About and beyond

Biography
In October of 1979 I was born on the Eastern Side of the Berlin Wall. Already as a six year old I felt an injustice about the restrictions to travel that I had due to my place of birth: In our church there was an exhibition of photos from Africa, and when I declared to my mother that I was going to go there one day, she had to explain to me that it wasn't that easy - only doctors and similar people were allowed to go so far away. Good, then I will be a doctor when I grow up, was my answer.

On the other hand I thought that instead of being a doctor who is still more or less restricted to being in one place only, I would rather live on a sailing boat and travel the world constantly. I had almost everything figured out - for a living I would write books and illustrate them myself. After all a writer does not have to be in the same place all the time, I reasoned. There was just one problem: I also wanted to own a horse when I grow up, and I was not sure if the horse would like living on a boat.

Until 1989 most of my travels led to Poland though, where we had relatives, and where we camped next to idyllic little lakes and forests. Then the Wall came down, and in 1992 finally my family took me on a journey that led further away: To Denmark and Sweden. I felt that now I am finally starting to see the great big world.

During that time I also heard of a daughter of friends who went to South America for a whole year, to go to school there. I could hardly wait until I was old enough to do that, too. In 1997 finally I went to live first for six month in Ada, a small town in Oklahoma, USA, and then for one month of Spanish classes in Santiago de Chile and five months of High School Exchange in Copiapó in the North of Chile.

Returned home I had to go to school for another two years, and then moved to Prague for three months, before starting University in Berlin. Fortunately now I did not have to be a doctor to be allowed to go abroad, so instead I started studying Latin American Studies as a major, and Czech and Romanian Philology as minors. I was the only student in my Romanian group who had not been to Romania yet, but an excursion in the summer of 2001 and a language course shortly after introduced me to this beautiful country. In 2003 then I went within the Sokrates/Erasmus Programme to study for one semester at the University of Bucharest.

Travels

After my time in Romania I wanted to do a little tour of different Balkan countries. Unfortunately this tour was interrupted by a broken foot. I returned home, but as soon as my foot was healed I set of to a four week visit to Spain. End of February 2004 I left cold and rainy Berlin again for a six week visit to Australia. Since then I did not have time nor money for more than little weekend trips that led me to Paris, to London, to the Netherlands, and to Belgium. But currently I am preparing a four-to-six month stay in Peru.