I once was asked by a kiwi woman if there is a sea in Germany.
I never answered as I thought that she was pulling my leg.
She also asked me if we have universities!?
Well, here’s the sea…1st question answered:
Autor-Archive: Arno Wirtz
Believing my GPS I should be on the German island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea (for those geographically challenged, that’s to the right of the great North Sea and in a somewhat coldish latitude).
But I’m not sure, I have a sense that I took the wrong exit and that I somehow sleepwalked to Greece.
According to the lore that I grew up with, where I am should be grey, cold and miserable.
I should be lucky to ever see the sun and life should be no bucket of laughs.
Yet I’m not seeing it, and I still can’t recall a single negative impression from my week on Ruegen.
This island is in what was once the dreaded – by West Germany anyway – GDR (German Democratic Republic or simply East Germany).
On the charts of fun winter holiday destinations it was said to be equal to northern Siberia. And the country’s sincerety and openness was only matched by North Korea.
What I’m getting here though is a sense that I’ve been conned a little by western information flows.
I’m having my own experience that puts the western propaganda about the East to roughly what it was, a political propaganda porky.
By the way, East Germans were fed similar nonsense about the West by their political leaders (so I was informed by one very interesting East German gentleman).
The East in fact is stunningly beautiful.
It has wonderful forests that have been protected and left alone for a very long time.
The people are incredibly friendly, open and relaxed. There is a rich history, and the architecture is just magnificent.
The images below are a few examples of what awaits in this part of Germany.
It all seems Greek to me.
It’s definitely autumn over here in northern Germany.
What I love most during this time is the crispness of the light on a sunny day.
It makes my heart jump up and down in joy – it’s that beautiful – and I just love it.
I also love walking around while looking at the light.
There is a new melancholy in the air that I hadn’t noticed in the summer.
Watching the people go about their day it’s clear that life is slowing down and getting ready for the long winter months.
The people will miss the light and warmth that the warmer seasons provide.
There are different sounds in the air and what appears loud in summer suddenly seems muted.
Not sure if this is just my impression – or if sounds really do sound different in autumn – but to me it’s a tangible change that I enjoy.
With the change in the light and sound comes a certain quietness that has a sense of calm.
As the world chooses a lower gear it’s the people around me that grab my attention.
I notice lots of them enjoying the rarer sunny days and making the most of the warmth that soon will seem like a luxury in the harsher climate of the German winter.
Awwww…
So, there I was, hitting the pavements of Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast.
I was happily walking along some narrow alleys wondering how to best do what I like doing most, which is to photograph street portraits.
In a previous post I mentioned that it is now illegal to photograph people without their consent, thereby rendering natural street photography pretty much redundant in Germany.
It is of course permissible to ask first and shoot later, or to photograph in such a way that people can’t be identified.
Contemplating that it might be time to start asking people if I could take their photograph I dreaded the possibility of missing good images because I might get turned down.
In general my approach has always been to ask before photographing and during many journeys outside of Germany I have rarely been turned down.
But Germans are different and most just aren’t keen to be photographed.
So the chance of asking for a photograph and losing out is pretty high.
Anyway, my wonderful travel guide – who has a habit of taking the mikey out of me – had earlier pinned a mid-sized pirate flag to my camera bag.
Turns out that Germans found this funny and wherever I went the flag brought smiles to peoples faces.
It also turned out that it was easier to ask people for permission to photograph.
Somehow this pirate flag had the ability to engage people in a way that merely being human did not.
The lovely couple below is one such example of barriers being broken down by the use of a pirate flag.
We saw each other coming…and there we were…a match made in heaven, and what I think is a fab portrait.
After making the picture I asked the couple if I could email them a copy of the image.
To this the gentleman kindly replied that they’d just gotten rid of their computer.
And there you go, another lesson learned. We don’t all need this modern stuff to happily get by in life.
Many thanks to the friendly couple, who made a wonderful photographic subject.
My wonderful travel guide pointing out an area of photographic interest while at the same time preserving her anonymity:
Well, it’s official now, it’s autumn.
First thing you notice is that people begin scraping their car windows in the morning.
Luckily the central heating keeps everything cosy, and if you don’t have a need to step outside – or look outside the window – you wouldn’t really notice the difference at first.
But the signs of seasonal change are everywhere.
The temperature gauge at night says 0 degrees, the birds start gathering for their big migrations, and the trees have put on colours in the autumn spectrum.
After my first German summer in 25 years – which was a blast – I’m now preparing for my first winter.
The days are noticeably shorter, very short in fact.
While the height of summer provided 16+ daylight hours, now we’re down to roughly 11 hours, and on the 21st of December it will be 7+ hours.
Not much light to be out and about photographing.
The change of seasons became very obvious the other day when I was sitting by my lounge window while observing the surroundings during some heavy rains.
The mood in the landscape was different, there was darkness in the air that I hadn’t noticed during earlier months.
The smells were also different and just seemed fresher and from farther away.
Not sure what exactly triggers the birds to gather, but the skeins have certainly been busy exercising their formation flying over recent weeks.
Not too long and they will all be gone till spring.
