Lanzarote

Back from the island of Lanzarote, where I rested my mind, my body and my soul :-)

Weather was almost always nice and sunny, with a couple of cloudy breaks. I liked it both ways, one day perfect to think about the meaning of life while studying the behavior of the clouds over the Atlantic ocean... 

..the next day sipping Cortado while studying the behavior of the beach folks....and of course jumping into the waves myself later..

Volcanic rocks, the blue sky...

...and the sea, fine vivid colors.

Another one of the public beaches, luckily not too crowded during the off-season...

Church in the village of Uga. The interior villages of Lanzarote looked Mexican to me: white houses surrounded by a yellowish desert...

Pretty nice sunset colors...

...time for a cold drink :-)

Famous Papagayo-beaches on the north-west end of Lanzarote.

Boat-trip to Corallejo, on the island of Fuerteventura. To me the picture looks pretty Carribean.

Airport series: Arrecife

Well, just another airport. Only the picture behind the windows is different from others...

Airport Series: Munich

Instead of a description of the perfectly generic airport of Munich a quote of the great Douglas Adams about airports in general:

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."

Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)

Pair of brown shoes - which are longing for being back in their shoe rack in a cozy home in Berlin :-)

Munich, on a frozen night

I meant to take lots of pictures of the fine old city of Munich, capital of Bavaria, but I only managed to take just one. Minus 20 Celsius and a freezing wind made sightseeing a torture, the light was surprisingly low, too,...maybe next time during daylight hours in summer.. 

Colorless South Pole Days

Only to post at least ANYTHING here, I went out to take some pictures. Here's all I found, Berlin's not exactly photographer's paradise these days...

Fluffy snow flakes on a car's top...

 ...and the river is frozen...

 ..only ice breaker ships instead of the sightseeing boats..

 ..and this pictures quite perfectly sums it all up: winter melancholia..

Berlin Winter Sky

In order to show the first blue sky in weeks in its true blue color I used the Photomatix software. Looks way too artificial, though. But anyway, it brings colors to the blog during these grey days, so in this case the end justifies the means :-)

The Bode-Museum (shown here, too, and I guess some other times as well)...

 ..and the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral).

Homeless Orphans

Once happy members of beautiful forests, later the pride and joy of the human homes and center of family joy and children excitement - now, only days later, all of them have been thrown out into the chilly winter streets, like trash, to die from starving or to be blown away by storms in the lonely nights outside, not even supplied with water or shelter ;-)

Some of them at least found partners in suffering and have huddled against each other...

New Years Eve - Leipzig

Arrived in Leipzig in the evening of December 30th, it was dark already. So main activity of that evening was visiting the several old trading houses with its passageways, for which Leipzig is famous. 

Then to the fine hotel for a good sleep.

From the 15th floor window there was a perfect view of the last sunset of 2011...

..which brought a rather fine day with a blue sky in the early hours.

'Whoever reads this is happy!'

Several old buildings make one feel as being back in former times..

..like this old coffee house: Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum...where even old Bach might have had coffee some centuries ago :-)

...but we went to somewhere else which was very good as well, had coffee with Cointreau against the chilly wind outside..

And another one later...

Then to the Thomas(!!!)-Church, where the famous Thomas(!!!)-Choir performed something in front of the statue of good old Johann Sebastian Bach. As I learned Bach not only was a very productive composer and musician, he also was a father of 20 children from several wifes. Impressive...

Here's the church from outside and inside. Later there was a Organ concert....

....and finally the year was over and Leipzig celebrated a hopefully good beginning of 2012. Unfortunately the fireworks smoke made further photo shooting impossible....Happy New Year everyone...

Rolling Hills

A typical sight in the low hills of the Crete Senesi, Tuscany, south of Siena. Just to post something sunny these days...