I'm taking the train to my girlfriend. 😎💕

About half of my four-hour journey is between Mainz and Remagen along the Middle Rhine.

🏞️🍇🏰

Misty vineyards, castles and small islands. 🥰

I particularly like the Bacharacher Werth (island) with its surrounding shallows. The train also passes the legendary Loreley, but I am already enchanted and stay on track.

✨⏫🛤️🏞️🧜🏻‍♀️🎶✨

My parents always encouraged me to capture animals. On the premise of releasing them exactly where I found them. I honestly can't tell if that's right or wrong.

On the one hand, children should be taught early on to respect animals and to leave them alone. I stressed the animals, frightened them and also approached potentially dangerous animals.

On the other hand, I was able to follow an instinct that is millions of years old and have developed a strong connection with nature.

If an animal was nearby, I felt a tingling sensation before I consciously perceived it with my other senses. Incidentally, Steve Irwin also reported on this feeling in an episode.

However, as an adult I would no longer harass animals unnecessarily. If I ever become a father, I have to ask myself how I want to bring up my child.

The frog sitting there on my hand is probably a Sahara frog (Pelophylax saharicus). I can say with certainty that it is a male. During the mating season, these have dark and thickened thumbs to hold on to the females.

I went hiking in the Andes again.

No, I wasn't. I just used Photoshop.🤪

More specifically, the generative AI fill of the latest beta. In the past, you had to laboriously select the motif, research the right background image, consider copyrights, insert it, edit the edges and make many adjustments. Today, all you need is a click and a text prompt. What do you think? 🤔

Now anyone can fake just about anything with ease. Admittedly, a closer look reveals a few discrepancies, but only a few look closely. Influencers no longer need to travel and dating profiles can be so much more interesting! On the other hand, if you want to be creative, a lot of work is saved and you can invest more time in other things. Also, almost everyone is already changing their "landscape" anyway, which others would call a beautiful face (wrinkles are natural and beautiful!).😉

Image 1 was created with the input "Mountain hike in the Andes", Image 2 "Landscape of the 2009 film Land of the Lost", Image 3 "Amazon River" and Image 4 is the original (in my neighborhood).

Authenticity is important to me, which is why I always mention content manipulation or generated representations. Except for the Easter eggs, of course, but nobody discovers them anyway.😄

Maybe I should devote myself more to classical painting again. It's not that easy to fake and you still have to do something.👨‍🎨

𝗘𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗸𝗲 🚲
😊🌱🌼🌞🐦🎶

In Oberursel-Stierstadt I saw these 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗽 (I assume Heidschnucke).

And I show you the 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 in Germany. Originally it was a transformer substation, but a few years ago it has been converted into a residential building with 14 square meters.

The facade was sprayed by the Oberursel graffiti artist 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘂𝘀 𝗝𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮 (1979-2017) based on the Alte Oper in Frankfurt.

Where the sun is tied. The Intihuatana Pyramid in Machu Picchu. 🌄

Behind me you can see the presumed remains of Nürings Castle. Around 1100, the Counts of Nürings built a residence on the mountain. After the male line died out in 1171, the county of Nürings was first taken over by the Lords of Münzenberg and then by the Lords of Bolanden. In 1233, after a division of the family property, Philipp von Bolanden called himself "von Falkenstein". This new Falkenstein line removed the remains of Nürings Castle and built New Falkenstein Castle right next to it.

🌸💮🌺🌻🌼🌲🌳

The Falkenstein Castle was inhabited from the 13th to the end of the 18th century.🏰 However, after the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648) it already lost its importance, fell into disrepair and was only partially habitable.

Not much is left of the castle. The demolition was only stopped in 1842, the entrance gate is a reconstruction dating back to that period. The square bergfried dates from the 14th century with its round turret from the 15th century and is 18 meters high.

The view is very nice, because the small town of Falkenstein looks as idyllic as the intro of a German soap opera from the 80s and 90s.😆📺

A small group of ibexes lived on the mountain until about the 1980s. They were sent from the nearby Opel Zoo in Kronberg.🐏

I didn't stay long there and hiked a bit through the forest.😊

🌸💮🌺🌻🌼🌲🌳

Nature's hide-and-seek ❄️🦆☃️

Seemingly endless..
along the Grote Nete river.

The heath in Kessel, Belgium is characterized by heather, swamps, drifting sand and ponds. Heath landscapes are a beautiful example of the interplay of culture and biodiversity. 6000 years ago 80 percent of Europe was still covered by forests. Heath areas naturally occurred only in very rare cases on coasts, in moorland areas and in the mountains. Then people started to use the forests for themselves. They required grazing land and thus not only changed the landscape, but also created new habitats for many different species. The extensive use of deforested and cleared areas resulted in increasingly nutrient-poor soils and grazing animals were bred that are particularly suitable for these areas. The upper layer of soil was regularly removed, mixed with animal manure and burned or applied to fields as fertilizer. The rain washed out the last nutrients and specially adapted plant species settled there, followed by rare animals.

These unique ecosystems survive only through active human intervention, which has been achieved through centuries of heath farming. However, this type of farming has become uneconomical, and a large part of the land has been converted into arable land by applying fertiliser. Other areas became forest again because keeping animals on nutrient-poor areas is associated with lower yields. With the loss of the heathland, numerous animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. And all the beauty that has always inspired painters and poets could simply disappear. It could hardly have been the biodiversity alone that led to active conservation efforts, but rather the cultural connection to this romanticized landscape form. We keep what we find beautiful and we can only find beautiful what we can see.