Wackennnnnn!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry! I'm sorry for having deserted my blog for the last two weeks .. but: I have a good excuse which is also the theme for this blog. From 2nd to 6th August, I was at the world's biggest heavy metal festival, Wacken Open Air!!! \m/

And although I didn't take my big camera(s) to the actual festival area (not because it would have been dangerous but because I couldn't have headbanged or been in a mosh pit while holding it... or even flirted for that matter ;-).

So anyway, I had my phone and my little Pixi (Nikon Coolpix) and want to show you some impressions in and around the concert. I didn't take pictures of the bands and gigs - same reason as above.

Here it is, Heavy Metal Town aka Wacken:


That's what you see first and foremost - the Wacken Logo in different versions:



"Hochalberne Bösesabwendgeste" (= highly silly gesture to prevent evil) or commonly referred to as "the metal gesture":




Oh yes, the metalheads..

They are: (impossible to treat)


but impossibly fun:


they headbang, mosh in pits, crowdsurf:


but like their comfort:


and are generally just very relaxed:




Oh yea, where are you from again?


I like everything that has the W:O:A logo on it, so I loooved the Full Metal Bag:


You wonder what my favourite place after the stage area was? "Wackinger Village" of course:


With games:



- wrong:
- right:
A little torture here and there ("He listened to Hip-Hop!" - "I saw him doing it!"):


and as all over the place, mead in its typical containers:


Isn't all that exhausting, you ask? You bet:

How do you know you're in...

... Hessen? Simple, just look out for the clues.

The sauce is always green and consists of exactly seven regional herbs:


The cheese is full of music:


The apple wine is called "fabric"*:


.. and its monuments hang high above the streets:


And you can be absolutely certain when you hear the Hessian "anthem".

* Stöffche is the diminutive of Stoff = fabric

Human Kangaroo

This picture was taken three years ago, at the first skyscraper festival I "witnessed".

Scraping the sky

Frankfurt has several skyscrapers, most of them used as office buildings for banks and the like. And depending on the perspective (again!), they look even higher than normally...

The full hour

Always at the full hour after 10 p.m., thousands of little lights start flickering all over the Eiffel Tower.
I captured this spectacle with my Nikon 2200 (in pre-SLR times), without a tripod and holding my breath...

It's London, baby!

I took this picture when I was in London for the first time, in the summer of 2005, and fell in love with the city. So I'll go again this year, for the 4th time now, with the difference that this time, I will not only visit the city but most of all the friends I have there. And this photo is dedicated to one of them, my friend and "guru" Briejesh, a guy who is an awesome photographer and shares his software as well as his knowledge ever so patiently with me.

Hands I

Recently, I saw an announcement for a photo exhibition named "Hands". I found that inspiring, so maybe this'll be my week of hands :-).

The first picture in the cycle is of a Dutch guy who adds the finishing touches to a sand sculpture of the Frankfurt skyline, at the skyscraper festival two years ago.

Bee-Day

This is the first photo I uploaded on TrekLens (That reminds me, I haven't posted anything there in ages - have I grown out of it maybe?). It was taken with my Nikon Coolpix 2200 and still is a pretty good shot. That proves once again that the most important part in photography is the photographer after all...