Sometimes you need a little distance to see the world anew.For me, that is exactly what flying is.

A flight in perfect weather can be magical. The vastness opening up beneath you and the clarity of the air are, every time, something set apart from the ordinary.

The eye travels out past the wing into the haze that slowly blurs the landscape. It is a way of seeing that seems to let go of its usual interpreting and judging for a moment — and gains its intensity precisely there: pure perception, free of judgement.

And so, uninterpreted and open as it is, this moment never looks for a place in ordinary memory — it stays in the body as a resonance, still quietly sounding long after such a flight.

There are different views on being alone. Some can hardly bear it, others seek out exactly those moments. Whether you endure it or seek it never even becomes a question in flying: there, being alone isn’t a state you choose but a fixed part of the training — the first solo flight.

What many don’t know: it happens in the middle of the training. Before the licence.

Before that you practise circuits. Take off, fly, land, again and again. The instructor sits beside you and can step in at any time.

Until that moment comes.

“You’ve got this now. I’m getting out. Fly three circuits.”

You know the sentence is coming. It is still something else entirely when it does.

Suddenly there is only the aircraft and me. No one beside me. No one to step in. The responsibility is entirely mine.

I remember that moment with surprising precision to this day. Stay clear. Stay focused. Work the checklist.

One sentence kept going through my head:

I’m going through with this. Full stop.

That “full stop” was more than a thought. It was a decision I couldn’t go back behind — no hesitating, no “maybe not after all”. And exactly there lay something freeing: where nothing is left to decide, all that remains is the next step.

Take off. Fly. Land. Entirely alone.

A sightseeing flight with passengers is something special. People place their trust in me, hoping for a particular moment above the clouds. That trust means a great deal to me.

Which makes it all the better when, after landing, I look into bright eyes and see that the flight reached them. That for a while everyday life was gone, and the vastness, the quiet and the intensity of flying were simply there.

That’s why these flights give me so much. I give someone an hour — and at best a memory that stays for a lifetime.

I don’t receive despite giving. I receive because I give.

Seeing your own part of the world from above changes something. Places I drive past every day suddenly form a pattern: the river explains why the roads lie the way they do, and the roads explain where people live.

From the inside, much of what obviously belongs together from the outside looks like chance. From above I see the pattern. On the ground I live inside it.