Tag: Germany
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BACHARACH
Every night before retiring, I see a book sitting next to my bed. A book I use frequently to dream about my next adventure: the Lonely Planet Guide to Germany. The cover shows a little village with a dominant church on a river. After some map gazing I discovered the cover pic was taken just an hour or so south of us on the Rhine. The sun made a rare appearance this weekend and despite the frosty conditions, Padma and I drove to Bacharach to check it out. It was too…
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INTO THE LAND OF MY GERMAN ANCESTORS
I had visited Germany on numerous occasions prior to living here. And every time I visited I felt an odd sense of belonging. As long as I didn’t open my mouth to speak, I even felt German. I felt comfortable and at home. And in a way, I was indeed home. Half of me is German. My father is half German and my mother is half German. For 15 years, I have been trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that constitutes how I came to be. While researching my father’s…
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THE WALK HOME
My heart really races each time I come home from work. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. It’s not entirely because I know my sweetheart is awaiting me. I get a pretty good workout on my way home. I get off the train at Oberwinter and immediately get on a pathway to climb home to ‘Oberwinter Heights’. In a bit less than 300 metres I climb 66 metres. It is a super steep climb. I just put my head down and take a step at a time. I like to pretend I’m slowly and…
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AN AUSSIE MEAT PIE TO SAY THANKS
I’ve been waiting 21 years to say ‘thank you’ to former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer. Today I got that chance and bought him an Aussie meat pie to show my gratitude. In 1996, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his deputy Tim Fischer acted swiftly and decisively to launch a gun buyback program. Twelve days before they launched the National Firearms Agreement and Buyback Program, Martin Bryant unpacked an arsenal of automatic weapons at the historic site of Port Arthur and massacred 35 people. It wasn’t a popular move…
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CALLING ALL WEBERTS
Grab a map of Germany and find Frankfurt in the centre of the country. Then trace your finger about 100 kilometres northeast and amongst the forests and fields you’ll find the tiny hamlet of Olberode. In 1364 four brothers Adolf, Christian, Frederick and Eckhart cleared land at the site and the village of Olberode was born. Now, 650 years later, Olderode is throwing a big anniversary party and is inviting its lost sons and daughters to return to their ancestral homelands this September. In the mid-1800s emigration fever struck Germany and…
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FROM ALEPPO IN A VW
In May of 1993, Padma and I and our VW camper van left Syria with the hopes of spending a few months exploring Turkey. That didn’t quite work out the way we had planned. Our VW wasn’t was licensed in Syria and the Turks didn’t accept our international registration. It’s all complicated but in the end we had to pay a USD5000 bond and were given five days to pass through Turkey. Amazingly we got our $5K back at the Greek border but our plans of a few months photographing the…
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