As my wife and I love Scandinavia we decided to go on vacation to Sweden this year. We found a nice, typic, red wooden house in Orrefors to stay with our kids. Orrefors is located in Småland in the southern part of Sweden. The area is well known for its glassworks and therefore called the Kingdom of Crystal.

Once more we enjoyed the beautiful landscape of Scandinavia: forests, lakes, rivers, long roads without meeting any other car or driving through a village - we even met an elk. Unfortunately the camera has been in the trunk when we saw the elk standing next to the road. After that my camera was with me all the time - without seeing an elk again. We also went to the forest picking mushrooms and collecting blueberries, went canoeing and made some trips to the cities of Kalmar and Växjö and to the Astrid Lindgren's World in Vimmerby.

Last week I've been to Beijing again and as always I brought my camera with me to take some pictures. Although the air pollution has been far less than expected there was still some haze preventing a clear sky and nice sunset pictures. As this kind of light gives much softer shadows than direct and harsh sunlight I made the best of it and focused on taking pictures of the people of Beijing.

I've been to the Netherlands this week and used the opportunity to take some pictures. I started my day quite early to go to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Kinderdijk. I arrived at about 6:15am, half an hour before the actual sunrise.

If you go there before the official opening hours you don't have to pay the entrance fee and it won't be that crowded. I only met a couple of people with their bicycles and some walking their dogs.

I will for sure come back for some pictures of the sunset later this year.

I used my tripod and an ND filter to make some long exposures to blur the clouds (2nd picture). However I like the first picture more due to the birds and the bush in the foreground.

This week I spend three days in the beautiful city of Budapest. The weather was rainy when I arrived in the afternoon of the first day but fortunately the rain stoped one hour later. I went up the Gellért Hill to the Citadella and took some pictures at the blue hour shortly after sunset.

The next morning I set my alarm to 5am to be at the Gellért Hill before sunrise. I expected the historical buildings to be illuminated in the morning as well, but unfortunately they are not. However the weather was good and I was able to take some nice pictures around sunrise.

For my 2017 calendar I have chosen 13 landscape photographies I took in the last three years. This time I used the photo lab pixelfoto express just around the corner which I discovered a couple of weeks ago during a walk. The quality is quite good with reasonable prices and the staff is really friendly. Thumbs up from my side.