My previous and future travel experiences (by Ronny Errmann)
The Easter weekend came like (nearly) every year with the best weather, lots of sun and warm temperatures. Being outside is nice, it’s so green and flowery. This is one of many impressions from the weekend, as a flower lover one could take photos like this every 5 minutes. I took these images on a 90 km cycle tour, the longest this year, so far.
Actually I wanted to meet a friend tonight who has his job at the university in Central Europe and wanted to go to a friends wedding at the weekend and wanted to see some other friends before then. But as the meetup didn’t work, I can write a little bit about racism. Racism is the […]
Racism in the middle of society — Ronny Errmann
Racism is the reason why he cannot enter the UK. He has the wrong passport and therefore does not have the privileges that one has with a Western European, North American, and probably also Australian, New Zealand, or Japanese passport: You can get into almost any other country without a visa. He only got as far as the check-in counter at the airport, where he was told that he was not allowed to go to England and would need a visa to enter the country. It’s just not on the British Border Control website, so he didn’t apply for one. And for many years he could easily travel without a visa.
At least the airline was kind enough to put him on a later flight so that he could make a few phone calls to the British Embassy and his nationality’s embassies in the capital and in London, as well as British border control. And there seems to be this rule with the visas, but not officially, because the British are too cowardly to cancel the mutual agreement on visa free entry, and instead have only an internal rule for their own border protection. After seven hours of phone calls, it was clear that the trip would not work out.
And of course nobody is responsible either, there is nothing official, so that he will still have to pay his own expenses.
And all because he was born in a country on the African continent. And that’s the racism of the white western world. This is not only a British problem, also in France, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Austria, Sweden, other European countries we treat certain groups of people as second class citizens. Every day.
After one of the nights of observation at the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, I was given a guided tour of the telescope and was then able to enjoy the sunrise from the “catwalk”. In the image above you can see the shadow of the mountain I’m on projected onto the other tall mountain on the Big Island.
At an altitude of more than 4 km you are almost always above the clouds, so there is little rainfall/snow. And due to the volcanic formation, the landscape looks like lunar landscape. As a contrast, another photo 40 km away and 4 km further down.
This was the trip where I rode my bicycle to the airport.
If you go on a business trip to Hawaii (and the North American East Coast on the way back) and live 250 kilometres away from Frankfurt Airport, why not cycle to the airport instead of taking the train? And while you’re at it, why not go wild camping too? Having experience of long bike rides before, the trip didn’t seem too crazy to me. The bike tour didn’t really improve my CO2 footprint, but the feeling of having achieved something was still good. I didn’t usually have that much luggage when cycling: a lot more clothes, my big hiking backpack, laptop…
However, I noticed the biggest and unexpected benefit on the return trip. I flew back to Frankfurt from Boston overnight, the day of the return flight I had explored Boston on a hired bicycle. I think I was in Frankfurt at 8am, still had to go to the hotel where the bike (and everything I didn’t need in the USA) had been safely stored for the last 3 weeks, then pack everything from the travel backpack into the bike bags, early noon and off I went. And so I cycled on two different continents within 15 hours. It went upstream through the Main and Kinzig valleys, see how far I can get. I spent the night on the watershed to the Fulda valley, the last few meters uphill I noticed that I had slept only on the plane the night before. But on the other hand I didn’t have problems with jet lag, but felt that I could use the time well. I slept great in the tent and felt really good the next morning.
On the sidelines of a conference, and on the way back from Maui, I had the chance to see Niagara Falls as well. The visit was a bit different than what I preferred at the time, we came in a large group and in general Niagara Falls is a very touristy place so totally different from what I’d prefer for vacations. And yet there were also quiet and uncrowded spots on the parapet. I would never have done the boat trip without the group either, which would also have been a shame as the large amounts of falling water were impressive.
Most houses on La Palma have a roof terrace and due to the steep slopes, every house has a good view in at least one direction. Since I liked to get up early and because of the La Palma time zone, sunrises and sunsets are very late, I was able to enjoy the sunrise regularly.
Between the two photos two months passed. While the sun is rising over the flat, northern part of Tenerife in the zoomed top photo (October), the sun is rising over the higher center of the island (more south) in the bottom image (December).
I had the chance to visit friends in Spain. And so, at the beginning of March, this hike in the Sierra de Huetor National Park took place with not exactly the best weather and yet it was already very spring-like. There was a lot of change in the landscape again, from olive groves through dry and rocky landscape to extensive forest and meadow areas. All the greenery was definitely a blessing, I usually can’t see anything else like this at the beginning of March.
I find geology interesting, especially how slowly the earth (has) changed. Hence the many time-lapse videos, even though they can only cover much shorter periods of time. The stone in the photo is debris from a tunnel construction and contains so many fossilised ammonites. These lived 240 million years ago (Triassic – shell limestone) in a shallow sea and some of them were so covered by carbonate mud after their death that they were preserved. Over the millions of years, many more layers were deposited above it, which also petrified, the entire land has risen and partially lowered again, a lot of material has been removed again and now we walk around on these ancient testimonies of life.
The Easter weekend came like (nearly) every year with the best weather, lots of sun and warm temperatures. Being outside is nice, it’s so green and flowery. This is one of many impressions from the weekend, as a flower lover one could take photos like this every 5 minutes.
Before our hike we had a day to explore Tromsø. We used part of the time to visit the Fjellheisen, from where you have a really nice view over the city. There we unpacked our walking sticks for the first time to practice handling them before the heavy backpack would be added. We had some fun and were glad not too many people could see us. At the end of the hike back to the city, however, we felt sufficiently practised for the big adventure.
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