Last night I was browsing through some old photos and stopped at this one from Berlin. It feels like I took it yesterday, but it was in fact ten years ago.

Time really flies. Back then I was living in Berlin, and this blog was only a few months old. Some of the very first posts here were about the city: maps of its districts, the people living in it, and a nice picture of Berlin to start the week.

As you can see in the photo above, it was dusk on a gray evening. The TV Tower (Fernsehturm) stood in the background, the tram wires crossed the sky, and the evening glow lit up the horizon, in that typical Berlin style I was lucky to admire quite a few times.

It’s hard to believe a whole decade has gone by!

Last weekend I got up early and went for a bike ride, something I do fairly often when the weather starts warming up. I crossed Basel in the morning when absolutely no one was around and you could hear all the birds singing, arrived at Burgfelderhof, and headed over to buy bread in the French town of Saint-Louis. After crossing through the town, I went to Huningue and then over the famous "Passerelle des Trois Pays" bridge you can see in the photo above, to get into Weil am Rhein and pick up some extra groceries before heading back to Switzerland.

This structure, called the Dreiländerbrücke in German, is a beautiful bridge that crosses the Rhine between Huningue (France) and Weil am Rhein (Germany), and according to Wikipedia, it holds the world record for the longest single-span bridge for pedestrians and bicycles only.

A couple of days ago, I took the regional train from Badischer Bahnhof so that L. could visit Europa-Park for the first time. I had been there a couple of times before and always had a lot of fun. The last time was probably when I went with my brother, but it had been a while since then. It was great to go back and share the experience with L., who really enjoyed it as well.

We had a great time, and the weather was perfect, as you can see in the picture above. We went on some of the rides we had explored online beforehand, including Arthur and the CanCan Coaster, among many others.

It was a fun day, and we can't wait to go back again soon.

Last weekend, I went on a nice bike ride to buy a few items for breakfast. My journey took me across the Franco-German border via the "Passerelle des Trois Pays" bridge. As I pedaled along, the sun began to rise, casting beautiful multicolored hues on the horizon, while birds flew from one side to the other. I couldn't resist the urge to stop and take a photo. You can see the result above.

View of the Freiburg im Breisgau city center, including the cathedral, from the top of the Schlossbergbahn last weekend.

A couple of days ago, I was walking back to my place in Berlin, looked up, and saw those nice patterns in the sky that you can see in the picture above. I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog how the sky in Berlin is one of the highlights of this city.

A couple of days ago we visited Lindau, a major town and an island on the eastern side of Lake Constance. We stayed at a hotel on the island, which is connected to the mainland by a road bridge. The current harbour of this island was built in 1856, and the iconic lion sculpture and lighthouse mark the entrance of this port. An interesting fact is that this lighthouse is the only one in Bavaria!

Eurostat published some very interesting stats regarding the mobile internet connectivity of EU citizens in the Information Society section of the Eurostat regional yearbook. The map above shows the countries with the largest and smallest percentage of users browsing the internet through mobile devices in cities. It was not surprising to see the Nordic countries at the top of the list, but I wasn't aware Italy was at the bottom.

Here is a bar chart with the countries sorted by percentage:

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, and I learned about the interesting history behind it. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a refuge from his constitutional monarchy duties, in order to revive his romantic dreams of medieval kings. The guide described how the king was deemed insane, arrested, and died mysteriously. My GF and I were discussing yesterday that, insane or not, he certainly brought good fortune to this region of Germany!

The German border with Poland in the east runs through the town of Görlitz, which before 1945 was a single town. This border post marks the end of the country.

Interesting picture taken today at the Vitra Design Museum when the sun was starting to go down.