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The End.

this is the Atomium — sort of a symbol of Brussels. except that Brussels itself is not very shiny, or modern, or pretty. but that’s a different story. the Atomium was built for the 1958 World Fair, which, judging by the items sold in souvenir shops, is the one remarkable event in Brussels’ history. some of the spheres house small (photo) exhibitions, while the tubes contain stairs or escalators. the uppermost sphere is the only one we could actually look out of (nice panoramic view) — an elevator in the vertical shaft takes you up (after waiting in line for a while).

this vertorama has been stitched together from three landscape shots, one above the other. the stitching itself was done by regular panorama software after rotating the images into portrait, and then rotating the result back to “normal,” followed by some slight cropping and color adjustments. that’s why some of the tubes look slightly bent, which they are not. it might not look like it, but I was actually pretty close to the thing when taking the pictures — the topmost shot was almost straight up. the sphere at the top of the picture is pretty much right above me, as you can see from its reflection.

greetings from the site of this year’s European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) at the Brussels Expo. they put the whole thing into one of the exhibition halls, and instead of the conference rooms that we are used to, they erected these tents inside the hall. that’s a first for me.

the whole place has a very unique charm to it. the buildings were erected in 1935 (at least that’s the number that’s chiseled into the outside wall in very large letters) and have a Third Reich feel to them. the halls themselves have a very industrial look. and these Oktoberfest-tents, in which the sessions are held, are definitely something. there are five of them, and they aren’t sound-proofed very well, which can make it hard sometimes to hear just what the guy on the podium is saying — not that I’d care most of the time. the blue carpets, the wooden benches (it’s a shame Julia isn’t here), and the thoughtfully placed bamboo pots don’t really help to improve the general mood.

on wednesday I’ll have my 15 minutes of fame in the tent in the center of the picture.

these are some remains of a newspaper that some of the guys used to get the barbeque going. I was just sitting around, playing with my camera when this little guy came flying in, so I took a shot.

I thought it was about time to post something different from architecture or JSOVT(MB) pictures again, so here’s the result of that thinking.

I’ll be in Brussels (Belgium) on a conference for the next week starting tomorrow. I’ll bring a couple of pictures that I wanted to post, so if I find the time and if there’s Internet access, there’ll be something new here next week — otherwise there won’t. we’ll see.

we’re leaving Gubbio (for now) and make a day trip to Florence, in the beautifullest of weathers. it is quite a drive — I think it took about two and a half hours to get there. now by far the largest building in Florence is the Cathedral, so naturally our tour started there.

the Florence Cathedral — very impressive on the outside (the inside is rather plain except for the beautiful frescoes on the inside of the cupola), and huge. you can go inside for free, but to work yourself up the 460-something steps to the top of the dome, you need to pay. go figure. we did both anyway, and there really is a spectacular view over the whole city from up there; that is, once you catch your breath and your legs stop burning so you can actually enjoy the view…

no wide-angle setting on my camera was wide enough to fit the whole thing into the frame at once. sure, you can go back a bit into the streets extending from the piazza, but then you have stupid houses blocking your view. so I tried to do a vertorama, just like Panorama Paul always does (look him up in my contacts, he makes some great pictures). since trying to stitch the two landscape shots didn’t work really well — I got some straight lines, but everything was horribly distorted — I rotated them into portrait and did a regular stitch. now the verticals are all crooked, but I think it looks pretty neat. so there you are.

if you want to know more about the very interesting history of the cathedral, check out its Wikipedia entry in English or in German (which is more detailed).

yes, we’re still in Gubbio, and also still on that same tour through the city as in the previous pictures.

this is the Palazzo dei Consoli which houses the Eugubine Tables, a set of seven bronze tablets from the 2nd or 1st century BC. really, really old stuff — more than four times older than the first European footprint on American soil, actually. the building itself was erected in the 14th century. the piazza and the palazzo are pretty high up on Mount Ingino, and offer a very scenic view over most of the town, just behind the parapet on the left (maybe I’ll post a panorama shot sometime).

the sun was just starting to set behind the palazzo, bathing the piazza in front of it in a really moody light. unfortunately, the group had decided to pay the supermarket a visit before coming here (also see this story about supermercati and us), and consequently we were too late — the museum was closed. we never came back (at least not at an earlier time in the day), and so I never did see these famousest(!) of tables. but at least I have this shot of the palazzo’s outside.

I could have moved back a couple of meters and used a longer focal length — there was room aplenty — but where would be the fun in that, right? I dig these crazy perspective distortions…

I have no idea what the guy thought when I made Julia sit on that bench very briefly just for this shot, but it must have been something along the lines of “what are these crazy tourists up to again?”

this is on a small square in front of the Church of San Domenico in Gubbio (see this photo) where we took a short break during our initial exploration of the town. some of us got themselves a piece of pizza to go (those who could absolutely no longer wait for dinner and also had not bought anything in the many sweets or ice cream stores along the way) and some went into the church (like us two). but not before taking another shot for JSOVIT(MB).

these are electric versions of votive candles (it took me at least 10 minutes to figure out that name) in the church of San Domenico (see this picture). welcome to the Catholic church of the 21st century. no fire hazards in this church, thank you.

you are supposed to make a donation into the donation box below before turning one on. I have no idea if one is allowed to turn them off, or if that requires an extra donation. and somehow this modern version gives the whole thing a very commercial aftertaste…

there is really not too much to say about this picture, or the church. we were in there only a short while, because the rest of the group became very anxious about dinner by the time. I really like the light in this scene, coming from the very end of the hall, and giving that golden glow which contrasts nicely with the blue light coming through the windows behind me. most of the churches that we saw in Italy were very impressive inside, with lots of art on display. unfortunately, nobody wanted to see quite as many churches from the inside as I did, but we still did enter quite a few.

this is one of the few pictures I shot with ISO800 and I must say I’m quite impressed with the quality. sure, there is some noise (which you might not really see as long as I’m no flickr pro account holder), but this would hardly show in a printout. with all my previous cameras, ISO800 would have looked like there was a snowstorm (with colorful snow, too!) in that church…

in this shot, Julia sits on a bench on the sidewalk around the park in the center of the Square of the 40 Martyrs. there were a couple of “normal” benches, too, but I thought this poor-man’s Stonehenge fitted the ancient town rather well. this was taken at the end of an afternoon walk through the historic city center, during which we constantly struggled to keep up with the rest of our group because I made Julia sit on nearly every bench or sittable-upon surface that we passed…

the Square of the 40 Martyrs is named for the 40 Gubbians who were shot by the Nazis as retaliation for the assassination of two officials during WWII.

Gubbio itself “is one of Umbria’s most ancient settlements, dating all the way back to the 3rd century B.C., and sits perched on the slopes of Monte Ingino. The city and its historical riches have been well preserved, and the centuries have left traces of Gubbio’s Etruscan past, Roman municpal ruins, and years of subjugation under medieval aristocracy.” (from italian cooking & living) — I couldn’t have said it better…