BALTIKUM '19 Gdańsk -> Estonia by bike
This trip started in an area at the baltic sea quite densely populated being called Gdańsk.
From here I went by bike. Shoutout to Hinzi for setting up the bike for this tour. Worked like a charm for about 1200km before it broke down in Estonia. But I am getting ahead of myself. For now it rides like a charm 🚲
I was leaving Babylon-Gdańsk as fast as possible close the seaside in north-eastern direction. I had no idea where I was trying to get honestly. Estonia somehow. I don't even know why anymore. I think it was because I like the colors of the Estonian flag.
In a night without mosquitoes I was roaming through the bushes. I found out that 4-sec of shutter speed and a headlamp as a singular light source can produce spectacular crispy night nature shots.
After Morocco this was my second journey after having the hot-filter built out of my Camera, meaning I can shoot from Infrared to Ultraviolet.
By the use of filters that I put on top of my lense I could decide again what frequency range I want to capture.
If the colors look slightly off but still have connection to your real perception, than the picture was taken without filter, capturing Ultra-Violet, Normal Wavelengths as well as Infra-Red.
This is the same picture as above but shot only in the infrared spectral range. If you have questions about this kind of photography feel free to contact me. Or ChatGPT.
Before you scare away due to kyrillic symbols, the word in the heading means Kaliningrad. It is a small district of Russia that is surrounded by Lithuania and Poland.
"Spits? What is a spit? What the heck are you talking about?"
I guess spit must be an exotic word to you if it does not refer to saliva.
Well at least I did not know it until I was on a spit. A spit is this (look at the red circle):
So guess what what. Spits are fucking chill as long as you are more than 1km away from a Russian border. Russian borders in general a quite a vibe killer must I say. Being in EU is cool. Being in Russia is cool. But Russian border... nice thrill for some minutes but too long can't be healthy.
Anyway, those spits have a very ordered neat and tidy set of natural features. On the seaside you have a proper beach for dozens of Kilometers. Then comes some super flat dunes followed by 100m of deep forest. Then comes the road that stretches along the whole spit. Then comes another 100m of forest. Then comes another beach towards the lagoon. The lagoon side will feel very different though. It is much more like chilling on a lake in terms of animals and vegetation. And then 3 min by bike you go to the other side of the spit and you are on the ocean again. Fun times. For some parts of the spits the dunes seriously take over. This is amazing to explore, it almost feels like being in a desert, except of course that you breath salty sea air.
Look at the picture above that is shot from within the sand of a dune. The dune was quite a large hill just before the beach would start. Lookin away of dunes' the beach side one could see water as well. That is pretty much all the width you get there. So cute.
The desert reveals its true magic in the darkness of the night. It is impossible to reach such low levels of light pollution in a populated area of the world.
The next village was 50km away.
Lying in the dust and watching the milky way unfold in the sky for hours was better than cinema could ever be.
The most intense experience that the desert offered me was the sunrise.
5:30 in the morning the horizon would slowly but incessantly start to light up.
Brighter and brighter shades of blue unravel.
The milky way was still there in its full glory — 20° azimuth over the horizon were the rotation of the earth would soon reveal our sun.
The blue spread from the horizon through the milky way to the zenith of the sky.
The first shades of yellow came through at the horizon.
To my amazement the milky way was still well visible in the semi-lit sky. Actually it was still as visible as if you could see it from the central European countryside.
Somewhere at this point I forgot about being human for a long time span.
My body froze.
I could not take pictures anymore.
I was listening to music but at some point I had to stop because no music would fit anymore.
No music could do justice to what I saw.
The first glimpses of yellow light were on the horizon. The first ambient light rays sent by our sun, reflected in the atmosphere and crashed into my patch of desert gently dimmed up the scene around me.
I realized the vast emptiness that I was in.
For a hundreds of acres around me was literally nothing.
Some hills at the horizon.
One empty street passing through.
No distractions. Just bare vast empty desert land, and a sky full of colors. No clouds. No shapes. Just one horizon.
Below the horizon nothing but dark dead rocks and sand.
Above the horizon there was everything.
A giant colour gradient from yellow in the front to blue above to darkness behind me.
The galactic milky way star cloud just in sight. A comforting thick light dot called Jupiter was just a few ° away from the center of it.
Our sun right behind the horizon about to show its grace, warmth and abundant power.
'Twas like watching a climactic movie. Slowly the colors on the horizon changed, intensified.
Something very powerful was about to ascend over the horizon.
Sure I knew it was the good old sun, but I never watched it like this, felt it like this.
It was as seeing a sunrise for the first time in my life.
The mellow bright orange disk of the sun dipped above the horizon.
Suddenly I was out of my body. I could see myself standing in this infinite empty space.
An infinitely small conscious pebble in an unconscious blank surface on a massive planet that is slowly but steadily rotating towards an spherical radiating nuclear fusion power plant generously emitting abundant amounts of warmth and light into the void of space but also on this evolving rotating rock that I am standing on.
It is this field of ever flowing light that allowed more complex molecules and life to form here, and now I - a small conscious dot in the desert - stand here in these nothingness.
Able to perceive this motherly field of warmth from our star.
Able to perceive the infinite potential of nothingness of desert and space.
Grateful for being allowed to try to grasp this great mystery of being.
Of existing.
Of differentiation and emerging complexity from subatomar particles to galaxy clusters.
The duality of information and consciousness.
Of space and energy.
The vastness is not the only mesmerizing direction of scale that one can experience in the desert.
One can also explore the small scales.
The flight back to Germany would be from Agadir. It was good to touch base with the element of water after the desert before returning to green Europe.
