postcard from germany :)

what of our lives ends up online?

I haven’t been out of the country since March 2020, when I spent three horrible days travelling back to Michigan leaving my life and job in Armenia. Until last week, when Andy and I flew out to Berlin to visit my college roommate and best friend Hannah and her partner.

I had forgotten how good it feels to be surrounded by a different language.

Germany isn’t so different from America, certainly not as different as Armenia was, but it reminded me how much I really do like visiting cities and experiencing different cultures— a side of travel different from my now usual hiking and paddling trips. There is so much of this world to see and experience and ultimately limited time to do it. I often feel very bound by my blog, my instagram, what’s expected of it, and like I should travel in a way that lines up with what people expect. (It feels like sometimes that every moment that I am not in the process of creating something is a waste. I have trouble turning that feeling off).

sunrise coming into Germany out the plane window; a bahn station

Dresden, Germany and a Christmas market there. Dresden is a really interesting place to visit because it was truly bombed into essentially dust at the end of WWII in what many consider to be a war crime on the part of the US. The city has been painstakingly rebuilt and reconstructed.

Potsdam, near Berlin. The Christmas market in the Dutch quarter here ended up being one of our favorite parts of the visit.

A cocktail bar; the Berlin Wall

Christmas markets on Christmas Markets. We probably walked through a total of 15 miles of Christmas markets. My personal favorite was the small one we went to first on an organic farm in Berlin-- I didn't take any photos but it wasn't crowded and it was just a really casual, fun atmosphere.

Making mulled wine with Hannah at home; In Dresden, there were all these clocks. Some in excellent condition still, one burnt and warped from the fire bombing up front and center. I didn't take a photo of that one but I wish I had.

notes from lately:

• christmas markets, gluhwein, cooking in Hannah’s kitchen, catching up, watching netflix together, sharing our favorite embarrassing stories from college with our partners, more christmas markets, a museum or two, Dresden, Potsdam, ect. It’s funny and a little odd to explain when people ask what we did, because for me all the highlights of the trip were just… hanging out in my best friend’s kitchen again. Berlin is cool, but far cooler is that I’ve been friends with Hannah for ten years now, and we still talk almost every day despite living a literal ocean apart. I truly hope that everyone can find a friendship as reliable and fulfilling as the one we’ve had since college.

• I’m a person who writes about travel, but when I’m travelling somewhere outside of my usual topics to visit someone who I’ve been friends with since long before I started sharing my life like this it sort of begs the question “how much of our lives belong online?”. It’s something I think about a lot and am constantly navigating, and a question I think is relevant for all internet users, not just people with blogs.

• Last week I wrote a little about what it actually means to be an influencer and it touched a little on some of the reasons I actually don’t love sharing online a lot of the time. Whether someone is a blogger or instagram user or sharing there life in a different way, “influencing” is really glamorized and overall misunderstood (most “influencers” are people marketing a freelancing job of some sort, not just people posting and making money). I think it’s important for people who are looking at content creating and want to do it as a job to understand what that actually looks like, and what the consequences of putting your life online look like.

• I got so, so sick while travelling. I’m just now starting to feel better. It’s the second time I’ve been sick since November and I’m over it. Breathing out of both nostrils is such a luxury.

• Unsurprisingly, travelling again has me thinking a lot about Armenia, and how I want to go back. The blog posts I wrote while living in Armenia were actually the first iteration of the hello stranger blog— you can still read them all here.

• I’m feeling very settled, but also very caught in-between lately. I really, really am enjoying my new job, and but I’m still adjusting to where having a steady 9-5 puts me with my freelancing work. I love creating outdoor resources and writing, and I don’t plan to stop doing that but adjusting the time I have available to the projects I’d like to take on is an ongoing learning curve.

• There’s nothing on my travel calendar until summer right now, and I kind of like it.

---

looking for winter midwest travel ideas? have you tried…

just because I don’t have any winter travel plans doesn’t mean that winter in the Midwest is anything short of magical :)