jottkah

We left Germany for the first time since Corona and it was amazing.

Although hardly any of our vacation plans worked out (we were supposed to go on a hiking trip in the area that was hit by the flood catastrophe) we had a good time. We continued our hike on the Hermannsweg and then – just like last year – we went to Berlin. It was incredibly hot, we went to Berghain, we took a tour in the Spreepark, we drank coffee and beer and hat fantastic food. It was so good to finally see something else again after months of lockdowns (which weren’t really lockdowns, but still) and social distancing. And on the last day of July there was the first concert since March 2020: Notwist in the Westfalenpark Dortmund. A really good month of summer.

October is my favourite month and this one was especially great. We were able to spend a few days on an island in the North Sea. It was the first time being by the sea this year and that little escape from our everyday lives with Corona felt soooo good. So there were lots of walks on the endless beach – but also some through the beautifully colored Ruhr area back home.

More walks. I think I’ve never walked as much as during Corona. People from outside the Ruhrgebiet won’t believe it, but there’s so much beautiful nature here. The photos in the second part of this post have been taken somewhere else, though. We went on a two day hiking trip in the Eifel, which we had booked long before Corona, and after all the time of not going anywhere it felt as good and relaxing as a one week vacation.

Last Saturday we went to Frankfurt to see the “Beauty” exhibition by Sagmeister/Walsh. We also found some beauty outside the museum. My photos in chronological order:

Right after Easter we went on a three day trekking tour in the Eifel. We had booked two so-called Naturlagerplätze, wooden platforms in the middle of the forest. There’s room for two small tents on the platform, a bench and table is built right to it, and there’s an outhouse is nearby.

We hiked along the river Urft, crossed an exciting bridge, came by an estate that had been used by the Nazis for educational purposes, visited an abandoned Belgian gas station (the Nazi estate turned into a military training area first for the British, afterwards for the Belgians), had Grappa and coffee and scones and stroopwaffels and Nutella bread (and some disgusting looking trekking food from a plastic bag), got water from a beautiful little creek, were only a little scared by the blair-witchy constructions near our second platform, and saw virgin Mary on our way back.

Despite our backpacks being a little too heavy it was a fantastic trip and I’m looking forward to visiting the two newly opened platforms in the next year or so.

Get ready for a huuuuuuge post! In October we spent a week on São Miguel, the biggest island of the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. We were hoping for a relaxed holiday: a little hiking, a little hanging around the pool. As it turned out, we couldn’t even use the pool once because it was raining and storming so heavily most of the time. Instead we hiked a lot and got wet a lot and were happy about our backpacks’ raincovers and fast drying functional clothes a lot.

I also took tons of photos with my “real” camera, but as usual, I haven’t even looked through them yet. So let’s start with the VSCO pictures from that trip.

Another great thing happened in September: we spent a weekend in Paris with friends. By train the trip only takes about an hour longer than to Berlin – I really don’t know why we haven’t gone there earlier. I had been in Paris once before, about 25 years ago. (I feel very old now.) At the time I had just learned a tiny bit of French and was able to say “Monsieur Cartier entre la salle de séjour.” Turns out, I can barely say any more than that today. All those years of French at school for nothing. Merde.

We strolled through Le Marais, drank beer, watched Julien Baker play a show, were happy about the rainbow crosswalk in the queer quarter, made photos with fingers atop the Louvre pyramid (which will never be published), held hands near the Seine, looked at the Eiffel tower, and wondered why Paris is called the city of love, when it should clearly be the city of piss smell.

In August we went hiking at Wilder Kaiser in Austria. It was quite hard and at some points even scary, but also absolutely wonderful and amazing. And after that: a weekend at the North Sea in the Netherlands with friends.

While sorting VSCO photos from the previous months I found a folder with pictures I took during the Typo Berlin conference in May. I had already prepared all of them on my way home, but I couldn’t upload them because of the crappy WiFi on the train. So here’s a bunch of (very) black and white photos from Berlin.

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