The Presumption of Innocence is a constraint on the State’s power, not a constraint on private thought. So here are my thoughts.

Collien Ulmen-Fernandes has filed criminal complaints in both Germany and Spain against her ex-husband, Christian Ulmen. The core accusation is virtual rape¹. Specifically, she alleges that for over a decade, he created numerous fake profiles in her name on platforms like LinkedIn (really?!) and dating sites. Through these accounts, he is said to have engaged in sexually explicit chats with a lot of men while posing as her. Furthermore, he is accused of distributing pornographic images and videos, partially through deepfake technology, that featured women bearing a striking resemblance to her, intended to be perceived as her private material.

Christian Ulmen, through his legal representation, denies all allegations.

This story is not new. Collien Ulmen-Fernandes has been vocal about being a victim of digital violence and identity theft for years. In early 2024, she even produced a two-part documentary for the ZDF network about deepfakes and the devastating impact of digital sexual violence. In late 2024, she filed a criminal complaint against „persons unknown“ in Berlin. For a long time, she was a voice in the wilderness. The public reaction was one of distant, academic interest in the „risks of the internet.“

Everything changed on March 19, 2026, when a report in Der Spiegel publicly named Christian Ulmen as the accused.

Suddenly, everyone gave a fuck.

That includes a skyrocketing interest in said deepfakes. Google searches for it exploded.

This is not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is how people talk about it. Specifically experts and the general public. I apologize in advance: This is gonna be a longer post.

Innocent until proven guilty – by whom?

Parts of the public were already feeling very intellectual when they posted „innocent until proven guilty“ under a youtube video or in other social media.

Enter the experts. Specifically, enter Udo Vetter, famous for his lawblog, giving an interview to nius (what the actual fuck why does he even talk to them?!). If the first phase of this story was the emotional explosion, the second phase is the cold, legal bucket of water thrown over everyone’s heads.

Vetter did what he always does: he spoke from the fortress of the legal system. He leaned heavily on the Presumption of Innocence, which is a cornerstone of justice in courts and media and society (more to the latter later). In addition, he pointed out that Collien is alleging this has been happening for over a decade, involving hundreds of men and a massive digital footprint. His big question? „Why haven’t any other witnesses („Dritte“) come forward?“

In a legal court, that’s a fair question about the burden of proof.

In the court of public opinion, this is what I would like to call a catastrophic communication failure between systems.

Or shorter: Bullshit.

Not pictured, but still interesting to think about: A commenter in Udo Vetters’ lawblog.
Source: Medium.com

Meant to keep state and media from being tyrants in their own right, this concept is weaponized by experts and commenters alike to freeze a social conversation.

It spurns on the idiots. They use it to play the role of the rational and educated adult in the room. They act as if they are defending the very foundations of civilization, when in reality, they are just using a legal concept they have no deeper understanding of to shut up undesirable opinions or prevent people from forming them in the first place.

I swear they exist. Source: dreamstime.com

What the mob says here is this: „You are not qualified to have an opinion, and your moral compass is legally irrelevant and therefore morally also wrong.“ It treats the public like a tainted jury rather than a society trying to figure out what kind of digital violence it’s willing to tolerate. And they point to the experts to justify this.

Why are experts like this?

Experts play into this willingly or unwillingly. At least they do not reflect enough on their role in this discourse. If they did at least some reflecting, they would not give fucking nius of all places interviews.

But why?

This is the point where it gets frustrating and also a bit complicated.

To understand why experts like Vetter fall into this trap, we have to look at how society is actually built. It isn’t one big, coherent conversation. Rather, it feels like everyone speaks a different language about different interests. I bet you have observed this if you ever read legal German or a letter from your city: Technically it’s German, but you sure as shit do not understand a word.

But you could say it’s actually worse: It’s a collection of separate systems that don’t actually even speak to each other.

This is where Niklas Luhmann comes in.

Luhmann was a German sociologist who realized that modern society is made of specialized systems (Law, Media, Science, Morality, …). Each system is autopoietic, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a closed loop. It only cares about its own internal logic.

Every system runs on a Binary Code. It’s how the system „sees“ the world:

• The Legal System only understands: Legal / Illegal.
• The Moral System only understands: Respect / Disrespect (or simply: Good / Bad).

And on the section between the systems, a catastrophic communication failure happened. What followed was a systemic crash.²

When Udo Vetter speaks, he is 100% correct within the Legal System. In that world, the only thing that matters is the code. Until a judge flips the switch from „legal“ to „illegal,“ the act effectively doesn’t exist.³ For a lawyer, innocent until proven guilty isn’t an a tool to block opinions from being formed. It’s a presumption. Hence the name.

The catastrophic failure happens when an expert tries to export that into the moral system of the public discourse.

When the YouTube mob yells „Innocent until proven guilty!“ at someone expressing empathy for Collien, they are trying to overwrite the Moral Code with the Legal Code. They are telling you that you aren’t allowed to use the „Good / Bad“ filter until the „Legal / Illegal“ filter has finished its five-year gestation process.

Systemic Colonization Says „What?“

In sociological terms, this is a colonization of the public discourse and moral system by the legal system (represented by an expert). The Law is trying to take over territory where it doesn’t belong.

By insisting that the presumption of innocence applies to your brain, these experts are trying to delete your moral autonomy. They want to turn the public square into a sterile courtroom annex where human intuition, empathy, and social patterns („where are the other victims?“) are treated as „illegal“ data.

The experts play into this because they are victims of their own training. They are so deeply embedded in the Legal Code that they’ve lost the ability to „translate“ for the real world. They don’t reflect on their role because, in their mind, they are just stating the truth. They forget that the truth of a courtroom is a very narrow, very specific version of reality and proof.

But this is what the public hears:
Do not use your own brain. Do not form your own opinions. Do not not watch their movies anymore because you find it problematic. Do not discuss this any further in public, because we do not have a sentence by a judge yet. It is dangerous! Wait for (my!!) authority to give you the okay.

I’m niused to it

We also need to look at the venue. Vetter didn’t just give this interview anywhere. He gave it to nius.

I have nothing but disdain for nius. There is no Presumption of Innocence here.

This isn’t a minor detail. When an objective legal expert steps onto a platform that thrives on the narrative of the „oppressed citizen“ fighting a „woke dictatorship,“ they are abandoning neutral ground. They are providing ammunition for the narrative.

In this specific ecosystem, the Presumption of Innocence is no longer a shield meant to protect an individual from the state. Instead, it is weaponized into a sword against societal consensus. Under the logic of nius, anyone who believes Collien Ulmen-Fernandes (or even simply expresses empathy!) is immediately branded as an „enemy of freedom.“ Yet at the same time, those people like to throw 1984 around. And I want to throw up.

Legal expertise, in this context, serves as nothing more than a professional veneer for a deeply ideological dismissal of a victim’s experience. And it works.⁴

Small Recap: Catastrophic Communication Failure Between Systems

Why is this a Catastrophic Communication Failure between Systems?

• Systems: We are talking about two different worlds: The Legal System (Courts/Lawyers) and the Moral System (You/Me/Society).
• Communication: The attempt to send a message across the border of these two worlds.
• Failure: The message arrives as pure noise or in the wrong language with the wrong emphasis.
• Catastrophic: First, it destroys the attempt of understanding each other. Second, there was massive backlash from both sides. Third, it is ripe for abuse by malicious actors.

Academic Hedging and Responsibility

If the lawyers are currently colonizing our moral discourse, where are the people who are supposed to bridge the gap? Where are the sociologists, the communication experts, the people who actually understand how these systems work? Why is the silence from the universities so deafening? Why do most sound so … weak and unconvincing if they speak up?

I strongly believe most academics are currently failing the public. They see this catastrophic communication failure happening, and they choose to stay in their offices. Or if they leave, continue to speak the carefully curated language of their office.

I also strongly believe media as an interface between systems is failing the public. They invite the wrong guests, or do not explain where they are coming from. And they do not translate their language.

How would this look like?

Vetter could say: „This is a public discussion, but in a court room different rules apply. Here they are: …“

Moderators could say: „We invited our three guests. One is an expert in law, the other in social issues, the last in AI and IT.“ and then make them understand each other. Moderate.

Media aside, why do professionals talk like this?

The reason is a professional disease called Hedging.

In the academic world, if you say something directly, you’re a target. To survive a peer review or a faculty meeting, you learn to wrap every statement in three layers of bubble wrap: „Perhaps,“ „Under certain conditions,“ „The data suggests, although further research is required…“

This is correct and professional. At the same time, if you are a prominent professional in public discourse, the eyes of your field of study dont stop watching you.

Being „imprecise“ in the eyes of colleagues is so terrifying to some (or they are so used to talking like that), that they become completely unconvincing to the public.

But your job here is to convince and educate the public. Not by being an expert with big words, but by speaking the language of the public, and talking about what is interesting to them.

And if they dont do it, someone else with nefarious intentions will. And they will use the experts. In this case, it was nius.

The Mirror

I realize the irony here. I am sitting here using Niklas Luhmann to explain why academics are isolated. I am doing exactly what I’m critiquing. I’m using the big words to explain why we shouldn’t use them.

And also, not all academics are like that. But that’s the point. It’s always academics. They refuse to reflect and to use the tools of language not to cross a gap between systems, but for signalling belonging and creating a shut-off community nobody understands anymore.

When I talk about a catastrophic communication failure, I’m not trying to sound smart. Quite the opposite. I’m trying to tell you that you should not sound smart, you should sound empathetic and easily understandable.

Know where you are. Know who you talk to. Know whose language you need to speak.

Vetter should have known that. He is moving in both courts: Legal and public opinion. He must speak both languages.

At the end of the day, Christian Ulmen may remain legally innocent in the eyes of the law. That is the job of the courts in Germany and Spain, and it is a job they should do with the utmost precision. It is a result the public must accept and see as true.

But until then, as educated people, we need to stop hedging and start listening, understanding and translating in public. We also need to admit that the Legal System is currently failing to keep up with the reality of digital violence. We cannot wait for a judge to give us permission to have a moral compass.

Because moral and ethics come before law. And even before that comes communication.

1. For the lack of better words. ↩︎
2. If you want to see this crash in real time, look at funfacts.de segment on Nuhr on youtube. ↩︎
3. For a more disturbing look into that world, look into the blogpost by Vetter on lawblog and the comment secion. I refuse to link the nius interview, but I will link that. It is a masterclass in the „Legal Shush“: self-appointed guardians of the rule of law quibbling over grammar or equating anti-deepfake legislation with North Korean totalitarianism while human identities are being shit on. Morality is just signal noise. Only the technical „purity“ of the legal code matters. What grounds these laws are based on? Who they protect? Who cares. Disgusting, really. ↩︎
4. See above, footnote 3. ↩︎

The state of my house is a reflection of the state of my mind.

The opposite is also true: If I clean, I instantly feel better. Digital housekeeping is no exception.

Containers running slow, services scattered across different ports and addresses, and I have to remember what is going on where. It works, but it isn’t right. It’s mental load.

Anyways. I finally sat down to clean up. Got nothing better to do. How long can it take? A day? Two? Just put in a little work now, so I don’t have to do a lot of work later, right? While I’m on it, I might as well upgrade my system…

If you’ve been following along, you know this blog runs on a TrueNAS Electric Eel system. It’s a great piece of kit, but self-hosting … well. You’re never really „done“ working on it.

This digital housekeeping was about a little bit of fresh air and a lot of maintenance: A new mainboard. Files from SSD to NVME. All the problems that came with the hardlinks in compose.yamls. Caddy, automation, port fowarding, network routing, certificate obtaining, head-against-wall banging. You know the drill.

From J5005 to N100

I finally swapped the old J5005 for an N100 to actually run my stuff properly. The N100 is great, but of course, it only has one RAM slot. I had to wait for a 16GB stick from eBay (thanks AI for the nice RAM prices, buying my stuff used now) and until then, I was stuck with 8GB. I’m absolutely sure this won’t be a problem in the meantime.

I actually enjoy the hardware side of this. Rewiring everything in a Node 305 is tight, but cable management is weirdly relaxing. The real headache started when I tried to boot up. Running 20+ containers (including resource hogs like Immich and Nextcloud) on 8GB is a death sentence. Especially when you’re moving massive datasets from an SSD to a new NVME. Everything crashed. Of course, it took me a while to figure out why.

The data migration was a mixed bag. Changing all those hardlinks in the compose files while trying to keep FoundryVTT assets on the SSD and the OS on the NVME was tedious. Sometimes it do be like that.

At least it is clean now. And got to write a bit of compose.yaml and refresh my memory. It’s scary how much I forget. It’s my code, after all, but it didn’t feel like it.

Put the DNS in the Black Hole or something

I also moved my Pi-hole. It’s no longer on the TrueNAS, now it lives on a dedicated Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the TrueNAS just acting as a backup. Why? Please don’t ask. No good reason. I just thought that was neat, and it doesn’t throw load errors anymore.

Then I tried setting up „Split Horizon“ DNS. Basically, I wanted the same URL to point to a local IP when I’m at home (for speed) and a public IP when I’m out, without any changes on my end. I scrapped it. Couldn’t get it to work. Abandon ship, maybe later.

Cloudflare WTF of the day

Then there was Caddy. Specifically, the Cloudflare DDNS plugin.

Cloudflare started pushing these new cfut_ tokens. They’re great, except the old tokens were all 40 characters long. The new ones are cfut_ + 40 characters.

And Caddy don’t like this. Oh no, good sir. The Caddy plugin (cloudflare-ddns) had a fixed 40-character limit hardcoded into it. The new tokens are longer. It broke everything. I could not add a new API token into Caddy, it will not work. Caddy does not accept it. Fix is out as we speak, but of course not implemented into the precompiled images yet. So I compiled my own. Sure. Why not. Can’t wait to use serfriz image again. These maintainers are basically gods to me.

Who is to blame? I blame Cloudflare for their shit error messages and for forcing new tokens down everyone’s throat to „fix“ their own bad legacy documentation. But Caddy isn’t innocent either for having such a rigid limit.

Classic. https://xkcd.com/2347/

Work is never done because someone somewhere changes a character limit.

Somewhere along the Watchtower

I installed Watchtower to update my images. I cannot wait until this breaks stuff, too. In my infinite wisdom I excluded things like FoundryVTT from the automatic updates. I would never make the mistake and update Foundry directly after a big patch and break everything and spend a week to fix it and grow a little bit balder over all the frustration. Oh no, not me.

I have no friends, so a bot writes me

I coded a small script that lets me know when services go down. That’s it. I also get overly excited that someone writes me when I get a notification, only to get disappointed that something crashed and burned.

It wasn’t even that much work. And AI really helps out with easy projects, though I fear I wont learn that much if I rely on it too much. Or my own voice and expression gets lost in the process. If anyone real reads this, I bet you thought this was written by an AI in parts, right? That’s what I mean.

Lessons Learned

I am not big on learning from my own mistakes. I’m lazy and I really like learning from the mistakes of others. Also I might have infinite wisdom, but I do not have infinite hair to spare. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

So. What did I learn…

• Automation is a double-edged sword. You spend a lot of time now to safe a lot more time later. Until it „helps“ you into a disaster. My new Watchtower is set to Opt-In only.
• Monitoring is peace of mind. My pinger bot now yells at me on Telegram the second a service croaks.
• I actually don’t do complicated stuff. I’m basically script kiddy level, and I can still make mistakes. Big, big thanks to all the maintainers and open source coder gods out there. Thanks to you, I can enjoy my silly little projects.

As a kid, when I was five or so, I had a cassette (shut up, I’m not that old). I don’t remember much from it, only that it was a poem or song about someone working on a computer all night to get something to work.

It ended something like this:

Die Augen brennen müde,
doch er hat es geschafft.¹

I think it influenced me more than I knew.

1. The eye are burning, tired, but he did it. ↩︎

We covered University (grades). We covered Work (money). Those were the easy ones. Why? Because they are openly transactional. You give labor, you get a grade or a paycheck. The exchange rate might be unfair, as I ranted about previously, but at least there is a contract.

Friendships are different.

The fundamental definition of friendship is that it is not transactional. I do not listen to your problems so that you buy me a beer. I do not help you move apartments so that you help me move mine. I do it because I care.

But here lies the trap. Because there is no contract, there are no boundaries. And because I claimed „I don’t expect anything in return,“ am I theoretically not allowed to be angry when I get nothing in return?

I feel like most of the time, I am the one who writes first. The one who calls. Asks if my friends have time to do something. Or even takes the first step making friends with someone. I am pretty sure, almost everyone feels that way, though. So you might understand my fatigue.

There is this dangerous question lingering in the back of my mind: If I stopped pedaling, would the bike keep moving? Or would we just fall over? If I didn’t text first, would I ever hear from them again? This tension is where the burnout happens for me. Slowly and unnoticed, as burnout does.

Also, by trying to help I do run the danger to not only hurt myself. We are raised to be helpful. To be good boys and girls. But in my private life, I found that my helpfulness sometimes becomes a burden. There is a point where helping a friend is actually just enabling them to stay stuck. If I am always the shoulder to cry on, I am absorbing their negativity so they don’t have to process it. If I always solve their crisis, they never learn to avoid the crisis in the first place. And worse, if I can’t help, I blame myself, and they might even blame me for my „un-helpfulness“. So is it better to just stay far away sometimes?

And worse, it drains my battery. I realized that it is better for a friendship not to help when the cost of helping is my own stability. When I am lighting myself on fire to keep them warm, as they say.

So, how do we avoid social burnout? I am trying to learn matching their energy. If a friend gives 20%, I cannot give 100% forever. I have to dial it back to 20%. First of all, this is self-preservation. If they truly value the connection, they will feel the void and step up. If they don’t, the friendship fades. But on the other hand, I read that matching the energy of someone actually helps deepen a friendship and a genuine, empathetic connection. Especially, if your friend needs help, sometimes it is just better to not come in swinging with 100% problem solving attitude and energy. For both of us.

I am really, really trying to learn this and act on it.

So this time, there isn’t much intellectualizing going on. Sometimes, you just gotta relax, hang out and not worry about all that stuff. Leave that to your 9-5.

End of series.

Last time I talked about university. Scrap education ideals. The university of today trains you for work.

Let’s talk about work.

It’s the exact same problem, but now it’s about your salary, not your grades. There’s a fundamental difference: You are making money for someone else.

Now when you really put effort into work, you are not even getting good grades (the promise for a good job) for it. You are getting your salary. If you are lucky, a bonus. But let’s be real:

The new ceiling is your paycheck. Working 120% does not get you 120% of your paycheck. Doing that extra work that is not in your contract is analogue to the misplaced effort in university: You can spend weeks on a quality project that you know is good, but your boss’s priority was just hitting basic KPIs. Your good work is wasted time you could have spent improving a metric set by someone else.

At least university prepared you for exactly that, right? The specific work you were asked for.

But then why, oh god why, do we always read about „quiet quitting“ and „nobody wants to work anymore“? Pressure to keep you on your toes, compliant, anticipating getting fired any day now? Maybe.

But I do not think it changes the choices we have. Namely those three, as far as I can see:

The famous quiet quitting. Also known as the bare minimum. Also the work you were literally hired for. Do enough not to get fired. It is a logical, maybe cynical response. It is unfulfilling, and if you are the type of person without hobbies it is not a good recommendation for you. If you do have hobbies, a good private life, friends… go for it. You will suddenly have so much more energy if you leave your job thoughts at your job place!

Of course you might be a workaholic. Or a gambler. Or both. Everyone has an addiction, right? Go above and beyond. Work those 120% and hope your boss is one of those 12/10 types who notices your effort and decides to reward you out of the blue with a promotion or a bonus. But it is on your boss to do this, on their good will. And in all my years in university, this 12/10 thing happened only once.

The last option is to be Machiavellian and a strategic builder. Fulfill your contract. Do a solid 100% of the work you are paid to do. Reliable, but never more. Consciously cap your effort. Save that effort, those extra 20% and invest into yourself. Because you are the only person that actually values that and future you will pay you back. Do side projects. Certifications, if your country loves them. Use your time to apply for a better job that pays more.

Because:

You don’t owe the company. And if you dont own a company, this third option is the only one that feels like a real answer to me. Build that github. Do your passion project. Monetize job-adjacent stuff. But leave your free time free time and don’t hustle. That free time is too valuable for the last topic, friendships.

Until next time! And if you are a friend of mine, please don’t judge me too harshly on this…

I’m in a rather foul mood right now, because I feel like my effort is not rewarded enough. Or rather, my effort is misplaced. And it is my fault.

I feel this in university, career and private life. I am not sure what to do about it. In this blog post, I will take about university and why putting effort into it actually sucks.

Here lies my ambition. The F is for Effort.

This may sound conceited, but I have hit my head on the ceiling a couple of times while in university. There were two reason this happened: One, I did too much and standardized testing did not reward me. And two, I simply did focus on the wrong and very exhausting things without taking into account that my Prof only had a checklist for the basics.

Let’s start with the simpler one, getting full marks and why it actually feels like shit. Imagine you hit 100/100 in a MCQ test. Feels good, right? You got everything. Now imagine you hit 100/100 in a written essay. Suddenly, this does not feel so great. Because you can be sure you spent more effort than necessary to get there. This could easily have been 110/100, but the scale did not allow for this. In addition, the next 10% are always much, much harder to achieve than the previous 10%. Like the old rule, you achieve 80% of success with 20% of the effort, and the last 20% with 80% of effort? Yeah, now imagine going beyond that. One of my Professors actually had a solution to this: He simply awarded 12/10 points because „the essay was just that good“. But this, again, feels strange: Why was this not an option to begin with? And then we run into the original problem…

The other issue, in my opinion, is much worse: Misplaced effort. There have been so many instances where I felt that my work is really, really good and high quality, but it was just not the standardized thing the professor was looking for. „Oh, you did a systematic literature research? Well, you actually did this subset of an SLR, not that. And we were looking for that. Does not matter that yours is 5x more the work and actually delivers interesting results. It was not the one we were looking for.“ Yeaah….

Compliance is more valuable than quality or results.

This actually made me double and triple check and mail and talk to professors just to try to figure out what the hell they want from me.This meta-game to ensure compliance is actual valuable effort on our part as students. Way more than actually being smart or doing hard work. I recommend you get good at playing it. And for your sake, I hope you do not run into this one specific type of professor: One who knows exactly what they want, but will not tell you. In this case, I suggest to just switch courses.

Because in the end, what counts for your job application are your grades.

Speaking of jobs, I will talk about them next time.

In the meantime, remember that education is a marathon and not a sprint. And make sure you are a good boy or girl and comply.

There is so. much. plastic. in Asia. South Korea is no exception. South Koreans love their plastic. Everything is wrapped in plastic. Food. Daily items. Even plastic bags need more plastic.

I think for most this realization hit when they got a meal to take home. It was, of course, in a plastic tray. That plastic tray had a plastic lid on. With a plastic spoon and fork. Wrapped in plastic. Taped onto the plastic tray. To keep it all together, it came in a transparent plastic bag.

All the bottles are made of plastic, too. Of course they are.

Once you bought all of this, you are kind of on your own with it. You are expected to eat your food out of that plastic tray, then wash that plastic tray and depose of it.

Because at least they recycle, right?

Wrong. Well, kind of right. They do recycle, similar to Germany, but it is a weird system where you separate bottles (plastic) from other stuff (also plastic) and sometimes vinyl (plastic?). How am I supposed to know everyone does it right? Is there somebody going through all this trash and sorts it for a final time? Why do people have to separate the trash correctly on their own in the first place, then?

Also: South Koreans seem to hate trash cans. Must have something to do with a bomb that has been planted in one, so the country collectively decided: No more trash cans, just throw it onto the ground in differently colored trash bags. Or it is due to some weird tax thing that encourages people to take their trash home with them to separate it properly (pay-as-you-throw?). Anyways. This results in (1) very few to no trash cans anywhere and (b) trash just randomly on the streets in front of houses or in backyards.

It looks really dirty. And there is a lot of plastic. A lot.

It really makes me think about the hyper consumerism here. Everything is shiny, everything is plastic, but once you buy it and are done with it, Koreans seem very much out of ideas what to do with their trash.

I wonder if this is a metaphor for their society as a whole. I guess I will see.

So far, I know it is similar with plumbing and other waste management.

Going by recent statistics, there is a lot of microplastics in this, too. So it checks out.

This is going to be a short one.

So I was getting back from the rental agency and wanted to grab a drink on the way. Korean summer weather is killing me. I noticed three girls I knew sitting in the convenience store and talked to two of them for a bit (one had to leave).

They asked me about my age. I told them and that I was studying again. „That’s brave“. I know she meant well, but that didn’t sit well with me. I don’t even know why. I don’t think it’s brave. It may just be new for them. Here is the thing: Besides having more experience and done more in my life already, I do not think I am that different from them.

I like food. I like to travel. I am getting annoyed by orientation week. I want to find a new room (they were at that same agency, I think). Everything here is new to me. I like to party.

But…

I think my grey hair stands out – especially in a society that is all about looks and performance like South Korea. I don’t feel that included, especially in that club we all went to where I got weird looks by staff (yes, really) and don’t know why. And people generally turning their backs to me. I feel this when I talk to people and we understand each other, but I know that after that initial small talk, there will not be friendship because of differences. Kind of puts this whole experience into a different light.

But I always had these problems with people, so what’s new? And I think this experience is something a lot of people make when coming to South Korea, I am just on the fast track.

So I don’t take it personally. I am an experience for others, too, and I intend to make it a good one.

I am tired. My feet hurt. My room is messy. I do not have a phone number. I did not get the courses I wanted. And I am not at all oriented.

Other than that, it’s going great!

What is there even to talk about? Well… every day begins at 6 am and I have finely tuned and organized program until 8pm. Every minute you spend, every move you make, they will be watching you~

And there is never time for anything. Best example? Courses. You would think they are pretty important, as they are the main reason most of us are here. But … they have been delayed by a day. And then we had to pick them after lunch break. Which resulted in a mad dash for cheese sticks and french fries, followed by confusion while navigating their website. Just great. I am free to do whatever, but I can’t imagine how stressful this must have been for people with specific needs.

Such a nice atmosphere. Too bad I don’t have time to enjoy it.

We are also walking a lot. And I mean a lot. 50.000 steps per day. Easy. Up the hill, down the hill, in 34°C and high humidity. I hope I do not look like I feel.

Other than that, everyone has been extremely helpful. It is very different to Germany for me, as I really feel like people are here to help. Even though you have to smile and wave – probably even while asleep on the bus that took us to an amusement park. That park – Lotte World – would be perfect for a Zombie movie. At least in my opinion. Don’t tell the Koreans this, but damn their Lotte mascot is creepy. Would Goethe have liked this?

Fun Fact: Lotte is a huge company, and this is their park. It is named after Charlotte, a character in „Die Leiden des jungen Werther“ by Goethe.

At least we filled out banking forms. Someone really went through 50 pages per person for 400 persons and circled all the fields you have to tick with a pencil. When I find out who that was, I want to gift them a little something. Incredibly well organized, incredibly inefficient. But impressive nevertheless.

In the distance: Solbridge. I think the green is only possible because all the people are crammed into skyscrapers.

Tomorrow: More walking. More smiling. More waving. More collectivist activities. Everyone is invited, and everyone must attend.

After that, I can finally be my usual self again, relax a little and finally orient myself in South Korea.

Looking forward to it!

Hello and welcome to this little blog.

You know that feeling, right? This nagging feeling that you should have done something long ago. But you just didn’t. And then a day passed. A week. A month. But now you’re going to start. You just need to…

Anyways. Welcome to this blog. I will write about my stay abroad in South Korea, and all the impressions that I get. And when I am back, I will see if I continue!

That leg room means business.

I have seen a lot of travel videos on South Korea (and Japan, and other places). I just like to watch them, they are relaxing. Just a night train with a dude who does not talk much, or walking through Seoul at night. I wanted to do that too. More on how that went later…

I generally and genuinely do not think that you have to make experiences yourself to learn something. You can learn from others. See what they live. But there is some strange kind of danger to that. You are not living this yourself, it is just an illusion. And we all know what social media does to our brains.

Korean Cable Management.

So I came to see for myself. Just wanted to go somewhere far away for once.

And you know what? It is not that bad. People are the same everywhere, just a little different. Or as they say in Thailand: „Same same, but different.“

The Koreans I met so far were nice. One smuggled my sweatshirt through the airport control, after I forgot it there and could not go back. The older (probably rich?) man in the airplane was very amused when I put on the complementary face mask and took it on himself to teach me how to eat Korean food correctly. It was a fun flight!

She helped me make that smoothie on day one to cool off at Daejeon Station. I will forever treasure this memory, even if I got to treasure the smoothie only for a couple of seconds. So good.

Speaking of desperation. Imagine getting on the bus in South Korea after a long flight, only to get yelled at by the bus driver who refuses to switch to English. Wasn’t me who got yelled at. Never understood why, either. Old men don’t care.

Generally, the days here have been very, very long. Koreans work hard and are incredibly organized. Both not my forte. Also, just because you work long and hard does not mean you get a lot of work done. But more on all that later!

Not pictured in the beautiful view of Daejeon: The days are long, hot and humid.

Lastly, something for the nerds: This blog runs on wordpress. It is selfhosted at home (pls dont pull the plug, mom!) on a TrueNAS Electric Eel system via Dockge docker. Reverse proxy with caddy, cloudflare for protection with regular IP address updates.