october '16: hiking in the valley.

you don't always have to leave the place you are staying in in order to experience something new. sometimes it's just fine to stroll through an already known area, a familiar landscape, the streets of a city you've been to plenty of times. sometimes you rediscover your love for that place again, looking at it with different eyes or just realize that you are content and at peace in this locality. le val-d'ajol is such a place for me. no matter how often i set out to do a little walk or tiny hiking tour around this village, i always discover something beautiful and it soothes my fickle and always overthinking mind for quite a while. i feel at peace, strangely, even though i know that i'll be feeling unstable very soon, at least until i return to the reality, my reality in germany. sometimes it all feels like a dream, the places i've been to and dreamed about and am in love with looking back. there's so much beauty around us, but it all falls back as soon as you have to deal with a job you don't exactly love to work at, or with people you don't like, or with yourself, you and your insecurities, your shortcomings and failures.

it's always a little strange to look back in time at my pictures, to see that indeed there is something out there that is worth staying alive for, even though you might feel utterly lost and forgotten in the moment. it is bitter sometimes to get to know places, knowing you'll love them, but at the same time having to leave them as time's running up and you have to face your confined surroundings again.

but at least you have the memories, and maybe that's all you need for the time being to continue on a path that looks like a black hole swallowing universes.

morning mist.

bright pink glory.

couldn't get enough of it.

the slight fog was really magical.

looking down onto leyval, which is a village that's part of the commune of le val-d'ajol - and the place where we rented our chalet.

signs of autumn.

cat in a window. ( it's a cat heaven up there )

cows in the shadows.

path of happiness.

one of my most favourite things ín the vosges mountains are the old farm houses everywhere, nestled perfectly into little hillsides.

forest light.

far in the back you can see le val-d'ajol, the main village.

we met horses.

the morning sun was illuminating the woods we strolled through in such a beautiful way.

more cows.

blood red leaves are filling up my heart with joy like almost no other thing in this world.

barn ruins.

there are a lot of crosses strewn all over the valley, about 145 to be exact. there's even a hiking circuit that leads you to the most historic crosses in the valley. it's quite an egg search finding some of the crosses.

found a cute butterfly.

another cross was 'crossing' our way.

typical farm house of the vosges mountains. i especially love the wide archways.

ha, this post features a lot of kittens.

we stopped by our chalet for a small rest, to drink some coffee and eat some cake before taking another stroll down into the village. we found this young cat under our balcony table. there were a lot of cats rummaging around our house, sometimes you could find them on our door stoops, cuddling with each other, other times they were just passing by and looking at us indifferently. it's truly like a kitten paradise up there.

the city hall of le val d'ajol.

notre-dame de l'assomption.

one of the main plazas in le val-d'jaol.

found some alien plants in front of a hiking route board.

and a kitten on our balcony table in the evening. <3 p="">

may '20: seeking modernism.

super pink rhododendron buds emerging! i start off this post with some flower images to appreciate and praise the time of spring, especially the month of may, which is the most abundant spring month to me personally. all the blossoms, all the fresh greens amass during may, and my heart and mind are hardly ever able to not frolick & gush about it all! for this post i am returning to one walk i did with the sole purpose to find a special mid-century villa in königstein ( which would ultimately prove to be a failure - i did find it, but i couldn't approach it properly to have a good look at it and only ever saw a tiny bit of the garden/forest side ). the whole walk was not a letdown, though, as i did find some other mid-century & brutalism gems and thoroughly enjoyed walking through the old spa town in the taunus mountains. rhododendron shrubs yield all kinds of different blossoms in myriad colours, they are easy to breed, therefore a wide variety can be found all over the wor...

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 ...

the america chronicles '22: austin I - city of the violet crown.

sighted on the way to austin: the texas colorado river . but beware, this is not the iconic colorado river ( 2.334 km long ) that has its source in the rocky mountains and confluences in the gulf of california, flowing through the grand canyon and other magnificent landscapes along the way, but this is texas' very own colorado river with a length of 1.387 km starting in the llano estacado plains in northwestern texas, and eventually ending up in the gulf of mexico at matagorda bay . why there are two colorado rivers in the US, i really don't know 😅 my guess is, that they were named by two people in different times, not knowing of the other's colorado river discovery. we'll meet the texas colorado river again in austin, so i will probably bestow more information on you eventually ;D a random road squirrel, also found on the way to austin. austin is about 187 miles ( 300 km ) away from baytown and is situated west from there in central texas. it sits at the foot of th...

ghost of nature.

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