Funky. Ligerz. LightPainting.

Henry Purcell's piece "The Fairy Queen" is our new choir piece for the choir concert in May, and last week was choir week in Ligerz. We spent five days practising many hours a day, but also enjoying our time at this beautiful spot at Lake Biel.

Fun fact: Biel is at the border where the French and the German language "collide" in Switzerland. That's why everything is Semi-German and Semi-French, even the name of the city Biel/Bienne!

With a lovely view of the mountains and lake, Ligerz is truly a spot one should visit someday!

The only disturbing thing is the train line at the lake where a lot of intercity-trains passes. But after a while you get used to it.

In our free time, we jammed on the pianos, played some card games or werewolves or just sat and chilled, read some books and had a good time. But the last night my friend Laura and I took some light painting shots and long time exposures of the lake. Some turned out very special!

Just for those wondering: This was a 20s exposure and I moved my feet after 10 seconds. That's why they are transparent ;)

This was actually a long time exposure in complete darkness! One can even spot the stars on closer inspection.

Zermatt and the Fireworks of Zürich

Just after celebrating with my entire family last weekend, my parents and I left with friends to go to Zermatt for a week. You've probably heard of the Matterhorn, one of the most famous mountains in Switzerland which is in Zermatt. But there are not only many tourists taking pictures of that mountain peak; there are also many cool activities you can do like snowboarding and skiing, sleighing, hiking and partying in the evenings!

I snowboarded for two days, one day the weather was not that lovely and then a friend of mine came over who could neither ski or snowboard, so we went sleighing and hiking which was lots of fun too!

 On New Year's Eve, Johanna and I then went to Zürich to watch the firework and go to a nice reggae bar. It was really nice and the fireworks amazing!

Lots of band practice!

Finally the holiday started and I had a great first day in our school's choir week! We practice Monteverdi the entire day which was great and spent a nice time in the evening at the lakeside singing songs :)

This week I had so many band practises with our new group. I was asked if we would like to perform in three weeks time and then we decided to spontaneously form a group and start practicing. I think that it's actually going to turn out great because we already have a few cool songs in our repertoire.

Yesterday evening I also had a party at my home (after four hours of band-practise!), I made pizza dough so everyone could later put the topping they desire on it. We also played Singstar and watched a cool movie together! So a real fun evening :D

More Drone Photography

As some of you might have noticed from previous posts, I've got myself a new photography tool: a drone. It's cool because it's quite tiny and lightweight. Therefore I can fit it into my backpack easily and take it with my wherever I go!

Just a couple hours ago I passed through Zürich to go to the mountains on ski holidays with my parents. I made a little stop in Zürich and flew a few miles around. Here are some of the pictures I took :)

Last weekend my parents and I went to Zuoz for two days. It's a village in the mountains near St. Moritz, tiny but beautiful! I flew around a bit too:

Some might wonder what is going on in this shot. I'll explain: I was actually lying on the floor in a small tower which had a big hole on the top. The rest of that tower was covered in snow (what you can see outside of the ring). 

And here's another picture of Baden taken with the drone:

I hope you enjoyed this weeks post! Feel free to share it or leave a comment below :)

EF City Escape - Lake Cinema - Concert

Putting all the exams we had aside, this week was awesome!

Yesterday morning, the holidays already began, I had to wake up early again.. I went to an instrument store in Baden to get a thing on my Flügelhorn fixed and to get some new mouthpieces to try out.

Then I took the train to Zürich. I had an ambassador meeting with EF, the organisation that planned my exchange. The programme me and many other ex-exchange students had this morning was really cool! We played a real-life game, split up in groups, where we had to follow along clues and hints and think logically to solve a crime scene in a park in Zürich. It was so much fun and we had a great time :)

Later on I met up with my mum to get a few new clothes and wander around the city for a bit. A little later my dad joined the crew too and we went to a cinema on the lake (because at the moment there's a huge film festival in Zürich). The cinema was a wood-build on the lake where you could also get a drink and enjoy a free movie in the sunset!

Friday evening I visited a Barock concert at our school performed by the school orchestra with some guest players. It is not really the type of music I usually listen to but it was very interesting and we've enjoyed it a lot!

Finally, last Monday, all third class of our school had to run 8.5 kilometres around the lake! For some people it was not so cool but I enjoyed it quite a bit! The weather was perfect and if you run with the right people you are motivated to keep your pace until the end :)

Totally British

On the Friday just a week ago my friend John from England arrived here to visit me in Switzerland. Me and my mum went to the airport to pick him up and then I showed him around my school and Baden.

On Saturday morning we woke up early to go on our nicely planned trip. With the bus and train we went to Thun, just John me and my mum because my dad was still working. Thun is a lovely place and we were very lucky because on that day there was a festival with barrel organs, ferris wheel and a lot of people. We just walked around and up the castle where we had a nice overview on the mountains and the lake below us. Since most boats in Switzerland are included in our pass we took one that went from Thun straight to Interlaken. Inter laken means "between the lakes", the Thuner and Brienzer lake. It was a lovely trip where we ate some nice soup on the boat and just enjoyed the view which was outstanding (by the way did I mention that there was not even one single cloud in the sky..) In Interlaken we planned to go on a little swim in the lake but in the end we were just relaxing in the shadow of a tree. Next on our tour we took the train to Grindelwald where we got a room in the youth hostel and got company by my dad.

Since John is living in a very flat part of England and has never actually been in the high mountains we thought it would be great to show him our alps. About a week ago we pre-booked a very steep cog-rail train up the Jungfraujoch. It is one of the highest mountains we have in Switzerland with a lovely view on the Aletsch glacier which is the largest glacier in the Alps! You also see an interesting but very touristic exhibition indoors that shows the making of the crazy train going up the mountain and as I said it attracts a huge amount of asian tourists. After a nice lunch a bit further down the mountainside we walked to the middle station and took a train back down to Brienz where we took a swim in the icy cold lake. Brrr! It is so cold because the water comes streaming straight from the glaciers. Another night in a youth hostel but this time next to the lake :)

Change of plans! The weather on Monday was not as sunny as we expected it to be so we canceled our train up the Brienzer Rothorn which is the home mountain of Brienz and took the train to Luzern after a nice lunch at the Giessbach hotel and a second walk (for me) up the waterfalls that are behind that lovely hotel. I think that we follow the asians because Luzern is actually populated by asians too (secret fact!) But it was nice doing a walk, eating ice cream and showing John around. We went back home a bit earlier since we were all very exhausted by the walking and the spicy hot weather :P

On Tuesday we showed John Zürich. Even I was in places I didn't know existed because my mum showed us around. A while ago she studied Architecture and got her diploma in Zürich so she had some lessons too about the city, its history and the interesting places. After some walking around we took the boat (again) and went swimming at the Mythenquai where we ate dinner and soon took the train back. Johns visit was already over and I was planning to go to Italy for a couple days to visit my friend Ari. You will be able to see all about Milano in the next post on Saturday ;)