Postcard from... The Bookshop

The books on my shelves contain more stories that those printed on the page. Sometimes when I take a book in my hand I remember not only its contents, but where I was when I read it. A campsite in Sweden. An overnight bus, crossing the Alps. A bedroom in Headingley. Then there are the stories of where they came from. A gift, perhaps, or more unforgivable, something borrowed and never returned. And then there are those books where you can remember where you bought it. From friends in Kreuzberg. In a converted mill in Massachusetts. An old railway station in Alnwick. In Krakow I bought a book and read it in the tiny cafe at the back of the shop, the whole afternoon passing me by. In Saskatoon I paused long enough at the shelf of Beat writers to prompt the bookseller to tell me that William Burroughs had died. I thought of Burroughs again in Paris, at that famous bookshop by the river. It had been top of my list when we planned the trip, the main thing I wanted to see, and it was everything I had hoped for. There might be whole worlds on the shelves, but sometimes it is the bookshop that is the place.

Five Questions for... Sabine Hellmann

As part of our regular series of mini-interviews on the blog we are talking to the editors and contributors to Elsewhere about what place means to them. Today we welcome the photographer and filmmaker Sabine Hellmann, whose images from the Nambuma Trading Post you can find in the digital-only Elsewhere No. 00 we created for our crowdfunding campaign...

What does home mean to you?

Home for me is a place that I feel comfortable in and that evokes certain sentiments and a strong sense of belonging that is hard to describe. Having moved to Scotland seven years ago, I have accumulated a few ‘homes’ in my heart over the years. Berlin will always be my ‘where I come from’ - home; Wismar is a special home for all those years of studying and partying; Kusamala, the permaculture centre in Malawi creates that sort of overwhelming home-feeling each time I arrive and the comfort of knowing a place and it’s people; and Scotland, after all, is my current home, where the smell of breweries, Lothian bus exhaust fumes and the sea breeze create that sense of belonging and comfort… well, maybe not the exhaust fumes. Home is after all where the heart is and my heart is quite compartmentalised in that regard.

Where is your favourite place?

There are so many of those special places. One that stands out in the gorgeous Scottish Highlands is Glen Affric and that one particular tiny island in the loch, where you have to cross some wobble shiny stones in order to reach its wee beach. Sitting by the campfire, watching the clouds pounding through the glen creating misty rainbows all around and still having a sheltered bay surrounded by ancient pine trees, birch boletuses and blueberry bushes - that’s the place!

What is beyond your front door?

I live in the heart of Edinburgh, and Calton Hill with its semi finished ‘Greek’ temples sits basically across the road. I can see tiny people walking on the hill from my window and now and then I rush out the door and up the steep path to catch the sunset and hear the numbed noises of a busy town from high above, overlooking the Firth of Forth, wee islands spiked with WW2 bunkers, the hills that are dotted around the city and a plethora of rooftops - a magic place on my doorstep.

What place would you most like to visit?

Oh there are so many places I find fascinating and worth exploring. Nearly every corner on this planet has stunning landscapes, amazing cultural sights or natural bounty. It’s not just about the place for me, but also the people and their daily ongoings! Spending time with a community is so much more valuable than merely visiting a place. Meeting the people that shaped a part of a landscape is fascinating - even more so, if those people haven’t been exposed to capitalism and exploitative economies. Spending time with a tribe in India made me realise how we have lost our connection to nature in our modern societies and I hope to be able to spend time with such inspiring communities again in the future.

What are you watching right now?

Well, still fresh in my mind is the documentary Virunga I saw a few days ago. A place so tragic, beautiful and charged, it is hard to believe how humans can be so cruel to each other and to their planet. That film encapsulates so much about our human condition, set in a stunning mountain rainforest in the Congo, pounded by horrific conflicts. To see those fighting for the survival of the last mountain gorillas, for their national park and against corporate interests and their own government.. it’s one of those heartbreaking yet uplifting insights into a place that is so hard to imagine. Life changing!

Sabine is a German-born, Scotland-based creative freelancer, who got stuck in the beautiful city of Edinburgh after completing her MFA in documentary directing. Her interest in filmmaking and sustainability landed her a job as a participatory video facilitator in a Scottish Government funded permaculture project based in Malawi, in south-east Africa. Sabine’s areas of work include graphic design, photography and creative storytelling, and of course making use of any opportunity to explore new landscapes and cultures.

www.sabinehellmann.com

Postcard from... Dublin

Dublin 15 is full of rats. There is one crossing the four lanes of Snugborough Road, oblivious to the cars whooshing past and my shadow on the sidewalk. It just scampers along on whatever business large rats have in broad daylight, stopping at the curb for a moment, before scurrying into the shrubbery next to the sidewalk. I walk further down the road past the National Aquatic Centre, with the ringing of the last ice cream van of the dead summer disappearing in the estates on my right. The shrubbery is rustling constantly; with every step I seem to startle another greyish-brown critter with a wormtail, scampering away from empty packs of crisps deeper into the undergrowth. The midges dance on the Tolka river in the last rays of sunshine the day has to offer. In the shadows of the outer walls of the estates there’s the smell of rotten leaves, of trampled-flat ice cream-wrappers, and long-dead things.

By Marcel Krueger

Elsewhere Crowdfunding Campaign Update

We are eighteen days into our crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo and we are so pleased and excited to have already reached 62% of our target and we are not even halfway through… it has been so fantastic to get such a positive reaction, whether through the many people contributing from around the world, but also everyone who has helped to spread the word, sending us emails or making comments on our social media sites.

But of course we still have a third of our target still to find… so we thought we would not only use the chance to remind you of Elsewhere No. 01, to be published in June and featuring fantastic writing, photography and illustration, but also the various goodies you can get if you contribute to the campaign. Julia has designed some wonderful notebooks, for all the scribblers and sketchers out there, and we have also screenprinted some of her fabulous illustrations created to accompany the articles in the digital-only zero edition.

So if you want to get your hands on these, as well as the chance to be the first readers of our journal, please head on over to Indiegogo (if you haven’t already) where you can find out more details – including the contributors to Elsewhere No. 01 – and help us in any way you can…

Elsewhere Crowdfunding Campaign

Thanks so much,

Paul & Julia

Postcard from... Rannoch Moor

Rannoch Moor. For years I have been wanting to take the Caledonian Sleeper, to climb aboard the train at Euston station, to fall asleep somewhere between Stafford and Crewe, and to wake with the glens, the lochs and the mountains of Scotland outside the carriage window… and at the centre of that dream has always been the moment that I would lay eyes on Rannoch Moor. I am not sure why this high, open, expanse of boggy moorland, across which the railway tracks make their lonely progress, so captured my imagination… but it did. And now, as the landscape opens out and the snow – up to now visible only on the higher tops – seems to be coming down to meet us, I am finally there.

I don’t know how long it takes us to cross the moor, as we stand at one end of the carriage and move back and forth, the views out of either side of the train such that the only vocabulary that lands on the notebook in my hand is patently not up to the task of doing justice to the scene. Bleak. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Put down the pen and just look. The sky is blue, the light is soft, and the moor is lightly covered with snow. I can feel the images becoming imprinted on my memory. This is what I have been waiting for, and yet I could not have imagined it would be like this... Rannoch Moor.

Five Questions for... Tim Woods

(above: Mole National Park, Ghana)

The next in our series of mini-interviews with the editors, designers, writers, photographers and illustrators of Elsewhere is with our Copy Editor Tim Woods:

What does home mean to you?

At present, ‘home’ is still England, despite having lived elsewhere for nearly six years. But the exact place in my country of birth varies. For official purposes, it’s my dad’s house in rural Suffolk. When talking to people in Berlin, it’s Brighton: my last place of residence in England and a place that people have heard of. Strangely, Wiltshire – where I grew up – feels less like ‘home’ with every passing year. I don’t see the possibility of ever living there again, so it has become the backdrop for happy memories rather than any current sense of home.

Where is your favourite place?

As for most people, it’s impossible to choose just one. So my most recent favourite place is Mole National Park in Ghana. I spent two fantastic years in the country and this scrubby land in the far north was the pick of many highlights. There’s thousands of birds to gawp at, and the elephants come and drink from the hotel swimming pool. Perfect.

If I’m allowed two, then second is the west coast of Scotland on a sunny, midge-free evening with the tent already up and the stove bubbling.

What is beyond your front door?

A memorial to Rosa Luxemburg, a famous figure on Germany’s left. She lived in our building on Cranachstraße in Friedenau early in her life, and people regularly stop at the memorial to place flowers throughout the year.

The front part of our building was, until quite recently, a brothel (it’s now a beauty salon) and we also found a swastika painted on the ceiling of our ‘secret’ cellar when we moved in. Ours is a flat that comes with a good dose of intrigue.

What place would you most like to visit?

Northern Mali. I was lucky enough to visit the south of the country for work last year, and it was just as wonderful as I had hoped it would be. The recent war means the north remains off-limits to foreigners, but it’s top of the list as soon as that changes. Lake Turkana in Kenya and the Rwenzori mountains in Uganda are second and third. I’m a big fan of travel in Africa.

What are you reading right now?

‘About a boy’ by Vikram Seth. I bought it about 15 years ago, quite possibly to leave strategically placed in my student house in a futile attempt to look learned and well read. At Christmas I decided I should actually start reading it. It’s good. Long, but good.

Tim is the co-founder of Car Free Walks, a website of UK walks that can be reached by bus or train. He recently moved to Berlin with his partner after two years in Ghana, during which time he blogged about the ups (beaches, football, hiking) and downs (power cuts, incessant heat, lack of food for veggies) of life in Accra and beyond.