Into the Blue - Blog @en

Final report of my research on the situation of undocumented migrants in Arizona and California, supported by the American Council on Germany’s McCloy Fellowship in Journalism

If you are a digital nomad or just traveling a lot, you will know these situations: How to edit photos on your office computer, with no Photoshop installed? How to merge your application into one PDF in a Peruvian internet café? When traveling without my notebook, I use cloud based programs (mostly for free) and without downloading. Here is a selection for everyday use.

When lawyer Kate Dowing announced that she would move out of Silicon Valley due to the exorbitant housing prices, the story went viral. It emphasized what many Bay Area residents know all too well: If you come to this affluent area for other reasons than working for a major tech company, life will be very expensive. Here are some ideas to make it work nevertheless.

As students and friends often ask me this question, I have created a little flowchart to help you find a camera that fits your ambition, experience and purse – without endorsing specific brands. If you need more help, feel free to ask any question.

Why are portraits of women so often limited to their beauty, while men get all the rest – the quirky, the mysterious, the interesting look? My photography class at the Stanford International Center couldn’t care less for these conventions and took portraits of women who struck us as being strong, witty, brave, funny and expressive.

This is a small presentation that I gave on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2016 at the I-Center.

The German NGO Welthungerhilfe has chosen a picture I took in India for this year’s christmas card. I would love to tell you that this family is as merry as it seems here, but while we were joking with the adults, the children’s faces tell the real story. Like most inhabitats of the coastal Sundarbans area, this family is terrified by the increasingly strong cyclones that hit their homes. The last one killed thousands in their area, turned many of their neighbors into climate refugees and left this family traumatized. I often think about them and hope they are well.

Finding a room in San Francisco or Silicon Valley has never been more difficult. For a foreigner, who is not working for a extremely well-paying IT company and not even commuting, it is nearly a wonder to find anything at all. But we found a really great place in a garage – and isn’t that where all the good stories beginn in California?

Estela de Carlotto, grande dame of the Argentinean civil rights movement, has finally found her stolen grandson Guido.. 37 years after his parents were murdered and he was made to live with a couple close to the military regime. What a day for the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo! However, there are still 400 unidentified grandchildren out there… Do they have the slightest idea? And if they do, what keeps them from coming out?

As project manager I was in charge of the relaunch and conception/editing of Welthungerhilfe’s Annual Report 2013. Welthungerhilfe is Germany’s largest secular NGO. The Annual Report shows on 56 pages what the NGO used donations for, how people benefit from its projects and what the future holds. Upon evaluation of 50 Annual Reports, Spiegel Online named Welthungerhilfe the “most transparent” German NGO.

Cruises can be really boring, many people warned me before I got on board the Ocean Dream to surround the world with hundreds of Japanese people. Well, this one wasn’t – thanks to the people on board. Let me present just 5 out of more than a thousand: the interpreter, the captain’s right hand, the activist, the volunteer and the child.