november: erfurt zoo.

i know that for many people zoos are very problematic and i understand the reasons for it, but it never hinders me to visit them. i also think if zoos didn't exist we wouldn't have the understanding for the general problem that wild living animals are in danger. there'd be no protection areas worldwide, if people wouldn't have been sensitivized about it, and i'd go as far that many people only start protecting something when they understand something's in danger. and zoos are a great place to teach people about it.

it is one of my favourite pastimes to look at animals and watch them for a while and marvel at their exceptional existence. these pictures were made in my home state thuringia, in the zoo of erfurt to be exact.

meerkats are probably my most favourite animals, ever, even though i actually love the majority of animals. but there is something about them that deeply amuses me.

sleeping lionesses. the zoo says these are barbary lions, but i'm not actually sure, as they actually seem to be extinct in wild life. maybe they're some kind of offspring of the original species.

beautiful lion man joco.

baby meerkat<3 p="">

watching the hyenas.

family gathering.

it's always amazing to me how synchronicity is such a big deal with suricates. they are like a beehive.

mothering.

sun worshippers.

barbary macaque. in erfurt zoo you can enter the compound and walk around, while the apes are running and jumping around, sometimes even coming so close you can almost touch them.

looking very skeptical.

just sitting around and watching everything.

cats sleeping in the sun at the zoo farm.

strange little chameleon creature.

a black deer amongst fallow deer.

munching on leaves.

giraffe baby. maybe it wasn't a baby anymore, but it was indeed much smaller than the other ones.

remnants of halloween.

in the rhinoceros house. the light was wonderful.

meeting another cat at the end of our zoo tour.

zebras are so beautiful.

especially this one with the amazing hairdo.

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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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