november: homeland.

i had a week off at the end of november - so heading to my homeland thuringia was on the plan. little did i know that this week would contain heartbreak, loss & nostalgia. my grandmother called us midweek to tell us that my cousin died, we couldn't enjoy our vacations any longer. the rest of the week was spent with visiting family, to give sympathy to all that were effected directly by the death of my cousin. i kind of felt lost and out of place most of the time, it did touch me, but it also made me feel hollow inside. it was a strange week - full of nostalgia, sadness, solidarity & the occasional beautiful moment - in a time were you feel disconnected this can be something that keeps your spirits up a bit.

the garden i grew up with.

my mother and me visited weimar ( to visit my gynecologist ) - and we made a short walk through ilm-park.

we discovered a russian war cemetery - relict of word war II & gdr history.

there were squirrels everywhere, i tried to take photographs, but they were too fast.

this artificial ruin is a popular motive.

yellow leafy bliss.

the colours were beautiful.

Comments

november: kickelhahn, himmelblau & weimar cemetery.

i had a week off in november and visited my parents ( as i often do on my vacations ). on a sunday morning we headed to the thuringian forest to climb onto the peak of the kickelhahn mountain. the kickelhahn mountain is the landmark mountain of the city of ilmenau . johann wolfgang von goethe , the famous writer & philosopher, often visited ilmenau and also climbed the kickelhahn. oftentimes he stopped at a little hut in the woods to relax for a while and on one of these stops he wrote one of his most known poems. our little adventure didn't last the whole day, though, as we had a little date with the weimar cemetery to look after the grave of my grandparents and then to visit my cousin and his family. tiny peek onto the kickelhahn tower. thuringian woods - deep dark green. at the goethe hut. this plate shows the german version of the poem goethe wrote here. inside the hut. and here's the english translation. i love this poem so much, as ...

in the forests.

it's that time of the year again.

july '20: lake petersdorf discoveries and a plea against genocide.

the green wild meadows of malchow's sandfeld. in the west of malchow there is a big chunk of forest that spans towards plauer see, a widely 'uncultivated' area these days, but it hasn't always been this way. in my last post i mentioned the nazi munition factory that had been built in these woods, away from prying eyes of their enemies and where they also built an external subcamp for the concentration camp ravensbrück. exactly these woods we explored on a pretty sunny day, betraying the darkness that happened around these parts. isn't it weird that there are places in this world that were built or used by dark forces and horrible regimes and you vist them 80 years later and they are the most peaceful places you can imagine? sometimes my brain can't cope with the contrast of knowing what was in the past and what the present looks and feels like. it definitely leaves me with a strange impression often, kind of like a little sting in my heart and brain that is not ...

ghost of nature.

Search This Blog