Local tourist

I had a completely empty calendar at the beginning of the year and could have chosen to literally go anywhere, at any time, but what I really wanted was to spend the summer in Berlin. In my home, in my neighbourhood.

During my travels in Asia, I gave the same answer to all the people who asked me when would be the best time to visit Berlin. Unless you thrive under depressing grey skies and freezing weather, avoid the winter at all costs, and after that, spring and late summer are usually the most enjoyable. The peak of the summer is manageable as long as you know what you’re getting into, and if you don’t forget to plan trips to one the many lakes and swimming pools around the city.

My recent schedule has been like that of someone on holiday in Berlin: parks, lakes, bike rides, exhibitions, concerts, coffee walks, and flea markets. I could almost be mistaken for a tourist only visiting the city for a short time.

I started thinking about making another photography book. I’m more than happy with the response I got for my first one, and this gave me enough motivation to have another look at my archive, to see if there was something else I could share. Saying that I started working on it would be a stretch, but just know that I now have a concept that I’m happy to refine and work on, in the near future.

Just keep in mind that “near future” could mean anything between “next winter if I feel like it” and “maybe in ten years”.

I didn’t write and publish as much as I intended to, but I’m not worried about it. I’m at the point where the habit of writing is there, but I still need to improve a lot on many other aspects. I knew writing was difficult so this doesn’t come as a surprise to me.

There are currently eight active drafts in my admin, on topics such as “what does being ‘well-travelled’ really mean?”, “what is a real photograph in the age of AI?”, or “for the first time since 2022 I got back on a stage for a presentation”. There’s absolutely nothing linking all these ideas, except for the fact that I just find them interesting. There’s also plenty of things I’ve written without the goal of being shared or published for now. I need to find a way to be more focused, and more consistent.

Writing from my own desk — or from my regular coffee spots around the city — might have worked against me. These places are very familiar and comfortable, but perhaps too much so. For an entire year, I never wrote from the same location twice, and I’ve realised that the constant change of scenery while traveling helped me more than I anticipated. It’s not really a discovery but I’m now definitely convinced that inspiration comes more easily in unfamiliar surroundings.

I’ll be leaving very soon for my next adventure. It won’t be as long and as remote as the one from last year, but will still take me to places I’ve never been before. My experience gives me a ton of confidence in “underplanning it”, and I honestly wouldn’t want to do it any other way. I have a start and a finish location, as well as a loose itinerary, but besides that, nothing really set in stone. I’ll just see where this all takes me.

Some of you already know where I’ll be starting, but for now, I prefer not to disclose where I’m going. I can’t guarantee anything but I’ll try my best to write more frequently during this new chapter.