(updated Oct. 20, 2006, 5:30PM)
Hello again,
Some late-blossoming flowers consoled my eyes late last week on the outskirts of Bern, in the compound of the BEA exhibition centre. ASTTI, the Swiss Association of Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters (http://www.astti.ch) were getting ready to celebrate their 40th anniversary, a big bash, on those premises.
Yesterday, I was invited to dinner at my younger brother's. They live on the outskirts of Bern but in the exact opposite direction from the above. It was a blowy, stormy evening, with gales ripping branches off trees and scattering seedpods and needles all over the streets, pushing at the big, heavy bus that took me up the hill to Schliern and almost sending a hapless cyclist careening off his cycle-path. Gardens were a-clatter with bin-lids and boards flapping. The trees were pushed dangerously low to the ground, their branches whipping the air. (This morning I heard that we had wind speeds of up to 100 km/h -- not quite hurricane force, but scary enough.)
The sky was magnificent, though, and consoled me somewhat for not being on a sea shore:
(By the way, these are brand-new photos stitched together with the help of cool free software called Autostitch -- thank you, Michel from Funimag in Paris, for the link! :)
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
When I walked to the bus a few hours later my steps were cushioned by thick layers of pine needles. Elsewhere, my shoes crushed rough pods of beechnut. The wind kept up for quite some time. Later, rain lashed trees and buildings.
Peace!
This one was taken Dec 8, 2006, at about 4PM, from my office window (as were the ones above):
And these were taken Dec 9, 2006, from my kitchen window, about 8AM:
This has been one extraordinary winter so far. Much warmer than usual, no snow, except for last weekend, when overnight the mountains saw snowfall of up to one metre! Roads were blocked, power lines came down with trees falling on them, but the winter resorts are happy as, finally, the skiing season has started in earnest.
