PHOTO-A-DAY CHALLENGE

Arriving at Our Home Base

Week 117 of the photographic documentary of my daily life

It’s always nice getting “home” again. While, as nomads, we do create a new home in a matter of days, we still have two places in the world to call home and always return back to. The two home bases are my parents’ and my in-law’s home. Two homes in two different countries and on two different continents.

Right now we arrived at my parents' place and as I am trying to organize all our belongings squeezing them into my tiny cupboard and sorting out my photos I did get confused and found out I skipped one day in last week’s photo essay.

So, to get things right again, I’m starting this week with Wednesday’s photo.

It’s been a while since I last visited my parents’ garden plot. Now, everything is harvested and picked. Well, almost. My parents had so many apples this year that they left a few hanging on the trees. And guess what? There are some species rather happy about that!

Like the two friends below.

The butterfly was feasting on that apple for at least 15 minutes and gave me lots of time to figure out the right angle with my broken autofocus.

Yes, my lens is still broken and won’t get repaired, I tried. But a new one is on the way. Excitement!

Another day, another load of work ahead. For those few days before heading off to our adventure we had quite a list of things to do and so we were off this morning going to the city center of Stuttgart.

As we came up the stairs from the subway I was surprised to see the ferris wheel. I don’t think they ever had one standing here at the “Schlossplatz”, in the heart of the city.

I loved the violas planted all around the park adding some color to this sunny day in fall.

After our shopping tour (buying only electronic devices) we took the subway back up out of the city and walked into the garden. My dad had planned to make a barbeque for lunch and we didn’t mind. It was a gorgeous day.

It’s when I walked past this beautiful garden filled with dahlia flowers shining in all different colors, shapes, and sizes.

On Friday I was busy with a lot of things but most of them were online. I didn’t seem to have taken the time to take out my camera and decided to capture my mom’s display of fall later that evening.

Those are all decorative gourds grown in my parents' garden. The pumpkins aren’t edible but the Cucumis (tiny cucumbers) can be eaten.

I lied when I said all the vegetables and fruits are harvested. In the flower boxes on the balcony, my parents don’t grow flowers. They have six boxes filled with strawberries and there is still a berry or two a day for me to pick and eat.

Saturday was the wedding of a friend of mine in the city center of Stuttgart. This event was bringing me back to my teenage memories and times when I used to party down in the city every weekend.

It’s been a few years since I was last in a club down there and both of us, David and I, ended up enjoying the party. On our way home we missed the bus in Esslingen (I live so far out of the city I need to take the train and then the bus to get home, or walk, that’s what I did a lot in my teens).

As the “S-Bahn” arrived at the train station with a 10-minute delay, I could see our bus leaving in front of our eyes. I guess he couldn’t wait another 30 seconds. But hey, nothing to get upset about since we can’t make the bus come back.

It was half past one at night and the first night bus would only come past 2 am. We asked a taxi driver for the price but just as when I was younger, we decided it wasn’t worth the money.

Esslingen is actually quite a beautiful city with lots of architectural interesting buildings and lots of history. Since David has never been to the city, we decided to walk around instead of sitting and waiting at the train station.

We walked to one of the bridges crossing the river “Neckar” and saw this beautiful half-timbered house on a tiny island on the water. They had these reeds or blades of grass planted in flower boxes on the railing of the bridge and I used them to frame the picture.

Sunday we slept in after that late night out and I spent most of the day on my tablets. Yes, I got two now. David was trying to make me buy a new tablet for over a year already but I simply didn’t find one I wanted. My old Samsung tablet often freezes or just turns black when I work on it a lot but I haven’t replaced it yet since I didn’t find anything in the same size which would be an upgrade.

These days they make everything larger and bigger. Phones and tablets. And then you get keyboards for it. But that isn’t the point of having a tablet. I travel with my tablet everywhere and type on it like on a phone. I might argue with you I can type faster on the screen keyboard of my tablet than you can on a keyboard of a computer.

All of them, really every single of my articles published on Medium, are written on my tablet. Just because of the convenience of being able to pull it out anywhere and everywhere I do get the chance and time to produce so much content.

However, I did agree in the end that I do need to upgrade my tools and finally agreed on a Samsung Galaxy tab S6 Lite. Yes, it is taller than mine, I said there was nothing in the same handy size available.

It's not that much wider so I hope I’ll still be able to type on it even though I figured already I need to stretch my hands a bit more to get to all the letters. The salesman wanted to convince me to get the additional keyboard with the tablet but I just smiled and denied the offer.

Let’s see how far I’ll come.

So today, I finally started setting up the new product. Medium was the second app I installed. I needed my emails first to be able to sign into Medium. I do like the new design and longer screen. It makes reading a more enjoyable experience. I guess I read about 70 articles today. Yes, my reading list was far above 100. I had to.

And now, I’m typing. On my old tablet. Because I still can.

Today I did some more organizing in the flat. When we arrived we placed bags and items in all the rooms of my parents’ flat. It was time now to clean things up.

We packed everything away and carried it up to the attic. Up there are almost exclusively my belongings and I’m very thankful we can store our stuff up there.

After packing everything away I spotted a box that said “Anne shoes”. I had no idea what kind of shoes I still had and decided to take the stuff down and throw things away.

It came out there were no shoes in there but school papers dating back all the way to primary. It must have been the last memories I had kept from all my school years.

Anyway, I’m on a constant downsizing project and decided to throw more of them away and keep only very few of the exercise books. However, before throwing all of it away, I skimmed through the books and took loads of pictures of my work so that I have the memories at least in digital version.

Yes, those will appear in upcoming posts. I got some ideas already.

And here’s one for you. I think it’s from 6th or 7th grade. Learning English. A language I never wanted to learn and speak every day now.

On the first of November, my parents were having a barbecue in the garden inviting friends and family over. For us, there is no such thing as barbecue season. We make food over the fire 12 months in the year.

But something else was almost more exciting. My lens had arrived and I could now test it in nature.

I do know, I now have to learn new things again and figure out this lens but I wasn’t disappointed with my first day’s result. Even though I took the below picture with less than-optimal light settings one can still identify the species.

European Goldfinch.

And then, yes. It was time to start packing again. We barely settled down at my parents' place but have a great road trip planned before diving into the next line of work.

We’re driving east again!

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” — Paul Coelho

This has been my week in photographs. 7 days. 7 photographs. Anyone can join. Once. Or weekly. It doesn’t matter. We welcome everyone! Dennett started this photography challenge in 2020 and many have participated ever since.

Erika / Eileen / K. Barrett / Juan / David / Mia / Susan / LensAfield / Kim / Barbara / Diana / Barb / Sandra / Shruthi / Ellie / Pene / Olive / Gustavo / Jane / Penny / Jillian / Shell / Ivy / Lisa / Lynne

And these are the previous weekly photo essays:

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