ghost of nature.

i had a week off in april and visited my parents ( as i often do - i have doctor's appointments to attend - a perfect excuse to travel to my homeland ). on the first day we made our way up to buchenwald. mainly because we wanted to pick wild garlic. but we remembered that the day we were visiting was the liberation day of kz buchenwald and since the garlic picking ground was right next to the camp we decided to extend our stay a bit ( i convinced my parents to stay, because i'm magnetized by historical places and am cruel to myself for wanting to remember past times, especially as difficult and terrible as these ). but i do feel it's important to commemorate the past, and take it to heart, the loss, the pain and the terror, so you don't forget. in times like ours at the present, i think it's even more important and pressing to look back, to show what might return if we let the wrong ones reign us. the gate building. the areas that are narrowed down with ston...

my favourite place to hang out in wiesbaden is definitely the north cemetery . i have to visit it at least once a year, and make it a goal every autumn. for this particular visit, though, i skipped the autumn tradition, as my friend and cemetery partner in crime l. wanted to really explore one of the wiesbaden graveyards with me in april. so we headed out on this beautiful spring day and rediscovered this gemstone in a different light. with all the green leaves and fresh buds the cemetery appeared like a garden eden to me. the magnificent statues surely add to that! favourite crypt. you can sit outside on lithic benches and cradle your inner goth very nicely :) der herr ist mein licht und mein heil wer sollte ihn fürchten? the lord is my light and my salvation who should be frightened by him? one of the perfect lithic stone benches i mentioned earlier. mossy grave beds galore. eagle in the shadow. spider webbed maiden. i will al...

outside of wiesbaden, in the so called 'ländchen', there are several little villages, situated peacefully at the foothills of the taunus mountains. i refer to the region as 'the shire', you know, as in the place where the hobbits live in 'the lord of the rings' :) on one of my spring walks i discovered that auringen was in possession of a real hiking trail, approximately 8 km long. i had tried out the trail before, but failed miserably at following the correct paths, and ended up somewhere near medenbach ( i think i wrote about that in my last post. ) so of course i needed to return for a new try. the weather also was much better than the last time i visited, which made for a really beautiful walk. one of the downsides though, was the fact that the trail is badly signposted. i walked into dead ends at least twice, but i was determined to finish the walk this time, so i didn't give up.  tiny creeks are my favourite. it's so great t...