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I was planning on posting 2017’s best of or flashback post earlier than last year’s. Instead, I’m posting it much later, how about that! 2017 seemed like the fastest year in my life. It was the first full year of full-time self-employment for me and my office was still my bedroom in a shared apartment. It definitely won’t be next year, though. There were many highlights, many new plans made, lots of wonderful places visited, delicious food tasted, and great things experienced.

 

Gornergrat

The year started with a day trip to the Gornergrat summit to see the Matterhorn. Turned out it was hardly visible at all thanks to the cloudy sky. There were other great views, though.

 

South of France

We only had a few days and we were sitting in the car for quite some time, but we enjoyed an amazing little road trip to and through the South of France, all the way down to Avignon – and back.

 

Warsaw

Though technically we were within the city limits, we stayed in a beautiful lake house quite a bit outside Warsaw on the Polish countryside. We was some of my non-Swedish friends from Sweden and me. It was a nice, brief meet-up and I’m hoping for another one in 2018.

 

Hamburg

We spent a long weekend in the Hanseatic city at the beginning of last summer. Temperatures were hot, yet we were very active and walked around the city all day every day in quest of the best food and coffee (and were quite successful).

 

Copenhagen

This was two full weeks in Denmark’s capital and yes, it wasn’t cheap. The first week I stayed in a house with some friends for a training camp, the second week was pure vacation – which meant spending a lot of money eating and drinking out – with my girlfriend.

 

Print Shop

Last fall, I finally launched my online print shop after several months of planning and developing the online it – and finding a shared darkroom to co-use.

 

Oeschinensee

The first of a few short hikes we did last summer was a very beautiful one at Oeschinensee. I was there a couple times with my family, but it’d been ages since the last time. It wasn’t too crowded yet, warm enough to take a dip in the cold water, cold enough to get out again after a few seconds.

 

Grindelwald

Another short hike was done at Grindelwald First, though it was more of a stroll than a proper hike, sharing the path with cows and thousands of Chinese tourists. The weather wasn’t great but we made it to the nearby lake and back before the rain started.

 

Friedrichshafen

My mother treated the family (no, not the monkeys) to a weekend at Lake Constance, where we spent two laid-back days, not doing much more than eating and going for a walk here and there.

 

Traveling Light + Barcelona

The Film Photography Gathering was taking place in the Catalonian Torroella de Montgrí. It brought together an impressive number of world-class photographers as well as antique cameras. Here are blog posts no 1 and no 2.

 

Vietnam

We spent almost a week in Saigon, a few days in Hanoi and some more in Hoi An, where we arrived just when Donald Trump and Mr. Putin were to leave, so they made us wait for ten minutes on the highway, while Donald and his many black cars were racing past us. During this time, we made a couple of short films for a Swiss company. Find the blog post here.

 

Bangkok

We only had to stop over in Bangkok for our flight back to Switzerland wasn’t until the next day. Thus, this wasn’t much more than a ride from the airport to the hotel, delicious Thai food for dinner, a good night’s sleep and a ride back to the airport. But even if it’s just for a night, Bangkok is a great place to visit. I think I took two photos. And I like both of them.

 

New York City

We spent the last two days of 2017 and the first day of 2018 eating and drinking in Brooklyn and had a wonderful New Year’s Eve at Evelina, before we flew down to Colombia to continue our four-month trip around the world. Since it was like a million degrees below zero and we didn’t even have proper clothing for normal winter temperatures because we wouldn’t carry those winter coats to all those hot and humid places we were going to spend the next four months at, I didn’t bother taking pictures.

 

Sarajevo, Annecy, Avignon, Warsaw, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Friedrichshafen, Barcelona, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Hoi An, Bangkok, New York City – the list of places visited certainly seems shorter than last year. I visited 9 countries, was on 19 flights, and spent about 7 weeks abroad.

Looking at my 2016 post, I was able to fulfill pretty much all my resolutions. I traveled a little bit more within Switzerland, spent most of the summer in Bern and was able to better manage the amount of work and schedule jobs in advance. I didn’t work on personal photography projects as much as I’d planned to. And hardly ever did I manage to do nothing for a while, I still didn’t find too many moments to be bored. Instead, I was planning a 4-month trip around the world so there’s definitely more travel this year again, and I have initiated some projects that I’m hopefully going to be able to talk about later this year.

 

I know the year isn’t all that new anymore, but let me wish you a Happy New Year.