When the author Franziska Consolati talks about her travels on her blog, you don’t get to know classic holiday reports. The reader is taken on an eventful story by her narrative style. For example, you can literally hear the tension crackle when, for example, you sit still in the eye of an elephant in the African steppe.
After reporting on her trip to Mongolia in 2019, she is now publishing her second book “Around the World in Germany ” in April of this year. We are very pleased that Franziska Consolati was available to answer a few questions:
In your new book “Around the World in Germany” you present exotic activities from all over the world. The special thing, however, is that you can experience all these adventures in Germany. Had you been toying with the idea of exploring your home country for a long time or did this idea develop due to the Corona pandemic?
Even before Corona, I asked myself more and more often why we actually look at our homeland with different eyes than the rest of the world. An example: There is a road in the Alps that I have driven along hundreds of times in the past ten years. There we are out and about in the forest for a long time until we arrive at a hilltop and the trees open up the view: In front of us lies an impressive panorama of the Bavarian Alps. If this road were somewhere else, if this moment had happened while traveling, I would have pulled over immediately to the right to enjoy the view. I probably would have even taken a photo. But that never happened here – until a few months ago.
So I would say that the awareness that we don’t have to travel far away to experience something new, something unforgettable, has developed long before. Corona has certainly accelerated this development significantly.
Is there an adventure in Germany that has inspired you so much that you might want to experience it again?
A few! If we like something, it would be a shame to tick off the experience just because we already know it. Above all, I would like to experience the adventures that take place in nature at any time of the year. Whales, for example, I can’t see often enough.
For many of our readers, the holiday only begins as soon as you sit on a plane or have crossed the national borders. Do you have any tips on how to fully enjoy the experiences even on a weekend trip – without thinking about everyday life?
Turn off your smartphone! 🙂 I do this regularly now, even when I “just” want to disappear into nature for an afternoon. I strongly associate the feeling of not being available, of not quickly ending up in an app during a break, with being away. Otherwise, of course, it helps to keep the favorite habits from all the long vacations on short trips: turn up the music in the car, turn down the windows, leave the clock at home. Whatever it is that we look forward to when we think about the next vacation.
I would like to go into one more statement from your book:
“And without having to fear that we may not make it to this place a second time in this life.”
This sentence spontaneously triggers a lot of positive memories in me. Although I also believe that these special moments can no longer be experienced so intensively on a second visit to the site. What makes the perfect moment on holiday for you?
The perfect moments are usually the unplanned, the spontaneous ones. The moments that we had absolutely no expectations of, because we couldn’t know that it would be a moment at all. On a temple tour, for example, it is the moment when the sun shines through the window in the ceiling at exactly the right moment, or a nice conversation with a monk. When diving, the perfect moment is not the brightly colored school of fish that we really want to see, but perhaps the feeling when we finally lie perfectly in the current and feel like astronauts.
And if we visit a beautiful place a second time without expecting it to be exactly the same as in our memory of the first time – then we might even find something completely new in that place.
Can you tell us where your next trip will take you? Maybe across the country’s borders again?
As soon as travel within Germany is possible (and responsible) again, I am very happy to continue exploring our home country with our VW bus. For a weekend, for a little longer, on our doorstep and corners that I don’t even know yet.
In the summer, we will probably also cross a border: namely the one to Sweden. On the way there, however, we will take a lot of time in Germany.
