Summer is full on here in Weimar. We’ve got temperatures hitting close to 40 degrees C and the weather is like on a tropical island. It feels good – almost like an extended vacation overseas. Ever since our return from India 3 weeks ago we are taking things easy. Soeren still is out from school and that alone slows down our routine immensely, with no time pressure for homework, sport runs, meal plans or bed time. It’s summer time and the living is really easy!
„Stay till Diwali!“ Last week my dad wished a few times. I wished we could …
A list of tasks to complete, must dos, deadlines to meet and unfinished projects to complete ran down like a matrix in my brain. Now as I sit here back in Weimar listening to the wind howl outside as the rain batters against the windows, I am thinking I wish I did.
Weimar – Brussels – Normandy Coast – Paris – Weimar
Weimar – Valdobbiadene – Rome - Amalfi Coast – Venice - Weimar
We are thinking of getting away. Satisfy the itch on our feet, packing up and heading to different shores. Not the travel we have been doing for work, workshops or photo shoots but the travel for us. The kind of travel where time is not an important commodity, instead it is the adventure and the experience that makes a trip memorable.
Summer vacations spent in India at my grandparents’ home in Delhi are forever etched in my memories. Their imposing house, at the end of the street, was nestled next to big open fields and further beyond those fields, small woodlands, that my brother, cousins and I called the “jungle.” Often, as we played out on the fields we would hear the howls of monkeys and the high pitched mewing of peacocks and other animals vibrating through the trees, drifting over the fields, sending us darting back to the house out of breath and petrified.
My word for 2014 came to me this summer when I was vacationing in Thailand. Up until then I had a few words sailing around in my head: listen; pause; awaken - but most of these were induced by the situation I was in at the time. What I wanted to do the most, what really makes up my character and defines my personality was the word - connect. And last year I cocooned myself from a lot of people shielding myself from disappointments, trouble, pain and worry
Close your eyes. Imagine the one place you would love to be in at this moment.
Where are you?
Me … I am in Norway – winding up around the narrow roads of the magnificent mountains, floating on the stunning clear fjords or lying on a lush green grassy hill under cherry trees. Roma … sitting in a lively coffee bar in Trastevere. Terracotta, maize and wine colored buildings cast a glow almost like a daylong sunset. In Gozo, watching the big fiery sun dip into the turquoise sea just behind the Azure Window. In a vibrant, psychedelic market in Istanbul.
Funny how one week can differ so drastically from another and the days are a constant roller coaster ride filled with barrel rolls, boomerangs and catapults. On the positive days it is often enthralling but on those dark and negative calibrated days this is emotionally draining. On these days all you really want is come home, run a hot bath to drown out the emotional and mental noise and look forward to a comforting meal, maybe even at having a good bitch with the partner!
Here we are - on the other side and well into the second week of a brand new year. January - is a month that gives me very mixed feelings. It’s a month that fills me up with contradictory thoughts and emotions. A month I very much look forward to in December but once here I cannot wait till it moves on.
