between christmas and new year I have visited the Dornier museum at Friedrichshafen together with my two brothers.

The Dornier museum just opened last summer and the latest state of technology is incorporated to this exhibition. It was a pleasure to visit it and it is even close to Winterthur (see the photos).

during the last day (and night of course) the temperature here in Winterthur has changed from around 5° Celsius to -14°C due to an arctic wind. Beside this it was also snowing a little bit.

Enough to have covered the landscape in white as you can see on this photo (photo taken at around 5 pm).

what an exciting time, during the last three weeks I switched no less than five macs in our neighbourhood to the latest Mac OS X operating system.

They had to simply be upgraded from Tiger or Leopard to Snow Leopard or migrated from one Mac to another. There were no big difficulties except one that didn’t display the emails in the message list and the preview window. Of course Snow Leopard in most cases needs new drivers for printers and scanners.
Beside this it is also getting colder and starts snowing here in Winterthur. I think it will be Christmas time really soon now

It is now about two month since Nadine started her au-pair job in Madrid, time to see if she is going well. Marianne invited me for that weekend to Madrid. We arrived on Friday evening by airplane and met Nadine for dinner.

On Saturday we went to the city (SOL) to see a few famous places (you can’t see every place in one weekend, this city is too big) and of course we were also shopping. On the next morning we were walking in the Retiro park and enjoying the beautiful autumn here in the south of Europe.

this is by now my fastest shopping for an Apple Mac computer, within four hours I have evaluated, bought and transferred all my data to a new MacBook Pro, wow!

While on my training that Thursday evening I was thinking how I could assist Nadine in Madrid with an external hard disk or something similar. During the week she emailed that her MacBook G4 was making a strange noise, probably the disk I thought. But when I returned home that evening I had an SMS on my phone telling me that the MacBook is dead. Time to take action because we will fly to Madrid tomorrow afternoon. Figure out what model will be best was one thing but finding a shop in Winterthur carrying that model with the bigger RAM was just plain luck. When I returned home I was once again surprised how easy and fast all my user data could be moved over to the new Mac, try doing this on a Window PC

While Alain and me enjoyed our trip around the Weinland Marianne was running the halfmarathon from Wil to Frauenfeld. She did this with a new personal best time in less than 1h 30min. In fact she gets faster from year to year

And by the way, this years color was blue. The members of the NWK-NOS always color their hair for that race.

One of our family friends, Sepp Reichlin is celebrating his 60 birthday. We were invited to that special event too.

With a special train from the 30ies called Churchill-Pfeil we enjoyed a trip to Andelfingen - Rheinfall - Stein am Rhein - Kreuzlingen -Weinfelden - back to Winterthur. Its named after Sir Winston Churchill who visited Switzerland short after the 2nd WW. Then he did use this train to travel through Switzerland.

on Sunday 25. October I was going for a bike-o competition in Wil (SG). The OL-Regio Wil was offering two orienteering events at one day (bike and foot).
I had a good start until control 8. Then I wasn’t concentrated for one short moment resulting in a fall.

On my route to control 9 I did one last check and get a fright on driving to control 6. Therefore I read the map in detail to find out that everything is ok; I had to pass control 6 again. But this double checking took two or three seconds more than expected. Too much!
I was driving straight away from the road into a small channel and ending at a big tree 10 meters away (more details).
Since nothing happened to my bike and I didn’t feel bad I continued my competition as good as possible. But I couldn’t sleep during the next two nights and when I went to the doctor he diagnoses two broken ribs at my back.

On that sunny autumn day during school holidays we went for a bicycle ride to the „Zürcher Unterland. First we stopped at the Tössegg where the two rivers Töss and Rhein merge.

At Eglisau we had break for lunch before we were continuing our trip to Rüdlingen - Flaach - Volken - Henggart and back to Winterthur.

having a Matura diplom also means that it is time for a new era. Nadine decides to start their studies at the University next year and first will improve her skills in Spanish. Therefore she leaves to Madrid to work as an au pair girl for the next nine month (or so).

Here she has packed all her luggage and is ready to leave. We accompany her to the airport in Zurich.

Today Marianne and me are celebrating our 25th wedding day. Time moves on really fast!


Taking a look into our album brings back a lot of memories

today we were invited by the Kantonschule Rychenberg to be part of the maturity celebration. This - I would say - ceremonial act was held at the Stadthaus in Winterthur.

class by class every single student gets his result and certificate from the prorector of the Gymnasium Rychenberg Mister Jürgen Thon Benz.

This years summer vacation we (Alain and me) travelled to northeastern Germany to a part called Ostvorpommern. There we had rented bicycles. We then were biking from town to town. Our journey starts at Stralsund. On the following days we stayed at Greifswald, Wolgast, Zinnowitz and Usedom.

Alain in front of the Hotel Preussenhof at Zinnowitz
At Usedom we left our bikes and took a bus to Anklam from where the train leaves back to Switzerland. As selection of the huge amount of photos is on my Ostsee 2009 Flickr ablum.

From Zinnowitz we went to a roundtrip on 22. July to Peenmünde. I have read a lot about German aircraft history and visiting the exhibition at Peenmünde was almost a "must have" to me.

The "Historical Technical Information Center" (HTI) is located mainly at the former power station. Today it focuses on rocket science. But during the period from 1936 to 1945 it was also a test site for the German air force (Luftwaffe). Btw the rocket testing and development was under contol of the army (Heer) then.
Pictures from the HTI are on my Flickr photoset Ostsee 2009.

Spring time is a wonderful time to go out for a bike ride. Last week Marianne and me were biking to the Hörnli and yesterday it was the turn of the Schnebelhorn (highest point of the canton Zurich, 1292 müM).

Together with four colleagues we started in Winterthur. Winterthur - Turbenthal - Steg was a good road and from Steg the real biking begins. I've recorded this part (Steg - Wolfsgrueb - Hand - Schindelberg - Tierhag - Grossegg - Steg) with my GPS and uploaded it to my Garmin Connect account.

There are a few more photos on an album on my Flickr account.

on Good Friday 10. April 2009 Alain and me were going on a bike trip (around 20km) to Moorwilen, Klingenzell and Freudenfels whereras Nadine and Marianne were staying in a training camp in Ravensburg (Germany). But on Easter Monday we met at the Weinfelder OL in Thundorf.

Here Alain is passing the control number 97 near the end of his course on H14.

after more than one year of absence I get back in orienteering this weekend. In Erlinsbach, near Aarau the Swiss championship in night orienteering toke place.

Again Sämi, my brother, was taking photos of this event. It is amazing to see how he captured the special scene of a night orienteering event (more photos on his website).
After a few trainings I knew that I could run for about one hour without having problems with my knee. Therefore I decided to start in the class men short "HAK".

Another member in our 50's club! Hannes my younger (but not the youngest) brother celebrates his "special" birthday today. All of our family met at the castle of Hohenklingen above Stein am Rhein for dinner.

The castle Hohenklingen has been reopened as a restaurant last summer after rennovation. The castle is open to the public. From the main tower you have an excellent view to the west (seen here), the south and the east.

remember this song from Dr. Feelgood? Sometimes I listen to it when preparing for a competiton. But this time it's kind of a comeback or let's say I am trying to find out how good the recovery from my injuiry is. Doing night-orienteering I like most, so it's no surprise that I'll start with this kind of orienteering first.

(photo by Sam Hebeisen)
Well on this Friday night it was quite busy in the Ochsenfurt near Weiningen because the NWK-NOS started their training weekend with a night-o training too. My brother Sam took a couple of photos from the night-o training on 20. February 2009.

The general meeting (Mitgliederversammlung) of thurgorienta was held in Hüttwilen. The same place as last years Seebachtal weekend with two big orienteering competitions. As usual the club-OL preceds the general meeting. This year we have a strong winter time and that Saturday makes no exception. It was heavy snowing during the whole afternoon.
But hey, that's winter as we know it!

I have posted that last year already. After getting an old Dragon kit of a Cayuse I wasn't satisfied with the result. In november last year I red in the news of Scale Rotors that there is a Fujimi kit in 1:48 available and I decide to build that model again. But this time in a smaller scale.

The Fujimi kit is for a Huges 500D type and there is a conversion kit available to get an OH-6A (V-tail, four blade rotor). But everything else you have to build on your own. There are almost no aftermarket products around. Thanks to the nice folks on the Scale Rotors forum I not only get valuable informations about painting and markings but I also get in contact with Fireball Modelworks who made dedicated decal set just for me. I have posted that model to the gallery there.

Marianne and Nadine did start at the cross championship of the canton Thurgau on Saturday in Aadorf. That's not far from Hagenbuch the little village where Marianne grew up. Nadine had a good race and became 2nd.

on this Saturday Nadine has given a presentation of her examination work. During the last couple of months she worked continously on her thesis. In her dissertation she did some research of how sport could have an influence in your daily life.