Karl Krause

"Life is like a mirror. If you smile into it, it smiles back."

True to this philosophy, I have turned my hobbies into my profession. Writing, traveling, photography - From an early age, I have tried to describe the world and capture the most beautiful moments in words and pictures.

I was born in 1984 in a small town not far from Dresden, in the Ore Mountains in Eastern Germany. Up in the hills I went to school, with plenty of snow and skiing in the winter and lush green nature with picturesque mountains in the summer. After graduating from high school - with German and biology as my major courses - I moved to the city of Dresden. Of course, this also had to do with my Coming Out because life in the village in the former GDR was no picnic for a young, maturing adult.

So. I was gay. However, years of desperation and isolation preceded my being able to say this sentence with conviction and without fear. But when I came out, I gained the strength and the urge to do something about the situation I had to grow up in. After completing my civil service, I started training as a medical nurse in Dresden, studied Medicine for four years, and began to travel the world with my backpack - and also to write.

Travelling and Writing. I had found my calling. And after my first article in the student newspaper of the medical faculty of Dresden about my one-month trip to India, my voluntary work at the local LGBTQ+ non-profit organization Gerede e.V. and the first Pride in the capital of Saxony, it was clear to me: goodbye Medicine studies.

With the beginning of my studies of art and architecture history in Berlin, the desire to write and to make a difference with my words evolved more and more. And be it "only" to inspire the readers of my texts to follow my journey(s). In Berlin, I also met the person of my life, a Dutch man, whom I eventually followed and moved later to Amsterdam.

And then it happened: my cute little personal blog became Daan and my blog Couple of Men, for which we started traveling the world, waving the rainbow flag and started to be a voice for the international LGBTQ+ community. Our articles were read, our stories were shared, and our posts were supported. Then we won the 2021 Best in Travel LGBTIQ+ Storyteller Award from Lonely Planet. And our success story took off.

And now? Now I can call myself an author: "Couple of Men - Ein Männerpaar reist um die Welt" was published by the renowned German pubisher house Gräfe & Unzer Verlag in Munich in May 2022. And again, my texts are being read.

But our work has only just begun…