On our way from Heidelberg towards the Polarstern we decided to spent some days before in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria. On the one hand side to have some sort of holidays, on the other to already test our measurement equipment under realistic circumstances in the bay you can see above.  Our Hotel was the tall one in the middle of the next picture, we on the 3rd floor, our telescope on the balcony, the spectrometer inside and the cleaning personel was instructed not to clean our room to avoid having people tripping on our fibre cable which costed a couple of 100€.

A sunset from the top of your hotel:

But we also worked!

The first day after we arrived I took a look around las palmas. Not much tourists there, that was already clear, since the beach was fully crowded on sunday and almost empty on monday. And judging from the languages spoken around us, mostly spanish, a lot of ‘native inhabitants’ and/or spanish tourists were there.
In the town in a park I found a stone meant for climbing – but the grips downstairs were so small that it was hard or impossible to get up there with normal shoes:

Otherwise the town is a lot of others: not so beautiful, but a nice old town. and quite colorful. And the sea was to be seen from almost everywhere, the air was clean and fresh, quite a pleasant stay it was

View from the next bigger shopping center close to our hotel:

The second day I took a but to Teror. Basically to take a look at the village, but it’s quite small, thus I started to go the next hill, without much of an idea where to go, also the map wasn’t a big help. So I went up and up, sometimes on those weird small streets, sometimes more ‘off-road’, sometimes ending up in someone’s private garden – dunno about the spanish and the ‘every-man-right’ or however it’s called in english …
anyway, the way there was already sort of fun: the bus trip took about an hour, the street was quite steep and small, thus the bus had to use both lanes in curves – thus blocking the traffic from the other side. To tell those others that we’re coming, the busdriver just honked and continued with normal speed into the curve – quite exhausting to think about it and to watch it, after a couple of minutes …

From up there also Las Palmas can be seen.

I followed some road, continued up to some hill to write postcards and then go downhill on some downhill track for bikes. actually a not too good idea to go these downwards, the bikes are going down fast anyway, thus they might need less grip, but me, for me I would have liked to have a bit more grip a few times


The track:

Then somewhen I found a supermarket to eat something. It’s all not been planned, thus I had just water with me. and after 5 hours, some kilometers and about 800 height meters I was hungry. And a bus stop was close, too.
The bus then stopped in Aracuz and I had to change busses. I used the time to take a look around there:

Then the following day I made a trip to gargal in the northwest of the island. actually quite a poor village/town, nothing much to be seen, at least that’s the way it appeared to me. Interesting height differences within the town anyway.

And then there was the last evening in the hotel, the last evening swimming in the sun, packing our equipment, to get up around 6 in the morning to leave towards the actual purpose of this trip, towards the R.V. Polarstern

in case you havn’t got that link by email yet: a lot of pictures from gran canaria and the polarstern can be found here in a zip file.

Yes, there’s a lot of photos to blog, but currently there isn’t much time to do so. let’s see, tomorrow to Ulm, the day after to Nijmegen and then some days later to Bremerhaven.

(dank an Beate für das video)

Wieder festen Boden unter den Füßen …

Polarstern ANT XXV/5b Las Palmas Bremerhaven:

(Clicking on some of the images provided might improve your reading experience )

We were until last sunday only climbing within a climbing hall in Heidelberg. But since the weather looked nice and we all wanted to go there anyway, we spontaneous decided on saturday to go to an old stone pit north of Heidelberg in Schriesheim. It’s part of a nature protection area, and it’s already visible from some points in Heidelberg.

For the start we decided to do top-rope climbing, thus the rope had to get up to the top of the first wall. Everything else might work inside for us, but outside it’s another story. The whole pit consists of 4 levels, each connected by paths which are manageable with backpack and normal shoes.
Marco and me went up to fix the rope. actually it feels quite strange to lie on your stomach and look down there to check if everything is fine …

… the others waited downstairs to get the rope to start climbing …

Downstairs there was ‘Donauwelle’, ‘Aprikosenkuchen’, and some other stuff. (click!)

one by one we went up, but since we’ve already been climbing the other day, it was ok that we had one rope for five persons.
Since there are no more or less well-defined ways to go up the wall, everybody found another way, and everybody needed a lot more time to find a suitable place to position hands and feet.

it feels surprisingly safe to be somewhere in between those rocks …

Below, that’s one of the paths connecting the different levels within the pit.

sometimes even with ladders. which does not always improve the feeling while climbing up there.

Upstairs there was more sun, sharper rocks, more falling rocks and a better view – why did we stay so long downstairs ?!

note that there are other people visible in the background of the following picture:

and somewhen we finally managed having eaten all the cake and simple chocolate had to be eaten

and a last view on the rhine-valley.

(more pictures can found once again in the gallery)

Ein süßes Schild – dennoch denke ich, dass dort oben auf dem Heiligenberg - wie sonst auch - wieder tausende in den ersten Mai hineinfeiern werden …

The R.V. Polarstern (de) is already on it’s way to Europe, to Bremerhaven. We’ll board the ship on Gran Canaria on 14th of May and go back to Germany that way.

(or also on sailwx.info)

As already mentioned with map of the travelled track in a previous post, I was for a few days on Amrum, with my parents and some friends of them. I left Heidelberg in the early morning after a short night to arrive on Amrum somewhen around 8 in the evening. The weather turned worse the more north I got, a lot of fog and some wind – let’s regard it as a ship-training session for the boat trip in may

the View onto Wittdün on that evening from the ship’s topmost level – not many people have been outside due to the weather, but for it felt way too crowded inside the ship itself, so I’ve been outside the whole trip.

The next day the weather turned out to be more like on the following days, sunny and warm. ok, warm might be exaggerated, but for this time of the year it was warm.

From the north of Amrum we were able to have a clear view to Sylt and its lighthouse – Sylt is a neighborisland to Amrum.

During all those days I managed to go running three times. And consequently I’ve been eating a bit more than my parents *g* When I went running it was about 1:45h …

Wittdün in the morningsun:

Running along the beach feels great, but if you have this ground, you get quite dizzy after 10 minutes …

In the South of the island the beach is over 1km broad, but within the last years new dunes start growing thus it seems to be smaller, at least in the ‘middle’ of the island.

On one of the following days we went on a small boat to a Hallig, Hallig Hooge. Hallig means that it’s some different sort of island, there is no real protection from the sea by dikes or walls, instead the houses (and churches, as on the following picture, with a cementary) are build on small artifical hills.

A view on Hooge:

Interestingly the plants on the island were not much delayed compared to heidelberg or preetz, seems like it started growing at the same time almost everywhere in germany this year.

A view on the beach – with a toilet house

The temperatures were on Hooge sufficient to walk outside in a shirt whereas on Amrum we needed jackets almost all the time. The sun was quite powerful anyway, already.

Within the dunes there are several houses build from stuff which has been found on the beach. Some are quite complicated looking, but all of them can provide cover from the wind to enjoy the sun

And some pictures from Nebel, the village in which we lived for a couple of days:

The church is surrounded by an interesting cementary, with a lot of stories on the old stones. but it’s better to read them in a book, since they are quite hard to read and sometimes written in a local dialect.

Back we went again by ship, to Dagebüll, passing along Föhr.

a lot of ships, due to upcoming eastern:

Nicht alle und auch nicht alles meine …

Der Wald ist auch grün, mittlerweile:

Vor 2 Wochen sah es noch so aus:

(clickable)

some more pictures will follow …

(tomaatit, pyöreät)