I had the opportunity to attend my first ice hockey match on Saturday evening featuring the SC Langnau Tigers against the HC Lugano. It was quite impressive, although I had thought that the so-called atmosphere would be more catching. The game is so damned fast - maybe too fast for me. I missed the replays I'm used to on TV. And the brutality of the players and the game itself is awful. I'd never seen the Ilfis Halle when it's in "hockey dress" before. It was alright because it was still summer, but I don't know if I could bear it in winter. Anyway Langnau eventually won 4:3 after starting with 1:3 into the last round. The audience was pleased.

Summary of this week's very relevant news from the World out there:
The lives of US soldiers at war are now in danger for the first time ever because wikileaks released around 400'000 documents from the Iraq war, US foreign minister Hillary Clinton claims. Maybe they shouldn't have gone to war in the first place.
Gas is becoming a scarce resource in France because the lazy beans will have to work until the age of 62 before going to pension. There still is spare oil to be collected from the residues of the Deep Water Horizon leaks in Mississippi...
The SCL Tigers won 9:1 against Lugano in the Swiss Hockey National League A.

I'd like to provide you a 360° panorama view of the Louvre in Paris. Assembled by hand from various pictures I took during our trip to the capital of France in July 2009, it shows the small Arc de Triomphe, the glass pyramid and the side wings of the gigantic museum.

The Swiss have accepted the proposal to ban the building of minarets, official results show.
It's shameful for a democratic country to globally ban the Islamic religious expression in its constitution. The proposal doesn't forbid the building of mosques or other religious temples - only minarets. However, it shows how narrow minded voters are and how very little diplomatic feeling they have.
As an atheist, I must confess that I am way more bothered by christian churches and their bells than by any minaret.
It would be interesting to see how much damage Muslims could inflict to the Swiss banking system if they would draw back all their money from Swiss banks - and how much political damage this decision inflicts to Switzerland on the international level.

I had a bit of time to look through the hundreds of pictures I took during the vacation on Malta. I played a bit with GIMP's panorama plugin. Here is a composition of pictures showing Valetta's, Msida's and Slimas habours together with a view of Manoel Island.