border

Phantom Border named as one of 20 Environmental Books to Inspire You in the Year to Come!

December 16, 2024Kerstin No Comments

…by The Revelator, the online magazine of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Regular readers may remember Lange’s Revelator essay about Germany’s “Green Belt” and what it represents for humans and nature. That essay just scratched the surface — this book-length examination takes us on a powerful journey through the Green Belt’s history, culture, and ecology.… Read more Phantom Border named as one of 20 Environmental Books to Inspire You in the Year to Come!

Working through History over Beer

April 4, 2024Kerstin No Comments

This article, based on my chance encounter with retired Bavarian police superintendent Otto Oeder and subsequent invitation to the Stammtisch, appeared in the Mindener Tageblatt’s January 13/14, 2024 weekend edition. Captions to photos are in English so you can follow along even if you don’t read German! Leuchtende Berghänge: sattgelbes Eschenlaub, das Hellgelb frühherbstlicher Buchenblätter,… Read more Working through History over Beer

See for yourself!

January 18, 2023Kerstin 4 Comments

You’ve been reading along—or maybe you just came across this little island in the vast virtual ocean—and now you want to see these places for yourself? Now you can! Find out more. AFTER THE WALL: DISCOVER GERMANY’S HIDDEN HEARTLANDThis special tour [dates TBA] will take you to the Green Belt—the nature preserve that has been… Read more See for yourself!

The birds at the end of the world (Part 2)

August 31, 2020Kerstin 9 Comments

As Kai goes on to fill in the picture for me, I realize that what made the resolution for the Green Belt so effective was a chain of developments that sounded almost providential. Kai Frobel himself uses the expression glückliche Fügung, the coming together of auspicious circumstances. What becomes quite clear to me, too, is the… Read more The birds at the end of the world (Part 2)

The Birds at the End of the World (part 1)

July 24, 2020Kerstin 6 Comments

Why “the end of the world?” you may ask. For the people who lived near it, the border between East and West Germany might as well have been the end of the world. For birds – and for countless other wild creatures – the deadly border was a lifeline in an increasingly inhospitable modern agricultural… Read more The Birds at the End of the World (part 1)

At home on this earth?

May 30, 2020Kerstin 3 Comments

Since the coronavirus started to spread around the world earlier this year there have been countless stories of nature rebounding: bobcats and black bears venturing onto the roadways in Yosemite National Park, Venice canals so clear that schools of fish are visible again; seismologists finding that movements in the earth’s upper crust have slowed down… Read more At home on this earth?

Dating in the Borderland

February 15, 2020Kerstin 2 Comments

Anna had reserved a room for me in a small Gasthaus one village over from Kella. During GDR times, Pfaffschwende had been just outside the Schutzstreifen, the high-security “protective zone”. The narrow road to Pfaffschwende had been the only one by which Kella residents could access the rest of the GDR. As she and Andreas drove me… Read more Dating in the Borderland

News from the German Unity Sculpture Park

November 15, 2019Kerstin No Comments

One of my favorite places on my border expedition was the German Unity Sculpture Park in the Rhön Mountains. The park sits directly in the former border strip between East and West Germany and was created by the artist and engineer Jimmy Fell. I found the installations – among them “Expulsion”, the “Miracle of Leipzig”,… Read more News from the German Unity Sculpture Park

The Villagers’ Rebellion

September 10, 2019Kerstin 3 Comments

Germany is fast approaching the 30thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which took the country and the world by surprise on November 9, 1989 (for more on how this actually came about, stay tuned for the book!) Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, for a tiny East German village 130 miles northwest… Read more The Villagers’ Rebellion

More on Heimat, and Sauntering, and Gratitude

November 21, 2018Kerstin 2 Comments

During my expedition along Germany’s death strip-turned-green-belt, I followed a strategy I came to think of as “structured sauntering.” The former border strip itself, with the help of a guidebook in my handlebar pouch and a GPS route in my phone, provided the geographical structure for my journey, from the Baltic coast in the north… Read more More on Heimat, and Sauntering, and Gratitude