A personal brief history

I felt a bit like a freak, when I stood in front of a ruin – I didn’t enter them, I was too afraid to do so – and I used to visit places in different circumstances: sunrise, sunset, twilight hour, by night. But it was ridiculous for others, so I kept it as my secret.

By surfing the web I found his website; it contained not much personal data about himself, and the only thing I could say for sure was he’s obviously in my age and he seems to live nearby. His site contained much of the lost places I only knew from the outside, but he was also in –and in much more lost places I never noticed. I immediately fell in love with his work – and saw our home country different now.

I wrote him an e-mail to his pseudonym address. And he did something not really usual for him (at least in matters of groupies): he answered. Few days later, we met in person – our first common tour. I learned there’s a term for this kind of interest: „urban exploration“; and that the correct notation for people like me is not „freak“ but „urban explorer“. Suddenly I wasn’t on my own any longer, and a hobby made friendship.

So much happened over the years: we celebrated birthdays and marriages together, built and bought proprietaries, babies were born and grew up; health and disease, birth and death, fun and trouble – and our lost place trips, again and again, even when sometimes infrequent. But I’m still one of his biggest fans. And so proud of all we did together in the past – and will do in the future.