A mother and child take the toy dog for a stroll in Zermatt, Switzerland.

This might be my most favorite photograph, that has come out of my camera, to date.

a.k.a. Schloss Rapperswil, in the Swiss German, is a castle in the town of Rapperswil, where we spent the bulk of our time last month. It was built in the mid-13th century but since 1870, has been home to the Polish National Museum created by Polish emigrants, more specifically, the castle’s lessee and restorer, Count Wladyslaw Broel-Plater.

To a casual observer, such as myself, the collections inside the museum are not extensive and the layout seemed somewhat random, but I might be judging harshly because I didn’t understand much of what was written about the displays; even the stuff that was written in English. Still, just walking around in a nearly 800 year old building is pretty darn cool.

The view from the tower

Now that we’ve been home for a week, and kind of a crazy week at that, I can finally post some more photos.

Our second weekend in Switzerland, we took a short trip from Zurich to Arth-Goldau, where we took a cogtrain to Rigi Klösterli and began our ascent to Rigi Kulm. The elevation at Klösterli is a little more than 1300 meters and the peek at Kulm is at about 1800 meters.

Here’s the view looking north from close to where we got off the train at Klösterli. In the lower right corner, you can see a portion of the tracks from the cogtrain. I believe that’s Lake Lauerz and the Kleiner Mythen (the darker peaks in the upper right) in the distance.

Here’s a look at our destination, several miles away, Rigi Kulm (the red and white radio tower).

And a closer view from the same point on the path.

The view to the south. The Bernese alps.

Along the way, we met some new friends.

I expected to see some sort of sign, telling me who this guy was. Alas, I guess I’ll just have to make up my own story.

Looking to the northwest, over the town of Küssnacht, from roughly 1600 meters up.

Rigi Kulm, from Staffel. We’re getting closer!

Finally made it!

It was an exhausting trek; mostly because of the snow. But it was a blast and I cant wait to do it again.

A selection of photos shot while strolling through another splendid old town in Switzerland, near Zurich.

After spending the night in Mürren, our plan was to visit the Jungfraujoch, but the mountains were shrouded in fog, and there’s obviously no point in going to the top of a mountain when you can’t see your nose in front of your face. So we began our journey to Rapperswil, where we’re spending the majority of our time in Switzerland.

On our way to Rapperswil, we made an unscheduled stop in the village of Thun. We had noticed a castle there, on our way out to Mürren and figured it might be fun to see what that was about. This turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip so far. This town is so beautiful and picturesque, it almost felt too good to be true (I know, that probably sounds weird to say that, but I’m so jaded and cynical because it feels like every place of historical value in the states has been taken over by Disney and there is so little of anything that’s authentic anymore. Okay, back to Thun.)

So we walked from the train station up towards the castle, stopping along the way to snap photos here and there. That top photo is looking across the river, up towards the castle (on the left) and the adjacent church/clock tower (on the right).

We walked around in the castle a bit, which is full of cool old stuff, and goes into a lot of detail about the history of the town. You can also walk up into one of the towers and get a fantastic view of the valley and mountains across the lake.

The day after Sechseläuten, we took a trek to the Bernese Alps and spent a night in the tiny mountain village of Mürren. The total population of Mürren registers at just around 450 people, but tourism is popular enough to support several hotels/resorts, providing roughly 2,000 beds. Fortunately for us, it was early enough in the season, it felt like we had the whole town to ourselves!

There are no roads leading to Mürren from the valley below. You get there by cable car and train. Below is an image of Lauterbrunnen, as viewed from the cable car that takes you to Grutschalp. And then from Grutschalp you take a two-car electric train to Mürren.

Unfortunately, we arrived too late in the day to attempt any serious hiking. And I don’t even know if any of the trails were open, due to record snowfalls this past winter. But we were able to go for a half mile or so walk to get a fairly good glimpse of the spectacular view.

Here’s an image overlooking Mürren.

Mürren is situated about 5,400 feet above sea level. I think that’s the south face of either the Eiger, Jungfrau, or Mönch, on the right. Not sure which (maybe none of the above), but I know all of these peeks are visible from Mürren. It’s quite stunning and these photos don’t come close to capturing the beauty.

As you can see in that photo, it wasn’t a particularly bright sunshiny day, but the setting sun did make an appearance. Both of these images were shot from the balcony of our room at the Hotel Alpenruh. Quite a treat!

Some more photos from walking in the “old” part of Zurich.

Sechseläuten is an annual spring festival in Zurich. The festivities start around mid-day, with vendors setting up booths with traditional sausages, cheeses, candies, and various other goodies.

Starting around 3:00, there’s a parade where people dress up in traditional garb from various times in Swiss history, or as their favorite historical figures. One man I saw was dressed as Albert Einstein, complete with the recognizable crazy hair he wore in the later part of his life. Another man dressed as the reformer John Calvin, who (I didn’t know this previously) preached over 2,000 sermons in Geneva.

Around 6:00 PM is when they light the Böögg. Legend dictates that a quick burning indicates the coming of a warm mild summer. A long burning means a cold and rainy one. This year’s burning was officially recorded at 12 minutes and 07 seconds, promising a medium warm summer.

Final preparations before burning

The conflagration begins

Fire creeping up the tower

Fully engulfed in flame

Not even recognizable as a Böögg anymore

Merely a shadow what he once was

I started playing with this app I heard about called Camera Awesome, from SmugMug. The output you see here is the result of about five minutes of clicking on filters and borders and textures, and then sliding contrast and saturation levels from one extreme to the next, until I felt the images were sufficiently butchered. It’s a fun little app, but they might have hyped up the “awesomizer” feature just a tad. These images are all from Herrick Lake Forest Preserve in Wheaton.

The top image has a “Denim” texture applied. For the image below, I kicked up the awesome level all the way to the top. It’s how I roll.

For this one, I applied the “Prehistoric” texture.