Townsville & Paluma

3rd - 18th August
Lots of warm and sunny days in Townsville! Beautiful sunrises and wonderful Yoga classes at dawn, followed by a coffee, fantastic!
Last Sunday we drove north of Townsville to Paluma for a walk through the forest and to see a waterfall. We were surprised that we headed in to bushfire area - controlled, however it was still strange having tree trunks burning and driving past, some branches on the road on fire and lots of smoke! But all good, we had a wonderful walk in the cooler area. On the way back to Townsville, we stopped to have a look at the nickel refinery where Silvan spends most of his time currently!

Ruetliwiese - Lucerne

28th July
From Lucerne we took the boat to Ruetliwiese, that's where Switzerland was founded in 1291 by the three original cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalten by establishing a loyalty oath. For the 700th anniversary of Switzerland, the "Path of Switzerland" was created giving each canton a piece of the walk around Urnersee (part of Lake Lucerne) connecting all the cantons - we did the walk from Ruetli to Seelisberg. From there the old Steamboat "Stadt Luzern" (1928) took us back to Lucerne and we were fortunate enough to have some live music from the "Blue Balls Festival" on the boat!

Aletsch Glacier

22nd July
Walked a 6h tour from Riederalp to the Hanging Bridge at Aletsch, then back up over the mountains towards the glacier and down to Riederalp. It was an amazing walk, but also exhausting in length and in height difference of 640m! Tina - Thanks for being the mountain guide :)!

Stanserhorn

20th July
Together with my mother and my sister Claire, we went on a day trip towards Lucerne to take the new Openair-Cablecar to Stanserhorn. The weather wasn't perfect, but at least it wasn't raining! We took an old fashioned rack railway part of the way, before getting on the worlds first "Cabrio-Bahn" which opened about 2 weeks prior. Once were were on the way up, it got more and more cloudy until we were in the middle of it and only saw 5m, so no nice view at the top over the mountains and lake Lucerne for us!

Gurten Festival, Bern

13th - 14th July
Went to the Openair Festival at Gurten, that's the "house-mountain" of Bern! There were various Swiss Bands including Zueri West, Pluesch and Patent Ochsner, but also more famous ones like Lenny Kravitz, The Roots, Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Parev Stelar Band and many more! Sadly on Friday it started raining in real Swiss manner at 6pm and wouldn't stop for 5h... so we were off to buy gumboots! On Saturday it was a warm and sunny day, fantastic!

Engadin

6th - 8th July

I spent a weekend with my mother in Engadin. We went for a beautiful walk from Maloja to a mountain lake and had lunch there. On the way back to La Punt, we stopped for a coffee at Lake Sils as well as St Moritz. The next day we took the cable car to Diavolezza, I was amazed how much the snow and ice on the mountains had changed in only 10 days!