bruecken_schlag – Seite 13 – bruecken_schlag

Baltic Love – Rügen in Light and Shadow

My love for the Baltic Sea is endless. My eyes grow wide and dreamy when I talk about it, and I have an infinite supply of tales to tell about different cities, especially the hanseatic ones, along the shores of this most beautiful of seas. When Andrew and I made for two days on Germany’s biggest island Rügen, I was excited like a four-year-old at Christmas. I will soon tell you about our hikes from the little village of Lohme, where we stayed, along the coast with its famous chalk cliffs. But today all I want to share with you is my passion for the Baltic Sea in pictures.

My sister once said she prefered the North Sea, and when I asked her why, she said: „Because I like the Elbe River better than the Alster.“ To someone from Hamburg that makes immediate sense. The Elbe and the North Sea are less domesticated, more untamed, wilder. The Alster and the Baltic are calm and reliable – some may say boring. I cannot for the life of me agree with the last point. I have seen the Baltic shimmer in all different shades of blue and green and grey, I have seen it crushing towering waves onto the sand and lie still like a mirror. It has never once bored me.

One of the things I love is that the Baltic can change colour from grey to blue and back in a matter of minutes. Also I am convinced that the sky is of a more intense blue than elsewhere (if it is blue that is, and not overcast). I feel like the Mediterranean is always blue. Granted, a beautiful blue. But the colour range of the Baltic just seems richer, and sometimes a grey sea is just what I need. Grey and angry.

Images like this make me feel free. Where might that boat be going? Is it maybe without aim and just leasurely, idly swimming by? How symbolic of life is a boat on a sea – trying to fight through the storms it might encounter and trying to hold on to the peaceful sunny days?

The Baltic Sea is also so different from the Mediterranean or the Black Sea with their heat and palms and sandy beaches. Granted, you can have wonderful beach vacations by the Baltic, but generally the climate is of course rougher, harsher. I may like the Baltic better when there’s a strong wind and I’m wearing hiking boots and a rain jacket than when I’m wearing a bikini. The climate also grants that you have the most wonderful of combinations – forests right by the sea. When I walk that line between the rich green leafy thicket and the wide openness of the sea, I don’t need a Mediterranean beach.

I am also fascinated by the swans at the Baltic. Seagulls, yes, but swans? When we went to Rügen now, I was almost surprised that they were there. I had only ever before in the Baltic seen them in Poland. But there were loads of them, and watching them dive into the tiny waves for food or sliding by majestically on the water was beautiful. In this picture, I especially like the two to the right. They look like a long married couple.

When the sun sets at the Baltic, and the sky is exploding in colours that you don’t get to see even in the most beautiful sunsets in the city, light fades, and the sounds of the waves and the wind become more dominant than what is visible to the eye, I get calm and relaxed and I can forget my busy life for a little while. There is peace.

Do you have a favourite sea? Have you been to Germany’s biggest island Rügen? Would you like to go?

Bridges in Nottingham, England

September 22, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 4 Kommentare

Today I bring to you a bridge cluster, if you will. I am enjoying how in this picture the two very different bridges are at a right angle, leading up to each other, connecting not only two river banks, but also each other. When I visited Nottingham in June and Andrew took me back to the train station, we had a little bit of time to kill before my train left, so we ventured away from the station and found this spot. I don’t remember where exactly it was, just that the stone bridge and the modern steel one in combination with the red brick warehouse and the dodgy and dirty looking water reminded me of home, of Hamburg’s granary city and its feel of trade and hard work. How that is changing now the port city with its modern architecture and posh restaurants and bars is coming about there…

I have written about it before: Nottingham is not the prettiest or most enchanting city I have been to. But it had its very own and individual flair. In many ways I like the coolness and the distance with which the city met me. It was honest and down to earth. I took the picture in June, but it looks just like Berlin looks now in the autumn weather that I see when I look out of my window. It seems to be saying: „I don’t care if you think it’s summer. I’m doing whatever the hell I want.“ I wish I could be a little bit more like that sometimes.

I f you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

Myths of Diversity – A Travel Rant

September 18, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 12 Kommentare

As of lately, there have been quite a few articles that deal with the downsides of life as a travel writer. They address issues such as loneliness, exhaustion, instability, angst and overworking. I think those are very very important points to bring to everyone’s awareness. Even having been out there just once for a relatively short amount of time, I had to deal with some of the issues and did not enjoy coming back and having to explain to people that I did not just return from a five-month wellness trip. But the articles also made me think about some more uncomfortable things. And for the first time in my travel blogging life, I really wanted to rant about some stuff.

The first thing that came to my mind is that these articles serve a very specific function – and that is, they ask for sympathy. I do not think that the main purpose is to inform people who do not know about the issues raised. It is to be reassured by like-minded people that it is okay to sometimes feel bad in this very privileged lifestyle. Why do I think this is the first reason for these articles? Because, if we’re honest, the travel blogosphere is for the most part a self-sustaining microcosm. Especially when it comes to the vast amount of smaller blogs, we write for each other and reproduce the lifestyle we love for one another, justifying our belief system to a crowd of people who support it anyway.

Usually, I do not have a problem with any of that. I am part of this system and I think each of us still has enough wisdom to share that there is a justification for all of our writing. But sometimes I miss the reflective side of it. And while it is important to speak about the downsides of travel and the hard times, I think it is equally as important that we understand what an extremely privileged life it is.

In this context, there are a few myths that persist and that no one touches. One in particular. And this is where my rant starts. Here it is:

Travel does not bring together people from „all kinds of different backgrounds“. It is by and large a community of quite privileged people.

Just like travel blogs are not read by „regular“ people but by a specific travel crowd, the people you meet travelling are not all different from one another. This is nothing but a lie. Travel brings together a very specific clientele of people. And what is more unsettling: Usually they are well-educated and from privileged backgrounds. Think about your couchsurfing hosts, your hostel roommates or the people on that boat trip you booked around the islands of any given country. I would be very surprised if the majority in any of these scenarios was not something we would call privileged.

To me the most significant thing is this: Go to any twitter travel chat and see what people say to the question what inspired them to travel. 95% of them will say that they are from families where travel was valued and that they have been travelling with their families since they were children. How many families with children can afford extensive travel? Even if it’s camping, hitchhiking and couchsurfing! If you talk to people who are actually not privileged at all, they will laugh in your face when you tell them about travel inspite of a low budget, especially with a family. Who will work their two jobs? Who will give them more than a few days in a row off work?

I am not saying that travel cannot be strenuous. By all means I am not saying that professional travel bloggers are not very very hard workers or don’t deserve the life style they have created for themselves by putting in the effort. But as we seek comfort in each other when we feel that it is all too much, let’s remember that to a great number of people those complaints must sound like sheer mockery. Because they never even had the chance to leave the country – even when the next border isn’t far away. They never had a chance to act upon their curiosity for the world and their wanderlust, because they weren’t taught that it might actually be possible and because their finances barely cover the cost of living.

Everyone who grew up travelling or discovered travel as a grown-up and had the means, chances and luck to include it in their life extensively should thank their lucky stars that it all came together for them. I consider myself undeservedly privileged in that sense. I have no idea why I should be one of the chosen ones who can afford travel, but I am, and for this grace of fate I am grateful every day.

Rügenbrücke, Stralsund / Rügen, Germany

September 15, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

The biggest island in Germany isn’t necessarily the most famous one. It is called Rügen and is in the Baltic Sea. And it is connected to the mainland city Stralsund by a stunning bridge, the Rügenbrücke.

When I was at college in the area, you could reach the island only by a tiny bridge, the Rügendamm, that always had horrible traffic jams on it. My sister once took ten hours to get off of the island in the car. Since 2007 the modern Rügenbrücke offers the much more comfortable way to cross the strait between the mainland and the island, the Strelasund.

When we went to Rügen this weekend, I took a picture on the way there in beautiful early autumn weather. The aesthetics of the modern bridge stand strongly against the bright sky with it’s Baltic blue colour, and I can’t wait to be by the beach of the sea I might love most of all of them.

On the way back, Andrew took another picture of the same bridge in much more dramatic weather conditions. The steel towers almost disappear into the foggy clouds, and rain is starting to drum on the windshield. I can hardly believe that it is the same place – but in two different directions. It puts a whole new perspective on the idea of, well, perspective itself.

I f you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

Bridge Metaphors

September 8, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 6 Kommentare

There is a feeling of autumn grabbing a hold of me, earlier in the year than I am used to it. I feel like retreating into my shell for a while and reflecting on lots of things, and that goes with moments that lack inspiration. This feels like a time to think, not a time to create. I find such breaks immensely important, but they don’t necessarily go well with maintaining a blog.

Stari Most, Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina

I cannot go without a bridge pic in this post though – this old favourite is Stari Most in Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina – the bridge that inspired my blog’s name and theme.

Now, I still have loads of stories and thoughts to share that I have stocked up on over the summer for my weekly posts. But as I went through my photos, there was no bridge that inspired me enough to do my Sunday piece on this week.

Instead I remembered that I had seen on twitter this week that Istanbul’s slogan for their application to host the 2020 Olympics was „Bridge Together“, and I was once more reminded of the power of language and the power of the Bridge as a metaphor. And it made all the more sense to me that I was always meant to love Istanbul – as a city of bridging two continents together literally and metaphorically.

But there is more ways in which the bridge is present in our language. When there is need of calming down, of letting things come to you, we decide to „cross that bridge when we come to it.“ When we want to cut off all opportunities of going back, we say we are „burning bridges“. And there is the playful merging of the two that says „We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.“

Bridges thus seem to be an inherent part of the metaphor of the „path of life“. They hint at overcoming obstacles, but also at the fact that the road won’t always be the same and there are bound to be transitions. Whilst on a bridge, there might be a feeling of in-between. But only while on the bridge do you have a distanced outlook on the lands on both sides of the bridge. Maybe that is what my current autumnal need for solitude is for.

Capture the Colour – Streetart Edition

September 5, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 14 Kommentare

I am not a photographer. I am slowly, ever so slowly starting to get a grip on perspective and lighting in a process of learning by doing as I am taking photos for the blog more and more; and I have recently understood that photo editing is something I cannot stay away from forever. But I am still self-conscious when it comes to my pictures.

All the bigger was my surprise that Julika of Sateless Suitcase (an enchanting blog everyone should follow!!) tagged me in theCapture the Colour Photo Contest. While I am most definitely not going to win anything (it must be a huge contest with God knows how many participants), I enjoyed the process of choosing five pictures for their specific colour – a new way of looking at photos and training my eye to see photography as artistry. I chose to show you pictures according to a theme, like I have seen others do it on their respective posts (Julika chose one city for each colour), and am showing you five street art pictures I took this year.

Red

This is a former squat in Tübingen, Germany that is still a self-governed youth center. When I went to school in this cute little Southern German town, I would pass by here on my bike almost every day. I took the picture last March when I went to visit my alma mater. Most of the writing on the facade are slogans of the political left. Tübingen was an important place in the 1968 student movement, and I feel like this place is somewhat continuing that tradition.

Green

This is actually a connection box for street lighting. They are usually just left grey and boring in Germany, but this one in Lübbenau, in the Spreewald region South of Berlin, has been turned into a little canvas for a cute little piece of art. And didn’t I have to love it all the more as it was depicting – a bridge!

White

Gdańsk Zaspa was my street art discovery of the year, and I have dedicated a whole article to it here. It is an area in my beloved Polish city Gdańsk where the socialist concrete buildings have been turned into overdimensional works of art. I love this one because it is so plain and yet so detailed with its sea of drowning houses.

Blue

I took this picture at the demonstration against the partial tear-down of Berlin’s Eastside Gallery. This is the street art you can see on the original Berlin wall – and the hole that was recently made in it in order for an investor’s plans for building large apartment and office complexes in the area. The Eastside Gallery is the longest connected piece of the Berlin wall that is still in place and an amazing document of history as well as an artwork of epic proportions. I hope it will keep being protected by the people and government of Berlin.

Yellow

On my last day in Chicago, my friend Jesse took me to the predominantly Mexican-American neighbourhood of Pilsen for some excellent, excellent Mexican food and a blast of Latino culture. Getting off at the L stop at 18th Street (use the pink line!) alone was amazing – the station is covered in beautiful art that shows the cultural heritage of the inhabitants of this part of the city. I could have stayed and looked at the details forever.

This is my street art focussed colour contest contribution. Now I would like to tag Aggy of DreamExploreWander, Ulli of ansichtswechsel, Aryn of Driftwood & Daydreams, Aiko of Behind My Messy Desk and Mandy of Emm in London and invite all you great blogging girls to do the same and show us the colour in your life!

The Last Year of My Twenties

September 2, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 14 Kommentare

It was another birthday in a foreign country for me last month. As I go through pictures of birthdays in my twenties, it feels weird to see how I have changed and how much I have grown. On the inside more than on the outside, maybe. To be quite truthful I do not want to switch places with that girl who just turned twenty in El Paso, Texas, In fact I can hardly believe she’s me. She was so much less confident, so much more doubtful about her place in the world. At 25 – a birthday that I for once spent at home, back then that was Tübingen – I had already found out much more about who I wanted to be. It was to be one of the best years of my life, the year I got to travel through the Balkans. I was in a good place that year – full of hope and anticipation, full of blissful naivety.

Last year, I was in Tallinn, Estonia for my 28th birthday. I made a lot of big decisions on that day, resolutions really, something which I do not usually do. Miraculously, all of them have worked out for me. I quit smoking. I ate more healthily. I exercised more. I have loved and been loved. I cannot deny it: I have had a blessed, blessed year.

Birthdays make me reminiscent, reflective and a bit nostalgic. I take my birthdays seriously. When people do not set great store by their special day, I understand that. But for me it doesn’t work that way. I look at those pictures above and I see a different person with different experiences at different stages of her life in every one of them. I can see how I have grown as a person into who I am today. And I have reason to think about that development and ask myself if I want what I have, if I want things I could have if I tried, or if I want things I can never have and will just have to get over. I have come to have two rules: If it’s the first, be grateful. If it is either of the last two, do something about it – even if doing something only means to suck it up and stop fretting.

As I start into the last year of my twenties, I think to myself that I have learned so much since I was that girl in this post’s first picture. I have learned that short hair suits me better than long. I have learned that even the best of friends sometimes come and go, and that it’s not a catastrophe if they do. I have learned that a broken heart will heal, even if it feels like it can never possibly beat without hurting again. I have learned that a good man will care about his girl’s happiness and fulfillment. I have learned that too much ambition will kill you, and that being second best can be okay (although I am really still struggling with this one, being a horrible perfectionist).

One might think that with all this life experience I could now lean back and harvest what I’ve sown. But maybe the most important lesson that my twenties have taught me is that knowing all these things makes me none the wiser. The next time I fall apart with a friend will hurt just as much. The next heartbreak will, too, and it will feel like it will never ever stop. And it will probably take me quite a few more times of feeling like a failure before I finally come to a healthy understanding of achievement. May the last year of my twenties bring me one step closer to balance and inner peace, even if that means chaos and struggle for now. I would like to get to a bit of a stable place in my thirties – as much as I loved every bit of uproar in my twenties – and if 29 needs to bring on the crazy in order for that to happen, so be it.

This year, my birthday was spent in Chicago – that is, I was at the beach in Wilmette for most of the day:

I wonder what it is going to be next year when I hit the big 30.

What have your twenties taught you? Do you set great store by your birthdays? Do or did you have any dreams for your thirties?

Latin Bridge in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina

September 1, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

Today’s bridge brings you back to that country that has my heart and to a historical place for all of Europe.

This is Latin Bridge, or Latinska ćuprija, in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. The river that runs under it is the river Miljacka, so beautifully besung by Halid Bešlić in the song of the same name that I have mentioned in this post about the Sound of Bosnia. The bridge is one of the typically Ottoman structures you see so often in the Balkans – with their several arches and curvy elegance and playfulness. The bridge is even part of the coat of arms of Sarajevo, albeit quite stylized.

To be honest, although it may be the prettiest bridge over the Miljacka River, Latin Bridge didn’t impress me much at first, and I found the Miljacka to be shallow and narrow. But then it came to me that in this very spot, few metres from where I took this photo, archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb called Gavrilo Princip in 1914. Many of you will know that this is considered one of the, if not the decisive moment that started World War I. This is typically Bosnia. It keeps surprising you with amazing facts and, I have no other words, a pretty fucked-up history. If there ever was a country that made me understand that things aren’t always what they appear to be at first glance, it was this one.

I f you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

Five Reasons Chicago Became My Favourite US City

August 28, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 16 Kommentare

As of lately, if you don’t have a great interest in Chicago, you haven’t had much to read on my blog. Now I still have many posts to write about the „Second City“ of the US, but I don’t want to bore you and instead keep diversion on my blog. Because of this, I am going to mix it up a little again in the future. I have some great posts in store. Nonetheless, I feel like my Chicago-adventures deserve an all-embracing post that rounds it all up for now. So today I will tell you the five reasons why Chicago quickly stole my heart and became my favourite city of all the ones that I have visited in the US.

1. Walkability and Public Transport

My most influential US experience, as I have mentioned, has been in El Paso, Texas. In El Paso it is virtually impossible to walk anywhere at all, and I was never allowed to use public transport for my hostmum’s fear of someone mugging me or the likes. In Chicago, not only are the sidewalks, but with the cta, Chicago Transit Authority, there is a magnificent system of metros (called the L, short for ELevated) and busses that will make every part of the city easily accessible. Convenient day-, three-day- and seven-day-passes make it a joy to move about the city. Apart from that, a lot of the stations on the L show the charms of days long past with their wooden platforms and cast-iron banisters.

Chicago is easily accessible in the most convenient, healthy and environment friendly ways. What’s not to love.

2. Architecture

My readers know that I am a fan of the medieval red brick beauty of Northern European Hanseatic cities. But Chicago has shown to me what urban beauty in a large metropolis can truly mean. Skyscrapers don’t have to be glass boxes without creative form or shape. They come in neo gothic, neo classicist, and in round, triangular, and square shapes in all creative combinations. I might not want to live on the 57th floor of any given building, but those skyscrapers are sure impressive. And they can be, I think I have mentioned it before, funnily reminiscent of social realist architecture in Eastern Europe.

Chicago has opened my eyes to a new artform – modern architecture. Thank you!

3. The Greenery

Chicago has a seemingly infinite number of parks. It starts by the great ones downtown, Grant Park and Lincoln Park, that stretch along the entire coastline of Lake Michigan, and continues in uncountable small neighbourhood parks in every part of town. A lot of them have lagoons that add a freshness and wideness to the urbanity you find downtown. They are lively places where people from different communities seem to come together to have a good time, and people watching is a wonderful pastime here.

Chicago is not only loud and crazy in its urbanity, but it provides spaces of retreat in its midst.

4. Shopping

Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely not the girl who goes abroad to shop. In all honesty, I don’t even like shopping very much at home, and it is beyond me why someone would spend precious time in a foreign place with an activity as tedious as running through shops that look the same in all the Western world anyway. But… when there’s shops like in Chicago, it is different. There are unique places like the above Coffee and Tea Exchange that feels like what in German would be called a Kolonialwarenladen – one of the general shops of yore that would mainly sell items from the colonies. And there is an amazing vintage shop culture for ANYthing – clothes, records, and of course, books!

Chicago puts the atmosphere, the individuality and the fun back into shopping for me. I haven’t had this much fun browsing through items in a long time.

5. The Lake

Finally, Chicago’s biggest selling point to a water girl like me is bound to be Lake Michigan. Being from Hamburg, I appreciate water in a city more than anything. Being at the shore of a river, a lake or an ocean clears my head and makes me happy. Usually I wouldn’t have thought that a lake would really do it for me – too static. But Lake Michigan is different because it feels like the sea. Its colours change between a Baltic grey and a Mediterranean bright blue, it has angry big waves and quiet glassy clear days. If you get out of the immediate city, you will come across beaches that are well worth a holiday.

I appreciate Chicago’s urbanity, its excitement and all the convenience that it has to offer. But the beauty of it is that it doesn’t only offer that, but also the opportunity to easily get away from it all and feel yourself in nature. It seems that the city has it all.

What about you? Have you ever been to Chicago? Does it seem like somewhere you would want to go? Have you got a favourite city in the US?

Bridge at South Pond, Chicago, Illinois, US

August 25, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

Today I am self-indulgently using a picture of me on a bridge. I hope you can bear with me 🙂This is a bridge at Chicago’s South Pond in Lincoln Park. One of the fabulous things about Chicago is the myriad of parks the city has. In Lincoln Park you can strut from South Pond via the Zoo to the North Pond Nature Sanctuary in one long beautiful walk – and it is all for free!

Standing on the bridge at South Pond looking at the Chicago skyline, I felt the great gift of the green and the nature surrounding me inmidst of the big city. There were flowers in blossom and different birds came to rest at the shores of the pond, families were strolling the Park Nature Trail with laughing children, and me and my two friends were enjoying our walk. It was peaceful, and yet the skyscrapers in the distance promised tales of rattling metros, honking cars, fussy businessmen and -women strutting along through the street canyons, bustling shops, friends sitting over coffee at Starbucks, and all the noise and excitement of urban life. Between those different worlds, I felt eternally grateful. What a rich life it is that I am allowed to lead!

I f you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

bruecken_schlag_worte

Brückenschläge und Schlagworte

Autor: bruecken_schlag (Seite 13 von 27)

Baltic Love – Rügen in Light and Shadow

Bridges in Nottingham, England

Myths of Diversity – A Travel Rant

Rügenbrücke, Stralsund / Rügen, Germany

Bridge Metaphors

Capture the Colour – Streetart Edition

The Last Year of My Twenties

Latin Bridge in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina

Five Reasons Chicago Became My Favourite US City

Bridge at South Pond, Chicago, Illinois, US

Mehr zum Thema

Suche

Mehr zum Thema