Sometimes you get just the right things you need in the right moment. This time, so hungry for travelling and sun and all together for the Mediterranean flair, I enjoyed exploring the city all by myself, walk up and down streets, hills, ruins, parks in my go-explore-sneakers, without a plan nor timetable, just following my senses, my impressions and moods.
Read moreCamp in Germany // Beach Time Sweethearts
Recently, my BFF Jurga, her boyfriend and I decided to go camping for a weekend - wherever, doesn't matter, as long as it's in the nature, it's green, close to the water, kind of calm yet giving a summer holiday feeling. Last minute, just the day before leaving, we heard about this awesome place on the Baltic Sea coast called Prerow - a fisherman village on a peninsula, combining a lagoon-like calm sea on the east, yet rough waves on the west side of the peninsula, a forest in between, soft sand and our campsite on the edge of the dunes. For us, two Lithuanian girls, this place was giving a very rare sense of a Baltic homeland site, it was mind blowing to recognise something we grew up with on another countries shoreside like the preserved architecture of little wooden houses, the landscape of the shore, a pine tree forest just along it.
We stayed at the Regenbogen Prerow Campsite. As we checked in very late, for some magical reasons we got the very spot we actually were wishing for - at the very corner on the last bit of the campsite, where our two of the four neighbours were a dune (with the sea 100m behind it) and a young growing pine forest. Moreover - we got located next to the nudist beach :-) So I could finally get one of those pictures out of my tent that I was always dreaming about when diving into Pinterest scrolling too much. However, absolutely everything was perfect about that weekend - coffee in the sand, rain in the night time, sun all day long, braless suntanning, campsite cooking, hot water showers and, of course, a lot of amazing scenery filled with love and kisses for my photographic delight.
It wasn't my first time at the German part of the Baltic Sea. But all these years we've been fast to book flights to anywhere in Europe for hikes, roadtrips, beaches and longing for distant corners with high peaks, hot springs or long sandy stripes of beach. But I had to realise how little I actually know Germany and how much it has to offer nature wise if you know where to look for it. If you have any advice, top 5 must experience nature locations - share it with me, please. I'll mark them up in my map and save my weekends for them.
La Primera Sonrisa // Design Hotel, Café and a Grand Idea
When I first met the two owners of La Primera Sonrisa at the opening of their café & bar, I ended up standing behind the counter and pressing fresh lemons into the iced water for their curious new customers. People were standing lines on their first open day and I was more than keen to offer my help switching from customer to a bartender. The thing is, after two months of me living in a sleepy little village it was like an iced water splash into my face to see two young lively people with dreams, ideas and certainty in their eyes doing their own thing. Their magnetic energy kinda reached my good vibe locators and so a friendship was born.
Here are some facts. Koen and Ivo are two of those, who actually did quit their well payed jobs in Holland and decided to turn their paths into a more sunny, tropical kind of life under the Andalusian sky. Just a couple of months ago, they did what many thought was impossible - they opened a café & bar followed by a two room design hotel on a site where there's not one shop nor office nor market. But a grand view.
It's the village called Polopos in the very south of Spain, white and old like Spanish little villages are, with narrow crooked streets, big bloomy flowerbeds, clean air, a view of dry mountains and the Mediterranean sea, and countless possibilities for outdoor hiking adventures. It's very tranquil and what some might call boring, for many - me included - it's the way to unplug from a noisy city life, get relief and reconnect with the simple joys, sensations or even the own breathing rhythm. On a calm sunset hike you start feeling like a prince of the world, watching endless Mediterranean below the feet, snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada in the north and sometimes even another continent in the far South. It's a village with a huge potential of a tranquil kind.
The hotel offers two rooms with a unique design. It's a personal business matter for the two entrepreneurs and you feel it when you enter the rooms - vintage carpets, fossil accessories, upcycled furniture and found attributes from around the globe meet together in a hotel room with aview. In the mornings they cook you breakfast and in the afternoon there's a set of creatively homemade tapas to every refreshing drink till after the sun sets.
To book a getaway holiday at La Primera Sonrisa you can contact Ivo and Koen directly or book on the common booking websites. Otherwise, take a sneak peek on their homepage, instagram or facebook to get yourself convinced.
Good to know: best airport to land is in Malaga (120km away); rent a car with a slightly bigger engine for serpentine uphill rides; go in autumn, spring or around the Christmas period - it's good for hikes (if you are fine with melting in the sun - July and August are also great!).
By the way, the café and the hotel are the stepping stones for a further grand idea: in the following months an off the grid eco resort is in planning. A kickstarter alike project will be launched soon to collect the needed resources for this vision to come alive: you will be able to make a contribution of 500€ in exchange for a two-person ten-day accommodation in one of their Valle del Eden Tiendas that will be built on a mountain side land property surrounded only by nature. So stay tuned for more details on their media channels.
A Drone Experience
... or The Things You Can Learn From Your Older Cooler Brothers
Both of my brothers are technical geeks, of course. Because who's brothers actually aren't. Every time I come around to visit the one or another - there's new things to see, to learn, to touch and then be jealous about. This time my big bro' introduced me to his precious new toy - the drone DJI PHANTOM 3 Advanced. As an out-dated humanist I have never actually seen nor - moreover - tried out navigating a drone of that kind. It's this little light weight, four propeller thing with a flexibly attached camera; it can fly and be navigated for up to 2 km of a distance away from its controller. A 12 megapixel camera with HD video recording capacity - all there. And - when you attach your mini tablet or smartphone on the controller, you can follow the drones route from birds eye perspective while still keeping your feet firmly on the ground. How damn cool is that!
And so we packed the drone bag to drive towards the next calm corner in the busy city of Vilnius. My brother insisted on me overtaking the controller and daring to get the drone up to the sky. Amazing how easy with just four different finger movements you can come up with something amazing like that within minutes; I got thinking about how many more possibilities open up for creative people and artist, how many fantastic unseen images can be captured or even staged. Just to start with - look at this Lithuanian photographer Karolis Janulis who was obviously having lots of fun experimenting with his drone pet.
But as it isn't quite of a bargain that you spontaneously purchase out of boredom at night on Amazon, here's my top five reasons to start saving on one:
- it opens a rare perspective from a birds eye on demand, something that was not possible to be seen on a casual every day basis
- it reaches things, buildings, nature landscapes which are hard to be reached by foot or machine and makes an additional point of view possible
- it's practical for different kind of documentation like events, real estate, landscapes
- what ever you do photographically - it will bring you to the next level
- and let's face it - it's a great toy in general! like when back in childhood the kids who got those tiny remotely controlled helicopters for Christmas and from then on everyone wanted to be friends with them.. but that's a totally different kind of story.
Good to know: get at least one extra battery at purchase, otherwise you can pack up the propellers after just 20 minutes of great but short fun.
A few snaps from up above:
Look at that - the most symbolical building of Vilnius, the Gediminas' Tower, the reason why the whole city was build around that hill. I was navigating the drone up above it and around.
It was a rather special visit of my brother and Vilnius this time. To be honest, even though it's only the cream part I've been spending time at - like the old town, newly reopened parks with their musical fountains in bright sunshine, those busy but somewhat charming summer city corners amazed me. We were cruising on longboards in a big green park at dusk together with many other people cruising on other things while some DJs were changing one chilly vinyl after another, just because it's summer, just because it's good weather; we tested some of the new Vilnius talking statues between beers on a warm summer night to rediscovered some of the forgotten Lithuanian history pages while the streets were full of celebrating beautiful summerly dressed people; my bro' showed me a place to try out virtual reality glasses which was a whole lotta different experience all together. It was a quality visit for sure. And I'm happy to have a big brother there, too.
Focus!
There are so many things that I wanted to create and share on this blog since ages. So many - I don't even know where to start. I have a very impulsive mind and I rather suffer from the many ideas that come into my head than make and actual profit of it. All of them, the ideas, really want my attention and to get materialised one day, or rather just right now, and if they don't - some of them start nagging me till I cry, can you imagine? And then they get angry and pretty cruel! I tell them to stand in line and wait for their turn, and what most of them do is just roll their eyes, start taking long loud breaths to show how 'patient' they are, one starts tapping its foot to the ground, eventually start moaning. I get soft and when I turn to the most impatient one somewhere in the middle of the queue, kindly giving her a warm hug and offering to go to the front of the crowd, despite all the other ideas that are there in front of her already. And I kindly ask what can I do to make her existence come true, but what she does is getting all bitchy, stops talking to me at all and turns her eyes away.. Apparently, I've been neglecting her for so long and she's so heart broken now, it's too hard for her to talk to me anymore. Our relationship is ruined forever. With lots of patience I have to start guessing, offering her a cup of tea and somehow trick her into sharing her life-changing existential goal with me. Maybe she'll still give me her blessing and I can create something beautiful out of it.
And that's everyday. Multitasking, managing, dealing, staying patient yet vivid with all the ideas that pop into my mind and scream for attention. And I better recognise the best ones fast, and I better get on doing what they say, 'cause no matter how genius they are - they won't be standing there for ages waiting for their turn in line. They are very undisciplined, you know! They are like little babies, little untamed kiddos. But that's why they are amazing at the very same time. A creative idea, just like a kid full of phantasy, won't be sitting there, killing off all its energy, just to be able to play 'on its given time'. Ideas, like kids, grow if you give them the time and space to grow into something amazing. They might become your inspiration well, your best friends, an amazing part of your identity. Now, I don't know how this turned into some essay about how a child becomes your identity, but that's what it's all about right now. What I want to say is - be careful with ideas that pop into your head. Take a good first scan and decide on just a few which will stand in the queue to become realised. As shiny and sparkly some of them might look - they will have to be sent away in order for you to built just a few bigger stronger projects at a time. Some might eventually come back again, maybe even more developed and advanced by the time.
So stay focused.
The photo shoot is from July last year on a beach on Helgoland, one of the photo experiments which my friend Indre Winterrain helped me to work on. Born out of another idea which was luckily standing in line with a little bit of patience. Luckily, I didn't let her stand there in the never ending queue for too long.