november: animals are a human's best friend.

my vacation time at my parents came to an end and i had to return to wiesbaden again. before i said goodbye we made a nice walk by the river unstrut. the weather was particularly stormy - a perfect november day.

willow tree in yellow glory.

unstrut river. we just rediscovered our local favourite river in recent years, i don't know why we never had that much focus on it before. here in wiesbaden we have the huge river rhein and whenever my parents visit me it's one of their first goals to drive there and have a walk along it... maybe through discovering the rhine they remembered the much smaller river unstrut in their area again - at least that's what i think. anyway, i grew to love it and personally think it's one of the best gems my home area has to offer.

the river flows next to an industrial area and some of the buildings there make for a nice background prop.

darkness surrounded us soon.

that was pretty much the point when we decided to walk back, as the weather started to grow really uncomfortable.

upon my return in wiesbaden i was greeted with blooming schlumbergeras! they are seriously my most beloved plants in my flat. they bloom quite often and i tend to think it's because they love me.

on another november day on which i had nothing to do i decided to drive to kronberg to visit the opelzoo, another favourite zoo of mine here in hessia.

dwarf mangooses huddling together. it's a real pleasure to watch them for a while. just like meerkats they are really social animals and companionship is most important for them.

i do think they're quite beautiful little animals.

coral world.

yellow citrusy fish.

it's hypnotic to watch the corals sway in the water.

insects collection.

mistletoes having a ball in those trees.

the bird sanctuary.

there was a surprise in that pouch! a baby cangaroo was the stowaway ;)

i couldn't get enough of these two.

persian fallow deer. they were too far away for better photographs.

great white pelicans.

flamingo bath.

the warthogs had kids as well!

a brown hyena on the lookout. another animal i couldn't get enough of, they are simply so marvellous!

i love those ears!

what would a zoo visit be without them meerkats? my little friends :)

dancing under the sun.

i call this one 'peeing and looking that no one sees me peeing'.

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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