About me
About my life

Gerald Drißner (Drissner), born in 1977, grew up in Austria in a mountain village in the Arlberg region. He is a graduate economist and Arabist. He learned journalism at Germany’s most renowned journalism school (Henri-Nannen-Schule).

Gerald has lived in more than half a dozen countries. He is currently based in Berlin.

Alpine village

Gerald is a very experienced skier and alpinist, having grown up in one of the world's finest ski areas: the Arlberg region.

He has been coding since his youth and was connected to the outside world with his mailbox (BBS) even before the Internet.

Journalism

Gerald is equipped with more than twenty years of prolific writing experience (magazines and newspapers).

After graduating from journalism school (2004/05), he worked as a staff-reporter at Stern magazine. Later he moved to Egypt at his request to study Arabic. Since then, he has been working as a freelance journalist.

Gerald has worked as a guest reporter at the Egyptian daily newspaper al-Masry al-Youm.

Arabic World

Gerald lived abroad for more than twelve years - in the Middle East, North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia), Turkey and Greece. He has travelled to most of the Arab countries.

He was one of the few German-speaking journalists to experience the Arab Spring at first hand in Egypt, as he was studying Arabic in Alexandria at the time.

Gerald lived in Athens, Greece, for two years during the financial (and refugee) crisis and has been intensively covering and researching the economic and social consequences.

TOPICS

Gerald writes about everything – but preferably about his area of expertise:

LANGUAGES

German (mother tongue)

 5/5

English

 4.5/5

Arabic

 4/5

Hebrew

 2.5/5

French, Urdu, Turkish

 1.5/5

TECHNOLOGY

Gerald has been using Linux (Arch) since his youth.

Web: Gerald is proficient in all common CMS systems, especially WordPress. He is an active member of the WordPress community.

Coding: CSS, HTML5, PHP; JavaScript; Python.

SEO: Gerald follows the latest SEO trends very closely and has completed several Yoast workshops on SEO writing.

Internet Security: Since Gerald lived in authoritarian countries for many years, secure and encrypted communication feels natural to him. He also offers courses in this area.

Software: Audio and video editing; image editing (open source, Adobe).