my introduction post

Hello,

My name is Benjamin Becher, I was born in beautiful Solingen, which is between Wuppertal and Remscheid. Solingen is known for its knife production, and we also have the highest railway bridge in Europe (Müngstener Brücke). Burg Castle, which was built in 1130 by Adolf the Second of Berg, is also a great place for excursions. I'm 38 years old, I've been through some ups and downs over the years, but they still define me today. For a little over 10 years now, I have been living with my partner, who brought a then 4-year-old son into my life. From then on, everything changed for me, my single life was over and I slowly had to take on responsibility. Our son has been in the world for a good 20 months now, and he has turned everything upside down again, even though we thought we were almost through with the 14-year-old 😉 😉 Let's just start again from the beginning.

I have to say, I never wanted to have children of my own, but since he's arrived, there's nothing better for me than spending time with him and watching him grow up, play and learn. At the moment I'm still on parental leave until my son is settled in kindergarten.

I left school at 17 with a secondary school leaving certificate, then I completed a basic vocational school year in a vocational school until I finally started my training as a retail salesman. However, I dropped out after one year. For personal reasons, I then decided to look for a job because I couldn't cope with the training allowance. After a lot of toing and froing, it was decided in 2009 that I would retrain as a cutting machine operator, because I understood that you can't get very far without training. I completed the retraining in 2011 with my journeyman's certificate. Since then, I have worked in a wide variety of metalworking companies. When my wife told me she was pregnant in 2019, I took this as an opportunity to reflect on my life. Can I give my unborn child the life it deserves? Can I support a whole family on my hogging salary? I decided to use the months of pregnancy to immerse myself in different worlds of work. Now my wife and I decided to enjoy the two years of parental leave with my son (and it was a very nice, intensive time), so that I could take my time and look for a new career.

As far as my hobbies are concerned, I can say that my earliest memory is of joining the TV Dabringhausen football club when I was about 4 years old.

I joined the youth section of the Bambini in Wermelskirchen. It quickly turned out that I already had a talent for football and was thus challenged at an early age. Up to the D-youth, I was in some of the district's selection teams almost every year, which meant that I was able to play for some Bundesliga clubs, and a short time later I also received some offers. My parents told me that it was probably because of me that I didn't accept any of the offers. I didn't want to move to a football boarding school and I didn't want to leave my classmates and youth club. It even got so bad that my parents told me I should accept one of the offers because it would be good for my future. But as a 10-year-old, I argued, if you force me to go there, I will never play football again. A short time later, this issue was settled. As the support for me became less and puberty set in, the quite slim boy became a little fat rollmop who just didn't want to grow. I continued to play football up to the senior team in this club.

Shortly after my 20th birthday, I stopped playing football.

After that time, I took it a little easier in the sports field. After that, I had a rather wild phase for quite some time, where I was out and about a lot, partying, meeting up with friends or just hanging out with colleagues. Then, due to a stroke of fate, I stopped everything overnight, never went out partying again, never touched a drop of alcohol again and withdrew a lot. When I wasn't at work or out with my dog, I spent most of my time at home in front of the PC playing online games and watching series. But mainly I played "The Settlers Online", lived in the online world day and night for almost five years.

During that time I met my current partner, the story is quickly told, I moved into the flat above hers, she became my neighbour, that's how we got to know each other. After about a year and a half, we moved into the flat we share, where we still live together today. Of course, she didn't keep up the gambling for long and so I soon got bored.

Today, when I'm not busy with my family or my work, I'm usually out and about when the weather is nice. If it's not possible to do anything outside, I go tinkering in the basement for my hobby!

Through all the series I have been watching for years, I also came to my current hobby of gold panning and detecting (metal detector searching). In the beginning I was just fascinated by these series that were on DMAX. How great the gold looks in the pan and in the tube or how they cast a bar. I was also impressed by the gold prospecting and wanted to know if I could do that too. What was clear to me from the start, of course, was that it was a hobby, and after looking for some of these series for a while, I then found out whether gold panning was even possible in Germany. I quickly discovered that there is already a fairly large community in Germany and the neighbouring countries. At some point I decided to take a gold panning course at Gold Welten in the Eder Valley in Germany. I had more fun there than I had in a long time, so the next day I got my first pan and some other equipment and registered on some forums to read up on the subject.

(This is what it looks like when we go prospecting or exploring! With these hobbies you get around a lot and see wonderful places! Here we are on our way to Diesentis in Switzerland).

(The picture is from 2018 from Dormagen on the Rhine in Germany, you can see me spending the day by the water with my dog and my self-made gold panner(Highbanker). Small grains of gold were also there that day).

(This is gold from Italy from the Elvo, the Elvo is a river in northern Italy that flows through the provinces of Biella and Vercelli in the Piedmont region. In its upper reaches it has the character of a torrent. It's really great there and I always like to go there, enjoy the nature and the gold is also very beautiful, which you can wash out of the river there :-).

I have always been fascinated by sounding, but I hardly had any extra time for another hobby. But my little one is now in kindergarten and I'll be out of parental leave in 2 months, so I bought my first detector a fortnight ago. But I had to realise that I made a mistake and bought an expensive detector straight away. In the meantime, I've been out and about with it, but I can't get on with it and so far I've only found rubbish. Since yesterday, the new and cheaper version has arrived at home, which I already understand for the most part and I am looking forward to trying it out for the first time. In the meantime, there are many of my gold panning friends who have also discovered panning for themselves, so we can do two hobbies together.

This is one of my two detectors. I've been using it for a little over 3 weeks now to search for coins and similar things in the fields of Germany.

I came to Steemit through a fellow prospector and gold panner who told me about this site one day while I was prospectoring. So, that's it for now. I hope you were able to get to know me a little bit.

Information about the device

Category= Photography
Device= Redmi note 9 pro
Photo editor= Snapseed
Lens Standard= Normal lens
Location= Switzerland
Photographer= @bechibenner

Thanks for visiting, hope you enjoyed the photo and follow me for more....

Greetings from Germany