In Zürich the weather is business as usual: no snow and relatively foggy. When we arrived in Davos the weather there was also as usual: Much snow and clear skies. Yummy!

We had a lot of teaching and worship mixed with food and fellowship. We had the Saturday afternoon off, and most of us went to do something that I haven’t done in many years: sledding! You definitely don’t have to be young to enjoy that, trust me.

But for some strange reason the snow wasn’t just used for peaceful purposes like sledding. Some of the people in the above photo returned home with snow both on the outside and inside of their clothes…

When we came back to the apartment we had more predigt followed by a feast of Fondue. I considered finishing the cheese in one big gulp, but I chickened out.

In the night we made Glühwein, but only after building a bar disk in the snow outside the apartment. We had a lot of fun building, and also here there were some incidents with flying snow…

I made many new friends and experienced both the very nice city of Davos and some awesome moments of prayer this weekend. Many moments will stay in my heart for a long time!

The next Swiss place to visit will definitely be Walensee. We passed by there on the way back home and it was a stunning sight.

For all you photography geeks: Look closely on the last photo you’ll see the little thing with the red dot standing on the “bar disk”. That is my trusty SB-800 firing from remote with the wide area diffusor enabled. Camera set to Manual exposure on tripod, fully automatic TTL flash command mode, photo taken via the very useful IR remote control I had in my hand + timed release. A few simple tricks like that and you’ll get awesome results and impressed friends!

That’s it — you don’t need to plan long eight-hour trips like back home, the Alps are just around the corner. In fact, they are visible from ETH on a clear day, rising monumentally above the horizon. Skiers paradise. The train left Zürich HB at half past seven and the trip took us almost three hours, which actually is kind of a long trip since St. Moritz is relatively far away from Zürich. The reason for going so late in the evening is that all of us has a Gleis 7 card that allows you to go by the Swiss trains for free after seven o’clock. The six of us occupied sixteen seats in the train because of all the skiing equipment…

The weather was perfect. There had been heavy snowfall during the weekend and the weather report predicted 130 centimeters of powder. I didn’t type that number wrong, we expected one point three meters of fresh, wonderful snow. We arrived in Celerina near St. Moritz at Tuesday evening and checked in to the hostel. There was overcast, but we hoped for better weather in the morning. A good night’s sleep later the alarm clocks went of early in the morning. Martin went up to check the weather. His first report was a dissapointing “I can see overcast”, which was followed by an excited “Wait… I can see stars!”. It marked the beginning of a very good day.

I have never before experienced off-piste skiing that was so demanding. My friends are very good skiers (and snowboarders), so they found some, hrm… interesting paths down the mountain. Since there’d been so much snowing many pistes were closed, and the avalance risk was higher than usual at 3 out of 5. We took precautions and equipped ourselves with active transponders and shovels just to be safe.

The weather report didn’t lie when it talked about the snow. Robin even got stuck when he took of his snowboard because he sunk down shoulders-deep into the powder.

A helicopter was flying around the mountain all afternoon, landing and taking off many times from the same place. Only later I understood that they were dropping explosives on the slopes, setting off controlled avalanches.

Floating in powder way above ground is an awesome feeling. The skis don’t make a sound and you land soft when you tumble around. The snow is untouched and you find your own path down the slope. Combine that with blue skies, no wind and a temperature of a few degrees below zero and you’ve got the perfect day of skiing. It doesn’t get any better. Value for the money? Absolutely!

Wonderful Switzerland!

I was on a photo tour of the Canton of Zürich yesterday, and will upload some photos in the next coming days. The above photo was taken from Felsenegg during the “blue hour” just after sunset, for which I waited over an hour. ETH is clearly visible as the lit square building right in the middle of the photo.

Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @200mm, f/11

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