The December and this Post is about to look back on the year 2010 and forward to 2011, together with many other people around the world who participate in the #Reverb10 Project.

Prompt: Travel. How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year?

First of about the Travels of 2010. This year was full of some adventures and travels. Journeys and experiences. The first was my trip to Spain for 3 weeks. I was there to learn the language better, take great photos and to have a great time. Both was OK. The photo taking and the having a great time worked out pretty well. But I have massive problems with the language. Somehow I do not get it. If you want to have a look at the photos, I uploaded some at my Facebook Fan Page (CHRISSP.com – Photography).

The second trip was in August. This time it was a trip from my home in an old car —the car is a MG-B convertible old-timer— to Munich followed by a crossing through the alps headed to Italy and Finally I wanted to arrive in the Swiss to do some hikes with my dad. This trip was about being alone for some time, enjoying different landscapes and taking a lot of photos. The drive from my home over the alps and to Italy, everything worked great. But than the engine blue up. I stopped working in the middle of driving on a speed street. I called the breakdown service and it took them 4 hours to get to my place! I had near to no water left and had to wait all the time. In addition to that: I could not even listen to some music since I was scared that my iPhone battery could drain to fast and that would have been fatal since I had no other way to reach anybody. In the end it went all pretty smooth. I got to the Swiss the same evening and met my dad.

The next day we went on a hike as well as the day after the that. We walked a whole lot of altitude and it was a blast. It was great weather to walk and the scenery was awesome. The mountains near Interlaken are a great place to walk. If you are interested in my photos from that trip they are also at my Facebook Fan Page.

So this is about the year 2010 travels. There are some small trip in between but they are not worth mentioning here.

For 2011 I have big plans. One is to get back to Spain for a special trip. The others are more like: I want to travel a lot and visit different countries, do different things and see the world. But that is reserved for a future post or project.

I am back again and I have to say: it was a good idea not to post over the week. And made me think that sometimes a break is not that bad.

Normally when I went on travels I scheduled posts to be published though out the time I was not there. This time I did it differently: I simply did not publish anything. And it was refreshing. I now — again — have the feeling that I can hold this up and keep going since I already was lacking the lust of posting twice a week.

Stories about the travel will follow as I go through what happened again, but I need some time to get it structured. Especially the photos are a bit to much to do on a weekend.

Tomorrow I am leaving on a trip with the MG. The rout is 1700 kilometers (1056 miles) and it is going to take me from home to Italy and than to the Swiss. I hope I am not going to have any complaints and everything is going to work out great.

One inspirational post was In The Woods by fiftyfootshadows.

I randomly decided to disappear into the woods for a couple of nights last week and took a bunch of photos with my Hasselblad and XA2. The little mini backpacking trip was wonderful and besides all the humidity and bugs, I had the valley to myself that I was in and it was really great to get away from things for a bit, take some photos, and just breathe.

~ In The Woods by fiftyfootshadows

My trip is not going to be a trip into the woods but I am going to take a bunch of photos too. So stay tuned for the outcomes.

If you are interested, here is the rout I plan on taking.

** UPDATE **
This is also going to be the first week in over one and a half year where I am not going to post any scheduled posts to be published over the next week. So stay tuned for all the coming in one week. Maybe there will be something special.

One very nice aspect about traveling to different places is to meet different people. It is more or less the same as going to conferences or congresses. The end result is — most of the time — that you get to know other people. And one great aspect about that is that you may or may not get a place to stay in a — in the best case — different and/or foreign country.

I am right now having my last day here in Valencia, Spain and it was awesome, and I found exactly that: people I can contact if I come to their country to stay with them — or at least I can ask if there is a possibility to stay and if not, they can help me find one.

And in addition — besides staying at their places — you get to know other cultures a little bit. The background of different people, the stories, what they experienced over the past years and how they think. So my advice: get out of your comfort zone and meet different people, others than the once you always communicate, act, work or party with. It is exhausting, different and interesting to meet others but over all it is worth it!

In September I decided to chose an additional class at school: Spanish. There are many reasons for that — the most important right now is that I get a higher certificate at the end.

But there should be many more. The time you will read this post I am probably in Spain. Arrived 3 days before this post will go live. The reason for me to spend 3 weeks in spain is #1 to learn the language, #2 to meet interesting people, #3 to chill out and recharge my batteries for the next year of school and finally #4 to take some beautiful photos.

But whats about the language? Well I think that the more languages you can write/speak/understand the better. You can relate to the people in other ways and you can go to different areas of a countries than someone — just speaking english — can. Since my english already is pretty good. I wanted to start something new. And since Spanish is the second most spoken mother-tough the choice was pretty easy.

What I would like to learn in addition are the languages Chinese, Hindi and maybe some Thai. But that is for the future! Right now it is hard enough to get Spanish into my head!

Used by gulli.com/news / Panel: ccc jahresrueckblick

Day two is over. Again it’s over for me but some are still listening or just hacking at the hackcenter. My personal review of the day is that the talks I though would be interesting mainly were. Just the Attacking Rich Internet Applications talk was not what I expected it to be. But the two other talks have been quiet interesting and fun. The one was the talk about the CCC year, what happened – good and bad – and what goes on. The second very interesting talk was by Tim Pritlove about the Blinkenlights Project Steroscope in Toronto. That one I found very interesting especially in the mater of how to organize a project, and that you just have to do it and not just talk – even if you have to work 16 hours a day or more. And I found his way to present some things very funny, I have to say he’s a great stage man and not just that he does great podcasting as well.

gulli.com/news used one of my pictures

That’s it for today, the review of day 2. But what’s with day 3? I’m not going to be there. Why? Well just like I wrote yesterday, I’m not the right person for this event at least running around alone is not what I thought it would be and I have some other stuff going on at home. So maybe I’ll be at the 26C3 next year or not we’ll see.
But one very interesting thing just happened short before I was writing this post. I opened my WordPress dashboard after login into my blog and had a look at the stats and saw that a in link was showing up, well at least a recognition of my name which is mainly cspiegl. The page I was mentioned is gulli.com, the reason I’m mentioned is cause one of the pictures used in the article was shot by me. That makes me proud, especially cause it’s the first time one of my pictures is used by another person than one out of my family.

I thank you gulli.com news and the writers of this article (-rbrueckner & gS-), I’m looking forward to go on taking good shots even if I can’t take some more of the 25C3.

Day 1 is over. At least for me. The schedule will go on till 1 AM tomorrow I think, but I’m reviewing my opinion on what I saw today.

Like it was written on twitter, there where too few seats for to many people. I got lucky and after 1 minutes of waiting I got a seat with table and a power plug in ‘Saal1′ ( = room 1) – just perfect to surf and listen. I have to admit, I didn’t made it to the 2 first lectures I wanted to go to because of my notebook not File Vaulting fast enough. But the once after this first two have been very interesting. About the German ‘Hackerparagraphen‘ and building hackerspaces.org. I think if you are interested in what the keynotes topics where, just go over to the video archive of the congress at the wiki.

Preview Day 2

The list of interesting lectures, which I’m trying to visit:

1. 11:30 AM: Jahresrückblick
2. 02:00 PM: Attacking Rich Internet Applications
3. 04:00 PM: Blinkenlights Stereoscope

That’s a pretty short list I think but hey, I want to have a look at the other things at the congress too. For example the Hardware area close to the hackcenter. And maybe there is a great workshop.

Planing

For me all looks pretty interesting, but I have to say that if I have the choice next year to go to the congress or have some great days with friends watching movies or so. I’ll choose the friends cause the congress is not that much of information I would valuate, and the few which are valuable, can be watched via stream or recording. Maybe that opinion change over the next two days? Or not.

For this year, I planed to stay for 4 days but now I’m going to leave at the 28th of December cause the congress does not give me what I thought it would be like. That means no preview or review after tomorrow, maybe a review of the congress how I experienced it and the coverage from external.

I made it. I’m in Berlin right now and for 4 days from now on. The reason for that is known. I’m at the 25C3 to listen to lectures, photograph, meed and see people.

But there is something I have to tell. I’m not pretty sure if the 25C3 is the right meeting for me. It’s maybe for an other kind of people. But! I learned something in the past year. And that is: If you have the chance to meat people real – person to person – that’s great and you should go out to each and every conference, meet up, congress you can get into! Just for that real in person social-networking. That’s the main reason I’m here at this congress. One other reason is that I’m interested in some lectures but in no way in this hack center kinda hacking. More on that, there is a schedule online and I walked through this schedule to see what interests me. Here is a list of my favs for today.

1. 10:00 AM: Opening and Keynote “Nothing to hide”
2. 11:30 AM: Datenpannen
3. 12:45 AM: U23
4. 02:00 PM: Der Hackerparagraph 202c StGB
5. 04:00 PM: Building an international movement: hackerspaces.org
6. 06:30 PM: Erich Mühsams Tagebücher in der Festungshaft
7. 08:30 PM: Hacking the iPhone

I think if you view the articles pages you’ll get an idea of what it is about and I don’t have to explain that now. But I think that’s for me a great day of informations, but after the ‘Hacking the iPhone’ lecture I’ll leave. Let’s see how it tourns out. I’ll be posting a review and pictures of the day tomorrow.

**Update**

Sorry for the Update but the Title was not right.

I’m going to visit the 25C3 located in Berlin starting at the 27th of December and ending at the 30th.
Today the 26 of December 2008 I’m going to travel to the 25C3. For that I have to travel about 300 km. But what is the 25C3? And why I’m going to travel 300 km for it?

What is the 25C3?

The 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3) is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It takes place at the Berliner Congress Center (BCC) in Berlin, Germany. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics and attracts a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopians from all around the world. The 25C3s slogan is “Nothing to hide”.

Why I go there?

Well I hear a lot about the CCC, mainly though the podcast. But all that comes through their internet direct into my computer without any social interaction. The 25c3 is a possibility to get out, in touch with other people, living a live like I do mainly. And last but not least, to get out of my room. Last year was very exiting, it was the first time I visited the congress – the name was 24C3 and the slogan was ‘Volldampf voraus!’ (literally “Full Steam Ahead”).

I think this year will be very interesting too. There are some interesting lectures and workshops I’m planing to visit and write about. Also I’m planing to post a review and some pictures of every day.

Please let me know if you are going to be at the congress too.

Image via Fickr, source Kenzoka

So finally I’m done working.
Now I’m heading for vacation in Greece. Like I posted some weeks ago, I’m not going to update much, but taking pictures and stuff like that, updates are coming when I’m back home.

One last little note: My pages will be updated soon (after my vacation) with new designs.