Have I talked about the Winter yet this year, about the snow?
I don't think I have, have I?



It was a little warmer, yesterday, than usual so the snow lost a little of its volume.
This picture was taken this morning.
When the thermometer in the car displayed this:



Take my word for it — that is slightly chilly!

Obviously you'll now be asking what the roads look like.
Well, I assure you, there is no need for concern — today they have been cleared
and look more or less like this for most of the way down to St.Gallen:



Two inches of packed snow.
In St.Gallen it is much warmer [-13°] and there is more traffic so a lot of the snow had disappeared from the roads by 07:00. Instead it was piled up on the pavements, where pedestrians had to fight to pass each other.



I do like the winter – don't you?

I recently published a list of all the Macintosh computers I have owned. This got me thinking about my other hobby – photography.
It would seem that I don't get through cameras as fast as I do computers (or cars, my brother would tell you — not true!):

I started photographing things while I was at Art-School. I can't, for the life of me, remember the camera I used in those days, but I still have some of the pictures. Black and white.
For some reason photography didn't interest me a great deal in those days. It might be due to the fact that I found the costs prohibitive.

Around 1970 some kind person gave me a used Olympus Pen 35 mm Half-Frame Camera which I promptly took on holiday with me to Germany – that person may step forward because, I'm ashamed to say, I have no idea which relative it was.

From then I have progressed:

ca. 1978: Yashica TL Electro-X
1980: Olympus OM 1 (second hand but still in immaculate condition today)
1983: Olympus OM 2
1987: Olympus OM 2 SP
1992: Olympus iS 3000 (L3)
1997: Olympus CAMEDIA C-1400L 1.4 Megapixel
1999: Sony DSC F505 2.1 Megapixel
2001: Sony DSC F707 5.2 Megapixel
2003: Sony DSC F828 8.3 Megapixel
2006: Sony DSC R1 10.3 Megapixel
2008: Olympus E-3 10.1 Megapixel
2008: Nikon D700 12.5 Megapixel

Strangely I have no idea what happened to either the Olympus Pen or the Yashica.
I still have the OM 1 and the iS 3000 and only very recently gave the OM 2 SP to a friend, who'd broken the OM 2 I'd given her ten, twelve years ago. (The OM 1 and iS3000 are up for sale to the highest bidder!)

I've always been a fan of Olympus cameras and was terribly disappointed with the first DSLR they put on the market. It seemed so inferior compared with the Sony 'point-and-shoots'.
At the end of 2007 Olympus at long last introduced the camera that I'd been waiting for, for all those years. After reading the technical blurb, I ordered one and, when it arrived, was immediately disappointed with it!
Oh, dont get me wrong – it is a state-of-the-art device, but I had never read up on the pros and cons of the chip-size that Olympus uses.
The Sony chips are so much larger (at the same resolution) and deliver a picture (sorry Olympus) of much higher quality.

Having an SLR back in my hands, though, had me hooked again and when Nikon introduced an SLR with a full-sized (35 mm) chip...

As soon as I've got it calibrated to shoot panoramas, you can expect some high-quality alpine pictures (technically that is, not necessarily content-wise)!

Watch this space ...

I won't be able to go to work tomorrow, it snowed last night.
There are twenty centimeters of snow on the ground again. And it's still snowing!
Public transport won't be running and the schools will be closed.
The saddest fact is, the guy with the snow plough has by-passed us today and not cleared our road, so I'm snowed in!

Oh, wait a minute, I've been reading those horror stories on the BBC web-site – you know, those about Britain.
The snow plough hasn't been along today, because there are only the 20 cm at the moment and it's just not worth clearing the minor roads. Of course the main roads will have been cleared and public services will be running normally!

The thing I don't understand is the fact that the British train services can get stopped by 12 cm of snow, while services in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland just keep on running with just slight delays where there have been occurrences of ice on the tracks.
Can someone explain please?

Wiltshire county council used 7500 tonnes of salt in three days, so I understand, leaving them with just 1000 tonnes for the rest of the winter.
Are they really doing things correctly? Mr. Highways Agency CEO – you are supposed to clear the roads with a snow-plough and then disperse the salt; you need a little less salt that way!
Last time I talked about snow on this blog, someone commented on the fact that they always have the wrong sort of snow in Britain. I've not talked to Ms. Smilla about this yet, but I have the feeling that the Brits are using the wrong method, the wrong snow-ploughs, the wrong salt or a combination of the three.

We are in for more snow over the next week, so if the people responsible for maintaing the flow of life in Britain would care to come and take lessons, I'm sure you'd be welcome ...

You're going to say it's my own fault, I did choose to live here, after all.
I suppose you're right, I did choose to live here, but why, damn it, do the Swiss try to make me feel so uncomfortable with my choice?!

I am aware of the fact that I am a foreigner and that I shall remain a foreigner — always.
I was a foreigner in Germany too, but no-one tried to point it out to me every day.
The Swiss do:



This placard greets me wherever I go at the moment. It has exactly the same theme as last time, but this time round we have crows ripping poor old Switzerland apart instead of the multi coloured hands grabbing for passports.
The text has been translated in various news articles as "Free Passports for all? No" But it can also mean "free passage" and "not being held responsible for actions taken". In this case there is a tiny text that is overseen when you drive past the sign that says "Freedom of movement and residence for Rumania and Bulgaria NO" so I take it to mean "free passage".

This is another obscene example of Swiss Xenophobia being exploited by the Socialist Peoples Party.
Since the Schengen cooperation was introduced a few years ago, Switzerland has been forced to watch a flood of French, Germans, Latvians, Poles etc. stream into the country, oh, and myself of course! Same rights for all! Things are getting out of hand.

The Swiss borders have now been opened and the Customs Officers no longer check visitors entering or leaving the country – they only check for goods and then check the passports. Boils down to the same thing as previously actually ...
... but in theory unwanted strangers can now pass our borders unchecked – as in the rest of Europe.
Except, that is, Rumania and Bulgaria.

These are two of the countries that have signed a step-by-step-Schengen agreement (just like Switzerland) and haven't opened their borders for free passage yet. They can, however move freely around Europe.

Now we can't have that, can we!
It's bad enough that we have Brits here, without Rumanians too ...

Dear SVP get your act together and change your politics – there are no second-class-citizens!