Broadway Binge

I recently spent 2 weeks in New York City to feed my nostalgia and revisit this place that I kind of grew up with. I used to stay with a relative here on my past visits, who sadly passed away a few years ago. But what I did a few times with her was to go to TKTS and get discounted same-day tickets for a show. That way, I saw The Producers and Wicked, for example. However, it was usually not so easy to go to plays, because we had to go deep into New Jersey afterwards – which late […]

Revisiting New York: Politics, history and famil(iarit)y

Yesterday, I returned from my 10th visit to New York. After I blogged about my New York Nostalgia last autumn, I actually went through with it and booked a 12-day trip to New York, despite some doubts I had, mainly regarding the political situation. Is politics a reason not to visit a place? Depends. I think if you think like that, then I think a lot of countries are off the table for a vacation as well… most countries in the Middle East and northern Africa for their treatment of women and queer people, some European countries with right-wing governments […]

New York Nostalgia

Nine times I’ve been to New York in my life so far, and I feel the relationship that I have (or had) with this city has taught me a lot about life. Today when I think about New York, I get mildly overwhelmed at the thought of so many people and so much noise, but back when I visited, I really enjoyed this city. But let’s start at the beginning. My first visit to New York was in 1997 together with my mother. I was probably 12 or 13 years old, barely a teenager, and I definitely didn’t speak much […]

The Baltics and a new way to travel (for me)

Last week I visited the Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. I’ve been interested in visiting them for a while since they have such a fascinating history, and they are three countries that are as similar as they are different. Lithuania in particular was interesting to me because the language, Lithuanian, is one of the oldest and most archaic of all the Indo-European languages. For this journey, for the first time in my life I actually booked an organized group travel via Intrepid. There are plenty of similar companies that offer such tours, such as for example GAdventures and WeRoad. […]

Valencia: Sci-Fi, Aquariums and Bats

About a year ago I made a resolution to spend at least a week every winter in a sunny place. German winters are brutally dark, and every year my SAD gets worse. Looking for easy destinations that are affordable and not to far, I landed on Valencia. I’ve been interested in Valencia ever since I learned that it has a science center that is often used as a filming location for sci-fi movies and TV shows. Originally, this trip was supposed to actually happen a week before Christmas 2023, but I got COVID—so I ended up escaping the dark German […]

the author on a horse

Back back on the horse

Long time readers of my blog might recall my post Back on the horse from 12 years ago. I recommend reading that post for some necessary background information on my history with horseback riding and owning my own horses back in the day. Well, by now it’s been a very long 24 years since I had my own horse, Daisy, and it’s been 12 years since I last rode a horse during the lessons I mentioned in my previous post on this topic. I didn’t actually continue to go riding at the place that I went to 12 years ago […]

From the Pacific Northwest to California

Have you every planned a journey really badly? I certainly planned this one really, really badly. The plan was to go to Portland, Vancouver and San Francisco. But due to ridiculously more expensive single flights, I decided to fly to San Francisco, stay a night, and then fly  to Portland from there. Well that was a bit of a nightmare. But let’s start from the beginning. I left Germany around 10am, and after a brief layover in Copenhagen, entered the 11 hour flight to SF. It was alright but the flight gave me a headache, and I was exhausted by […]

Uppsala, revisiting Stockholm and a Comic Con

It’s been many, many years since my first and only visit to Stockholm so far. I took the opportunity to visit it again by combining a trip to Sweden with a trip to Denmark to visit my partner and meet some of his friends at a yearly meetup they have. The first part of the journey was all on my own though, and I figured that if I visit Stockholm, I might as well also visit Uppsala, where I’ve never been before. On the day of my flight, I landed very late at 23:30, and then took a train to […]

East Germany and Revisiting Prague

During my time at design high school, I went to Prague on a class trip – twice, because back then I was in my wild youth phase and I spend more time partying than studying, hence I had to repeat a grade. Back then, Prague was an amazing experience. The city had such a cool vibe, probably what people in the 90s meant when they said “Bohemian”. It is Bohemia after all. In mid-July 2019, I wanted to revisit Prague, combining it with a trip to East Germany and Berlin. So I flew to Prague. After arriving, I went straight out […]