views & surroundings

[panta rhei]

culture is surroundings as well - here's a link to a webcam showing the view from mount belchen (1414m altitude), the mountain we see from our kitchen:

http://www.belchen-seilbahn.de/webcam.php
(click on webcam)



here's how we see the belchen from our place:




-- how does it look where you are?

[mtmynd]

Beautiful, Panta...and rather chilly looking as I'm sure it is this time of year. I assume that you and your family are skiers, yes?

Are you located somewhere near the Alps or more westerly? I've been trying to find Munsteral on the map but not having an easy time.

[Arcadia]

beautiful place panta!!! It reminded me somehow our southwest.
what´s like today? sunny, windy and very hot (28.5ºC in the living room). From my window you can see roofs, buildings, cúpulas, terrazas, tilos, plátanos, palmeras, a pine, some clouds and some birds.
Last night the moon was bright orange over the black river and islands in a deep starry sky (seeing from a coast bar).

[panta rhei]

cecil - yes, we are skiers, but not SKIERS, as most people in this area are who spent as much time in the alps as possible. we neither have the money nor the time for these kinds of extended holidays, but we ski in our area when whe have the time (the closest ski lift is only ten minutes from our house), and do snowshoe tours.

here's zora with a friend of us with snow shoes on the belchen last year:



about our location: the alps are south of us, slightly east - maybe 150 km as the crow flies.
on clear days, you have a beautiful view towards them from the top of the belchen.

here's a map on which you can see the black forest.
we're in the extreme south of the forest. the alps are about a two hour car ride from here:




and on the bottom of this map, you can see the alps (the beige grainy part) - münstertal is about where the red flag is:




here you can zoom in (and even see our street: gufenbachweg) and out (to see the bigger picture):

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/ ... r&google=1

and here is some more interesting information about the mount belchen - and more pics:
http://www.summitpost.org/show/mountain ... in_id/3221


--- enough, i suppose....

[panta rhei]

arcadia - your place and view sounds like something i would like as well.

oh, and it is dark now of course where i am, so the webcam shows no view until about 13 hours from now when the sun rises again!

[panta rhei]

i'll be skiing again later today.... if you have a look, you may see me here - the webcam shows the beginning of the piste.



and wonderful holidays to all of you.

[judih]

wow! That's quite an environment. Maybe i can see you and maybe not - there's so much snow in the way! What else could a person do but ski.

i'm currently at school - it's the first day of vacation and our sunny large campus is being borrowed by some Vypassana meditators.

someone just walked by my window singing....hmmmmm

here, the spirit is louder than the silence

love to all,

j

[panta rhei]

today, it's cloudy up there, while down here the sun is almost out.
b and z are up skiing - can we see them?? (click on "refresh" to see the current web cam pic).

i'm home, cooking. our friends from switzerland will arrive soon and stay for the next three days.

your sunny campus filled with meditation sounds gorgeous, j - when spirits sing, silence dwells happily within.

love to all.

[judih]

cookin? What's cookin? roasted squash? A little herbal magic?

the silent singer was joyfully indulging in a forbidden Spanish melody...who could have heard? Only me! It was perfect.

Today the sun shines and i'm indoors. Updating webpages. Enjoying the afternoon.

love to you

j

[panta rhei]

fish and garlic and onions, in a huge pan together with carrots and potatoes, slowly roasting in the oven. mmmmmh!

-- a rich forbidden melody, only to be heard by you? how perfect. how precious. silence revealing itself through sound....

and now i'm back to the oven.

hugs!!

[Traveller13]

I'll have to post pics from La Rochelle.
Around Luçon things are a lot flatter




Luçon's town symbol

(It's ancient name is Lucio, which is latin name for "pike", the river pretator on the emblem)

It was an island several centuries ago, with an access to the sea


but the priests have decided to dry up the marshy surroundings, and now it's connected to the continent.

Luçon's cathedral:

Next to it, you can see the statue of his holiness the Cardinal de Richelieu, who claimed that Luçon was "the most dropping-bound village of France" when he was Luçon's bishop (1607-1623). We decided to build a statue of him for this occasion. I'm convinced that in the original version the statue was cross-eyed with a funny moustache, but those details got corrected.

Story: right next to the cathedral is a two-house street called "The Street of two Brothers". The naming of the street dates back from the time when the cathedral was being built.
Two architects, who were brothers, wanted to build it. Only one of them got the honor of concieving the plans of the church, which was built right next to his house.
As a way to take revenge on his brother, the second architect built a house facing his brother's, blocking the view of the cathedral, and the sunlight by the same occasion.
I like this story because of the symbolism: the two medieval brothers were opposing each other, and in their never-ending conflict they chased the sunlight from their homes.
A bit flowers-and-bunny-rabbits, but you get the picture :p

[Scootertrash]

Here's a webcam from our little town at the mouth of The Columbia River on the Northwest coast of the U.S.

http://crmm.org/wx/popup.htm

It's one of those cams the viewer can control-rotate it, point it up or down, zoom in or out, etc...Usually there's one of the ever present seagulls sitting right there with it in the daytime.

[panta rhei]

jeremy - are you in luçon, not in la rochelle?

jim - great webcam, but i haven't gotten control over it yet.... it seems to keep moving on its own (which provides an interesting view as well!).

[whimsicaldeb]

Panta .. your cams are showing plaid pictures, I guess the feed is down. I'll come back and check them again later. Your pictures are great!

Scootertrash ~ your webcam: Cool!

they don't have a webcam Martinez, California. the closest i could get was Berkeley:



http://sv.berkeley.edu/view/index.html
and as they say at the link: Here is the view from the Lawrence Hall of Science, overlooking the San Francisco Bay Area; currently (as i type this); it's raining - and here's the main link:
http://www.berkeley.edu/webcams/sproul.html

[panta rhei]

deb - the webcam shows plaids cause its night now. don't know why the darkness is shown as plaided black, but that's how it is.

check back in the morning (our morning) - you'll find daylight in the black forest around 11 p.m. your time until about 8 a.m.

when it's not cloudy/foggy, it's a beautiful view towards the alps.