Blogs from Bellinzona, South-East, Switzerland, Europe

Am Freitag habe ich meine 4. Arbeitswoche in Bern und damit gleichzeitig den 1. Monat erfolgreich beendet. Am gleichen Tag hatte ich mein Bonusmarkenheft vom Schweizer Supermarkt voll und habe meinen Überraschungskoffer abgeholt. Ein Foto ist hier. Aber leider war ich etwas enttäuscht, da das größte Teil darin eine Flasche Salatdressing war und ich m.W. noch nie zuhause Salat gekauft hatte, den ich mit Dressing verfeinert habe. Und ich habe das auch nicht vor. Falls also jemand diese Flasche haben will, kann er oder sie sie gerne bei mir abholen. Dazu gibt es eine Tube sinnloser Creme, die ich auch nicht benötige. Am Freitag habe ich dann auch noch überlegt, ob ich zum Mittelalterfestival in Bern will, aber ich habe mich dagegen entschieden, weil ich einfach keine Lust hatte. Das einzige was mich noch interessiert hätte, ... read more

Bellinzona, a city of 17,000 people, is located in southern Switzerland in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, in which it is also the capital of that canton. It is famous for its three medieval castles, Castelgrande, Montebello, and Sasso Corbaro. Figino is a small town located 45 min. south of Bellinzona, where I had to spend the night because all the accommodation in Lugano was booked up. It is located on Lake Lugano, where "I could see Italy from my window".... read more

Hello all, now to the best part of our trip so far... Our friend Ingo, from Freiburg, told us about this agricultural cooperative in the remote Ticino region of Switzerland. We had previously written to them while in Sarnen, and we super excited when we received the positive mail from Ulrico, one of the founders, a couple of days later . Our journey there was long but satisfying as we left Sarnen at around 9:30a and finally arrived in the hills of Pianta Monda at 7:30p, helped on our way by a kind stranger. Our adventurous travel there involved an amazing train ride through the snow capped Alps, where we traveled through tunnels in the mountains almost as much as on top of them. After 3 trains and 2 buses we were on the final and ... read more

I upload some pictures from last spring! Right now it's dark and rainy outside and I am thinking back to a really great trip to Tessin where I wanted to show Johan the south of Switzerland! I thought somebody might be interested to see some pictures we made. ... read more

Hey everyone, It has been quite an exciting few days for us here in Europe, but unfortunately it has also been a frustrating few days out in cyberspace. Many of you have let us know that you could no longer access the travelblog.org site to read our blog. In fact, travelblog.org itself was down from August 1-5. It's just come up today, and after reading the tech support forum, I can now tell you what has happened. Unfortunately, the story ain't pretty So apparently on the 1st, the one single (not backed-up) server that hosts the entire travelblog site got hit by a Denial-of-Service attack. The owner/admin of travelblog, in a state of panic, attempted to restart the mysql database. Unfortunately, he's not very good at mysql, used the wrong command and wiped out thousands of ... read more