My name is Sven Schirmer, born in 1975 in the former German Democratic Republic.
I grew up in a safe & good environment, and was grateful for the freedom that came with the reunification in 1990. After living in Germany for 25 years I decided to move to Ireland where I lived from August 2000 until December 2002. The main idea of this move was to learn English as well as getting the Irish & their culture to know. I also wanted to improve my knowledge in a professional way. So I started with simple HTML coding and went over some Java & PHP scripting into Networking. Before I left Ireland for my big Asia adventure I successfully certified as Microsoft MCSA. Dublin, the capital of this country is well known for all these pubs, pints & a fast growing IT business. Live is different there, compared to Germany. But if you are interested in that you have to come and feel yourself. For myself I really enjoyed living and working here as well as the little journeys around the island during weekends.
End of 2002 I quit my job in Ireland and went for a first long trip to Asia, eventually ending up dwelling for 12 weeks on a hill on a small island in Thailand. And then, roaming arround Japan for 7 weeks. Afterwards, circumstances brought me back home. Reality reached me quickly. My country seemed to have lost illusions & perspectives, morning about Euro inflation, industries outsourcing factories and facilities in Eastern Europe and Far East. Or is it just mourning on high level? Without decent job nor career opportunities I decided to study computer science in my home area. Even though it was fairly hard stuff after all these years off school I did enjoy this experience and graduated far better than expected after less than 4 years.
Economy was good in those days, and I decided to go back to business. In my first project with Siemens, I developed a complex test framework for multi layer PLC testing with my colleagues. After two great journeys to India and France in 2009, I decided to leave job, flat and country again and went cycling in Japan from August until December 2009. With my friends, I spend sunrise on Mnt. Fuji on my 34st birthday. Then I cycled into the Japanese alps and onward the West coast. The Shikoku Henro pilgrimage by bicycle was indeed a wonderful experience, as well as the ancient Shinto shrines on Kyushu. Eventually I went hiking in the primeval forests of Yakushima and snorkeling with man and sharks on Amami Oshima.
Not long after coming back from Japan, the lecturer of my diploma thesis offered me to work as freelance scientist for him. During the following 4 years, we improved the sleep-wake model and published several scientific papers. Beside that, I was free enough to travel. Further journeys by bicycle led me to Southeast-Asia, Australia and North America, where I met Kathrin from Switzerland. Together we cycled through Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina... After another long trip from Germany to India, we decided to settle down in Switzerland.
The website itself is named after a Leonard Cohen song I really like. The page was first set up in 1998, mostly for testing reasons, where every single thing used to be coded with notepad. After a decade of growing content and mess, I finally made a transition to Joomla CMS in 2010. SocialMedia links are disabled on this page to avoid third party data collection. If you want to share a page anyway, you are very welcome to copy the URL.
I hope you enjoy,
Thanks and cheers!
Sven Schirmer
Hauptstr. 94
9052 Niederteufen
Switzerland