We Started a Travel Blog. Somehow, It Became a Collection of Our Lives.

It all began with a simple idea: write about our travels, share a few photographs and perhaps inspire someone to explore the world. That sounded straightforward enough. Then life, WordPress and my apparently endless ability to collect unusual objects got involved.

It Seemed Like Such a Simple Idea

When Lizz and I started this blog back in March 2025, the idea was rather simple.

We wanted somewhere to share our travel experiences.

After more than thirty years of travelling, I had accumulated enough memories, photographs and stories to keep me occupied for quite some time.

And with Lizz by my side, there were still plenty of new adventures waiting to happen.

So why not start a blog?

Write a few stories, upload some photographs, perhaps make a video now and then, and share our experiences with anyone interested enough to read them.

How difficult could that possibly be?

Well.

Let’s just say that was a question I probably shouldn’t have asked.

First, There Was the Travelling

Originally, Lizz & Andi was supposed to be mainly about travel.

And naturally, travelling is still an important part of what we write about.

There are memories of places I visited decades ago, when taking photographs meant loading actual film into a camera and hoping at least some of the pictures would turn out properly.

There are stories about the South Pacific, including Tahiti and Tetiaroa, places that have stayed in my memory long after the journeys ended.

And there are more recent adventures with Lizz, exploring Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines.

But after writing a few articles, I began to realise something.

The most interesting parts of travelling aren’t always the famous attractions.

Sometimes they’re the unexpected encounters, ridiculous situations and little moments that never appear in a guidebook.

The ones that seemed terribly inconvenient at the time but become rather entertaining years later.

And gradually, I found myself writing about much more than destinations.

Then Germany and the Philippines Got Involved

Being a German married to a Filipina means that life comes with its own collection of cultural surprises.

Things that seem perfectly normal to one of us can occasionally leave the other completely bewildered.

And that’s before we even start discussing food.

Germany and the Philippines are wonderfully different in so many ways.

The climate, the traditions, the everyday routines, the way people celebrate, mourn, eat and generally approach life.

Living between these two worlds gives us an endless supply of things to write about.

Sometimes funny.

Sometimes touching.

And occasionally something that makes me stand there scratching my head and wondering whether I’ve misunderstood the situation entirely.

But that’s also what makes our life interesting.

I’ve come to appreciate that you don’t necessarily have to travel thousands of miles to experience something unfamiliar.

Sometimes all you need is to get up in the morning and discover what the day has planned for you.

Particularly in the Philippines.

And Suddenly, My Mother’s Cooking Appeared

Now, I never originally intended to turn our travel blog into a cookbook.

But somehow, my thoughts kept returning to the food I grew up with.

Thuringian dumplings, goulash, Rostbrätel and all those wonderful dishes that remind me of home.

And especially of my mother.

Food has a remarkable ability to bring back memories.

One familiar smell from the kitchen and suddenly you’re transported decades into the past.

Back to childhood.

Back to family gatherings.

Back to a time when you didn’t fully appreciate how much effort went into putting a proper meal on the table.

So I began writing down recipes.

Not because I have any ambition to become the next celebrity chef.

Believe me, the world has enough of those already.

But because these recipes are part of my story.

And because living in the Philippines occasionally gives me a serious craving for something that doesn’t involve rice.

There. I’ve said it.

I still love Filipino food, of course.

But sometimes a proper Thuringian dumpling is exactly what the soul needs.

The Japanese Surplus Shops Didn’t Help Either

Then came another unexpected development.

My collection.

Anyone who has read some of my recent articles may have noticed that I have a slight weakness for unusual objects.

Particularly when I discover them in Japanese surplus shops here in the Philippines.

Now, most sensible people visit a surplus shop looking for something practical.

A table, perhaps.

A chair.

Maybe a kitchen appliance.

I walk in and somehow become fascinated by a Pakistani camel-skin lamp, a pair of enormous rice goddess statues or an object whose history I know absolutely nothing about.

And then I simply have to find out what it is.

Which usually involves research, a little detective work and occasionally a negotiation process that takes considerably longer than anyone would consider reasonable.

Six months to acquire two wooden statues?

Perfectly normal.

At least in my world.

And before I know it, another article is born.

So now our travel blog also contains stories about Indonesian traditions, Pakistani craftsmanship, interesting works of art and the rather surprising journeys that objects make before ending up in our home.

I’m not entirely sure how that happened.

But I rather like it.

Blogging Is Easy. Until You Actually Start Blogging.

Now, there’s another subject we need to discuss.

The website itself.

When I started, I imagined the process would be fairly straightforward.

Write something.

Add photographs.

Press Publish.

Make a cup of coffee.

Finished.

Oh, how wonderfully innocent I was.

Apparently, blogging involves a little more than that.

There are themes, plugins, widgets, featured images, categories, permalinks, search engine optimisation and mysterious pieces of CSS code.

And then there’s WordPress.

A magnificent invention capable of making a grown man spend an entire afternoon trying to move something five pixels to the left.

Only to discover that it now looks completely different on a mobile phone.

Wonderful.

And don’t get me started on SEO.

You can write an article you’re genuinely pleased with, full of personal memories and carefully chosen words.

Then a little coloured indicator informs you that your masterpiece is apparently worth 62 out of 100 because you haven’t used the focus keyword often enough.

Naturally, you start making adjustments.

Suddenly your lovely personal story contains the same phrase seventeen times and reads like it was written by a particularly enthusiastic search engine.

No, thank you.

I’ve learnt that SEO can be useful.

But it shouldn’t be allowed to take over the storytelling.

A blog should still sound as though it was written by a human being.

Preferably one with a sense of humour.

And Does Anybody Actually Read This Stuff?

Ah, yes.

The eternal question.

You spend hours writing an article, choosing photographs and making everything look reasonably presentable.

Then you publish it.

And wait.

Perhaps somebody reads it.

Perhaps somebody doesn’t.

Perhaps the only visitor that day is a search engine robot, which probably isn’t particularly impressed by my reflections on Thuringian dumplings.

But I’ve realised something important.

I don’t want to write simply to chase visitor numbers.

Of course, it’s lovely when people discover the website, enjoy a story and perhaps leave a comment.

But if readership were the only reason for doing this, I probably would have given up long ago.

I write because I enjoy remembering.

Because I like discovering the history behind things.

Because certain experiences deserve to be recorded rather than left to disappear somewhere in the increasingly overcrowded storage cupboard of my memory.

And because sometimes I simply have something to say.

Whether the internet asked for it or not.

A Collection of Stories, Not Just Destinations

Looking at Lizz & Andi today, I realise that our little blog has developed a personality of its own.

It isn’t strictly a travel blog any more.

And I don’t particularly want it to be.

It’s about the places we’ve visited.

The people we’ve met.

Our life between Germany and the Philippines.

The traditions we’ve experienced.

The food we love.

The objects I’ve collected.

And the memories that continue to shape our lives.

Some articles are funny.

Others are reflective or rather personal.

Not every story has a happy ending, and not everything deserves to be treated as a joke.

That’s life, after all.

And I think a personal blog should be allowed to reflect that.

I don’t want Lizz & Andi to become another polished travel website where everything looks permanently wonderful, every sunset is spectacular and every hotel apparently offers the experience of a lifetime.

Real life is far more interesting.

Sometimes the sunset is beautiful.

Sometimes it rains all day.

And sometimes you find yourself standing in a dusty warehouse negotiating over a wooden statue that nobody else seems particularly interested in.

For me, all of those moments deserve a place here.

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

Well, I have absolutely no idea.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

There are still countless travel memories I want to write about.

Places I would love to revisit.

New destinations Lizz and I hope to explore.

More recipes I’d like to preserve.

And, knowing myself, probably a few more strange objects waiting to be discovered in some forgotten corner of a surplus warehouse.

The original idea was simply to share our adventures.

But somewhere along the way, this website became something else.

A place where past and present meet.

Where Germany and the Philippines sit comfortably side by side.

Where a childhood memory can follow an article about an exotic island.

And where a recipe for dumplings might appear immediately after the story of a camel-skin lamp.

Does that make sense from a professional blogging perspective?

I haven’t the faintest idea.

But it makes perfect sense to me.

And Perhaps That’s Exactly What This Blog Should Be

I’ve stopped worrying quite so much about fitting everything into one neat little category.

Life doesn’t work like that.

Neither do our interests.

And certainly not mine.

What started as a place to share travel stories has gradually become a record of the things that matter to us.

The journeys.

The memories.

The people.

The food.

The discoveries.

And all those unexpected little details that make ordinary life anything but ordinary.

Perhaps one day somebody will stumble across one of these stories and find something useful, entertaining or familiar.

Perhaps it’ll remind them of somewhere they’ve been.

Or encourage them to visit somewhere new.

Or simply make them smile over their morning coffee.

That would be rather nice.

But even if that never happens, I’m glad we started writing.

Because memories have an unfortunate habit of fading, photographs lose their context, and stories that aren’t told can eventually disappear.

This blog gives us somewhere to keep them alive.

So welcome to Lizz & Andi. It might not be the travel blog we originally planned, but it’s becoming a rather accurate reflection of our lives.

A little German.

A little Filipino.

Occasionally chaotic.

And never short of another story.

Thanks for coming along.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a photograph that refuses to centre itself on the page.