Last Thursday has been a very special moment in the history of my blog Flyctory.com. I a sure most of you did not recognize it. As my week before was very intense, even I had to admit that I saw it just one day later, on Friday. The Thursday morning posting, featuring the review of the DoubleTree by Hilton Newcastle Airport, has been my 4,000th published posting on the website. I felt that this anniversary is worth to have a look back to some special moments in the history of my blog. But first of all: thanks to all of you who support me, like and share my posts on social media, comment – or simply view some of the stuff I am publishing in here.
DoubleTree by Hilton Newcastle Airport
If you are interested in similar facts – just let me know. There might be a 5,000th or 6,000th post.. If I don’t miss it.
Why Flyctory.com?
Flyctory is an artificial word. When I started the project in 2018, I wanted to go for a sports and travel blog. Fly represents travel and victory sports. Putting the two words together lead to the artificial word Flyctory, which is a registered word mark in Germany now, i.e. nobody in my country can drive business or sell products named Flyctory, at least in certain branches and categories.
However, when I made the corporate design, put up the website etc., I did not think about two things:
- First of all, it is not obvious how to pronounce it. I just use the fl from fly, combined with the -ictory from victory and name it flick-to-ree. However, some people also use fly plus ctory, which leads to something like flyc-to-ree.
- Secondly, music came up rather quickly and became the third pillar of the website. I never changed the branding, though. This is why the Flyctory.com logo is an airplane kicking a floorball, but does not contain any reference to music, concerts or similar.
My Very First Real Posting
Flyctory.com started with some contents I in fact took over from my previous project, unihockey-pics.de / sport-live.net. In my first real blog post, I had a look at an alternative way of looking into the medal table of the Winter Olympic Games 2018 – something I did for the Olympic Games in 2020 and 2024 as well:
My Medal Count Winner 2018: Canada
And then there was music
Adding Music & Media coverage to Flyctory.com is closely linked to an artist, who I loved to follow during the early years of the website: Catherine McGrath. The young Northern Irish artist fascinated me once I saw her live on stage the first time. There has been other concert coverage on the website before, but her outstanding album Talk of this Town is not only the first album I ever reviewed on Flyctory.com:
Catherine McGrath – Talk of This Town (Album Review)
I would also say that her Liverpool show in September 2018 is my first proper concert report:
Catherine McGrath at Arts Club Loft Liverpool
The Most Frequent Content
Some posts fall under multiple categories, but nowadays, Flyctory.com has a strong focus on Music & Media. This category, including my playlists, concert reports and album reviews, has lead to over 2,000 published posts. Travel is the category with the largest backlog. There are some 1,900 posts so far, some 1,700 published so far. Sports, including sports reviews, just comes with some 270 posts published so far. However, it is a major source of pictures in the gallery.
My Most Difficult Posting
I would definitely vote for the Farina vs. 4711 post about Eau de Cologne, one of the most famous products of my home town. Farina is the original brand, while 4711 is more well-known, domestically and globally, nowadays. Thus, I had to be extremely precise to give a good overview on that topic I shared with you in October 2018:
The Eau de Cologne Giants – 4711 vs. Farina
The Most Frequently Featured Artist
Working with musicians is mostly very joyful for me. Only the reliability of US-American artists regarding already confirmed interviews leads to some struggle too frequently. However, with 36 posts related to him, including two trip reports, the most frequented artist on my blog is Weird Al Yankovic. The highlight of my coverage has, of course, been being a photographer at his show in Tilburg, Netherlands, in 2023:
Weird Al Yankovic (19th February 2023, Tilburg)
Regarding album reviews, no other act by far beats Lordi. The Finnish monster hard rockers are not only one of my favorite acts, but simply lead this category due to their 2021 seven album(!) box, Lordiversity:
Lordi – Lordiversity (Full Box Review)
With six concerts covered (full coverage with professional gear), the artist I featured the most in concert on Flyctory.com is country musician Lauren Jenkins. The last time I featured her was in 2023, supporting Eric Paslay.
Eric Paslay (13th December 2023, Cologne)
Most Featured Sports Teams
Even though it is always hard to combine tennis coverage with work, Indian tennis is one of my absolute favorites in sports. The highlight of my coverage, however, was not a match, but the induction of my all-time sports hero into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2024:
International Tennis Hall of Fame – Class of 2024 Induction
On the floorball side, the Hungarian floorball national teams top my coverage (and the coverage of all non-tennis events). I loved to meet “my girls” recently in Erd near Budapest. My support for the team kicked off at the World Floorball Championships in 2007. Many long-term friendships are based on that very special relationship:
Great Britain (W) – Hungary (W) 8-2 (2-0, 2-1, 4-1) – SO 0-3
Most Hotel Reviews in one city
Even though I haven’t had too many trips there in recent past, no city beats London on Flyctory.com in regards of hotel reviews. You find a total of 23 hotel reviews on my website. The best rated one is, by the way, the Conrad Hotel London St. James I visited in 2020:
Conrad Hotel London St. James
My Most Far Away Travel Post So Far
When I take the airline from my residence in Leverkusen, Germany, I did the most far-away from home travel review this year, when I visited Indonesia. The Whoosh high speed rail station is about 11,340 km away from home. By the way, this trip was the first time in my life being on the Southern Hemisphere.
Riding KCIC Whoosh – The Indonesian High-Speed Rail – in First Class
Postings about Flyctory.com
I sometimes write about the development of this blog, upgrades and other internal topics:
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In early April 2023, I gave you an insight into my loyalty program strategy for 2023. The posting Thumbs up ...
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When I wanted to work on 8th December 2023, preparing the base data for my two country music playlists, I ...
And then, it were three. I already shared Christmas songs by country artists twice as a playlist. For the Flyctory.com ...
Home is where the heart is - I had the idea to this posting about my favorite cities of the ...
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Damn, it is already four years... And it is more than 2,750 postings since then. On 25th February 2018, I ...
The last posting of the year - Best Ones 2022 is introducing you to my best experience last years (as ...
While the music market is more and more focusing on singles and even writes weird stories like Taylor Swift's "Top ...
Since I started working with Flyctory.com, I present you a list of my favorite songs at the end of every ...
Just some ten days left until Christmas. Instead of my typical album preview, I this time go for a preview ...
After I rolled out the Country Christmas Playlist 2021 in late November that year, I am this time a bit ...
I am quite sure I will never forget this 24th February 2022. Like I will know what I did on ...
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It is time for the final posting of the years, simply named The Best Ones 2021. After looking into my ...
2021 definitely lifted Flyctory.com to another level. The community is steadily increasing - days with less than 2,000 page hits ...
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Summer feels to be over - Fall 2021 is coming. Finally, I had much more - and better - trips ...
This is a posting I am aiming to write since ages somehow. I visited so many hotels - not just ...
During the later phases of the Covid-19 lock-downs in Germany, I had the idea to that posting. Maybe just because ...
I studied maths. This almost certainly means that I am weird. Or, at least, that I tend to have weird ...
It started on 27th July 2018 with Talk of This Town by Catherine McGrath. Last weekend, I reached another milestone: with Immortal ...
After praising my favorite songs of 2020 and the favorite albums and EPs in 2020, the final posting to do ...
292 Media Review postings - looking into new music (and a few other) releases was definitely some sort of core ...
2020 is about to come to an end - and the last three posting of the years re about to ...
Just about one month left until we are facing our very first socially distanced Christmas. Especially after hard times in ...
Starting Flyctory.com as a travel and sports blog some 30 months ago, I wouldn't have imagined at its beginning how ...
A friend of mine recently asked me how the current Covid-19 situation is affecting myself personally and of course also ...
My Country Music Playlists on Amazon Music and Spotify are one of the most popular elements of the Flyctory.com music ...
While I am writing this blog posting, I am sitting in London. The C2C: Country to Country has been cancelled ...
While I so far made an semi-annual look back in time, the "Very Important Postings", I decided something with my ...
I decided to split the "Best music" postings of 2019 into two parts: while I already published my personal Best ...
2019 has come to an end - and music has been one of the key topics of Flyctory.com in 2019 ...
You may have visited Flyctory.com the last days hoping to have some coverage of the Neuchatel World Floorball Championships this ...
I am constantly aiming to improve your user experience on the website. I always felt that drilling down the list ...
Some ten weeks weeks ago, I added another feature to Flyctory.com: the Country Music Playlists on Amazon and Spotify allows ...
I try to improve Flyctory.com steadily and enlarge your visitor's experience. I felt that there is so much music on ...
June 2019, time for the third semiannual summary of the website. Quite a lot has changed and improved compared to ...
Another six months have passed - the first full half year of Flyctory.com's existance. After I did the Very Important ...
1st July 2018 - we start counting down the days to christmas already. In this posting I resume about what ...
Some of you may ask: Why did I choose Wordpress for this site? First of all, my wife Sarah had ...
London Hotels at Flyctory.com:
Here are hotels I reviewed in London:
After I had a stay at the Novotel in the area right before Covid-19 broke out, I haven't been staying ...
In order to cover the Jenn Bostic show in London in February 2024, I was looking for a hotel in ...
Having a musical night in London in August 2023, I needed an affordable overnight with good connections to the London ...
I have been to quite a lot of Premier Inn hotels in recent times. In Germany as well as in ...
It is hard to argue against that the Sofitel London Heathrow is the most convenient option when you need a ...
Before I headed to Portsmourth for some Rock of Ages shows in Southern England, I had a night at the Premer ...
Being able to have a look into the Courtyard by Marriott London City Airport was the cause of a rather ...
In June 2022, I had a night at the Premier Inn London Paddington Basin. The booking was quite short-noticed after ...
For a Saturday evening show at The O2 in London, I have been looking for a reasonably priced hotel with ...
Quite some hectic a few weeks before I actually visited my favorite musical Rock of Ages again. After the show has been ...
The limited travel intensity during summer and fall 2020 lead to some interesting budget travel opportunities. During a trip to ...
I would say that the opening of the Hilton Garden Inn London Heathrow Terminal 2/3 has been one of the ...
As I delayed some reviews after I saw that Covid-19 will have a significant impact on us and our travel ...
I could not react any more when finally the C2C Country to Country in London 2020 had been cancelled. Thus, ...
Visiting Brett Eldredge's and Lauren Jenkins' final show of their January 2020 European tour (here are reviews of their Amsterdam ...
In early January 2020, I had a British Airways Mileage Run, flying from Cologne/Bonn to Gatwick and then spending a ...
During a November 2019 stay in London, I opted for the DoubleTree right at Victoria Station. Especially as we were ...
Thousands of people pass Hatton Cross every day without ever getting an impression of the area. The Piccadilly Line London ...
Premier Inn is a branch of budget hotels which is especially active in the United Kingdom. There are, however, also ...
After I stayed at the ibis Styles London ExCeL during the Country 2 Country 2018 already, I chose the hotel ...
In May 2019, I had another weekend trip to London. As my wife and I flew into London City Airport, ...
I chose the ibis Canning Town just North of the River Thames as my stay for the Country 2 Country ...
Due to a Eurowings flight cancellation on a London daytrip in early January, I got stuck at Stansted Airport. The ...