Sunday, July 22, 2012

"sea bear" on the adriatic ocean

At last I had the chance to be a sea bear and travel the high seas. I have to admit, the adriatic sea close to shore is quite calm, which was great to relax.

It all started with a train ride to the huge Frankfurt / Main Airport, I never understood why we had to go there instead of flying from Munich, but it wass first class there and back and was a relaxed start into the vacation, even though I had to get up at 2:30 AM, which definetly was a ghastly hour of night.

Here I am sitting on the magnificently restored city wall of Dubrovnik in Croatia at the Adriatic Sea, waiting for the church bells to ring and glancing into the old towns harbor, which you can see on the left.

Here I am obviously lending a helping hand to our captain on our the boat Leonardo, every time he needed some time off the wheel.

On the island of Hvar I took a rest on the very old castle at the top of town. The oldest parts of this castle are from 1000 BC, the newer ones from 1400 AC

I hope you can see me on this picture, I am sitting on the wall, above the sign. It really was so scary down there that I didn't manage to take a picture, I ran back out as fast as my paws would take me. It was huge for me but for humans it must have been awfully cramped in there.

Here I found a friend (of my yellow ruberducky bathtub friend at home), waiting for new customers to arrive. The rooms where always very pretty and cozy.

Seeing food and eating sea food is quite the same here, as it is so fresh, that one feels, that the fish just maybe has to be killed a second time, after it was grilled and flopped on the plate, cause it is so fresh and juicy.

Sitting by the sea and enjoying the sundowners dinner, watching boats return to the harbour from a day out at sea.

As you can see, the nears here have respectable jobs, working for the local croatiian ice food company. Each bear has it's own picture, one for frozen fish, holding a fish, the one for bakeries seen here, aso.

This vacation was excellent and I wouldn't mind to return to this country for another boating week anytime.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Steel for coal

I joined another outing to a special place I did not understand.
When we arrived, I saw this and didn't understand anything. Why did we come here to go and look at an oversized, strange and rickety looking ironing board?

Well, I did understand this thingamagiggy after my visit to the museum. This was a huge coal excarvator transport system, rather like the baggage conveyor belts from the airport.

So you can understand this a bit better, here is a cross cut through the open surface mining pit.

The big thingy in the middle is the F60 conveyor, only here the pit was filled with water, to become a camping with lake park. Lots of steel to move the dug out coal to be moved away.



Up and Up
Here you can see the future lake.

Here are the engines to move the huge beast, quite unbelievable.

Looking down from the very top, back down the conveyor belt.

A view from the side and top, looking at the track laying train at the very bottom on the right.

Here I am at the very end and right at the top, which is at the very right on the first picture.

And here I'm back at the bottom, having a look from the other end. If you want to see more, you can visit the website: F60


And this is my new friend, Lona. She was waiting for me to go outside, as you can obviously see from the look on her face.

Noodle factory in Riesa

 Recently I decided to find out how noodles are made, and since I was not far from Riesa in Saxony, Germany, I visited the factory.

Here I am kneading the noodle dough with a rolling pin.

Here I am with noodle shaping die (Nudelmatrize) The noodle dough is squeezed through these dies which shape the dough and then it is cut off, this happen very quickly so that the noodles fall down and then are dried slowly.

They make a lot of noodles and forms.
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