I grew up in a village in Germany between fields, forests and industry. In spring, farmers planted canola, its undulating carpet of yellow flowers expanding to the horizon. In autumn, the earthy smell of boiled sugar beet hovered in the air. Some nights, molten iron from the steel works illuminated the clouds crimson-red.

My childhood played itself out inside a 50x20km bubble with wetlands teeming with tiny insects and amphibians that I spent hours and hours at, using a  magnifying glass to gaze into strange lifeforms. In the far distance, the rounded mountains of the Harz range limited the seemingly endless waves of slightly ascending and descending hills, which echoed ancient oceans that once covered this land.

When thinking of it now, the scenery still evokes a strong feeling of abundance and peace.

When growing up, my family and I frequently travelled. Nature reserves, art museums and archaeological sites were top on the list. Two places that had a particularly strong impact on me were Naples and Constanța, a town on the shores of the Black Sea. Both of them are port cities with an ancient past, and both of them were very lively and culturally diverse.

Constanța surprised me with its calls of prayer, public buses so full that people were virtually hanging on to them and inscriptions from Greek and Roman times. Pompeji fascinated me with its expressive paintings of the Villa dei Misterii, and the National Museum of Naples through the tender frescoes of female bodies floating away angelically.

At age 17, I spent an academic year at a High School near Seattle, living with an American family. My immediate surrounding now incorporated glacier covered volcanoes that could actually blow their top off, (Mount St. Helens had erupted the year prior to my arrival), huge rainforests and ocean inlets with strong tides, teeming with sea anemone, kelp forests and spouting orcas.

Apart from exploring this grandiose nature, I was exposed to something I had never seen before: traditional and contemporary indigenous art by Northwest Coast painters and sculptors. Their expressions contributed to why I later chose cultural anthropology as my major for a Masters degree at Munich University, which eventually led to an extended field study with an indigenous group in Brazil.

Before the final exams, I withdrew to a wooden cabin in the Alps, studying the origin, construction and transformation of religion. Respite from existential wonderings came through an alpine meadow the size of a tennis court in front of my cabin, a field of extensive daily meditation. I had arrived when the terrain was still covered in a thick blanket of snow but left months later a colourful tapestry, teeming with life that had since emerged, it’s vegetation and animal life responding to the slightest nuances in temperature, sunlight or humidity.

Feeling comfortable as a recluse is an underlying theme of my personality as is spending time intensely with select others. Another dimension developed when I decided on my profession, working as a guide and lecturer, conducting expeditions and cultural tours with small groups of people.

It allowed me to further my studies in ethnology, art and cultural studies in situ: Tattoos chiselled into skin of Iban warriors in Borneo, megalithic structures on Easter Island, sculptures of the Inuit in Northern Canada, rock art in Australia, petroglyphs in Scandinavia, basket weaving in Cameroon, pyramids in Bolivia.

Or rock-hewn churches in Ethiopia, Inka temples in Peru, Romanesque cathedrals along the Camino and modernist urban architecture in Brasilia or Barcelona. All of a sudden I found myself standing again in front of the same statues in The National Museum in Naples I had marvelled about as a child, but now sharing my own ideas with groups of people.