I know it‘s a privilege here in Germany to be able to take some - or even a lot of - time off of work to take care of your children. It‘s even more privileged to receive money while not working during that time. It’s also not very common to be able to get a paid parental leave if you’re the father. So, we‘re lucky to live in a country with great social-, health- and family-care! ... [Read More]

Where heaven and sea become one, the sails disappear. Our side has to say goodbye, but on the other side there are friends waiting, happy to welcome you. Farewell.

It’s that time of the year again… November is near and NaNoWriMo is just around the corner. I get excited about it since two or three years now, but I think I remember to have first heard of it already sometime around 2010. I liked the idea that you sit down each day for a month to write and at the end of it you have written your own novel. I knew that it would not be a finished book and that the whole idea is to get an early first draft ready during that time… just writing, not looking back, not listening to your inner critic and putting down 50000 words in one month ... [Read More]

The result of the election last Sunday was as I expected. A far-right party is the third strongest party in the parliament now. Roughly 13% voted for them. Funny enough, they are the most successful in the areas with very few foreigners and refugees. I don‘t know why especially these people vote for more nationalism. The area where they are most successful is Saxony. I heard a radio interview, telling that an average kid in Saxony gets about 40 hours of political education during their time in school, starting at an age where many already left school ... [Read More]

I got to see the first couple of minutes of the new Star Trek: Discovery series. I didn’t hear a lot about it up until now, but I also wasn’t really searching for reviews or opinions. I was a huge fan of Star Trek when I was a bit younger. Deep Space Nine will forever be special to me. I really liked TNG and also Voyager, although I realize that there are some really strange episodes and characters in it ... [Read More]

It’s Sunday, election day… and I’m scared. I’m afraid this might be a turning point for our lives here in Germany. It’s the election where an extreme right party might become the third strongest party in our parliament. The people in this party are among the worst our country brings forth. The AfD (Alternative für Deutschland – Alternative for Germany) and the whole movement behind it is horrifying. Lots of people will vote for them because they are not satisfied with the current government and politics in general ... [Read More]

It hasn’t been too long until I got the first couple of responses to my last post! First of all it’s great to see people reacting to what I write. It makes me think I’m on the right path here. (Shush if you don’t think so 😉) Manton picked up on the part about caring too much about the stats: If all that drives you is the number of likes on a tweet, or subscribers to your podcast, it’s easy to get discouraged when the numbers don’t pan out ... [Read More]

One of the biggest purposes of my blog is to improve my writing and find out in which direction I should go with it. Now that I have a vague idea of some rules I like to set for myself and this site, I wondered how I could make it work this time. I had a couple of blogs in the past, all of which are offline now. I wrote in bursts… there might be a few months where I posted a lot, but then there would be silence for the rest of the year ... [Read More]

You do what? What is blogging? But... Why? I don‘t get it. I had some conversations like this in the past. “Normal people“ don‘t understand why anybody would take a relatively large amount of time to write about whatever and put it somewhere on the internet, exposing themselves, giving away a lot of private information. Should I try to explain it to them? Would they understand? I know about all the good reasons for blogs, microblogs, adding and owning content etc ... [Read More]

Ever since I learned the Swedish language for my time at a university in this beautiful country, there was one word that especially spoke to me. It probably is the word that describes the Swedish culture the best. It’s not just a word… it’s a way of life, a way of thinking. I somehow feel connected to it.