Lying off Madagascar

If Dirk Fahrenbach cranks the outboard motor up, maybe the boat will cover the distance to Dimakya in time. It is worthwhile to take time for this country, he said. The fact is, we are too slow: The clouds catch up and drench the boat with rain. This flushes away the heat of the body. For 20 years now this German lives in the Philippines. A shower before the rainy season is hardly worth mentioning, he says and afterwards neither. Taking time for this country is Fahrenbach’s life’s work. For decades the fishing grounds were ruined by fishermen with dynamite. The dugongs were almost wiped out.

Published in:
– Silent World
– WESER KURIER

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The Cockpit of the A380

Ingo Meyerdierks is now 46. When the teachers asked him back then what he wanted to be when he grew up, he answered, like all boys: “Pilot”. He was 14 and had his head in the clouds. The sky was always the gateway to the world to him. Meyerdierks is now head of Lufthansa’s A380 fleet. It is a year since the largest passenger aircraft ever built took off for the first time with passengers from Frankfurt Airport. Public interest was huge because of the sheer size of the wide-body jet. It continues down to today. With its height of more than 24 meters, the megaliner is superior to most goings on at international airports.

Published in:
– WESER KURIER
– WELT am SONNTAG

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Stone Age

It is like traveling through a picture book. Being part of the story helps you pay more attention to what is happening. You look longer. The coast is lined with sandy beaches in picturesque bays, then the landscape rises and presents an outstanding panorama. Natural forces formed huge cliffs mainly on the Costa Smeralda in the northeast and in the northwest of Cape Caccia, rock formations reaching up to the horizon which then drop abruptly almost 200 meters down to the surf. The water is indigo blue. Below the surface are dozens of hidden caves, a highlight for divers with strong enough lights. In them everybody is an explorer and discoverer.

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Published in:
– unterwasser

He who knows what women want

Dirk Bauer drives a Porsche. This car is the one fun factor in the life of the man from Bremen. It amuses him to reduce this toy down to a male stereotype. “The car is 24 years old,” he says, and the conversation about clichés leads to the professional achievements of the 42 year old. “Good Vibrations”: Bauer began his career with a handful of silicone and Plasticine at home at the kitchen table – today “Fun Factory” is one of the world’s best known companies in the production of women’s toys. Bauer is the head of a factory, which joined the global leaders in the industry in only a decade. “Fun Factory” produces sex toys: dildos, vibrators. Love balls.

Published in:
– FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU
– WESER KURIER
– HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT

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The tea man

In Moscow the other day they ordered 20 tons of the finest tea. Ralf Janecki’s company is progressing. The office of the Hanseatic Tea Export breathes the air of the big, wide world in the industrial harbor of Bremen. “We get up to 300 samples per day,” says Janecki. At the end of the day they are called “Althaus” tea or “Pure Tea”. These top varieties from the auctions in Mombasa, Calcutta and Colombo are not available in the supermarket. They are ordered by first rate hotels, or online. The customers rely on Janeckis nose. “90 percent of it is smelling, the rest is sipping.” The table with samples for tea tasting is eight meters long.

Published in:
– WELT am SONNTAG
– WESER KURIER

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Manila fancies Hamburg‘s experts

Elmar Lutter works for Lufthansa Technik at the Ninoy Aquino airport. German engineers are on demand in the Philippines. The government wants to lead the country out of agony to something approaching western standards. Tin shacks and children searching through piles of garbage for recyclables are evidence of poverty. Lufthansa Technik, a global contractor for maintenance, repair and overhaul of passenger jets, is also engaged socially in Manila. The company trains local youths. They are filing, drilling, milling and welding into a secure future as a mechanic.

Published in:
– WELT am SONNTAG
– WESER KURIER

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The last anchorage of the Rubis

If you follow the coastal road to the southwest of Monaco, the vista inland stretches just to the Maritime Alps – the view is phenomenal. The blue of the water, the red rocks at l’Esterel and the lavender fields combine to a panorama which lasts for hours – the Côte d’Azur. There are villages carved in stone from another time and the glamorous health resorts with the rich and famous along the seafront. The sea off the coast retains yet another spectacle: it is a mystical experience to dive down to last anchorage of the Rubis.

Published in:
– Silent World

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The free diver

Others are paralyzed by the breathless silence. Christian Redl lives more intensely in it for six to seven minutes. The Austrian is reckoned an eccentric in the diving scene. Recently he dived into one of the limestone caves on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. Outside scrub and mosquitoes, inside clean fresh water for a while – then nothing but a mystical fog of sulfur sulfate. Redl managed the 60 meters down to the bottom. Free divers find the meaning of life in depth and distance records. Average breathers can only imagine it, having seen Luc Besson’s “The Big Blue”. Redl is not attached to a pulling sledge, when going down.

Published in:
– Silent World

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A dive into Thor‘s World

Once again twilight has dipped Iceland in soft light until the morning. You could see the ships out of the window at night, anchored in the bay. During the summer solstice, the sun never sets completely, nor rises again before the night is over. Starting this early in the day still takes getting used to – eager anticipation does not change this: we are on the way from Reykjavik to Thingvellir, inland. To experience the underwater world at the edge of the valley should outshine everything previously experienced: everyone is an intrepid explorer in the cave system of the Silfra crack.

Published in:
– Silent World

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The Last Witnesses

How bad is it? Jaenicke: “It’s brutal. The film about the Arctic and the polar bear has been cut; it shows how cold-blooded big game hunters still shoot the animals down. The documentary about sharks is in the can. At the end we were in Spain. In Vigo they process fins en masse for the Chinese. This is not easy viewing. There is no animal that gets so misjudged and barbarically massacred as the shark! And why? Because some religions believe they have to cook shark fin soup and lots of people here consider shark-steaks and smoked strips of dogfish a delicacy.”

Published in:
– Silent World

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