Inspirational getaway (also: Updates!)

Sometimes I just need to leave home - sometimes those otherwise comfortable and safe walls of my room just seem to be closing in on me and block out every creative thought.
In times like these I am lucky to have parents who enjoy hiking and since my parents offered to take me to Trier (a city in the Eifel, not that far from Luxembourg), I gladly accepted. This saturday I went there and this entry will be some kind of short travel log – including photos of course! :)

But also to those who aren’t that interested in reading my odd rambling (*laughs*) it’s definitely a good idea to take a short look, because as the title says: I will inform you about some updates and changes I made on Fare off Visions.

 

Well, where to begin? I guess I should start with how the trip begun, huh?  I can tell you that: with me being absolutely drowsy. *laughs*
See, recently I developed a rather bad habit of sleeping in late, but my father told me we were to depart to Trier on 7:30 am in the morning, which meant I had to get up at 6 am. Not too bad, many of you might say – but although I used to get up at 5 am every morning the past two years, I was really tired. Fortunately we traveled by car and the way to Trier took two hours, so I could rest a little more on the way.

During the car ride I didn’t nap, however. Instead I had a rather amusing discussion with my parents about... Volcanoes. Yes, volcanoes.
You have to know, due to the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland  (the Bárdarbunga . What a funny name for such a powerful volcano. The images of the eruptions I’ve see look spectacular though.) I’ve read up on the topic of volcanoes. It’s something that always scared and fascinated me at the same time and I’ve been following the news about Iceland constantly... But it also got me thinking – I don’t live too far away from the Eifel and there’s a part of it that’s called the “Vulkaneifel”. People say the volcanoes there are slumbering since about 10.000 years, but I was like “What if a volcanoe DOES erupt there?”. So this was the topic we spoke about and I made jokes like “I have my umbrella and my sunglasses, but damn I forgot my fire fighter suit. I wanted to take it with me - ya know, just in case.”
Truth is though, despite all joking, I did make myself a little paranoid with thinking about the volcanoes in the Eifel and so I went there feeling uneasy ...

Finally arrived in Trier, we were welcomed by rain. Later, at a bookstore, the shop owner promised us sun however and his words would prove to be true later on, just another rain shower later.
The first sight I saw after a small walk, away from our parking lot at Trier’s soccer stadium, was the splendid sight of the Porta Nigra. I had seen it before and I recalled the image in my Latin textbook, but it was far bigger than I imagined it. Too bad there were so many people though, otherwise I’d have been able to make many more, nicer photos.

It was also there, at this ancient roman gate, that we split up – my father went to take the train (or rather, was going to, but apparently the German train services chose to mock my father by cancelling the train >_>) to go on a big hike, while my mother and I went to the city.
After a brief visit of the tourist center, equipped with a new map, we were going to follow the tourist’s trail...But then we saw said bookstore *laughs*. They had a discount there on many used and damaged books and I love to “adopt” those poor things. I jokingly went like “I wouldn’t mind a new Pratchett book” – and what happened? And just as I said this, I looked underneath a few books in the box and saw “Nation” by my favorite author Terry Pratchett. Well, that’s lucky, huh? XD And it was a real bargain, too!

Next mom and I decided to have breakfast, so in search for a restaurant of some sort, we went to a shopping mall. The sign inside said there was a restaurant called “Historischer Keller” (German for “historical cellar”) and oh my god... You can’t imagine how beautiful it was there *O*. The moment I went there, I nearly felt like crying because I felt so... At home there. It looked like a medieval wine cellar and it was rather dark there, with a comfortable, warm atmosphere. There were fake weapons and animal heads mounted on the walls, just like you’d imagine from a medieval dining hall. Honestly, I never had such a great breakfast before – it felt like the background made the food even more tasty than it already was (really, it was good <3 and for a rather decent price).

Afterwards, after a good breakfast, mom and I returned to the modern world and although our mood was great and we were about to continue our sightseeing tour, we had to postpone our plans a little. Dad called to inform us about the problems with the train and I felt bad for him, because he really seemed disappointed that the train thwarted his plans. I was worried this meant his hike was ruined, so naturally, my enthusiasm dampened. Still, dad told us to stay in the city and enjoy ourselves, but both, mom and I, eventually decided to go back to the car after a while and after we strolled through the town for a bit. Trier wasn’t as exciting as I had expected anyway – it reminded me a lot of Bonn in a way (mainly because of the many large marketplaces and because there were way too many shopping districts for my taste) and was less....I don’t know, old (?) than I thought.

On our way back to the parking lot dad called again though – he said he was on his way to his big hike after all (even though the train made yet another mess by not stopping on his station so he had to wait for another train to go back a few stops =.= Honestly, the “Deutsche Bahn” didn’t offer good services on saturday). Still, mom and I headed back to our car and I rested a little while there. Since the weather had changed and the sun was blazingly hot, I wasn’t feeling well. Laying down on the backseat and closing my eyes worked wonders though, so soon I felt better and I was ready to walk again.

We spent most of the afternoon at the banks of the Moselle.

It was pretty there – and calm. Very few people actually went there, because most tourists stayed in city centre, so we were able to enjoy the sight of the water and the company of some animals. We watched some cormorants on the water, met a few little lizards on our way and simply enjoyed the air and the good weather.
Only as it was growing late, we returned to the car and spent the last few hours of daylight by sitting in the luggage trunk, in the back of our car. There, mom and I fooled around a little and played small games (for example an odd kind of ABC game XD We both had to name murdering methods starting with A, with B, with C and so on. I was both, surprised and amused that my mom actually was up for such a morbid kind of game but it was really fun).

Soon after it was getting dark and bored as I was, I toyed around with my camera. I experimented a little with it’s settings, mainly with the exposure time and made a few silly light painting photos. Aside of those, I also attempted to take pictures of the moon – it seemed so large that night and it was shining brightly – and was rather successful.
You can see a photo of it – and other pictures I took in Trier right here:

This also concludes my travel log. Because otherwise, nothing else happened that’s worth to explain in detail, so I’ll just summarize the rest now:
It was late when dad returned, something around 10:00 pm, but before we drove home, we paid a short visit to Luxembourg. We tanked up our car and mom bought a little something in a store at the highway, but afterwards we drove toward home. It was around 1 am when home came in sight, but we only arrived there one hour later, because we made another small stop to have a very late dinner somewhere else.

When we came home, we were welcomed by the chirping of my pet birdie. He probably knows the sound of the keys turning in the lock, because the instant he herd this, he began to sing loudly, although it was the middle of the night. I guess he missed us *laughs*.
I was so glad to be home though because I was really very tired and slept in until after noon the next day.

So yes, this is all about my trip to Trier. :) I hope I didn’t bore you to death *giggles* and you actually enjoyed reading this.

Now, as for the updates (I’ll try to make this brief):

 

  • General changes:
    • Thumbnail gallery instead of a slideshow for drawings & photos on the whole website.
      I figured this looks nicer and it's more comfortable to manually scroll through the pictures rather than have them scroll automatically.

 

  • Art section updated!
    • New WIP & Finished artworks.
      Before only the blog articles that included finished artworks or works in progress appeared in the respective sections. Now you can also find more drawings there, including sketches, paintings and even concept art. I will update these sections in future without announcing the changes, so it's worth to take a look from time to time.

    • A few changes in the Doujinshi & Manga section.
      I published a new, short doujinshi called "A normal day" and I added two new pages to the "Tales of Yokai" doujinshi.  Furthermore I also edited all the files of the other two doujinshi (both, the "Broken" and  the "Tales of Yokai" doujinshi) and toned down the watermark to improve your reading comfort.

I really hope you like those new changes. Why not let me know what you think? :) Also, if you have a wish or something alike for future updates, do not hesitate to tell me!

~Yasao



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