lightly fry a bunch of onion rings and chopped cloves of garlic in the oil, but don't let them get too brown.

Throw in a handful of chopped, hot green peppers. Shakshuka is supposed to be very spicy. Dried chilies will also work. Then add Sweet Paprika powder, Cumin and Salt to taste.

Chuck in a bunch of finely chopped tomatoes, stir and let it simmer until it looks sauce-like. This is usually done in ten minutes.

Finally, you break your eggs and put them onto the sauce without breaking the yolk. Do not stir, do not touch, just let the egg stiffen somewhat in and on the sauce.

Serve straight out of the pan with some white bread. For carnivores there's the option of throwing fried margaz sausages or boiled lamb into the thing. My personal favourite is with the hot margaz sausages.

Rosh Hanikra II

The topmost picture is the view from the cable cart's top-side, where you go down to the caves. The bottom two are the view from the inside of the cave looking out.

Rosh Hanikra

In the far North-West of Israel, where the Mediterranean coast and the Lebanese border meet, the sea has been having a love affair with the rock for thousands of years. The last part I didn't make up, it's part of the informational movie they show you in English about these caves. Basically the caves have eroded into the rock face because the rock face has been pounded by the ocean for millennia.

The caves are beautiful, a rare sight. Specifically on a slightly more stormy day it's impressive to see from the inside. The movie they show you however, is so cheesy that words actually fail to describe it.

This picture wasn't taken on a stormy day. When the Sea is more tranquil, people sit on the rocks to fish, and it looks like something out of a movie. Not a cheesy one, at that. It's definitely one of my absolute favorite spots in Israel, but then I always did have a thing for water.

Roadside Diners at the Dead Sea

The amount of burger joints in Israel is concentrated in the larger urbanized areas. When you want to have something to eat when you're in the vicinity of the dead sea or the desert to the south, you're almost exclusively looking at arab-style restaurants that serve Humus, Shawarma, Chicken hearts from the grill and other such things in a pita bread.

So most people park their vehicle outside to have a bite in the Air Conditioned room if there is one, and sometimes you see rather archaic vehicles. Such as this one, as photographed on our way from Ashdod to the Dead Sea.

Tel Aviv Sunset

The gallery links to the left are now working. I still need to recreate some galleries for completeness sake, but with upload speeds in Israel being what they are, this will take me a while.

Then I've put back some of the Mp3's I had on the site. Selectively, because since I'm hosted with a 1GB contract, I need to watch the space I use. So I've only put back the song connected to my dad's obituary and the songs connected to the Bertje, that's Jazz compilation I'm doing. More on that will follow.

In the mean time there's this picture:

It's the coast of Tel Aviv as seen from Yafo at sunset. Originally I thought Jaffa was a town that made oranges. It turns out Yafo is the real name, it's an Arabic harbor town that Tel Aviv grew into, and it's got nothing to do with oranges. Those come from a Kibbutz.

Back in Business from Israel

Ok, This site has been down for the better part of a year, and I didn't do diddley to change that up till now. I managed to restore all the data, but I still need to work on a couple of things, most notably the Gallery links on the left side of the page.

In the mean time, things are fine in Israel. There's a heat wave going on, and I'm getting so used to the food I've even started eating Humus voluntarily. This however doesn't mean I bask in the sun all day long for I still sell my soul to the company store.

So, during the coming days, I'll try 'n' tweak the site so it works completely as it did before. In the mean time, I'll be posting some photo's I've taken in Israel for your enjoyment, and to prove there's more to this place than wars and bombs and mad hatters with beards.

The photo above was taken at Ein Gedi national park, which is located on the Western shore of the Dead Sea. It offers a view of a tree with the Dead Sea and the Jordanian mountains in the background. This area, although inhospitable to human life, is impressively beautiful.

Weblog II

There. Weblog II is done too. Enjoy.

Weblog I

I've now gone through all images that I posted on this site at any point in time. Actually it's arduous work, but now it's nearly done. After People II, Airports, Stockholm and the Stephen Simmonds gallery were done, I had a whole bunch of photo's left that won't get their own category, so I decided to stick those 77 images into two separate gallery albums, Weblog I and Weblog II.

Weblog I is done now, so only Weblog II remains. Then I've still got a considerable backlog in images, but I don't want to get into that right now. But they will come in due time. At least the history is now available.

People II

A brand spanking new gallery of photos. At some point in time these were featured on the weblog part of this site, but I figured I'd give them a place to stay...

Guess where?

Out o' the photo-archives... Somewhere in Europe

Wishing you a peaceful night

Önska dig en stilla natt
även en juldagsmorgon glimmar
Finn en plats där det är varmt
Härlig blir jorden, några timmar
Välsigna barnet och hans mor
Hoppas att far är hyfsat nykter
Ge en stund av sinnesro
Till dem som grubblar alltför mycket
Önska dig inget eller allt
Önska dig en stilla natt

Nu tändas tusen juleljus
Och bakom fönstret skymtar prakten
Du kom ihåg och tänd ett ljus
För dem som behöver änglavakten
Önska dig inget eller allt
Önska dig en stilla natt

One time only...

Ok, normally I don't "do" animals. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, making mediocre pictures of kittens that get critically acclaimed because they're so cute has always brought the taste of bile to my mouth. But this one I just figured was funny as shit. Specially given the fact that I usually mistrust horses to the point of hatred.

München IV

The Last of the München photo's. It's a huge backlog, but now it's done. I'll also aggregate them into a Gallery before going on to newer stuff. This time the pictures were taken at the Pinakotek der Moderne, a modern art museum in the middle of town. The place was interesting and boring at the same time. Mainly because there's a lot of interesting and boring modern art. Different strokes for different folks I guess. I had the same feeling as in Louisiana near Copenhagen... The building is cooler than the art in it.

Some of it was good though, paintings and pieces by more and less known artists. They also have a rather sizable section on industrial design and a funny section on jewelry with some of the more bizarre "jewels" I've seen in my life. The place is surely worth a visit, if for nothing else than to scope out the building.

München III

I know I know. We've been in Milan since then, but I have a back-log in photo's and whatnot. So I had some more München-stuff on my laptop. It was April, and there were flower-beds, there were people reading on benches, gargoyles and all kinds of cool things to see and do. I'll get back on Milan later.

Beach 2005

I went to the beach. With Stefan, Tony, Tony's daughters Bianca and Linda and had a grand old time getting burnt to a crisp. One of these photos is taken through Linda's Oversized Retro Sunglasses. Guess which one?

"Working" from Holland II

My boss told me to travel around and get to know my colleagues that are spread over the continent and beyond. So Playing with the lads was a good start... Don't tell anyone I've known 'm for almost ten years.

Obviously it wasn't me taking the pictures. Desiree was playing with DeCo's new Canon 350D and my Sigma 70-200mm 2.8 zoom. A good combination even at the worst of times...

"Working" from Holland

Marco & Son. Nuffsaid.

Helsinki

A month and a half ago, I visited Helsinki. Now Helsinki is an inherently boring place. I've never really thought that the Finnish way (silence) is too compatible with me, but now I've been there myself, and the place is just dead. Stockholm, Uppsala or Lule? are equally cold in wintertime, but at least there are still people about.

Cut a long story short: It's got some beautiful sights, it's clean, it's fresh, but it isn't alive. The best thing about Helsinki so far was a Belgian bar. Go figure.

Portrait...

My buddy Felix is a fashion photographer nowadays. Which is weird, because when he notices someone is pointing a camera at him, he starts posing like a model. Which always results in pictures I don't like. Once, though, I managed to capture Felix as he is. Although I did have some help of a 1000-watt studio lamp. Anyone have one for sale?

München II

So, what do people do in the middle of the English Park in München on a nice day in April?

Surf's up, Dude!

Ma's Hands

With regards to my last post, I've found this photo I took of mom. She's gonna kill me for putting it on the web, but there you have it.

Valborgmässafton

Spent the evening at the countryside, more on that later.

München I

München was wonderful. Filled with flowers, sunshine, people reading on benches and last but not least street musicians that played beautiful classical music. I bought the CD off this guy, and I'll be posting a Tune soon.

Visitors

Last weekend, my brother Geert and his fiance Rita were here to visit us. It was the first time in five years he managed to get to Sweden, so one weekend seemed a wee short, but it was brilliant seeing them. So we crammed in quite a lot of activities during that weekend.

We had a look at Uppsala. I've lived there for four and a half years after all, so we did the whole thing. The old town, the castle and its orangerie, the cathedral, the old graveyard and a walk around town.

We had a look at Stockholm. After running through the old town and checking out the glorious subway system we even took a mid-winter boat trip around town to see it from the water.

There were other tourists there that thought it was cold as hell on deck. So we spent most of the time inside the boat, discussing where best to drink beer in town with another bunch of Dutchmen on board and drinking really, really bad coffee.

On Sunday, after wining, dining and skooting around town for two days, we just took it easy, had a round of badminton and played monopoly all night. If you ask me, that was actually the coolest part. But evil tongues claim that was just because I won a game and tied the second.

Let it snow

Winter is having another stab at it this morning. Until this morning it has been grey weather with temperatures hovering between -2 and +3 in Stockholm, but today it snowed quite a bit. Finally the landscape's less boring.

And I'd wondered if my balcony was protected enough not to be impacted by rain and snow too much. I guess it isn't.

Mission Impossible - 1

As you might remember, I had this mission to go to a shop and portrait people in black and white. I need to select three to five of the above photographs. I think that the last one has to go, but the rest is a tough choice.

Help?!?

Dad

Which dad is best?

TANSTAAFL.

The other day I was reading Heinlein's "The cat who walks through walls" and came across TANSTAAFL. TANSTAAFL is an expression that Heinlein first coined in the book "The moon is a harsh mistress" from the sixties, and means There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

That phrase has been on my mind recently, and the more I think of it, the more I see a form of universal truth in it. These people on Dam square embodied that. I almost thought that the mime people at Dam square were having a laugh, which struck me as strange, for these guys are not known to be the most humourous of folk, specially to photographers.

After the posing, the jesting and a short negotiation it boiled down to showing them The Kwan anyway.

Padawan in Photoland

A friend of Lisa is a photographer. And in light of the fact that I would like to improve my skill I asked her if she didn't want to become my mentor. So she agreed, and she's now given me the first assignment.

I could choose between reproducing a picture of Cary Grant with a model of my choice, taking into account costume, lighting, expression and of course his cigarette, or I could walk into any shop in my vicinity and ask the people in it if I could portrait them. The deliverables for the latter mission are three to five black and white pictures that show the occupation and the personality of the subjects.

So I chose the latter. I just contacted three hairdressers near the HP office, and I'm seeing them next Tuesday. In a way this freaked me the hell out. It was hard to ask them in the first place, but now I also have a case of severe performance anxiety.

Not only will the photographer review my work, these three ladies also want copies, and if it's good stuff, they'll want to be using it for their shop.

Yikes.

Merry little Christmas

In Lisa's family they have this rotating schedule where Christmas eve is spent with the family one year, and with the in-laws the next. Since this year it was the in-laws' turn, we didn't do too much for Christmas eve.

To spend some time with the family anyway, we had what the Swedes call a "lilljulafton". A little-Christmas-eve, as it were. With presents, traditional Swedish Julbord, which is a buffet, and of course Swedish Gl?gg, the latter being the Swede's version of Vin Chaude or Gl?hwein.

Original idea

This is Paul. Paul is from the UK and told me about a theory he had. For centuries, people have been demonstrating against companies, politicians, wars and whatnot without any greater result. After a demonstration, things get ignored or they shift the PR so that the public at large accepts or forgets the situation.

Paul's idea is that we, the people, should demonstrate positively. When the Dutch government, which is known for its fuck-ups at the moment, does something good, hundreds of thousands of people should go into the streets and demonstrate to tell them they've done a pucker job.

Everyone has an ego, Paul thinks, particularly politicians. So by telling them what makes them popular we, the people, should be able to coax them into doing what we actually want them to do. The whole idea sounds to simple to be true of course, and there was some wine involved in the discussion, but I like the concept.

New Toy...

While home, I bought a new toy. Sigma's 70-200 mm 2.8 EX lense... I don't usually shoot cats, but the weather was so gray and dull that it was the best I could come up with to play with the thing. I do like my new toy.

Frankfurt...

Business trips tend to consist of Planes, Taxis, Offices, more Taxis, Hotels, still more Taxis and more Planes. This is what I got to see of Frankfurt.

Back home...

After waiting for a start slot in Frankfurt for half an hour extra, circling the runway in Stockholm for 40 minutes extra and the general stress of flying, I was glad to get home. Uppsala was pretty last night. After the snowstorm from earlier that evening had blown over, there was a crispy silence after the storm. I seem to be developing a minor fetish for nighttime photography.

All that aside I'm fascinated with the lanterns surrounding the old town of Uppsala. Which picture do you prefer, the second in this batch or the one I did the other day? It is the same lantern...

Grenoble II

After having some dinner with Roberta and Peter in the centre of Grenoble and her telling me a bit about the town, it's history, I went on a walkabout at 12 o'clock in the evening to shoot some pictures. Maybe I'll have time during the afternoon to ride up to the Bastille, the fort that overlooks the town and the Alpes. But here are my midnight roamings.