🥳✨️ Today I turn 39! I'm enjoying the day all to myself on the German North Sea island of Baltrum. It's the smallest of the populated East Frisian Islands. I've visited here several times since I was a small child. Baltrum is so small that there are no cars and no street names, only house numbers.

⏳️🪁 The last time I was here was 23 years ago, at the age of 16. The photos show me when I was about 3-4 years old (1989/1990), and the others when I was 6 (1992).

👶🦷 I remember losing my very first baby tooth on Baltrum. But you can't see it, because it happened on the last day. As a child, my hair was quite light—but yes, that's really me!

🐇🐓 In the early 90s, there were lots of pheasants and rabbits on Baltrum, and they were very friendly. But that hasn't been the case for decades. Today you can still see them occasionally, but back then there were a lot of them!

🐚🦀⛱️ I remember the girl I played with on the beach, and I also remember that a small seahorse and several starfish washed up into the hole we dug.

🐴😳 I was a bit sceptical about the horse (Norwegian Fjord Horse) because I didn't really like feeding it by hand. I was once bitten by a donkey, and that scared me. But I wasn't afraid to get on the horse and ride it. I have many memories of Baltrum, and that's why I'm spending my birthday in this special place. I'll have a detailed report as soon as I get back.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

Our grandparents visited me and my little brother in the children's home. Both loved animals and fed me lots of books and cakes. My grandmother was an artist and painted animal portraits with make-up on paper. She was a cousin of the German painter Rudolf Kortokraks. That's probably where my artistic streak came from. Both were politically active. My grandfather had a great sense of humor and was the son of the German founding father and humanist Dr. Werner Hilpert. Despite this, we grew up in simple living conditions. My brother and I lived in children's homes for about three years in total. My mother was homeless for 9 years. Life cannot be put into categories. The first children's home was privately financed and offered a little luxury (e.g. computer room, sauna, excursions, supplies), but we were always used as advertising figures (e.g. newspaper reports on company XY, which sponsors the children's home with a toy race track, etc.). The second children's home, where the photos were taken, was much simpler and was only able to afford modern equipment such as new furniture and computers - a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - thanks to a generous donation from the Lions Club. Instead, we often went out into nature together to pick mushrooms and berries and learned to haggle at every opportunity. Many of the residents of the children's home were mentally handicapped. Then I made friends and learned early on what the true qualities of being human are. It is being human.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

View of the panel buildings on Karl-Friedrich-Schinkel-Straße in Plauen (Vogtland/Saxony) in 2000. I lived there for a while on weekends. The rear row of buildings and the building on the right have since been demolished.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

We also had an electronic typewriter, but I liked that more! I wrote a lot of science fiction. If I remember correctly, I was sitting at Spaceship3000 (about a spaceship that stranded millions of years in the past). I enjoyed reading my older brother's Perry Rhodan books, which was very inspiring. Back then, there were only three snowy tv channels and the computer was an old C64. I only knew the internet from television reports. The cell phone was the phone booth at the bus stop. There was nothing bad about that.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.