My love of nature brought me to inspiring people for nature and biodiversity by transforming weeds to healing herbs:
„What’s blooming there?“ Even as a schoolboy, my aunt awakened my curiosity and laid the foundation for my love of nature. However, when I graduated in botany and biology at the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany, the only jobs available were in genetic engineering labs.
Without further ado, I continued my education and turned my hobby, computing, into a career, becoming a computer scientist. For my 50th birthday, my wife Susanne, a naturopathic doctor, gave me the best gift ever – the chance to become a nature guide: „to acquire the necessary official title for explaining wild herbs, which you already do in your spare time anyway.“ This advanced training in Freudenstadt revived my enjoyment of nature, and I subsequently qualified as a BANU-certified nature and landscape guide.
… or to put it more officially, I am all of the following:
- Graduate biologist (University of Tübingen)
- Nature guide
- Nature and landscape guide BANU (nationwide working group of nature and environmental protection academies)
- Lecturer at the University of Applied Forest Sciences in Rottenburg am Neckar (see also picture series)
- Field Identification Skills Certificate (FISC) with the Field Studies Council, Level 3 (currently working towards level 4)
- Besides my botanical knowledge and skills I am a business application computer scientist
If you happen to know someone who could provide me and my wife (or one of us) with a job under a sponsorship license, that would be a huge help in bringing us a decisive step closer to our dream of not just hiking in the UK, but living in the UK. We would greatly appreciate any information or help. Please do not hesitate to send a message to green@waysidetreasures.uk if you have a hint for us.