A German Perspective On The Death Valley Germans

 In the past weeks, I dove into the rabbit hole of the Death Valley Germans, a real tragedy from 1996 where a German family from the eastern part of Germany visited the USA as tourists, only to disappear and die under misterious and tragic circumstances.

The whole story was covered with great detail on a blog by one of the two hikers who knew the area well and eventually discovered some of the remains of the travellers.

Apart from this blog and a couple of really decent on-site travel vlogs, most youtube or overall internet sources seem to be regurgitating the same "horror/mystery" type of content that always tells the same story.

I want to change that by adding some extra layers of content, even though it's mostly speculative. I want to talk about how, from a German perspective, the events of what happened to the Death Valley Germans had unique characteristics that not too many people consider about this story.

1. The family was East German

This is something that always falls under the radar for two reasons. First, the American media are the ones who control the narrative while the German media (the country the Death Valley Germans are from) also basically just retell what happened in Death Valley without adding much local context.

Why is it important that the Death Valley Germans were actually East Germans originally?

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, only few years before the tourist family consisting of Egbert Rimkus, Cornelia Meyer and the boys Georg and Max would go on their journey into the United States. The Wall fell when Egbert was barely 30 years old and Cornelia was in her early 20s. This is relevant because, up until that point, you would have grown up in a socialist dictatorship that prevents you from leaving the Iron Curtain and enter the western world. A trip to the USA for an East German was, up until 1989, a very distant dream that required you to either try to flee your country and abandon your family, who would then be interrogated by East German police and treated badly, or to just give up on that dream altogether.

This adds an extra layer of freedom to the whole Death Valley Germans story. It also adds a certain degree of wanting to push forward, of taking risks, of not taking the safe way back, if you know the story.

There are also other elements at play. Considering the cold war, not only did the Germans know military installations in Europe, they knew Soviet military installations. It would have been even more probable from their view that an army base would be guarded and patrolled, what is suspected to be the reason they travelled south into their doom.

Another piece of the story few people know: Cornelia, the woman in the family, was regarded as an adventerous person herself. Unlike what you would usually assume - the man being the risk-taker and the woman being the nagging guardian who wants safety - Cornelia allegedly traveled into the soviet union in a East German car, the Trabi, which would have been quite a bold move back in the day.

Death Valley Germans

I couldn't find the German sources I found earlier but I am pretty sure that both Egbert Rimkus and Cornelia Meyer were described as daring, adventerous people. So I would argue that both of them were striving for freedom and taking risks during the trip. Whether one of them was more daring and pushed the car to its eventual limits while the other was more cautious is still speculation and will remain so.

2. Egbert was an architect and art lover

Egbert, who like Cornelia came from the city of Dresden, was one of the founding members of an artist club that acts as a sort of charity to support freelance artists. He was also an architect and successful businessman at the time of his death. I want to mention his profession specifically because it says something about him.

Having grown up in the German Democratic Republic, a socialist state, being able to study architecture is remarkable because back then, you didn't have freedom of profession as you do in the west. You are told what to do basically, and only if you are intelligent, have good grades and don't cause the ruling party trouble will you be allowed to enter university.

Egbert being an architect is also relevant to the story of the Death Valley Germans because as an architect, you need to have high skills in spacial awareness. Egbert Rimkus must have been able to guess distances, imagine spaces and have a better than average idea of where he was walking down in Death Valley. In the end, it didn't help him though, but it says a lot about psychological biases and errors if someone like that can walk into his doom.

3. Death Valley was especially important to Germans

One of the more overlooked facts regarding this story is the fact that Germans are especially drawn to Death Valley. The reason is a man called Karl May, an author who is not that well known in the english-speaking world but sold 200 million books worldwide. He wrote stories about Native Americans and American Cowboys, warfare in the Wild West and even Death Valley. For reference, one of the movies based on his books is called "Winnetou and Shatterhand in the valley of the dead". Although May was never in the USA himself, it is obvious that he based his works on the dry areas of the USA and even to some degree on Death Valley, although fictionalized. And while his works had only limited access in East Germany, the cultural impact he had should not be ignored when talking about the Death Valley Germans. Maybe, to some degree, he had an influence in this journey.

4. The psychological aspects of the Death Valley Germans

This is not an exclusively German perspective, but I want to add it anyway. If you really dive into the rabbit hole of the Death Valley Germans, you will find that, with some likelihood, they had a good chance of survival if they simply turned back and walked to where they had driven before. They had been to a small hut that can provide shelter and likely water, and it would have been a lot less of walking than what these Germans - Egbert, Conny and the kids - ended up walking eventually.

To me, what appears to have happened is a sort of sunk cost fallacy paired with a confirmation bias. On the one hand, they totally didn't want to turn back after being stranded in the heat, and on the other hand, they (or at least one of them) was appearently super sure that they would encounter soldiers in the China Lake Naval Facility, a military base that was further south.

I think that the reason they took this risk of going into unknown territory was that they could not accept the seemingly unsatisfying result of walking back their wheel prints, into a cabin that would only be occassionally checked by other people, and to simply sit it out and wait for rescue. This must have seemed unacceptable to them. They were under time pressure. Originally, they wanted to visit Yosemite Park, then they wanted to return their rental car, then they needed to take their flight back home, and they were also out of money and could not afford anything to go wrong in any of these aspects.

Maybe, to some degree, they hoped that they would reach an optimal outcome, maybe where a bunch of strong, muscular soldiers would drive up to the stranded car with a 4x4 hummer, drag the thing out of the ground, change the tyres and send the family back on their way. Maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but you get the picture.

And once again, I want to add the East German background here. This couple, Egbert and Cornelia, had spent most of their lives following orders under an oppressive regime, and now they finally had the power to say "no. I am not staying in my safe boundaries. I am pushing forward". This is what freedom could have meant for them. So perhaps, on a subconscious level, breaking free from chains was part of what influenced their decision.

I also asked AI for some interpretation. Bing Copilot made the suggestion that perhaps the East Germans in Death Valley were actually expecting there to be clear rules. As if to say:"If it's too dangerous to drive here in a car, there would be clear roads signs indicating so and forbidding us to drive here". So maybe their attitude of being used to regulation and strict control gave them a false sense of security when the American roads didn't clearly tell them to turn away near Mengel Pass and Anvil Canyon.

Final thoughts

I hope that these thoughts will add an extra layer of thought to the people who discuss the Death Valley Germans case. To me, it's really a haunting tale and I often compare it to that situation where you shut the house door behind you and realize you locked yourself out with the keys still inside. It's that feeling of making a small mistake that should not cost you much, but that little mistake has drawn-out consequences.

It's really true what Tom Mahood says in his blog about the family. They made honest mistakes, they were not complete idiots, but because they pushed on and didn't want to accept defeat, they ran into their misery.

As a man myself, I sometimes think that we are wired to take unnecessary risks. Our pride gets in the way and we want to push on instead of doing the right thing. It's also tragic that what stood between life and death was a bit of water, a bit of shade and some hours of painful walking. None of what happened to them was immediately fatal, but in combination and over extended periods of time, it was. And the poor boys. It's really tragic and we won't fully know what the last hours for each of the four family members must have been like.

If you want to learn more, I encourage you to read the blog mentioned in the beginning, but also to watch youtube videos from the area. It is a bit of a hell hole if you go there in the wrong season, and other than that, it's just a dead, rocky landscape that is so far from any life.

End Of Year Post 2025

 At the beginning of 2025, I spent a whole month or so in Singapore. That was a good thing because it gives me something memorable that makes 2025 more than the typical "transitory year" that I usually write about.

And in total, my mind is shifting towards the idea that life needs to be enjoyed more. The last period of my life when I had more than just transitory years was the time span between 2015 and 2018, when I had memorable trips to other countries each year, sometimes even more than once per year.

Having a memorable life is not only dependent on leaving the country though. There are other things that make like memorable, but visiting another country is probably the easiest way to make something stick to your mind longer term. And in a lifetime that is slipping away from me year after year, it is important that I have things to look back on. I will not take anything with me to the afterlife, as I believe there is no such thing, but at least I should not have to live with regret.

On the other hand, even if not everything is super meaningful and memorable, I can at least go through life with a feeling of "being aware" and contemplating things.

Just the other day I came across "the disintegration loops" by William Basinski. It's a seemingly endless musical loop. But what makes it special is that, while the artist recorded his music, the tape that was 20 years old at the time of recording slowly disintegrated as the magnetic tape flaked off while in the recording machine. It was an unintended effect but shows - in sound waves - how we all crumble over time. Add to that the fact that the music was created in the summer of 2001 and the artist then witnessed 9/11, where he himself videotaped the smoke clouds of that day from a distance and made it part of his work.

So what was 2025 like? At the beginning, I was in Singapore for a whole month, like I said. It was good being back after many years of not being there. Even that surprised me - the fact that I had been gone since 2017. With the pandemic and everything in between, I just couldn't make it back again.

After that, life returned to normal. However, quickly after the trip, I decided to take a detour in life and enroll in some sort of qualification program (Verwaltungslehrgang). It is fully paid by my employer. I think that this is a necessary step at this point. For 10 full years, I relied on having the same job in the same place, but I feel that I can no longer rely on this. I don't know why this is the case, but it seems that no matter what you try, you always find people who make life miserable and you have to escape them.

So while I do this course, I am stuck in this program for a year, from summer of 2025 until summer of 2026. And while I like it there, it's a bit unnerving to think of the changes that will have to come after that, and this also interferes with possible holiday plans, as I can't plan with certainty at all.

Other than that, I keep improving with my Indonesian. However, the more I learn, the more I realized what I can't do yet. My skills are mostly passive, and even in that regard, I just begin to slowly dive into less formal speech. I am keeping my progress to myself as to not raise any expectations around me.

2026 will most likely be a transitory year, and I'm not even sure if I will find a new work place. But since I am stuck with how things are going, I can't really plan anything other than to apply for jobs. So that's it.

A New Life - Marking Moments In Time

 Today is December 11th 2025.

The "person of the year" title has been given to the "architects of AI", namely Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Elon Musk of Tesla, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Demis Hassabis of DeepMind, Lisa Su of AMD, Dario Amodei and Fei-Fei Li.

The European Union allegedly is going to decide to remove the combustion engine ban for the year 2035 after protests from car manufacturers. Personally, I'm not sure this will have an effect - the electric car is here to stay and the time for combustion vehicles is ending one way or another - whether through bans or technological superiority remains to be seen. And who knows - maybe 20 years from now it will not be a question of which power source cars use but who drives them - humans or AI.

There is also a lot of turmoil in the world. Russia is still fighting against Ukraine and politicians warn that Russia might attack Europe next. Strange to think of it, when I was a child, the same kind of things were said back then.

In other news, I bought 10 shares of Nvidia, 1 share of Mercado Libre and 17 shares of the Franklin FTSE India ETF today.

Why am I saying all this? Because when I was a child, I wish that somebody would have documented what happened on the day I was born. Today, I became an uncle to a girl name Inaya. If she ever reads this, I want her to know that there was someone who cared to document what happened in the world on the day she was born. And who knows how much these shares might be worth one day in the future.

My wife and I even planned to keep some of those shares as a possible future gift, maybe to be used for a holiday together with out niece. But only if circumstances allow and she is a "cool" person. Maybe people won't use the word "cool" in 15 or 20 years, I don't know.

Anyway, welcome to this world, Inaya. You have been born into a place that is very unusual and during a time period when we might be heading for new and remarkable developments. At the same time, I am also worried for you: How will your family cope with the challenges of this special time and place? And how will the world develop for better or worse? Will you be able to develop well in this extremely digital age where almost every toddler is handed a computer screen from almost the first year of life? Will you be a digital zombie who has trouble making real connections with human beings, or will you be able to capitalize on the newest developments in AI, healthcare, technology?

I wish you the best. You will most likely still be there when I'm gone. So make the best of it and always remember to be aware and in the moment. The universe needs you to observe it and be fully in the moment. Use the life force that has been given to you. And I hope to see you grow up from a distance.

Finding blog posts from 20 years ago and other news

I just realized today that some of my posts on this blog are now 20 years old. Exactly 20 years ago today, I wrote about how frustrating it can be to write a song when you feel forced to be creative, but nothing comes out.

Crazy how times change. I wonder what it will be like another 20 years from now, on October 17th 2045. I will be in my 60s then, if I still exist.

In recent months, I have improved on my Indonesian language skills which I started working on in December of 2023. I have a 600+ day streak on Duolingo, although I use that app only for that reason and the rest ist mostly listening or a bit of reading. I still consider myself a beginner.

The big breakthrough currently for me is an online software called NotebookLM by Google. You can feed it sources of different kinds: PDF, websites, youtube videos, text. Then you can ask it to do something with it: Help you understand the material, analyze or make assumptions, or even make an audio podcast out of it. And it's great for both language learning as well as learning stuff for my current qualification (Verwaltungslehrgang).

The way AI is improving is remarkable. I wonder where we will be in 20 years. Yes, I know, the terminator timeline is still in the cards. But maybe we are lucky. Some people are already making memes online about how old people in the future will talk down on their children:

"No child of mine is marrying an AI chatbot"

"Oh dad, you are so robophobic".

It's basically the same as other types of relationships in the past. You get the idea.

All kinds of crazy things are going on around me. I should drop them in my yearly review in November or December. It will be interesting to look back.

End Of Year Post 2024

 Let's take a look at what happened in 2024 and how the future looks from today's perspective:

• In December last year, I started learning Indonesian. My progress was relatively slow and I had to learn a lot about language learning to begin with. It's like other things such as dieting or muscle building: First, you have to learn how things actually work before you can start an effective treatment. I also had to unlearn some things that many of us pick up as bad habits or attitudes, like thinking that learning a language is about "talent". So far, I am starting to improve. I have about 1200 word in my Anki deck, and am starting to understand children's cartoons kind of okay. I will sink more hours into listening comprehension and reading before I try to speak.
• Stocks: Broadcom currently sits at 179 dollars after a stock split this year. It is up almost 9 times since I bought it in March 2020, and that's without considering dividends. What a powerful investment. My other investment, Tesla, is also up big.As I write this, it is about to cross the 400 dollar price barrier, which is at or near an all-time high. The weird thing is that this strong move up in the last weeks was mainly due to Donald Trump winning the election. There is no material news regarding earnings per share that would justify the stock price. This leads to a dilemma where I could hold the stock and hope it stays up, or I sell because the fundamentals don't support the share price. At the same time, Tesla announced they believe that the newly unveiled robotaxis will make it to market before 2027, but that's not something they have been very good at predicting in the past. My other investments don't make up a big percentage compared to the previous two
• I'm still at my current workplace and have been there for almost 10 years now. But I feel like my time there is coming to an end. While I can still enjoy home office (50% of all work hours), I feel like it's not a comfortable place to be any more. I could still tolerate it, but maybe I should not overstay my welcome and move on. Perhaps this will happen in 2025 and I hope I don't screw up at my new workplace if I find one.
• I'm in a struggle with weight loss. It used to be easier. I just can't keep doing the right things and fall back into old patterns.

What else has happened this year? Not much, as per usual. There was no huge vacation or anything, but we have been saving money for an extended trip to Singapore early next year.

My expectation for next year:

Finally, there will be a vacation in Asia again. I hope to relax a little and regain my sanity. I also think that there is a chance that I get a new job. After 10 years in the same job, it would seem reasonable to try something new. While I will lose some benefits like home office and not having to do much most of the time, I think it would probably help to do something different, hopefully also something that motivates me and something that is closer to where I live. I am only looking for a part time job anyway.

Financially, I don't expect much from next year. I think if we stay where we are and keep our expenses covered plus a little extra, we can keep things going well.

My goals for next year: Weight loss throughout the year at some point, even if progress is slow. Improving my language skills in Indonesian. Keeping finances well-organized. And making sure that the next years allow for some good memories, because I feel that we are losing a lot of time not making memories.

End of Year Post 2023

 Another TRANSITORY year is coming to an end. Yes, the same story as every year: Saving money for the future. Investing money to have a better life at a later stage. And not much going on that is memorable.

In fact, it is really difficult to remember anything from this year. At the beginning of the year, we were in Berlin to meet some friends and family. After that, there is a big hole in my memory. What I know at the very least is that I have vacation days that I can transfer into 2024, which means that I did not have a lot of days off this year. But, due to extended home office, it almost felt like I didn't work at all. How lucky I feel.

I looked at my plans from one year ago. I got gifted a new phone, which is great. I still don't have a new PC, but that can wait. I don't have a new matress either or anything else in that direction.

When it comes to stocks, I had my first 5-bagger. Broadcom as substantially increased in value in the latter half of this year. It even reached 1150 dollars this month. Up until the end of the first half of 2023, it had never even reached 900 dollars. And to keep in mind, this is the stock I bought in mid march of 2020, when people were scrambling to buy toilet paper.

Not only did my Broadcom shares increase in value by 5 times, the stock has been paying dividends on top of that ever since. And since I bought those shares at a very cheap price, the amount of dividends I receive are quite high, considering how much I get back in relation to how much money I put in. It won't be that much longer until I get back 10 per cent every year on top of the shares being worth more and more.

Apart from that, I bought some other investments. The main theme this year were Australian lithium stocks, which pay dividends and have a substantial amount of lithium reserves they can tap into. This will be important in the future. People tend to think that more lithium mines will open in the future, but this is a lengthy process that takes a lot of time and bureaucracy to overcome. So I'm betting on the big boys right now.

I also took advantage of high interest rates. Right now, it seems that more and more people like to buy bonds before rates sink again, but I already seized various opportunities in the first half of this year. I basically "knew" that inflation would come down again at some point and that the expectation of high interest rates would dwindle.

My wife is working part time (about 50-75% of the hours she had before) and around Easter next year, this should go down to 50% of what was still the case in August. I view this as a positive thing. We wanted to have an easier life, and I believe it is possible to live like this in a frugal way. This is what we are good at and it improves quality of life.

On a more global scale, the war in Ukraine is still going on and probably won't end in the traditional sense for a much longer time. Then we also have a new war. Congratulations to Israel and Palestine for being little babies fighting over a ball. This conflict will never come to a peaceful conclusion. As long as religious beliefs are involved, there is no reasoning that could end this. Also, I view this conflict as some sort of global "social experiment". You know those youtube videos where they enact a scene where either a baby is being abducted or a man hits a woman? This conflict is that on a global level. I'm basically waiting for some big youtuber to reveal that it was all a test: We were supposed to call it out for being a bad thing (people dying, being tortured, innocents suffering), but instead, most people failed the experiment by picking a side.

My predictions for 2024:

• Interest rates will fall eventually. Probably around the middle of the year. This will lead to an economic recovery and a bull run in the stock market. I tend to be a bit cautious and preferably err on the side of pessimism, but I think things are going to go well still.
• The conflicts in the world will drag on, both in Ukraine as well as Israel. There will be lots of talks about how China handles Taiwan, but in the end, it will just be stuff that the news channels will like to spin as doom and gloom to keep people watching
• People will again lose limbs and lives on new year's eve (pick any year in the future), and children will still die of heat exhaustion because they were forgotten in cars in summer. Some things never change.

My goals for 2024:

• Have the kitchen repaired (should happen in January)
• Have the cat's teeth cleaned and have the cat fully vaccinated (first half of the year)
• Save money for a trip to Singapore (whenever that is)
• Invest in stocks that pay dividends
• Save money specifically for future years, in order to "secure" them in case something changes in the way we decide to work
• Find a way to spend the 25 vacation days that I need to spend in a good way

I don't expect 2024 to be a groundbreaking year in any way. The predictions that Tesla stock would reach 8 dollars of EPS were complete bullcrap. Earnings are of course stagnant in this difficult economic environment. And it is already clear that next year will be the same, even if the outlook, like I said, improves. It will take time until this carries over into earnings. The only stock that will really shine will be Broadcom. But that's okay. Things will fall into place eventually.

A Hedge Against Aging

 One of the things I regret the most in life is not investing into the stock market earlier. It has to be said that investing for the first time is probably more stupid than investing when you are an experienced investor (in terms of the decisions you make then), but still, even with some beginner investments, as long as those are long term, you are usually fine in the long run.

Now that I am older an am investing in the stock market, I realise what the power of the stock market is. You can hide that power behind phrases such as "the power of compounding interest" or other fancy words, but there is actually a different way of looking at it. It is a hedge against aging.

It does not protect you from literally aging, as you will still grow old. But what it does do is this: If you don't die young, the longer you live, the richer you get. The more your bones grow weak and your back hurts, the more money your stocks will make for you. As things get tougher and you lose loved ones, at least one thing keeps working in your favour. When other things are declining, this thing gets better. Like fine wine.

If you die young and don't get to enjoy the fruits of your savings, bad for you, but at least you don't have to go through the things that suck about aging. But then again, if at least you can get something positive out of aging, then this is it. You can't manually make the stock market move forward 30 years. It is something you have to live through yourself. But the good thing is that you can let that happen "on idle". You still live your life as the main character of your own movie.

If I had invested at least some money, let's say 1000 euros per year, into the stock market for every year since I was old enough to do so, that money alone would have compounded nicely and done great things for me up until today. Not even considering the next 30 years.

Sadly, most people don't understand this superpower, and the people who would benefit most, newborns, are rarely gifted this power by their parents, who spend their money on other things.

If I actually live to see the day that I turn 70, I hope that my investing strategy was good enough to look back on my investments proudly. Of course I could also screw it all up because it's the Truman Show after all and maybe the viewers want to see me suffer. But maybe not.

The next years are basically planned for me. I know when to sell, how much to sell, and what not to sell. It's all about how things are going to play out. I don't have the slightest clue. All I know is that the last years, going back to 2017, were me catching up with time and putting an effort into investing, when between 2012 and 2016, when I already had a brokerage account but didn't understand compounding, I wasted a lot of time. And before 2012, well, there were other priorities back then.

My investing strategy is risky, as it is very concentrated, but I have to cut a few corners because I don't want to simply be able to pay the electrical bill with my dividends. It's not enough. More than that needs to happen. But I at least have time on my side, because I am not in a hurry. So no, not interested in digital currency or rich over night schemes.

As I write this, I'm waiting for my Broadcom stock to pay me a nice dividend. Thanks to all the suckers who sold me their shares in the middle of March of 2020. It's been a nice quadruple since then, even excluding dividends.