It has been two months since my mother passed away. Two months sounds like a long time, but grief doesn’t follow a calendar. During the day, I am mostly okay. I keep myself busy. I do what needs doing. I write, I remember, I move from one task to the next. But when the day …
Another night flight. This time from Rarotonga to Fiji. On the evening of May 17, 1995, I left the Cook Islands and flew west across the Pacific. The flight itself was not very long, maybe around four hours, but something very strange happened on the way. I lost a whole day. Not emotionally. Officially. Because …
After leaving Moorea, I was still emotionally somewhere between paradise and heartbreak. From the window of the plane, I had watched the island slowly disappear on the horizon, and I had already made my promise: I would come back. The addiction had started. The German man from Fiji had been right. But the South Pacific …
The German man from Fiji had warned me. “Moorea is beautiful, Andi. But be careful. It can make you addicted.” When he said that on the phone in Germany, I smiled. It sounded nice, of course. A good sentence for a travel brochure. But after my first morning on Moorea, after the salty catamaran crossing …
I already told you about that famous Hawaii shirt I bought in Hawaii in March 1993, the one from the Tom Selleck Collection. Back in Munich, this became my newest fashion trend. Maybe “trend” is a bit optimistic, because I was actually the only person following it, but every great movement has to start with …
“Travel makes you speechless, then it turns you into a storyteller.” ― Ibn Battuta Travel Makes You Speechless — Then Annoying at Dinner Parties This quote of the day is painfully true. Travel has a funny way of first shutting you up completely — and later making it almost impossible for you to stop talking. At …
“If we were meant to stay in one place, we would have roots instead of feet.” ― Rachel Wolchin Thoughts about the Quote Of The Day That quote feels like it was written for everyone who has ever looked at a map and thought, “Hmm, maybe just one more trip.” It is the perfect justification for …
My 1993 trip to Hawaii did something dangerous to me. It did not calm my travel fever. It made it worse. Hawaii had opened a door, and behind that door was the South Pacific — that endless blue world I had dreamed about since childhood. Suddenly, all those old images came back to me: the …
There are photos from our younger years that do not only show how we looked. They also show who we were trying to become. This one is such a photo. There I am, standing on the rocks somewhere on Oahu in March 1993, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, wearing shorts, flip-flops, sunglasses, a hat, a …
This photo was taken only a few months ago, in Tangalle, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. But for me, it could just as well have been taken more than three decades ago. The wide beach, the long empty shoreline, the soft morning light, the footprints in the sand, and the ocean breathing calmly …