To start with, the name sounds unfamiliar: "What is it called again, Bierwaldstättersee?" Simone asks on the phone. - "No, not beer, but Vierwaldstättersee", I repeat, as I describe the destination, the Lake of Lucerne. Therefore, later, the Lake is always referred to as "Biersee", translated "Beer Lake". My VW bus friends from Munich had [...]
The serious, concentrated faces tell the tension when the opponents grip each other on their tear-resistant "swing" pants, waiting for the referee's signal. When it comes, both try to push the opponent backwards into the sawdust by using certain wrestling moves, also called "swings". "Swinging" is a Swiss national sport, which is mainly practiced in [...]
The opponent is a spiral slurry pump by the Swiss manufacturer Stöckli, six years old and actually a lightweight. Nobody expected any problems and, as long as my boss is around, there are none. In the morning everything runs smoothly: We brought the hoses to the fields and picked up the pump from the neighbors. [...]
"You must not park here!" says the man, waving the wrench in the air. I'm standing on a gravel yard next to the road and before I even can get out of the car, the resident appeared to rebuke me: "You have to park in the marked bays." After eight months Kyrgyzstan, the Swiss pedantry [...]
As I understand it, "dry tooling" is ice climbing without ice, using ice axes and crampons on the rock. They say, it was originally developed to bridge rocky passages in order to reach free hanging, frozen waterfalls. I had not heard about it, and when my Russian friend Katya suggested to visit the competition at [...]
Kok Boru is a real men's sport. This we notice as soon as we get to the grandstands of the Bishkek Hippodrome. Being a woman, you stick out like a sore thumb. If you continue to look around, you cannot help but wonder if the security forces are outnumbering the spectators. So we take our [...]
Actually Lisa was just looking for a horse sharing set-up, now she is a farmhand. How it happened? - She took the Mashrutka to the village and asked her way around. Speaking Russian clearly is an advantage. A woman from a shop introduces Lisa to Sahid. He owns a farm near Kashka Suu, about half [...]
The two horsemen came all the way from their small village to the canyons. There, at the foot of the mountains, the hunt starts. Anvarbek moves along the hills, his 14-year-old son Azamat rides with his horse along the valley. They patrol one canyon after another. This is a hunting trip: The young Azamat is [...]
Karakol is one of the winter sports hot-spots in Kyrgyzstan. The town is located about six hours drive from Bishkek, east of lake Issyk Kul. There is a fairly large ski resort and several freeride options: besides snow mobile tours and horse lifts, ski touring is on the rise. All you need to do, is [...]
Before I started my trip, I got myself a Goal Zero solar panel, the smallest one: Nomad7. It is available as Adventure Kit, with all kinds of adapters and other accessories. I didn't have to use it very often, but if I did, it was really necessary - primarily to charge my cell phone. These [...]