I’d like to show you some pictures from two weeks ago in Greece.
With both the manuscripts handed in, I took my first vacation in a year.

Germany was dark and cold when I left before dawn:

…but Greece was beautiful as ever:

I had taken a plane to the island of Rhodos. And I had no idea where to go next. So I did what I always like to do: I walked around.

The first thing I noticed – this place had been hit hard by the crisis:

I followed long empty roads through the heat of the Greek morning:

There were villages, but not very many:

…trees just like I had imagined them:

…and once more after so much time, I felt the cooling shade of a cloud moving softly over the land:

Some things were trying to hide their meaning from me:

While other things were so clear that it hurt to look at them:

I passed by a place that sold fur coats right before I entered the town of Faliraki:

And then the beach was there:

I had walked 20 kilometers with two backpacks, and I had a pretty massive blister on my left foot:

So I got a hotel room and some vodka:

Callicounis Imperial Vodka. 50% alcohol. Tasted and burned like the hot sun. 4/10.

I drank some of it, then I dipped my knife in it and cut the blister:

There was no way of knowing that it would get totally infected and nasty the next day.

Anyway, here I was in the South of Greece, right next to Turkey, with a hotel room, a sunburn on my head, a blister on my foot and the feeling of summer all around me:

I knew that somewhere, very far from me, my books were slowly in the making.

And I was happy.

Soundtrack: Dumbfoundead – “Town”