I have been in Switzerland for 3 days and still my luggage is missing. Having all my clothes, tripod, camera lights, shaving kit etc missing is no fun and has resulted in quite a few trips to local stores to get a few things to carry me through. I am hoping and praying my luggage is found tonight so I can work in the Neuchâtel region this week.
This weekend I spent some time gathering some B roll video and images for later use. I have been all over the area and logged over 300 miles on the ground and about 50 in the air by helicopter. Yesterdays travels were busy and here are a few highlights:
- I encountered beautiful villages, nice people, a few great hikes where you get winded easily due to the high altitudes.
- When purchasing some hiking clothes and trying them on, the store I was at had an unusual dressing room. It was essentially a sheet hanging on a metal ring with very little room to move. Half way through trying on the new clothes I realized the store was getting a real show when the curtain kept opening without my knowledge. I did not get any dollar bills thrown at me just some strange looks.
- I ran into some local alpine wildlife on the mountains and had one large male ibex warn me with a loud whistling noise that I was going to get knocked down the mountain the fastest way if I did not back off which I did considering my history with wildlife like the Kangaroo incident on film.
- I realized the people here really like electric fences and I found one the hard way when leaning on one to take a photo. The electric shock was like an extreme energy and adrenaline increasing event equal to drinking about 4 espressos.
- I almost caused an international incident when I passed some slow bicycle riders going up the alps, but how was I supposed to know they were in the Tour de Suisse race at the time.
- I ended last night near Zermatt and the breathtaking Matterhorn but my favorite village was the old Swiss village of Saas Fee hands down. I was tired and I could not fathom driving back the way I had came so I found an awesome solution. I drove my vehicle onto a train car and rode underneath the alps reducing the 6 hour drive to 40 minutes. I was shocked pulling onto the train car as I was thinking surely someone is going to check the vehicles and then we would have to go sit in a passenger car but that was not the case. I was on the phone with my brother when all of a suddenly the train took off darting into a dark and really quite smoky tunnel.
- I even ran into an AutoCAD user that I bumped into.
Today I took a helicopter flight up around and over the Eiger, Jungfrau, glacier fields, and the Schilthorn. The only disappointing items was that I was unable to land up on the glaciers or summit due to the winds and I also had my camera get into a funky setting accidentally and some of my white balance settings were out and it was also not saving the RAW images. The photos are still fine, just not the quality I would want them to be.
I have began uploading some photos to Flickr on this trip and also tracking by GPS the photo locations and a route map in Google Earth KML using the GiSTECH PhotoTrackr which also set the geotags in the photos so you can see them on a map in Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/btl/615198506/map/?view=users
Here are a few of my favorites as well as a link to my Switzerland June 2007 collection.
www.flickr.com
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Cheers,
Shaan
