"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
• Business application computer scientist
• 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)