Bernhard Wessling

above photo: the little daughter of one of my soccer friends joins me during the break in a game (she was one of my adopted grandchildren in China, because the mine were in Germany).

Not only I am working hard, but also playing hard – when active in my various hobbies:

playing soccer as a goalkeeper

  • for 13 years, I played in China (ShenZhen) in up to 3 different teams (WED night, SAT and SUN afternoon); my SAT and SUN team organized an extremely touching farewell party end of 2017, when I stopped working regularly in China; this gallery also includes some goalkeeper action photos (Tilkowski, decades ago Germany’s National Team goalkeeper, was my idol; he was the goalkeeper in my hometown’s soccer team „Westfalia Herne“, as a young boy, I never missed any game in Herne’s stadium)
  • my Sunday tean („Lao Niu“) prepared a nice and touching video about our many years of playing together, the upper photo on the right has the link to this video; photo below: my Sunday and my Saturday team (老牛,天龙) played against each other during my last Sunday in China.
  • in Germany, I had played for decades as the goalkeeper in my company teams; I am again now playing with the „elderly team“ in the neighbour town.
translation of the banner: (our) German team mate LaoWei 's farewell game - Old Bulls vs Sky Dragon

I like to take photos, mainly nature, preferably birds

at almost 50 years of age, I started diving, performed several courses (achieved to get the „Master Scuba Diver“ PADI level) and have done far more than 500 dives, partially in extremely interesting and challenging dive spots.

  • whale shark encounters on Maldives (photos and some videos)
  • some underwater photos taken in Desroches (Seychelles), where I took an underwater photography course but decided not to become an underwater photographer
  • the most challenging trip was an expedition to Aldabra, the world’s biggest raising atoll, for which I joined a marine biology research team; we investigated the coral and fish situation around Aldabra

(Almost every day, I play piano, but not very well, nonetheless, I like playing.)

Below you can see a few of my many photos, here from Antarctica (penguin and sea lion), diving (whale shark, powderblue surgeonfish & first dive together with my grandson), China (QingHai: bar-headed geese), Aldabra (giant tortoises mating)

Bernhard Wessling