Dust

Living close to an airport has its advantages. When people want to visit you for example. But it also has disadvantages which are hard to ignore.

Depending on where the wind comes from for instance, it smells of kerosene – so much so that you’re almost afraid to light a cigarette out there on the veranda. Or no matter how often you clean your windows, a day or two later it looks like this:

During the first half year after I started working here in Frankfurt, we still lived in Freising. That’s in Bavaria, close to Munich, and also close to Munich airport. But the distance to the airport was about double, and Freising is located on two hills from which you can see all the way over Munich to the alps on clear days. No plane went over, and you hardly ever even heard one. In Freising, we never had pollution like this, and I remember that after leaving the motorway on Friday evenings, the first thing I did was to open the car window, and to breathe. A difference to Frankfurt like night and day. No money in the world can pay for that. And I’ve never in my life seen a place more dirty and polluted than Frankfurt and its surroundings (ok; haven’t been to China’s industrial areas yet).

I want to be back there in Freising. Or anywhere in the alps. And very often I think about what we do to our kids just to have work in areas as polluted as this one here.

Took that photo a few minutes ago through our living room window, using the Olympus E-520 and the 50 macro lens.

Thanks for reading.