Our Team
Who are the faces behind 22places? We proudly present our wonderful team.
Jenny & Basti
The founders
We’re the two crazy people who in 2014 thought “Hey, let’s start a travel blog” and everyone around us thought, “Are you crazy? Why don’t you do something normal”.
We went through with it and with a lot of love and even more sweat (eew!) we turned that travel blog into our little company.
Fun facts about Jenny and Basti:
You’ll have to ask our team. If you ask us, we are very serious bosses.
Favorite travel destinations: New York, Lisbon, London, Australia, Thailand, Japan
Julie
Project Manager
Julie is our right and left hand and supports us in everything we do. Whenever we have an idea, Julie will do anything to make it happen. When someone in our team calls asks “Who’s going to do it?” the answer is usually “Julie!”
Fun fact about Julie:
Julie knew Jenny way before Jenny met Basti (sorry, Basti!), as they used to live together during their studies in Holland and Berlin.
Favorite travel destinations: Canada, Norway
Sarah
Project Manager Editorial Department
Sarah keeps an overview of everything and is the first and only one who manages to do so. Without Sarah, it would be very chaotic here. It’s nice to see someone is staying on top of things! Thank you, Sarah.
Fun facts about Sarah:
Sarah is a real Berliner who is married to a real Berliner. This is almost like winning the lottery.
Sarah likes to name her favorite things: Her racing bikes are called Pepe & Cat, her Vespa is called Karla, her camper Tilda and her son is called Emil.
Favorite travel destinations: Scandinavia, Austria and Portugal.
Rebecca
Editor Italy
Rebecca is our absolute Italy expert and always amazes us with new articles from Bella Italia. Her mom is from Italy, her husband is Italian and we have the feeling she’s in Tuscany more often than at home in Berlin.
Fun fact about Rebecca:
Rebecca was our first ever external author and taught us to trust someone with our work and that we do not need to do everything by ourselves. That’s why we did not want to give her up anymore and hired her as a permanent member of our 22places team.
Favorite travel destination: California, and – what a surprise: Italy
Maja
Editor
Maja started with us as a working student. But we got so used to her that we couldn’t let her go and we hired here permanently. Whenever we think she has enough todos for the next 3 weeks, she surprises us after 5 days with: “All done!”
Fun fact about Maja:
Maja has taken us up on our offer “You can work from anywhere in the world” and moved to Fuerteventura. During our calls, it’s not unusual to see her sitting in her car right on the beach, only to jump back into the ocean with her surfboard right after.
Favorite travel destination: Spain, Canada
Laura
Grafics and backoffice
Laura is an all-round talent. She is a graphic designer and loves structure and Excel lists. Funny combination, right? We think so too and love it, because that makes Laura the perfect team player for all the small and big tasks that no one else can do.
Fun fact about Laura:
Laura is truly making the most of working remotely. She is constantly sitting somewhere else in our calls and so many conversations begin with “Laura, where are you now?” “Oh, I’m in Budapest, Istanbul, Georgia …..”
Favorite travel destination: Italy, Morocco
Julian
Editor Photography
Julian is a professional photographer and knows every camera and lens there is out there. He knows the right answer to every question about photography. Really!
Fun fact about Julian:
Julian has 7 bikes (yes, one for every occasion) and he sold one of them to WDR (a German public broadcasting station). So Julian’s bike is famous! And in case someone from WDR is reading this – we’d like to add that he would like to buy his bike back!
Julian used to work as a crime scene photographer. But he claims that was more boring than working for us.
Favorite travel destination: Germany
Tina
Working Student
Tina is always on the road, traveling and traveling. One minute she’s in France, the next she’s in Portugal and the next she’s in South America. From wherever she goes, she brings back wonderful tips and writes them down for us. Oh, and from time to time she also studies in Cologne. But if you ask us, somehow that can’t be true.
Fun fact about Tina:
Tina is not only a fantastic writer, she’s also a great athlete and a talented linguist. She already speaks Italian and Portuguese fluently. At the moment, she’s also learning Spanish and French. We don’t know how she manages to do it all. Actually, it’s another indication that she’s not really studying. How else would she have all this time to learn languages?
Favorite travel destination: South America
Anna
Working Student
Anna studies in Würzburg (Germany) and supports us by writing articles and updating existing articles. She keeps impressing us with her superpower: she finds at least three spelling mistakes in each of our articles no one else has seen.
Fun fact about Anna:
Anna loves traveling, too. The only time she would never travel though, is during the carnival season. She is part of a dance guard, sews her own costumes and wouldn’t dream of leaving the country at this time of year.
Favorite travel destination: Greece
Joelle
Working Student
Joelle studies in Mainz (Germany) and is part of our editorial team as a working student: she writes texts, revises texts, researches images – and does much more.
Fun fact about Joelle:
In case of a zombie apocalypse and we have to survive in the wild, Joelle will be our leader. She was a Girl Scout for nine years and is a survival expert. But we’d be okay only getting to know her scouting knowledge when it comes to campfire songs. Maybe we should practice during our next team call. Just in case.
Favorite travel destination: Spain
Sara
Working Student
Sara supports us as a working student in the editorial department. She not only works on existing and new content, but also makes sure that our texts are properly translated into English – thanks to her studies in linguistics in Würzburg.
Fun fact about Sara:
Besides travelling and studying, Sara also finds time for dark fantasy novels, fanfictions and short stories. And she not only reads them, no, she writes them herself. But don’t worry, everything you read on our site is based on true events and doesn’t spring from Sara’s unbridled imagination.
Favorite travel destinations: Norway
Nadia
Editorial assistant
Nadia was our very first employee. She is actually a teacher. But because she likes it here so much, she’s still with us today as a mini-jobber and helps us with all the big and small tasks that need to be done.
Fun fact about Nadia:
If you ask Nadia where she is from, she has to take a deep breath. The answer is not so simple, because she was born in the Philippines and grew up in Tel Aviv, Cyprus and Berlin. But actually her family is rooted in a small town near Cologne. As you can see, Nadia is just right for our 22places team.
Favorite travel destination: New York