You should have seen the weather today, deep blue sky, hardly any clouds and you could see for miles. Perfect weather to stay on some big mountain. And now guess where I wasn’t.

Since my brother got a new laptop some times ago, I prepaired his ( or my) old one for my grandma, to replace the big and ugly desktop computer she uses right now. So for that, we went to Wolfsberg today, setting up the laptop, take the other computer down, setup internet and some software and settings, usuall stuff, you know.

Taking the Pano

Because some internet issues showed up, it took a bit longer then expected, but after that all  (and lunch), I still had soe time to go to the city to take some photos.

Some time ago I noticed that they made the church tower there public, I tried to went up, but you have to shedule a vist up there first, so no tower for me today. Instead, I just went inside, so another pano is on panotopia now.

Click for the link to Panotopia

Weather shoudl get worser now again, but when its nice long enough, stay tuned for another pano comming soon.

2nd big soccer game in Klagenfurt, Germany was playing against Croatia in town, and in Vienna Austria against Poland. Christian and Kwentin (with some of his Couchsurfers) already said they will come to the city too, so I wasn’t alone there. The city was full today, 1 hour before the game even started, the had to close the fanzone in the center, to many people.

Instead, we went to the fairgrounds, but even there were a lot of people celebrating. Anyway, we found a nice place and watched the game (and took photos), with just a light drizzle from above. In the first halftime, we went to the Claddagh, for a nicer place to watch the game. Sadly, they still havn’t got a good signal on the TV there. But better then standing around outside.

Quite surprising, Croatia beat Germany quite well, and with that motivation, Austria started their game. They played extremely well, but somehow they never managed the get the ball in the goal. 3 times they had a near perfect chance to score a goal, but never got it in. Instead, we got one. But in the last minute (literally), we finally got it in and with a 1:1, we still have a change to get into the semi finals. And its our first game for ages we havn’t lost.

With that result, Germany beaten, Croatia the group winner and Austria finally scoring a goal, the city went crazy (in a good way), everyone was doing party. Just the music was starting to get “strange”. Photos come tomorrow, just to damn tired to edit them now.

Aainst all odds, the weather started quite nice, so I could go to university, take my classes and get bach home without getting drownd by the rain. But not long after I got home again, the rain started with thunder and lighting.

Since with that weather, hardly any people would been in the city, so instead of going there, I started to scan the films I developed recently. And there I found out that I realy like the 24mm on the film camera. The sticky aperture it had healed itself, so thats fine now, only problem it still has is that when the sun is in the frame, contrast is down in the cellar. Besides that, its great. The scanned images can be seen on flickr here.

And also, I uploaded the panos from the fan zone.

Rain. Showers. Thunder and lighting. That’s pretty much what the forecast said for today. And as usually, nothing of that happened. Even the sun came out, just for a short moment, but still. It wasn’t as hot as some days ago when the sky was clear blue, but also it was dry and no water from above. Great weather to go out and take photos.

I met up with Gervin in the city, he wanted to order some stuff and also ha d a film for developing. For shooting, I went with the OM-2 + 24/2,8, he took a bit more and used his F3 with 8mm Peleng, 17-35 and 60-300.  I took the OM-2 for 2 reasons, one was that it has a nice 24mm lens that let me get close, 2nd I wanted to test it because of the metering issue.

Never seen that much police in the city, on every corner there were a group of 6 standing around. Other corners had even more. Right now I guess we have more police then fan wandering around, makes the city the safest place ever. Lets see if that’s true tomorrow too, when the first game starts.

Weather as quite nice today, and the city was still construction zone for the EM, so the best thing to do today was to go out cycling. Today I wanted to get on the Skarbin, a small sized mountain near my grandpa. Half it broke of long time ago, so you have a cliff today, gets you a nice view.  So I packed my back, grapped the bike and went on my way. I check Google Maps first, to get a rough idea of the way (found a better one on my way back anyay :P), and with that in mind I set off.

I first went towards Ebenthal, easy cycling since its quite flat there. From Ebenthal, I went towards Mieger, this is a more “fun” part of the track. I didn’t had to cycle all the way up, I took the first read lef and headed towards Grafenstein. Thats where I found out I could have just cycled along the train tracks. Duh!

I went thru Grafenstein, and short after that, I found the road up the mountain to Skarbin (the village on top has the same name as the mountain). I started at around 400m sea level, and I ended up somewhere around 800m sea level, so I had to cycle up around 400m/1300feet. Not hard to guess, I was pretty wasted when I finally reached to top.

I didn’t exactly ended up where I wanted to, somehow I got out way to far in the south.  But now that I know how to get there, I sure will go again, and this time more towards the spot I want too.

Getting back was more or less fun too, during the trip down, the breakes on the bike got pretty hot on the way down, and once I was finally down, it was still quite a long trip back home. I get home around half past seven, bit later then expcted, but that was mostly because I sepnd more time up the moutain.

Finalyl back home, after 50km/30miles of cycling up and down, I realy needed to get me something to drink, it wasn’t as hot as it was forecasted, but still, for cycling the whole day it was warm enough.