Madle Timm
I am Madle, the soul and soullessness of this blog. I’ve carried my backpack from America to Asia and from Africa to the North. I love to travel (and live) slowly, to discover local hidden corners and mountaintops, people, and everything in between. I come from (and am, unless I’m off again) Southern Estonia. The University of Tartu gave me my journalist’s papers, after which I worked at various newspapers and magazines, at the university, dipped my toes into radio work, and took part in a documentary film in Kazakhstan (it wasn’t Borat). I wrote the book “My Philippines.” And then I found myself, for a while, in the midst of humanitarian aid and the world’s crisis regions.
If you really must ask, I can tell you under a veil of secrecy that my favorite ways to travel are by bicycle, sailboat, skis, and motorcycle. I adore unhurried mornings, hiking, cooking, painting, reading, deep conversations. Sarcastic jokes often pop into my head and, for some reason, out of my mouth. Nature, self-development, and staying connected with myself and the universe are very important to me.
For some reason, Ethel likes to say that when meeting me, she always packs a lunch, because history has shown that an innocent half-hour walk might, seven hundred hours later, end up across barbed wire in a swamp. Not my fault that adventures don’t just sit and wait on main streets!
Ethel Rosenfeldt
I’m Ethel Rosenfeldt. I’m here to make sure Madle doesn’t completely go off the rails (Madle wrote that sentence). My path has taken me both into the depths of the human psyche and to different corners of the world. At the moment, I work at a university as a psychologist and also counsel clients in a private clinic. I’m inspired by challenges — for example: how to bring mental health and personal growth work out of the therapy room and into real life? Sometimes I even hold counseling sessions while walking in nature, because I believe that movement and a change of environment can support inner transformation just as deeply as the conversation itself. For instance, we also organized a summer sailing course in the form of adventure therapy for young people diagnosed with ADHD — and I believe that’s only the beginning! I’m open and constantly learning new approaches, including training in psychedelic therapy to broaden my understanding of consciousness and the possibilities of healing. Madle told me I should finally say something more exciting about myself, so here goes: sailing, ceramics, Latin dance classes, reading, crafts, and making things. And baking buckwheat bread is also a hobby — I’ve done it once! It’s hard for me to leave chanterelles behind in the forest, I have to know the inner life of every plant. And bird.
How did these two witches meet?
For ten years, Madle and Ethel somehow managed to avoid each other in a city of fewer than 100,000 people [even while attending the same school]. By a twist of fate, they finally met on a sailboat (neither of them knew how to sail) on a journey from Norway to Denmark — where one of them spent the first 12 hours throwing up, while the other, lulled by the gentle rocking of the waves and the setting sun, was quietly unwrapping a bar of chocolate…
[Is this supposed to be in third person? Ugh, weird, but I’ll continue.]
After such profound maritime experiences, it was no longer possible to pretend not to see each other on the street by suddenly needing to tie their shoelaces — so they had to become friends. At some point, they realized that both could react to seeing a fluffy cloud [“look, it’s like a giraffe!”] or a puppy as if it were the very first time, so it seemed only logical to enter the World of Serious People together [to forever ruin enrich it with their ridiculous ideas].
And so Wandersell Travels was born — a project that might, over time, change (only for the better) just as fast as a giraffe-shaped cloud turns into a Vulpes zerda in the sky [have you ever seen that?!]. One thing’s for sure — we do what we do with great joy and passion, even if you now close this webpage with a deep sigh, never to return.
Sometimes, it really is better to just stare at the sky.
