Karl Krause is a German queer writer, editor, and LGBTQ+ activist and one half of the couple behind Couple of Men, the internationally recognized, award-winning gay couple travel blog. As …
FINLAND: Before we start with our review of the gay-friendly Klaus K Hotel in Helsinki, we want to warn you, it is going to be a very sexy gay-friendly hotel article.
JAPAN: Our spiritual trip to the 120 Koyasan temples of Japanese Buddhism in Mount Kõya on the Wakayama Peninsula.
JAPAN: After our first days in Tokyo, we seriously wanted to go to our limits when making a Pilgrimage in Japan on the famous traditional Kumano Kodo route from Ki Tanabe to Nachi through the Wakayama mountains.
WORLDWIDE: It is time for our annual list of LGBTQ+ and Gay Travel gift ideas. We are focussing on gay travel gifts that you can buy or book online and are a great last-minute present.
ORLANDO: Four main neighborhoods and its new rides: A Gay Couple in EPCOT showing you their highlights of Walt Disney’s homage to the 1964 World Fair.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Next to all the presents and arrangements, time is the most valuable gift we can give to each other. Once a year, we all have that in common.
HOME: To support fellow LGBT and gay couple-operated companies and businesses related to travel, we will tell their stories in these challenging times.
Love, our world needs more love. For us, Valentine’s Day on February 14th is the best day to remember how important it is to show your love to the people you hold most dear. It is about love for another human being and to accept, to respect and to embrace its uniqueness. We are happy to share some of our gay love moments from our travels with you on a day that is made for love, romance and time together. If you don’t have a present for your girlfriend, boyfriend or simply the person you love, just give him or her a kiss. In our eyes, a love-kiss is the best way of sharing affection to someone on the most intimate way. Why cannot be every day as full of love as Valentine’s Day? Our plan for 2017: bring equal love to the world and celebrate it every possible moment. See you around the world and don’t forget to travel with us on Instagram #coupleofmen. Enjoy our Valentine’s Day Gay Kisses #lovewins ❤️
EUROPE: Couple of Men reporter Sarah could talk to transman Soldado who was born in Siberia, Russia, and had to face discrimination and violence for being LGBT in his home country.
NETHERLANDS: What to do on a rainy autumn weekend in the Netherlands in Northern Europe? This question is good to answer with a weekend escape to the Watten Sea…
GERMANY: Torsten and Sascha, the gay couple chefs behind the food blog “Die Jungs kochen und backen” (engl.: “The guys cook and bake”), love to spend time together in the kitchen.
SPAIN: Our Gay Couple Travel Gay Beach Ibiza Town Spain – Ibiza was on our gay travel bucket list for Spain as largest Balearic Islands already for a while.
There sure are many travel blogs out there, some of them are really well written and reliable travel recourses with valuable information about the location. But we all know, that LGBT travelers have some additional needs for their travel planning, especially when it comes to how gay-friendly, open-minded, and save a travel destination actually is. The niche of LGBT travel recourses, including our own gay travel blog, is still quite a niche but they are existing.
CAMBODIA: Running a gay café in Siem Reap is not all that the gay couple are doing to do what they really wanted to do their whole life. “We knew we wanted to help the LGBTIQ+ community” – Enjoy our story of Jason and Tola on Couple of Men and learn more about how the gay couple from Siem Reap is facing the challenge of the Corona crisis together.
Do you still remember MySpace? Well, for some of today’s longterm relationships it was the place to meet likeminded people long before dating apps and even Facebook. It also was the place where the lovely girls from ‘What Wegan did next’ meet each other many years ago. Whitney, a lovely girl from the US-State Kentucky, and Megan from the United Kingdom are a lesbian couple and LGBT entrepreneurs living together with their cute little dogs in Windsor, the UK.
NETHERLANDS: We have mentioned it a few times already when talking about our favorite LGBT and gay-friendly places to go in Amsterdam. There is one gay bar we love most.
USA: The story of Chris and Gus. Coming from the formerly isolated country of Cuba, the gay couple knows what it means when “traveling makes you free”.
NETHERLANDS: It was in summer 2018 during our trip to Berlin for Gay Pride when we first met Roxanne and Maartje, lesbian couple bloggers from the Netherlands.
USA: We visited the small town of Galena in the US-American state of Illinois. It is known for its LGBT and gay-friendliness, making it one of the weekend hideaways for the LGBT community.
A Gay Couple City Weekend Rotterdam: Rotterdam, a city of water, wind, art, architecture and a special atmosphere of independence. During Karl and Daan’s Gay City Weekend Rotterdam the gay couple traveled around the beautiful mix of architecture, water and nature atmosphere of the Major Port city of Europe. From the 5-Star Mainport Hotel Rotterdam the tour went over water with several boat trips, extraordinary good food, an inspirational visit to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, an Escape Room and a lively gay nightlife. Follow the guys on their Dutch gay city tour part 6!
HOME: For a long time, I’ve been struggling with what’s the best and safest way to share our rainbow family happiness with you and the world.
Yasss! We as Gay Travel Blogger will attend the 13th edition of the Pink Lake Festival in Southern Austria this August in 2020. Just two weeks and less to go before we will depart to Klagenfurt in the South of the Austrian state Carinthia. We cannot wait to be in the mountains again, something we really miss in Amsterdam! The small town Pörtschach am Wörthersee will turn pink to offer an LGBTQ+ friendly Get-together to celebrate diversity, love, and equality right on the world-famous Lake Wört (Wörthersee) nestled in the Alps of Austria. Together with the European gay-community, we will put on our Lederhosen to enjoy the beauty of the Austrian mountains close to the border with Italy and Slovenia.
USA: The hidden gem for the sophisticated lesbian, gay and queer travelers in Illinois. A hidden gem in the United States of America…
Top 10 Gay Travel Christmas Presents 2018 – It is time for the second edition of our annual list of our top Gay Travel Christmas gifts. This year, we found some great gifts like wooden bow ties and clothing made of eco materials that support our intentions for 2019 to find and promote sustainability in gay travel. And, of course, some interesting ideas for your gay travel bucket list that are perfect Christmas presents as well. Did you ever think about celebrating a Gay Pride on a Celebrity Cruise ship? As Gay Travel Bloggers we love to find extraordinary things like souvenirs from around the world but also Gay Travel Christmas Presents from companies in and around our home city Amsterdam.
Our Top 10 Gay Traveler Christmas Gift Ideas – The time of love and light has come as we are coming closer and closer to the end of the year. But before we celebrate the new year, Christmas is here with self-made cookies, brushwood decorations and Christmas songs everywhere. That means it is time for Christmas shopping and surprises planning for all our loved ones! Every year again, we are hoping to find the right presents for our partners, friends, and family to surprise them on Christmas Eve.
The Boutique Hotel Sleep-Inn Box 5 Nijmegen – is a charming Boutique Hotel right in the city centre of Nijmegen. The helpful and heartwarming gay couple Jos and Stephan are the owners of this almost 100 years old Dutch house. The accommodation is a well-made combination of elegant design furniture as a chic luxurious interior in modern style with comfortable beds. We felt home in this old mansion immediately.
Our best of the first gay cruise edition by Open Sea Cruises x Axel Hotels. Finally, it was time for our third European gay cruise gaycation around the Mediterranean Sea. The Spanish cruise operator Open Sea Cruises announced in March 2018 their long-term collaboration with the well-known Axel Hotels, a gay hotel chain featuring hetero-friendly accommodations, with the goal to organize a brand new European gay cruise experience for the entire LGBT community with concerts, parties, onboard activities, offshore tours, and more. Starting from Barcelona, the route brought us to France and Spain covering the Western part of the Mediterranean Sea. But what is special about the Pop Cruise by Open-Sea Cruises?
FINLANDS: Escape the Ordinary. Under this motto, hotel guests can discover the unique accommodation in a former Finnish prison on Helsinki’s island Katajanokka.
SOUTH EUROPE: It was time to go onboard the Monarch for our second gay cruise with La Demence, the well-known party organizer from Belgium. This year it should be a different route…
Top gay-friendly destinations around the world at the Spartacus Gay Travel Index 2018. Spartacus, the German publisher of gay travel guidebooks based in Berlin just released their annual Gay Travel Index giving a detailed ranking of LGBT-friendly countries worldwide. Since 2013, gay and lesbian travelers can find information about how gay-friendly their holiday destination really is. The guys behind the Spartacus Gay Travel Index thereby include the facts of how legal homosexuality actually is and if there are any anti-discrimination laws regarding sexual orientation or HIV travel restrictions.
Our Gay Couple Travel Year 2017 – Happy New Year’s celebrations everyone. May the year 2018 become a great year for you and your beloved ones full of love, peace, opportunities! We would like to take the chance to thank you for your support, love, and loyalty during our past travel year 2017 and, of course, for all your tips, advice, and for all the time we spent together all around the world.
Love Story of three Gay Couples: “Love Beyond Borders” – An extraordinary love between two human beings needs an extraordinary love story. And some really good storytellers, of course. But before we start to tell you a story of three couples, imagine the following scenario: you and the person you love are separated by several time zones, thousands of kilometers, a couple of countries and oceans, permanently. The only thing how you two can be in contact is to chat via apps, Skype, and, of course, to travel. But despite the distance between you and your love, the only thing that really matters to you is that you are in love.
Same-Sex Marriage Austria – For many of you, and even for us, this great news coming from Austria feel like an early Christmas present, especially for the LGBTQ+ community of the European country Austria. The Constitutional Court of Austria decided today that by the beginning of 2019 same-sex couples will be allowed to marry in the alpine country. After Germany this summer, the next European country will get marriage equality, although some time and patience is still needed.
Great News from Downunder: Australians say YES to Same-Sex Marriage! – Australia is about to be the next country joining the list of the 24 countries already allowing same-sex marriage by law. After Germany this summer, Australia could become the 25th country legalizing marriage between two people of the same gender. By taking the decision to hold an exceptional public opinion poll as a postal vote on same-sex marriage, the Australians had been free to vote for or against marriage equality. Although the final decision has still to be made in the Australian parliament, the Australian LGBTQ+ community took a huge step forward today, November 15th, 2017.
The 9th edition of the Goldelsen-Cup Berlin Gay Lesbian Volleyball Tournament 2017 – It is time to kick-off our Gay Sports articles on our blog with this year’s Goldelsen Cup in Berlin! The 9th edition of the annual International Gay and Lesbian Volleyball Tournament in Berlin is considered to be one of the biggest European LGBTQ+ Sports Tournaments taking place at the end of November in the German capital. As chance would have it, Karl is a passionate Volleyball player who started his Volleyball career at the age of 12. After he came out of the closet, Karl decided to join the International Gay-Lesbian Volleyball League playing in tournaments all around the world with his Teams from SSL Vorspiel Berlin and SLS “Der Bogenschütze” Dresden e.V..
THE CRUISE: The weather could not have been better when the first high heels entered the dancefloor. Blue sky and warm summer sun were promising making the Lady Party a total success, again!
CRUISE: Right after being back from ashore, we slipped into our golden wrestling outfits, put on our disco wigs and golden sunglasses to join the party crowd on the pool deck to “Boogie Oogie Oogie” into the night.
ICELAND: Lucky us, we had a little extra time during our 21-day Road Trip around Iceland to try a second whale watching tour, this time in Dalvík in North Iceland.
GERMANY: Same-Sex Marriage holds a majority within all parties except the right-wing party AfD (Alternative for Germany) and members of the Christian Democratic Union. We will have Same-Sex Marriage in Germany!
A stay at ROCKET ROOMS Velden am Wörthersee gay-friendly – Summer time is Pink Lake time! This year for the first time, we attended the 10th edition of the popular Pink Lake Festival in Southern Austria. Therefore, we stayed at the gay-friendly Hotel ROCKET ROOMS right in the city center of Velden am Wörthersee. Our double room with balcony, a rich breakfast, friendly staff and the central location provided us everything we needed for our time in Carinthia. The market town Velden am Wörthersee, well-known for the Renaissance castle Schloss Velden, is located at the Western lake side of Lake Wörth. It is one of the most famous holiday resorts of Austria. Especially in summer time, the warm and turquoise blue water of the lake together with several public and private bathing beaches are creating a wonderfully relaxed holiday atmosphere. When you are looking for a stay in a modern, stylish and hip place in Velden, ROCKET ROOMS Velden are the right choice. Enjoy our hotel review of the LGBTQ+ friendly accommodation in Velden am Wörthersee and see the ROCKET ROOMS through a couple of men‘s eyes.
Gay Couple Biking Tour Fort Island Pampus – Amsterdam during summer time is the best time of the year to explore the city but also the beautiful natural surroundings. But how are the Dutch people doing it? Of course, by bike! This weekend we decided to bike back in the past to learn more about Dutch history and the defense systems around Amsterdam, which have been declared as a UNESCO World Heritage site. We started our tour in Amsterdam center.