An old friend of mine visited me yesterday, we planned this for a while now since we didn’t meet each other for a long time, apart from the moments when we met each other in the city by chance in a busy moment. But over the last months we had a lot of contact via text messages and phoned on some weekends. He was one of my best friends a decade ago, but you know at some point life starts to keep people busy, can even separate people for a while, this was the only reason why we lost contact back then.

Most of our recent phone calls lasted more than two hours, it’s when you notice you still have a lot in common. We phoned again yesterday and he mentioned he has still two work free weeks, we spontaneously decided to meet each other. The weather here in northern germany is at the moment pretty rainy, not perfect to do something outside, as a result we decided to meet at my home. He did bring along his external harddrive and six beer, the external harddrive to show me his recent holiday photos and videos, the beer to have a good time.

The doorbell rang, I opened and saw him, we did hug each other and said something like “Long time mate, long time mate!”. Even if we phoned already several hours, we still had to tell each other a lot of stories, and of course, it’s perfect when you do that with a beer. We talked a lot about things that happened in ten years, but then also about more recent things. He visited me around 6pm and we sat together until 2pm, that was the point we both said “Oh my, the time did fly!”, we realized we should find an end. But I can tell you I enjoyed the day pretty much, we want to do this again once in a while.

Talking about his holidays, he was recently for 4 weeks in Bavaria, in the district Berchtesgaden Land to be more exact, that’s where the Berchtesgaden Alps are. We went through hundreds of his photos and watched his hike videos too, even one video where he sat in a ropeway for a half hour on his way down, yes, that gives you an impression how big that area is and that you do even need some time to get down with technical help. I enjoyed everything he showed me, hiking through the Alps that must be a fun experience, but also not an easy one, you could see his increasing exhaustion in the videos.

I mentioned that I have a blog where I do write technology posts at times, but where I also upload a lot of photos, especially nature related photos, basically a very broad blog. We shared thoughts about our recent passions, I didn’t mention it in the context of his photos, however, he came back to this thought and said “You know what? You should copy my folder to use the nature images for your blog”. That was a great offer, I told him that would add a lot of value to my blog and that I appreciate that much. I do now have a folder with 1049 Bavaria photos that I can share with you over time. The photos are taken with the iPhone, but there are still a lot of great pictures that he shot.

I told him about my photography hobby as well, he said “I am not so much into photography and you might find some problems with the images, but maybe you can find some you want to use”. We are honest with each other, I told him that the impression counts, which means I clearly enjoyed all of his photos, but that I would use the best ones. Of course, he has a lot of blurred, very grainy or too overexposed photos for my taste, but many good ones as well. I’m happy that I got permission to choose the best ones, there are even photos of Salzburg in Austria, it is a good news I wanted to share with you too.