![The round icon is drawn in a comic-like style and shows a young, fair-skinned man with an orange shirt and short brown hair holding a cane in his right hand. He has a brown shoulder bag and wears a [blind badge] on his neckline. In the background are two skyscrapers and a fir on a green field in front of a blue sky. Around the circle is written "The Way to my Personal Independence"](https://patrickdembinski.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/patrick-color2.png?w=1100)
My name is Patrick Dembinski, and – especially after attending ICC2014 (more on that later) – I like to travel around, enjoying my independence! My original location is Stade, a small city near Hamburg in the north of Germany; but eversince 2007, I have been attending the BLISTA, a special school for blind and visually impaired students in Marburg. However, I try to travel home for the weekend at least once or twice in a month to visit my family and perhaps some of my friends at home.
In this blog, I want to talk step-by-step about the development of my personal independence, as well as possible obstacles I had to face and get clear of. I decided to write up my experiences because I heard a lot about other blind and partially sighted people (even older than I am) who always got told by their parents or other close people that they just can’t do that because they are worried something could happen to them or due to other reasons.
Being worried of people is totally okay. At some point, however, it’s a wrong approach to just tell them that they are not capable of doing it, just to keep them home safe and sound; but that’s not all. A lot of people – handicapped or not – can’t imagine how it is possible to become independent as a handicapped person in general. Therefore, I do also hope that this blog will reach some of you guys, so you can get a better point of view about what we are capable of.
I plan to keep you posted as often as possible, depending on how busy I am with other things, such as my traineeship on software development. Of course, it also depends on how often I am traveling around in the future and if there is something interesting to let you know about. I managed to catch up with all the past stories and the blog is now fully up to date! Anyway, it might still take some time to write up future activities before I can share them with you, depending on the free time available to me.
The reason why I am writing this in English is because I want to reach as many people as possible on an international basis. Should you plan to travel abroad, English is a must-have; you cannot expect that everybody – no matter where you are – speaks your native language. Anyway, for all the Germans: I shall probably write up a German version in the future, but an international approach is more important to me in first place; it already takes enough time to write up everything in one language.
Contact
In any case, if you have any questions for me or something else you’d like to talk about, do not hesitate to contact me via E-Mail at contact@patrickdembinski.org.
Happy reading, and please excuse the mess! 😉
The way to my personal independence 