Iberia Impressions: Portugal’s North [en]

After Madrid, I headed for the coast of northern Portugal. Less sight-seeing and photographing, more surfing and partying. Didn’t even make it nearby Porto. Well, I’ll get to see it some other time… Esposende/Ofir First stop was the Ofir peninsula near the town of Esposende (the proper Portuguese pronunciation of which I will never learn). …

Iberia Impressions: Madrid Stopover [en]

I hadn’t been to Madrid before and the city has always been a mystery to me. How could one of the most notorious maritime empires have been governed from a landlocked place like this? The geographic location seemed unappealing — no harbor, no impressive mount-range serving as backdrop, not even a noteworthy river flowing through. …

Iberia Impressions: Euskal Herria (Basque Country) [en]

After visiting Biarritz on the French side of Basque Country, I finally arrived in Spain and on the Iberian peninsula. Donostia (San Sebastian) First stop was in Donostia, a city famous for it’s surf beaches, like Zurriola. It’s located by a river mouth and two bays. In the middle, there’s a small hill raising from …

Iberia Impressions: In Transit through France [en]

I’ve already written way too much about my recent Interrail surf-trip to Spain and Portugal. So this time let my just dump some photos from the places that I came through. Let’s start with my journey through France… Paris Two days stop-over. Always liked La Defense and the modern stuff (we don’t have much of …

The Gotchas of Railroad-Safety [en]

They say trains are one of the safest modes of transportation. And while I can think of several horrific train crashes in the past, I generally believe it’s true. But now I’m wondering about all the small things that could go wrong? How common are they? On my last surf-trip, I witnessed this small incident …

Interrail — was it worth it? [en]

I wanted to avoid flying during my surf-trip to Iberia, so I only used trains and buses instead. My trip took me from my home in Germany through France, Spain, Portugal, and back. Altogether this went really well. I was impressed by the punctuality and comfort of French TGVs and Spanish Renfe long-distance trains. In …

Iberia Surf Diary [en]

With a short stopover in France, I’ve been traveling through Spain and Portugal from mid-September to late October. Main objective was to get to know surf-spots along the Atlantic coast and surf as much as possible. Here I’ve collected my surfing experiences. Mostly to learn from it for future endeavors. E.g. what spots and what …

Notes on exiftool Usage [en]

Most of the image manipulation and media organization applications that I’m using do not have great support for meta data. Sure, they can display and edit relevant meta data. But they’re not great at filtering, bulk-editing, etc. So I’m using the exiftool CLI to get some of the basic image meta-data straight, before uploading images …