My travels

France is one of my favourite countries in the world. There are countless beautiful villages and cities, there's great nature, there are beaches aplenty and there's great food - let me know if you need more reasons!

I visited France on numerous occasions. in 1995, I went on a school exchange to Draguignan, in 1998 I spent some time at the Côte d'Azur and got to know Paris. 2010 saw me going to the same places again, plus some time in Provence.

In 2011, I spent 4 weeks in Bordeaux for a French intensive course before doing another 2 weeks intensive course in Rouen in 2012. In the same year, I also revisited Bordeaux and spend some time in Perigord. In 2014, I went to Alsace and came back with some great white wine.

In 2016, I explored Burgundy and Lyon. Still, there are numerous places in France I haven't been to, and all of them are high on my wishlist.

My wife and I visited Botswana as part of our "Desert & Delta" safari in August 2015. Apart from Namibia's many deserts we also spent some time in Botswana, mainly in the Okavango Delta (hence the safari's name) and the Chobe NP. Renowned for their abundant wildlife, neither of them disappointed us in any way. We saw elephants, hippos, crocodiles, zebras, antelopes, springboks as well as countless birds - and took a photo of nearly all of them!

Both areas are a must-visit, but I'm sure there's much more to see in this lovely country.

Ever since I saw photos of the majestic sand dunes of Namibia's Sossusvlei I had wanted to go to this country. My wife and I finally made it there in August 2015 when we participated in an organised 3-week safari tour through Namibia and Botswana.

Apart from the dunes at Sossusvlei we saw countless other aspects of the desert, had lots of encounters with wild animals, did a walking tour through a village in Namibia's north, enjoyed the night views of the milky way from an isolated farm near the Etosha NP and heard the shrieks of the aptly named grey go-away bird. Like many others, Namibia is a country that I will definitely revisit!

Despite the fact that I only spent a few days in Sweden, going there by crossing the Øresund from Copenhagen, the country had long been (and still is) very high on my travel wishlist. As a young boy, I read through pretty much all of Astrid Lindgren's books and slowly, but surely an image of Sweden was formed in my mind. Log cabins amidst endless forests, the odd reindeer or moose chewing grass on the roadside, clear and tranquil lakes, blonde girls and boys frolicking about in traditional clothes...

Well, I guess more or less everybody will have similar clichés in mind when thinking about the country. When we visited in 2016, we didn't see any reindeer, but lots of typical log cabins. Most Swedes indeed seemed to be blonde and the forests in the area we went to were dense (but not endless). We spent our time with friends in Hörby, discovering parts of Skåne from there. We spent an afternoon in Ystad, explored the lovely Kullaberg peninsula, happened across majestic castles hidden between yellow rape fields and took countless photos in some picturesque fishing villages. Due to our limited time we had to leave out many must-sees, so we'll definitely return to Sweden, too.

Let's start with Denmark, the country I visited on my very first international trip at the age of 1 year and 10 months. I can't remember anything from my first visit, but my family and I revisited the country twice (if I'm not mistaken) and a few memories have remained. One is that I played a self-invented game called "launderette" which consisted of me sitting in a kind of hole in the hedge. I must have been fascinated by a visit to a real launderette. Another memory is that I fell out of my bed in the middle of the night and rolled under it. When my parents checked on me, they thought I had been kidnapped although I was happily snoring under the bed... I also remember the smell and look of the dog roses that lined the paths from our holiday apartment to the sea.

35 years later, I finally revisited Denmark together with my wife (and our unborn daughter). We came there in May and loved the exuberantly growing flowers and trees - lilac bushes, rape fields, beech trees and countless others.

After spending some time in Copenhagen and a short visit to Sweden, we explored the island of Sjælland and its neighbours and found lots of beautiful villages and towns, spectacular coastlines and many other sights to behold.

Nibbling smørrebrød in Roskilde, exploring the cliffs on Møn, freezing at Denmark's southernmost point in Gedser and walking endlessly in Copenhagen to take in as many sights as possible in a short time were some of our highlights. Still, we haven't seen enough yet and will surely return to this beautiful Scandinavian country.