Beautiful

A few days ago, just after I had returned from Jordan to Bavaria, I drove south from the nearby town up the hill, through the forest and over the open fields towards Dieding – the little village that I call "home" when I don't have another home. It was late afternoon and the sun lingered low in the west, dipping the landscape in a mellow, warm light. The view was stunning - there, at the end of the fields, lay Dieding – hardly twenty houses and a few sheds, giving a home to more cows than people – and behind it stretched-out over the horizon, as far as the eyes could see from the east, where the forest starts and obstructs the view, all the way to the west, where the sun was planning to set – the Alps.

It was a No.1 Fuji Panorama Spot.

Later, sitting at the dinner table over a fresh salad with a glass of deliciously fruity white wine, looking out into the almost park-like wonder of a garden that my mother keeps, I thought for a moment: maybe I should try to find a job that I could do from here...


Some days later and several hundred kilometers further north-west, tonight I am enjoying a cup of white spearmint tea at my new desk in a students' dormitory in Cologne. I have a big room with scarily bare walls, a lot of (empty) shelf space and a sink. The smell of ground Arabic coffee is filling the air, my antique Iranian shisha-pipe is standing in the corner, the oriental rugs I brought are improving the look of the otherwise cement-coloured carpeted floor and a number of postcards are waiting to be put up, although that will hardly make it look cosy in here.
Tomorrow I'll venture out of town to IKEA in the hope not to return having spent a fortune on a car full of cheap (and usually unnecessary) things, as has happened in the past... The aim this time is only to get what is really needed and what can be permitted in light of my efforts to live an ever-more sustainable, eco-friendly and responsible life, i.e. no items that could not be purchased on the famous German "flee markets" or in socialistic furniture-sharing cooperatives and no things that only cost €2, look really stylish and "might be really useful one day".
AND: no paraffin candles that smell of strawberries.

So, wish me luck!