Your map is almost 20 years old: What would probably be different today?

20 years probably plays a lesser role for changes than short-term changes, such as the different times of day, weather conditions and seasons. After all, the perception of space for us humans is completely different at night than during the day, different in fog than in clear air. And in winter, when the fields are fallow and trees are bare, a landscape has a different shape than during the times when everything is growing. The records for the maps of total straight-line walking were subject to different conditions early in the morning than in the evening. And since walking in a straight line in the local landscape is extremely slow, a maximum of a few kilometers per day, much less in built-up areas, the traversal was stretched over different seasons. In the maps, therefore, snapshots and inadequacies are mixed with efforts to achieve objective accuracy. That is the interesting thing about reading maps: they are not “right”, but they live from the difference to what they are about. And this difference must be filled with one’s own interpretation and imagination when reading the map. Only through this the map does take shape. It is often claimed that cartography strives for a 1:1 relationship to its subject. In my opinion, it’s the opposite. The cartographic approach is basically about difference.