All Good Things.....

All good things must end.

12 years and 25 days.
4408 days.
105,792 hours
6,347,520 minutes
380,851,200 seconds.....give or take...

That is how long I have lived in Switzerland with my wife.  We moved here as a (really) new couple to pursue her job offer as a new MBA at the world headquarters of Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland.   We arrived, exhausted, after we completed a brutal 11-day marathon closing my life in Calgary, Canada so that I could come over here to be with her.  I quit my job, cancelled the lease on my house, sold my stuff and threw out the rest then boarded the plane.   I remember sitting with my new girlfriend on the plane, saying "whatever has not been done, will not be done.".   The plane took off and we started our new life together.

Nestlé had made the preparations for their new star - they had allocated a lovely studio apartment of 35 m2 overlooking the lake.  Stunning view.  Single bed.  My girlfriend saw this on arrival and started crying.

How far we have come.  We have endured all the pains and joys of creating a life in a new country; a new culture.  We got a great dog. We have been married almost 11 years.  Bought a house and a ski apartment.  We have created two gorgeous boys.  And we have LIVED.

Switzerland is in the centre of Europe.  How lucky we have been.  We have lived minutes from the French border.  We shop and fill our vehicles often in France.  With a good friend, I was able to do a 1-day photo trip to Rome and back and  a two-day photo trip to Bergamo and Verona, Italy.  We take weekend trips into Bourgogne, Avignon, Lyon Torino, Freiburg, Alsace and a multitude of other places just for fun, great food and delicious wine.  Cheap flights abound, allowing us to fly to the Canary Islands, Croatia (gorgeous), Madrid, and a multitude of other places for very little cash.  TGV to Paris just to eat at "the duck place".

We have made great friends from all over Europe - Dutch, Swiss, Swedish, Norwegian, French, German ...some Canadians  and friends from the rest of the world.

We have been fortunate.

May 23 2013 we board the plane home to Calgary, Canada.   We are different people.  We have grown.

Most importantly, my wife and I have grown together, and we have created our future.

Together.

Keep watching this page.  Images from Abroad will grace these pages with the glory of Canada in the not too distant future.

Thanks for following.

Wade Walker
Aubonne, Switzerland

Geneva at an ungodly hour...

Again got myself out before 5 am for another round of photos, this time in Geneva. We arrived well before any sign of light in the International City, and proceeded to make a tour of the waterfront. We did almost the entire shoreline of Geneva on this cloudy morning with the strong threat of rain. Was it worth it? Definitely. And the Starbuck's breakfast wasn't bad either...

Close enough to be eaten by a tiger...

Perhaps an overly dramatic title, but I couldn't resist...

Recently I picked up a new toy, a Nikon V1 camera. Not to get too technical here, but this camera is a wonder - I can use any of my Nikon lenses and it multiplies their magnification factor by 2.7x. So, for those of you interested, it makes my 300mm lens effectively an 810mm, which means I can get reeeeeaaallly close to my subject matter, while avoiding being a snack for carnivorous cats. Generally a good idea...

This for me was a test of this functionality. I am blown away. I have a new favorite toy, and I think it will be a favorite for a LONG time...!

Pre-dawn Montreux Switzerland and Post-dawn Ouchy (Lausanne), Switzerland

Recently I had to get up and out at 5 am to capture the morning light from one of my favorite places in Switzerland - Montreux. Many years ago, in 1994 I did a tour of Europe with a girlfriend - 1 month, 5 countries. Time was pressing, so we could only afford to spend one night in Switzerland, in Montreux. It always remained in my heart as my favorite place I had visited in my entire tour. In 2001 I found myself living in Switzerland, in Montreux. It was then and is today, still one of my favorite places on earth.

Ethereal Vevey

This photo was taken on a stormy morning in Vevey. To the right of Place de Marché is a set of three statues of seahorses that are near or in the lake. They can be magic in the right light and conditions. I was lucky on this morning.

I used a 10-stop Neutral Density filter to allow me to take a time exposure of 30 seconds, which gives the water that milky ethereal feeling. Fortunately, the sun chose that moment to envelope the statue in light. Sometimes the light just works.

A sleeping castle with an interesting historical link and a safely moored ship

I had the opportunity to find some time free last week, which inevitably meant I got out with my gear to capture more images of the beauty around this region.

The first image is one I have been planning for some time - to capture the sun as it rises over the Aubonne castle. The castle was built in 1680 for Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, an early visionary of the opportunity in Indian Trade. Interesting historical tidbit (Thanks to Wikipedia), M. Tavernier was the individual who discovered and sold the 118 carat Hope Diamond (as it was known when it was re-discovered after a theft in London) to Louis XIV. This was taken from a secret vantage point I identified near the Arboretum...

The second image was taken on a sunny morning of the CGN ship, "Lausanne". This ship, part of the fleet of the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman (CGN) who operates the steam ships on Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) is one of the modern ships of their fleet, commissioned in 1991. Here, we find it safely moored at its home in Ouchy, a district of Lausanne in the Canton of Vaud. Taken with an ultra-wide 10mm lens to emphasize the texture and color of the mooring rope and chain.

Thanks for reading! I have a bunch of new interesting photos from an outing to La Salève, a mountainous outcrop overlooking Geneva, Les Rochers-de-Naye overlooking Lake Geneva and others, but I need some time to select the best ones. They should be up soon!

Wade

la-Creux-de-Van, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Recently, I took a hike up to a formation I had heard about but had not yet seen. I have posted this elsewhere, but I will include it in the blog to ensure we can get this out there, as it is really impressive to see.

Satellite View, courtesy of Google Maps:


View Larger Map

Essentially, this is a near-perfect semicircular cliff face in the country side...I say countryside, because this is back in the sweeping Swiss fields, and inevitably. Cows graze directly on the brink...

My wife and I hiked up to it this past summer. It was an easy hike along a road, which was a bit of a surprise...what was even more of a surprise was to learn the road led directly to a nice restaurant stocked with good food and cold beer only about 300m from the formation itself.

View from restaurant - that horizon line is where the world ends...

Following our heavy but delicious meal of croûte de fromage at the restaurant, we walked through the grazing cattle to the brink, and were honestly struck dumb. Being there was better than expected. The cliffs are almost perfectly vertical and the formation itself follows a very smooth circular track. The view wasn't so bad either :

Again, sadly this is a small image, so the resolution isn't great...but you get the idea. My panoramic files end up being HUGE (500 MB+) so have to cut it way down for the blog...

Another view, just to give you an idea of the height of the cliff face and the impressive structure of the rock, here's a snapshot of my wife and our savage hound. She always comments she ends up as speck in my photos while the landscape sweeps majestically out behind her....as if she thinks I am focusing on the landscape and not her...

Stay tuned for my next posts!

Wade

New Panoramic of Fall colors near Fèchy

Autumn moves on and the colors just keep getting better. Fortunately, the vineyards have not yet suffered from the strong windstorms we normally have by now, which usually eliminate most of the leaves. Autumn this year is the gift that keeps giving.

Below is a new pano I took of the area. It is a 1:7 panoramic, so I hope you have a wide screen!

Photo Contest result

Just received word today I won second prize for overall quality of images in a local photo contest, with the subject of the 2011 Tour de Romandie bike race. Below are the images I submitted.

Autumn in the Arboretum near Aubonne, Switzerland

Autumn is here in Switzerland.  Already a country renowned for its natural beauty at any time of year, in autumn Switzerland's forests take on rich reds, golds, yellows and oranges, further enhancing its gorgeous landscape.


Being fortunate enough to live near the Arboretum (http://www.arboretum.ch/) which is a large natural park, I try to get down there now and again for a walk and some photos.  With the fall colors in full swing, the drive to use my camera overcame me recently during a visit from my mother from Canada and we spent several afternoons surrounded by Switzerland at its best...

The area around where I live is thick with vineyards, producing red, rosé and white wines.  Living in wine country has all sorts of benefits.  The diminutive, unassuming and delicious chasselas grape takes on shades of red and brown in addition to its native green when ripe.  It is not used for wine anywhere else on earth than Switzerland, where the climate is perfect for its growth.  The white wine is fruity and sweet, and excellent with cheeses, which of course, are legion in Europe.  The aesthetic benefit of the vineyards is one of intense interest to the photographer, and recently, I took my gear out to nearby Féchy on top of a convenient berm that some enterprising farmer had erected no doubt to prevent flooding from the tiny stream that ran across his property.

Unfortunately, I had to reduce the size substantially to upload it here, so any pixel-peekers out there may find some substantial loss of quality...click to enlarge.

First post

Just opened this up. Finally pursuing the ideas I have had all these years of sharing my experiences, my photos and my thoughts on the beauty around me

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