English Stories

A Sea of Temples beneath my Feet - In a Balloon over Bagan

03.05.2016 11:30
The flame hisses right above my head. A few roasted insects fall on my sweater. I shake them off, they fall a little forward, out and over the edge of the balloon basket. They plunge down almost 200 meters, landing on a field between some of the thousands of temples and stupas here in Bagan. We...

Hard Hits and Bleeding Love - The Hamar in Ethiopia

21.10.2015 13:52
The red blood can clearly be distinguished from the brown skin. It flows slowly but steadily in a small trickle down from the back of the young woman, eventually wetting her loincloth. She does not reveal any signs of pain. The woman continues dancing and singing, blowing into her horn from time to...

A Piece of Glacier-Ice, please – At Jökulsarlon in Iceland

05.08.2015 10:16
It takes quite some time. And a few sunbeams are of pretty good use. Of course, I cannot immediately see how a glacier moves down a mountain, but I have seen one melting. At least a tiny wee bit. And my tongue was caught for a small moment on a shard of this melting ice-giant, just as long as it...

The World and Me: Why Selfies are Part of Travelling

06.05.2015 22:06
This is me. And here again. And here, yes, that is me, too. Here in front of the Taj Mahal, there in Machu Picchu, another one in Petra, there at the end of the world. It is just me in front of another tourist attraction. Always in a similar pose: one with crossed arms, sometimes my hands in my...

Nierstein - Springtime in the (maybe) most beautiful town in the world

22.04.2015 20:02
Tiny, green, sparkling in the sunlight - the vine-buds strive towards the light. Millions of them, growing on hundreds of hectars earth. Their little knobbly heads are stretching skywards, reaching out from young and old vine branches, longing for warming energy. They want to grow, they want to...

Peru - Love letter to Machu Picchu

29.07.2014 10:52
You are so beautiful, resting there on this mountain, between even higher holy peaks, at the end of a valley. When the sun wakes you in the early morning, the beams of light penetrating the clouds, getting caught in the dew drops on the still damp grass. Oh Machu Picchu, your creators were smart,...

Iran - Love in the Time of Sharia

25.03.2014 16:07
She is standing at the tomb of poet Hafez in Shiraz. She is tracing the ornate contours of the verses on the sepulchral stone with a finger. The verses are about love - what else. Her love, to be precise, and that is the reason for her being here. She hopes for appreciation from her parents, her...

Cameroon - Hunting with the Pygmies

14.04.2013 16:02
His arm has disappeared in the humid earth, almost up to his shoulder. The hand of the Baka-Pygmy fumbles around in the deep warm earth, grabs frequently into the void, searching for traces of bush rats. Somewhere in there it is hiding. It knows that we are hunting it, it knows that its life is in...