Just arrived back from a holiday in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. Site of the camping. We had a great time seeing the mountains, the numerous waterfalls, the glaciers and the plants and animals (we loved the cows walking on the mountain slopes carrying cow-bells, and we saw a fox). We took a 6-day train/gondola pass to visit the hard-to-reach places. We had a lot of rain and forgot to take our coats so it was cold at times. But Switzerland in summer is a beautiful experience.

Being a tourist in Switzerland is hard to avoid advertissements for pocket knives. So I took this opportunity to replace the knife I got in 1988 when enrolling the Dutch army (which was also a Victorinox) with a more extensive one: the Cybertool 41. It has 41 functions, importantly a pair of scissors (incredible how often you need it), several screwdrivers and set of screwdriver bits, a corkscrew (my old knife didn't even have this, and I remember 2 occasions in which I opened a wine bottle using a knife (this agony no more!). It also contains a pen. It costed 108 CHF ( about 70 euros). I also added a nice looking belt clip to keep me from losing the knife.

Looking for attraction parks for the kids we stumbled on the "Jungfrau Park" (here's their website, fine use of the TYPO3 framework, not), formerly known as the Mystery park. I thought, what is this place? It is a park built around the "mysteries of the world". Now the world contains many mysteries, but these mysteries looked strangely familiar. And then I saw that it was possible to pay a visit to a lecture by Erich von Däniken(!) this rang a bell. Apparently Erich von Däniken, who's book Waren de Goden kosmonauten I read some 20 years ago, had set up this park in 2003. The park features several multi-media presentations illustrating von Däniken's ideas. I enjoyed them. And of course I went to see the lecture by the man himself. It was in German by I had no trouble following it. At the end he had a book-signing session. I waited for it to finish to be able to shake his hand and compliment him for his work. He asked me where I was from and what I did for a living. He said programmers make good money but I had to correct that ;) All in all a very curious experience.

In the evenings I read in the book Het wiskunde boek that Katja had bought. Each left page contains a mathematics gem, each right page contains a picture of it. Even though its impossible to understand all the ideas, it is a fascinating book.