My decade (2000-2009) in photos, text and links

01.January 2010

got this great idea from butterflylane. show 10 fotos of your decade. here are mine:

11.2000 – apocalyptic sky on the day my relationship broke apart (if that does not give you an impression on things coming to an end, probably nothing will.)

2000 was a year of change in every aspect. my businesspartner (& best friend) and i decided to close our first internet-company after two successful years due to personal reasons. i started a new job as art director online for a financial internet company, my current relationship started, ended, started again and ended once and for all at the end of the year. i travelled through california for 2 weeks which was probably the highlight of the year, allthough i did not know all the gems along the road as good as i know them now. all in all it was a challenging but successfull year, but surely not the one with the most happy memories.

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05.2001 – finally my childhood dream comes true: my dog phoebe

2001 in all contrast to the year before was a year when things got quite good on so many levels. i reconnected with a lot of old friends, found a couple of new ones and reconnected with the love of my life steph (who i had not spoken to for 2 years). i started to drive to oldtimer & 1950s festivals as my interest in the contemporary design of the 30s to 60s grew more and more and bought my first american classic car a 1985 chevrolet caprice. most important was the fullfillement of my lifelong dream of owning a dog.
so all these new connections and my golden retriever phoebe came into my life and changed everything.
the most important part though was falling in love and starting a relationship with steph in texel back in november.
i think this year layed the groundwork for so much to come.

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12.2002 – finding inner peace and comfort in california

In 2002 i discovered that my hometown essen has one of the coolest 50s diner in germany and visited all oldtimer and 50s festivals that were reachable with a bunch of car-crazy friends. i travelled the california coast with my best friend oli and we discovered things like the pismo beach hotel the lodge in big sur, the beachtown of santa cruz, or the bay of bean hollow (which are one of my/our favorite places in the world until today!). The year ended beautifully with stephs and my first christmastree as a couple.
all in all an amazing year.

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12.2003 – candlelight wedding chapel las vegas

the year of 2003 was filled with lots of trips to the coast of the netherlands. steph and i discovered domburg as a closeby posibility to wind down and take long walks on the beach. we also had a bunch of BBQs with our friends Anna, Markus, Michi & Jost in the summer, which was an awesome time. one of the most memorable highligts of 2003 was my 30st birthday which was a huge hawaii-hula-party at my appartment. some of the decorations of that party are still a constituant of our appartment until today
the very best part though was stephs and my first roadtrip through california which will be memorable to me forever. to show her all the places i loved and to discover new things with her on this trip was one of the best times of my life! taking part in the 2003 christmas parade at santa barbara is something that changed my perspective on community and social life of a town and its people forever. we had our first big boys burger at the historic big boys diner in burbank, we visited the mooneyes hotrodshop, discovered the tiki-bar “venus” in las vegas, i took a bunch of awesome photography nightshots of las vegas (which would later be part in my first photography exhibition), we took part in the 2003 mooneyes x-mas-show, spent our very first night at the madonna inn hotel and steph discovered her favorite beach in the world at carmel by the sea to name just a few of the highlights.

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08.2004 – me and steph at the lago di garda enjoying the sun and awesome panorama

In 2004 i bought my first digital SLR (Spiegelreflexkamera) the canon eos 300D, which was a big step getting more serious with photography. the first images i shot were from my 1966 volvo amazon. Steph and i started to hang out more with one of our favorite couples Anja & Marc, somehow we were just into the same things and ideas and so we spent a lot of fun times together. We also visited a bunch of friends in berlin and watched the historic race66. Of course there were also lots of 50s festivals and oldtimer meetups. One of the most important changes for me was quitting my job as an art director after 4 years and working as a freelancer once again to gain more control over how and with whom i work.
In the summertime steph and i had a great vacation at the lago di garda, which is a place my family went vacationing quite frequently when my brother and i were kids. the rest of the year was lost of work, as i was restarting my business as a freelancer.

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03.2005 – traveling through california with my girlfriend steph

2005 was one of my most favorite years, steph and i lived very active and realised, created, experienced a lot of new ideas and things. the year allready started out quite good with my first photography exhibition in cologne. it peaked with one of our most amazing trips throughout california on which we saw our first shag gallery exhibition in palm springs, discovered randys donuts in los angeles, got a private tour of barris customs including meeting custom legend george barris in person, i took one of the best photos i have ever taken of us in front of the amazing big sur coastline, i started to fall in love even deeper with san franciscos vintage architecture, discovered the redwoods in yosemity park, i visited westcoast customs (the pimp my ride guys) in los angeles for the first time, we discovered the beautiful town of pasadena (where i bought my first ipod, an ipod photo and started listening to adam curry and dawn and drew podcasts) and got to meet the artist mark ryden in person and finished up this unbelievable trip with the amazing experience of the las vegas rockabilly weekender where we not only met a bunch of people from back home but also took awesome photos and videos. Steph and i also did a lot of live-blogging (fotos, text, video and the fastfoodkids podcast) from our roadtrip and all other trips to 50s festivals and such for our retro-community fastfoodkids.de (which is currently a blogarchive of all our posts from 2000 til 2006). like i said 2005 was awesome and unforgetable in so many ways!

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11.2006 – honeymoon trip from eastcoast to westcoast with my lovely wife steph

2006 was another overwhelming and also amazing year as i suprised steph with a trip to paris in april and a diamond engagement ring on a nightly dinner cruise on the river seine. the second trip at the end of april was with my buddy oli, a three day trip to las vegas for another visit to the worlds biggest rockabilly and vintage-car-show. in may i finally switched from my beloved sony vaio to an apple macbook which has changed the way i use the web and all related technology quite a bit. in june the soccer worldchampionchip was hosted in germany and changed the country and how it is percieved around the world quite a bit. in 2006 oli and i started the bier und tech podcast a video show discussing apple, tech, the web and so on … we had so much fun! of course one of the biggest celebrations this year was stephs and my wedding. my 1958 chevrolet biscayne got finished from the technical overhaulin and a fresh new paintjob, but the most exciting thing was of course stephs and my two and a half monthshoneymoon-roadtrip from east to westcoast of the united states. the list of highlights might be too long for this post but let me try:
dolphin swimming on the florida keys, discovering the amazing endless beach of naples florida, the amazing night at the oak alley plantation in tennessee, the amazing pre-christmas-experience in the little route66 town williams in arizona, the always stunning visit to the monterey bay aquarium and of course all the standard visits to big sur, carmel by the sea, santa cruz, pismo beach and san francisco … we will never forget this trip and everything we experienced back then. on the downside to 2006 were an aching back at the end of the year which made my life a bit harsh at certain times. the year ended with a christmas evening at our appartment with all of my family and an amazing dinner including an oreo cake i baked.

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09.2007 – our pregnancy test showing “positive”

2007 is one of my “not so amazing years” as i have been working way to much and my back was in no good condition throughout a lot of time that year. one of the highlights was the return of my 58 chevrolet biscayne from her final technical overhaul and inspection. another thing i enjoyed in 2007 was watching lost with oli. steph and i enjoyed a short trip to the sea in april, a couple of trips to my hometowns lake baldeney and our first wedding aniversary. the most outstanding and positive thing in 2007 was that steph got pregnant. the year got even weirder after half of my family cancelled the christmas festivities at my brothers house due to two of them being very sick and steph being pregnant. the only thing that made me reconcile with 2007 in the end was the nice new years eve we spent at the sea with my brother, his girlfriend and marc and anja
liked the good parts of the year but somehow it remained a weird and rather sucky year in my memory.

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10.2008 – the birth of our son ben. this is me feeding him for the first time

2008 was the year of pregnancy and later on the birth of our son ben. the pregnancy was not as “problem free” as expected, we had to do a lot of extra ultrasonic check-ups as ben was passive quite a lot and the doctors got a bit worried. my wife steph slept very few hours if at all at nights which meant everything was quite exhausting for us. we were very happy on the day ben was born and healthy.
the first half year continued to be quite challenging as ben had problems sleeping and was crying most of the time.
i remember this time as one of the toughest me and steph had to endure as a couple, we suffered through and in the end it was ok but i have a lot of “not so great” moments where friends without kids or family members showed only little or no understanding as to why we were such nervous wrecks and why getting our kid to sleep was such a big deal. don’t get me wrong, i love my son and i don’t want to miss a second of his every day but getting through the first year was not easy at all.

besides the birth of ben this years highlights were a bit smaller, or maybe we were just too tired to notice them.
steph and me took a trip to bremen to visit the town and the german cheerleading mastership. i remember sitting at the pre-baby-course with a bunch of people i wasn’t that much interested in back then (which is funny as we are now friends with a bunch of them and i would not want to miss to see neither them nor their kids every other month and listen to their stories). i also remember finding a bunch of old photo-albums of my mums youth at my parents house which showed me a lot of perspectives i have not seen before. i remember the first holiday with our baby at the coast of domburg. back then ben could only fall asleep on stephs lap which meant she would sit in the vacationhome for hours barely moving with a sleeping baby sitting on her, while i was either sitting next to her or walking the streets alone. i remember watching and enjoying a lot of the chinese olympics during that vacation, a lot of times with baby on my arm. it was a weird vacation.
steph and i also started going to the zoo on a regular basis and i picked up my digital dslr to improve my photographic-skills a bit.
there were a bunch of nice summer days at lyfries backyard with all the kids playing in the sun, we tried babyswimming with ben which was quite stressfull for child and parents but got some sweet photos from it, concerning photography i finally got into lenses a bit and bought my alltime fave lense the 50mm 1.4 which changed my photography quite a bit. there were also some nice festivities: my sister dafne celebrated her 16th birthday, sven celebrated his birthday in darmstadt and oli and me went roadtrippin to the party. at the end of the year we were still quite stressed with all the baby and parenting stuff we were learning and all the sicknesses we had to get through throughout the year but things started to feel a bit lighter and so we had our first christmas with the baby and the whole family.

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12.2009 – enjoying the snow before christmas with ben

first of all: 2009 was a good year! especially when compared to the supertough 2008 and sucky 2007. ben learned not only to crawl but also to stand and walk and to talk, laugh and understand … which is amazing to me. he has grown from a little helpless baby to a young boy that has his own mind, ideas, humor and imagination. it is not all easy going but things have improved quite a bit from the first year. 2009 started with an amazing snow and ice scenery in january which got me one of the best phoebe images i shot so far! it got a bit sucky as i lifted a new workgplate for the kitchen and hurt my back … BUT everything else improved, starting with the first time in over a year that steph and i could take the time to eat out at a restaurant without the baby cancelling the whole thing due to severe crying and stuff. wow! ben also showed us his funny side which made a lot of the hard times bearable. we started a new family tradition with the monthly beckmanns family brunch. a big part of the first half of 2009 was completly emptying out the appartment and refurnishing most of the rooms. the masterplan behind all of the refurnishing was to move ben to his own little room (which used to be my workroom) so we could use the living room which is open to the masterbedroom once again. at the end of march i sold of one of my favorite oldtimers the 1966 amazon due to not finding the time to do a full body restauration after 10 years of riding it. i love the car but two oldtimers and a daily driver was just to much stuff to take care of. a rather big change coming from a rather small action was getting ben a little sandpit to play in. this opened up a whole new world of neighbors with kids (we did not even knew were living near us) that would grow to become something almost as close as friends.
one of the best memories of 2009 i have was our summer vacation in the little yellow cottage at the sea and bens 1rst birthday. it was a beautiful time in may.
the big celebrations just would not end this year: my dads 70st birthday, my brother got married to steffi, janine had her 40st birthday, my friend britta married her fiance lars, our friends kati and fabi got married, my buddy guido and katharina got married and rita had her 40st while marianne had her 70st birthday. awesome! i am a sucker for family & friends-festivities!
and remember the people from the pre-baby-course from 2008, i told you we met regularly to get all the kids together. what also got me quite happy is that we met up with a bunch of old friends who also have kids now. in july of 2009 me and ben went on a first father and son only trip to meet up with my family in speyer which went quite well and gave mommy some time to rest without us. steph and i had an awesome 3rd wedding aniversary, cruising my hometown lake with ben.
my photography improved a bit and i got this beautiful shot of the two orange flowers. i also have my birthday in good rememberance as we took ben to a wildlifepark in kommern.
there also were a couple of businesstrips to berlin that were quite nice thanks to the people involved in these companies.
in november steph, ben and i had second vacation in a luxurious little house at the sea, which was also great (even though it could not top the summer vacation in the little yellow cottage). i think we were the last tourists in this season so there was nearly nobody around.
there was also a second winter trip to speyer with the beckmanns family and some more snow shortly before christmas.
the year ended with an awesome family christmas eve at my brothers house and a quiet new years eve with just steph, me and ben celebrating at home. thank you so much for an amazing 2009. may 2010 get even better!

Artikel gespeichert unter: Daily life