november: thuringian forest.

the day we visited the thuringian forest near luisenthal we would also receive the death notice of my cousin. while the day in luisenthal was pretty magic - i even found a goat skull to take home for my not so fast growing skull collection - the time we got home and received the phone call of my grandmother, everything went dull. we always had hoped for him to recover - over the course of his sickness there were multiple times we'd thought he was on his way up, but that also counted for the times it was clear that the cancer was severe and probably not defeatable. in the end he fought four years, but he couldn't conquer. his constant optimism & general good will wasn't enough as his body decided to give up on him. i'm still thinking a lot about him, he was such a good natured guy, always seeing the good in everything and everyone. it's so strange to know that he's never going to be on any future family party gathering again. we discussed so many things when he was still alive and he made me think a lot about people, even though my stubbornness in hating mankind was always a bit frustrating to him, i guess. his intelligence was always something i looked up to in secret. he was a great guy ( he always made the effort to call me on birthdays or ask me how i was doing in life, seemed generally interested in what i was up to... ) and he will be greatly missed.

fog rising up in the woods.

mossy terrain.

i have a thing for benches... i don't know why.

a quirky wooden octopus.

rain drops on tiny leaves.

they look like transparent pearls.

the tower in the middle of the ohra water dam.

beautiful dam scenery.

withering away.

tiny droplets on november thistle.

view onto schwarzwald, a municipality of luisenthal.

an almost forgotten tower of the schwarzwald castle.

almost the same view as the one above. i love the fog passing through the valley.

you could go inside the castle tower and this was the view when you looked upwards.

another bench.

tiny hut. in the back there was a memorial for the soldiers of the franco-prussian war.

my parents looking puzzled.

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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.

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