Some old pictures I took while in Germany

It seems that people are adding pictures to their blogs, so I thought I would do the same. I took a couple of pictures during my time in Germany (back when it used to be called West Germany, and I was doing some "interesting" things in that country). I used to want to be a photographer, and the first picture I've always liked. It was of the Schwetzingen (or something like that) Schloss, or actually the house BEHIND the Schloss. An interesting story is that when I was driving to this place (during my "let's visit a castle a day on strange dates with my German girlfriend" days), I didn't understand the road signs very well, so I ended up seeing what in the US would be a "turn right" sign and I ended up driving onto the lawn of the Schloss itself. Let's just say some very friendly German Politzei were not very friendly at that particular moment.


This photo was of a castle I found while driving down the side of the river. It reminded me of those old King Arthur movies where the leader would send one of his vassals to defend a far away outpost. Well, I found a tiny path to the back of this place and hiked up what seemed like Mount Everest. Well, when I finally got there, I realized there was a road in back because as I stepped out of the forest and onto that road, I nearly got run over by the Mercedes Benz of the guy who seems to own this old fort. Laughs were had by all, as he kindly asked, "why are you standing in my driveway" in that way that friendly people often ask why there's a strange foreigner taking pictures of their house in the middle of nowhere.

The point of this post is that for the longest time I wanted to be a photographer. And then when I got out of the service, I started taking what I thought were professional photos, and a friend of mine came back from a trip to Italy and showed me her pictures. They were brilliantly captured and gave off a sense of complete ownership of the scene. I immediately realized she was a real photographer, and I was some flunky who pointed a camera and prayed my thumb wasn't in the shot. So I became a writer instead.

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