Shot on Fujifilm X-T3 with Fujinon XF 16-50mm f2.8-4.8
Vaddamorgana: Imaginary Boarders
Once a year, we manage to slip the yoke of the nine-to-five. A few days carved from our calendar’s iron grip, stripped of deadlines and metrics that allude to moving forward but keep us running in circles. Out there, none of that matters. Only the road and the quiet question of what waits around the next corner. It’s enough — more than enough.
Bakery stops, ritualistic; at least to Ferdi and me. Quickly, Seppi declares it tradition too. Someone’s late, someone’s already on the saddle, someone eats a cucumber while others linger over the second piece of pastry. It’s how we find our rhythm again, through the small synchronizing choreography of setting off. Slowly, the road lifts us, and the forest swallows us whole—cell service vanishing with the hum of the world. Our little band rolls unevenly, some push harder than others - synchronization not yet finished.
Vaddamorgana, a familiar mirage risen from maps — part dad joke, part dream.
A small café appears like a Fata Morgana. Drawn by desire more than need, we approach and glimpse inside. We find not only coffee but the glowing warmth of a fire place and another slice of cake. The heat of the fireplace gluing us to our chairs making it hard to leave. When local cheese and sausages as well as alcohol-free beer appear on the table without plan, we extend our stay eagerly.
Later the talk turns to where we sleep. Grand ideas of wild camping are dissolved into the tick-biten reality of the terrain. Even our campground swamped with these small terrors. Plans adjust, compromises made, nothing that the smell of pizza in our nostrils doesn’t soothe.
The road unrelentlessly folds us into itself the next day. Ramps steep enough to draw sweat from each of us. Still, city signs are sprinted for like schoolboys daring each other as if it meant glory. But we are chasing something quieter — the space between laughter and effort.
In a career-orientation questionnaire, I got asked lately during which activities I totally lose the feeling for time, the dictum of flow — turns out, my answer is awfully simple and was already mapped in gravel and laughter. Days like these, when time loosens its jaw and days are organized by the arc of the sun, outside.
After naps and roadside gourmets, the group splinters. A few need to satisfy their hunger for trails, underbiking like it is second nature; others follow the road content with the steady rhythm of tires and talk. We meet again in a boarder market. The Snackbären have their hands filled with cancerous-coloured gummy bears, while the rest craves savoury. We look like misplaced Almans on holiday.
It’s ridiculous; it’s perfect.
There’s a moment I catch from behind the lens: The five of them strung out and regrouping again. No roles. No performance. Just harmony in movement, playing bikes like children — without purpose, without measure. The world might run on clocks and ledgers but life doesn’t have to.
