Back To Shore

Every once in a while these past few weeks / months I thought maybe I should write a post about “this”. Or about “that”. Like I used to do back in the day. I’ve rarely followed through, obviously, but sometimes wondered where that impulse still comes from. But also where it came from in the first place.

Over the years I’ve learned that putting my thoughts down in writing does help me to process stuff. I also know that it’s supposed to be more effective when done by hand and not on a keyboard.

I’m still not so sure about that to be honest. I did and do try it both ways. The keyboard often wins. I then also wonder why that might be.

I spend a lot of time wondering these days. I here use wondering as an umbrella term for various kind of thoughts from “Mmmh…” to “WTAF?!?” about all kinds of topics from the workings of my inner mind to the rise of fascist ideas in Germany on to the climate catastrophe or the dangers of AI and all and everything inbetween and further on.

Amongst alls this various wondering a question I’ve also asked myself on occasion: why has English become my go-to language to write in? “The internet” was a predominately English world, when I started having a look around in it. Message boards / Forums, if anyone remember those, often were in English and to be honest I loved the challenge and practice to communicate in English. So that’s what I did. Might that really be all there is to it….?

Whenever I thought I could / should post about this or that, I also started wondering who would even (want to) read it or rather how will I get the word out to anyone. Are there people who have subscribed to my blog via RSS feed? I keep up that way with a lot of online publications: blogs but also websites, newsletters, people posting on Substack or Steady. But how many others do still use RSS feeds? Would moving to Substack or Steady give me a wider audience? Would I even want that?

I used to share links to my posts on Twitter and I think thus reached most of the people I’d be communicating with anyway. Back in the day, eh? I’ve still got an X account but it’s empty and inactive. I have signed up to Bluesky and Threads, but basically just to protect the username. I’ve also got a Mastodon account (same rules apply). These days I just can’t be bothered to post or to follow / read what other people post on either of those plattforms. Social Media overload and possibly also my inability to decide between the various plattforms I (sometimes) shared links to posts via Instagram stories, but that’s about it.

But if I don’t have a way to have people come over here to my little corner of the internet, why should I make an effort to write and edit and more importantly press publish? It makes me think a lot about the famous question that….

“…if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Maybe I should just stop second-guessing myself.

All this wondering though led me to some ideas of how to switch things around here in the future. It will need a bit of more work in the back-end, but there most probably will be changes. And then I might start posting a bit more. Photos more than words probably, because I’ve realized that I tend to get more personal in written words and I’m not sure I want to be(come) more personal online. Not these days anyway.

Talking about words being personal: These past two weeks I’ve seen three of my favourite bands / songwriters play shows and at each I had such a great time. Bad bad segue, I know. But often it’s the words written by those people and the chance to sing along to these words in a crowd that make these shows so special.

There might be more photos of these shows somewhere around here later. Might being the operative word….

Lyrics: “We Shall Not Overcome” – Frank Turner, 2013

[*dusts off the cobwebs all around here*]

A week ago I went to see “Die Toten Hosen” on (their first leg of) their farewell tour. Two days before that show I also I managed to buy a ticket for another gig on that tour NEXT summer. Let’s see how long the farewell tour will be going on…

If you’re not German and don’t know this band: “Die Toten Hosen” are one of the biggest – well known and liked – bands in German history. They started out as proper punk band in 1982 [I was in my first year in primary school in 1982] and managed to move into mainstream rock in the late 90s / early 2000s. Some might argue they stopped being punk then. On the other hand to keep doing this successfully well into their 60s is sort of punk still. I don’t care about the label to be honest. They’ve always also been very outspoken about social and political issues. At their shows they have room for organisations like Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, which is just really cool, I think. I like their music well enough and I very much enjoy singing along at a show; to their mainstream (radio friendly) almost pop hits from the early 2010s, the fast paced punk songs, which started as a B-Side in the 1980s, but became a crowd favourite and to the anthems from the latest (and last) album from 2026.

Without further ado, some photos. Enlarge on click and all.

This first one, is Danger Dan, the singer of their support band “Antilopen Gang”. I was hoping he’d play the anti fascist song he had released as a solo artist, just days before that show. Alas, he didn’t.

On various occassions during the show some flag bearers marched into the space between the crowds. Flags for the band but also their home town and their favourite (home town) sports teams and such.

It is a large scale stadium tour, so of course they made used of the various screens to not just display live footage of the band on stage, but also images about the 4 decades of music history. Album covers, tour posters, mementos from their time. I really enjoyed that. 44 years in this business is a lifetime.

One of my favourite parts from that was to see old images of the band members. They were such babies when they started.

Here’s my attempt to be artsy and edgy by documenting people watching the show through their cameraphone.
[Taking tons of photos with a regular camera doesn’t make me a better person, so I’m a hypocrite sometimes. I should come up with a new idea to be artsy in my “gig photography”]

For some songs they had specific imagery on the screen matching the song’s theme. Here is “Alles aus Liebe” (= All for Love)

Some more impressions from the band members on the screens and the crowd

As one of the encores they sang the newest anthem about their hometown Düsseldorf, wearing the upcoming season’s jersey of the local icehockey team. Campino, the lead singer is a huge fan of ” Liverpool F.C.” and of course he donned the scarf someone threw on stage before their traditional final song “You’ll Never Walk Alone”

And it’s not a proper stadium show without colourful lights (hard to do on a summer night before 10) and streamers and confetti, right?

[Personal Blog Related Post Script:

I still don’t quite know how to best use this space in the future. A place to share some of my photos for sure. And if not share to at least have them in one place for me to easily find them and look at as keepsake than just via windows explorer (or any image viewing software). I’m soooooo slow with editing and uploading and all that though. I have been back from my lovely summer vacation in the English South West for six weeks now and all I did – photo wise – was to transfer the hundreds of photos from the SD card to the harddrive.

Work has been sort of busy and I’m spending most of it sitting in front of a computer monitor screen. I don’t want to then also spend hours sitting in front of a monitor screen editing photos. [I obviously don’t have a problem sitting in front of TV or a phone screen in my spare time. I’m such a hypocrite!]

So, no idea when a new post might be up.]

Lyrics “One Foot Before the Other” – Frank Turner, 2011

In about 18 hours I will leave for a three week vacation in the South West of England. I should really finish this post which has been in my draft folder for about a week now. Because there will – or might at least – be more photos to post here from next week on.

So for the archive of the whole project here is a bit about part 7.

Part 07: Drensteinfurt (Mersch) – Werne
(KM 98 – 113)
Saturday, 02nd May 2026

For this section I had considered a quite long day covering a long distance. I had three different end points in mind. I stopped at the first one, because I was so knackered. It was one of the first few really warm days here and I realized that my preferred hiking weather is a sunny / bit cloudy maybe 15 – 20 °C. I enjoy mid-20s temperatures as much as anyone, but not necessarily for being out on a hike. I had thought of taking a hat, but I had to rush out of the home in the morning and forgot to pack it. Big mistake. Anyway…

The active part of the day started with 4 km from the train station to the actual Camino trail. It was shortly after 9 in the morning, so it wasn’t too warm (yet), so I didn’t mind walking it with fresh legs, unlike the last time.

From the first waymarker to the last of the day with a few interesting in between.

I admit I hadn’t checked the map much before this day to see where the trail would lead me. Through a golf course and past a manor house.

There were – again – quite a few – roads and trails leading straight ahead…

… and as it’s a rural area, obviously some agriculture.

Part 06: Münster-Hiltrup to Drensteinfurt (Mersch) (KM 078 – 098), 04th April 2026
Part 05: Münster-Dorbaum to Münster-Hiltrup (KM 061 – 078), 26th March 2026
Part 04: Greven-Schmedehausen to Münster-Dorbaum (KM 045 – 061), 19th October 2025
Part 03: Lengerich to Greven-Schmedehausen (KM 029 – 045), 27th October 2024
Part 02: Natrup-Hagen to Lengerich (KM 017 – 029), 13th October 2024
Part 01: Osnabrück to Natrup-Hagen (KM 000 – 017), 15th September 2024