Letzter Blogeintrag/Last blog entry

Sooo meine Lieben,

jetzt bin ich schon wieder zwei Wochen im schönen, aber sehr kalten, Deutschland. Zeit einen kurzen Abschlusseintrag zu posten. Die letzten sechs Monate waren einfach unglaublich!!! Ich bin so froh, dass wir am 2.9.2013 unser Abenteuer begonnen haben und alles so gut gelaufen ist. Wir haben unglaubliche Natur, Städte und natürlich Tiere gesehen, supernette Menschen getroffen und die paar auftretenden Hürden elegant gemeistert 🙂 Unvergessen bleibt mir das unglaubliche Gefühl nach dem Aufstieg auf den Ijenvulkanin Indonesien und vorallem dem Aufstieg aus dessen Kraters – bei einsetzendem Sonnenaufgang zu sehen, wie tief der Krater des Vulkans eigentlich war, in den wir zuvor hinabgestiegen waren – einfach unvergesslich!!! Und die Meeresschildkröte, die unter mir her schwamm, irgendwo kurz vor Gili T. Ich könnte ewig so weitermachen, erlebt haben wir echt ziemlich viel. Aber das erzähl ich euch lieber persönlich.

Die letzten zwei Wochen sind dank viel Besuch sehr schnell vorbeigegangen. Richtig angekommen in Deutschland bin ich aber trotzdem irgendwie noch nicht richtig. Der Rucksack steht schon wieder in der Ecke für den nächsten Trip J Vorallem war es schwierig am Anfang zu realisieren, dass ich jetzt nicht mehr 24/7 mit Rebecca zusammen sein werde. Das war schwer! Ich glaub, wir haben es mittlerweile beide schon etwas begriffen, glücklicherweise gibt es ja aber auch noch Skype. Es war so schön alles (gut und schlecht) mit dir teilen zu können, meine Liebe!!!

Bevor ich allzu sentimental werde, mach ich Schluss und ende mit einem Zitat von Mark Twain: „Reisen ist tödlich für Vorurteile.“ Besser hätte ich es nicht sagen können 🙂

 

 

WOW!!! The last six months passed so quickly and so have the last two weeks. Can’t imagine that the terrible moment of saying good-bye to my dear Rebecca happened 14 days ago. Indeed, that was a sad, sad day. We have gone through so much together, have seen the most amazing things together, have done the craziest adventures together – in short: we just had an amazing time together!!!! And now we are separated by thousands of kilometers…  But thanks to Skype we both, I think, have overcome the first sadness and now feel ready for the challenges awaiting us on either side of the Atlantic Ocean 🙂

Travelling the world was just phenomenal! It definitely was one of the greatest times of my life. Never have I seen so many (sometimes crazy, sometimes just mind-blowingly beautiful) things, never have I met so many inspiring people of such different backgrounds, never have I ever had the chance to dive into so many different cultures which make our world so unique – never have I ever been on such a great adventure!!!

I want to close my last blog entry with a saying that I stumbled over today: “We must take adventures in order to know where we truly belong.” Couldn’t have put it better 🙂

New Zealand calling!!!

After five weeks in superhot Australia (yes, on our last day in Adelaide, the thermometer hit 42°C), we were ready for a change. We both loved the red continent but imagined that New Zealand has lots of lots of stuff to offer as well. And we should be right. Never have my eyes seen so many different landscapes in such proximity. There are glaciers, there are volcanoes, there are turquoise crater lakes, there is freshly green rainforest, there are dolphins, there are parrots, there are remote villages, there is lovely Welligton. I could go on and on and on with this enumeration – New Zealand is a country where your eyes get spoilt, for sure!!! But not only the nature convinces tourists like us to come again, the people in NZ are just amazingly friendly, relaxed and always ready to help!! We felt so welcomed!

After having been on the road for five months and always having to rely on public transport, we opted for a camper van in NZ – our baby PACMAN! We could finally unpack our backpacks for THREE weeks!!! and had a place to call “home”. Whenever we felt like going some other place, we did so. I really enjoyed this completely different, yet extremely free and unlimited, way of travelling. Although driving more than 4400km in 23 days, it was fairly easy driving and thus we thoroughly enjoyed the countless hours we spent inside the car as much as we loved hopping out the van and going for a hike. In fact, the day we had to drop off “our” PACMAN was a sad one. Suddenly we had to carry our backpacks again, had to share a hostel room with other people, were “stuck” in Auckland and had to take the bus again to get to places. However, being able to go and take a shower whenever we wanted rather than sneaking into hostels and looking for the bathroom without revealing that we weren’t actually guests in that hostel, was one of the great advantages staying at a hostel again 🙂

Auckland was the last stop of our travels through NZ. Luckily we even spotted a Kiwi bird at Auckland Zoo on the day before we left the country. What a great end to an amazing time in down under!!!

Vom Ansprüche nach unten schrauben…

Hallo ihr Lieben,

letztens unter der Dusche im Hostel in Yodgjakarta wurde es mir mal wieder bewusst: Die letzten vier Monate haben uns gelehrt, dass man mit ganz kleinen Ansprüchen hier in Asien ziemlich weit kommt. 🙂 Ich beschwerte mich, dass das Wasser auch schonmal wärmer gewesen sei. Da kam aus der Duschkabine neben mir nur „Hauptsache wir haben Wasser“… So kann’s gehen. Vier Monate in mehr oder weniger Entwicklungsländern unterwegs und Wasser wird so kostbar 😉 Und nicht nur Wasser in der Dusche zählt seit dem 2. September 2013 zu den kleinen Freuden im Leben, sondern so viele andere Dinge auch:
So sind wir froh, wenn die Kakerlaken in den Kuechen/Badezimmern/Fluren der Hostels, in denen wir schlafen, zwar dort auf den Böden liegen, allerdings schon tot sind.

Ein kleines Loch im Boden und dazu ein gefüller Wassereimer sind ausreichende Toiletten geworden. Einfach drüberhocken und mit der Schöpfkelle alles weg“spülen“ danach. Geht alles 🙂 Toilettenpapier ist ein anderes Luxusgut geworden. Die ersten drei Monate hatten wir beide immer einen Notfallbestand von Taschentüchern in der Tasche, just in case. Das Problem haben wir seit Singapur nun allerdings auch nicht mehr. Schön 🙂

Ein Bett (oder besser zwei) in einem halbwegs dunklen Raum reicht absolut zum Schlafen. Und so reichen auch halbwegs saubere Teller um das Essen hier zu geniessen…

Aprospos Essen. Da kann ich von einem ganz persönlichen Anspruchrunterschrauben-Akt erzählen. Eigentlich schon seitdem wir in Malaysia angekommen sind, aber ganz verstärkt hier in Indonesien, habe ich es als Vegetarierin kulinarisch gesehen sehr schwer! Vegetarismus hat es leider noch nicht bis hierher geschafft und so wurde ich mehrmals direkt ausgelacht, wenn ich mal wieder gebratene Nudeln ohne Fleisch, Meeresfrüchte und Fisch bestellte. Die krasseste Situation war im Zug von Jakarta nach Yodgjakarta (8 Stunden). Zum Abendessen wollte ich mir in Bordrestaurant etwas bestellen. Rebecca fand schnell eine Lasagne, aber vegetarisches Essen gab es nich auf der Karte. Noch nicht mal einfach nur gekochten Reis ohne alles gab es!!! Wo sind wir denn?! Nun ja, mehr runterschrauben meiner Essensansprüche ging dann wirklich nicht. Weder Fertigsuppen noch irgendwelche andere Fertigprodukte vom Kiosk neben an waren vollkommen vegetarisch… Umso froher war ich als wir auf den Gili Inseln angekommen waren und wir wieder leckere, vegetarische Gerichte auf den Speisekarten gefunden haben!!!

Und zum Schluss den Anspruch, den wir zu allererst über Bord geschmissen haben: Immer frischgewaschene und vollkommen saubere Klamotten zu tragen 🙂 So geht’s natürlich morgens viel leichter und schneller 😉 Ich könnte mir vorstellen, dass sich das allerdings nochmal ändern wird sobald wir in Australien sind. Schließlich sind wir da ja dann wieder in der Zivilisation, wo man sich entsprechend kleidet. Wir werden sehen 🙂

Diesen Eintrag sollt ihr keineswegs als Beschwerde verstehen, vielmehr soll er nur als kleiner Einblick in unsere Alltagsfreuden hier am anderen Ende der Welt dienen. Wir schätzen die kleinen Dinge hier sehr und so versetzt uns ein leckeres, wohlgefülltes Frühstücksbüffet mit knusprigem Brot wie hier auf Bali in Ekstase 🙂
Morgen geht’s nach Sydney!
Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch an euch alle. Wir denken an euch 🙂

The girls are back in town…

Hi you all,
we made it back to Kuala Lumpur yesterday. It was a really nice feeling leaving the highway and recognizing all the places we drove by before our bus dropped us off in Chinatown. It felt familiar and we easily found our way around and went to some shops we remembered from last time without needing a map… I don’t want to exaggerate but it somehow felt like coming home 😉 What a great city, indeed. I, surely, will be back!!
But whenever I come back, it won’t only be for Kuala Lumpur, the country of Malaysia offers so many diverse things to do, see and experience. My favorites so far have been the amazingly wide tea plantations as well as our first trekking adventure to go and see the world’s biggest flower (Raflesia) in the Cameron Highlands, the more than beautiful beaches on Langkawi Island, „strolling“ through the world’s oldest rainforest and of course the metropolitan life here in Kuala Lumpur.
We have been extremely lucky with the weather. On the east coast, the monsoon flooded many of the touristy places so we were advised to stay on the west coast only. Here, there are some rain showers now and then but nothing too serious. It always stops after a while and then life continues again 🙂
The people we met are super friendly and always ready to help, if they could, they would take our hands and take us directly to the place where we asked directions for. Talking about the friendliness of the Malay people, I have to mention Am. Rebecca and I wanted to go to an Orang Utan sanctionary a bit outside Taiping. We asked at the local bus stand how to get there and they told us to take the local bus first, get off at a village and then take a taxi for the last stretch. Okay, we thought, sounds doable. So off we went and hopped on the bus. The friendly conductor and bus driver made sure we got off at the right stop and even showed us the street we should look for a cab. Unfortunately, this village where we were stranded was so remote that there were no taxis. We had two options: Either we walk the way (bright sun and 6km didn’t sound too tempting) or we ask the people working at one of the two food stalls in front of the mosque. Option two it was! We approached the man serving some cool drinks to the kids outside the mosque and asked whether he would know how to get a taxi here. He didn’t really speak English but the kids around him helped him/us out. They told us that there are no taxis here. Mmh… So we asked him how to get to the sanctionary without a cab. His answer was: „Sit down and wait until 1pm then I can drive you there“. Alright, it was 12pm and we just did what he told us. Before the prayer started, the kids had some time to talk to us and explain us what the drink that Am served us consisted of… some kind of jelly, milk, syrop and other unidentifiable things… We had a great time and laughed a lot. After an hour of waiting and after being back from the mosque, Am told is to get in his car. His small son joined us and it turned out that we first had to go to Am’s house to drop his son off and then he would drive us to the sanctionary (which was in the opposite direction). I cannot tell you how amazed we were when we, eventually, stood in front of the entrance gate of the sanctionary. Am even offered us to pick us up once we’re done and drive us back to Taiping. He was off work today so he would love to help us. He gave us his phone number and didn’t even accept the money we wanted to give him. At NO moment I felt uncomfortable or thought that Am had some other plans with us then driving us to the sanctionary. Conversation was difficult among us but we managed really well. Am was a great, great help and so genuinely friendly. Amazing!!! Our journey to the sanctionary took us more than 3 hours but it was worth it every minute. Great people!!!
This is just one example of the friendliness that we encounter here every day and which makes it soooo pleasant to stay and travel here.
If you have the chance, get yourself over here and see it with your own eyes. Malaysia is slowly but surely developping into a backpacker country, so tourist development measures are taking off rapidly. It won’t be the same authentic country in ten years, I am quite sure. So hurry up 🙂

As I said, we are back in Kuala Lumpur for two nights. Today we will check out the nationwide „year end sale“ before we make ourselves on the way down south to Singapore where we will hope to arrive in five days…

I am sending you warm and sunny greetings from my favorite capital we have visited so far.
Feel hugged!!!
Lisa 🙂

First update from Malaysia…

This morning at 4am we landed in the Malaysian capital. We found a bus that, eventually, drove us directly to our hotel (which is awesome by the way!!!). Today, our day started with a wonderful, delicious and overwhelming breakfast. After that we went outside to discover Kuala Lumpur by foot. No honking, no dirt on the streets and due to the many other Westeners here, nobody really cared that there were two more Western girls walking down the streets… No starring anymore, makes our lives here way more enjoyable 🙂

The city is great and I caught myself many, many times today just looking up to the sky to see all the skyscrapers here. I just love big cities and Kuala Lumpur is definitely one of them. We had a small snack just outside the Petrona Towers and enjoyed some Malaysian jackfruit and red dragonfruit. Such a nice view for having snacks, I might have fallen in love with this city 🙂

Alrighty, after having had some seaweed flavoured fries and boiled coke with ginger (yes, food is different here), it is now time to hit the sack and send a big, big hug to you all out there. You are thought of often!!! Bye bye 🙂

Ein Nachtrag aus dem Flugzeug von Bangalore nach Kuala Lumpur…

Indien, oh Indien… Solch ein facettenreiches Land. Wir hatten schlechte Zeiten, aber eigentlich doch viel mehr gute Zeiten. Aller Anfan ist schwer und so brauchte ich gute zwei Wochen um mich halbwegs auf die staendigen Menschenmassen, das ununterbrochene Verkehrschaos und die penetranten Gerueche ueberall einzulassen und irgendwie einen Weg zu finden das Neue zu verdauen. Die Zeit in Orcha hat mir dabei geholfen und ich habe gemerkt, dass ich (auch wenn nur fuer eine begrenzte Zeit) unter sehr eingeschraenkten Bedingungen gut zurecht kommen und trotzdem meine Zeit geniessen kann.
Auch mein wohlweisslich eingepacktes Desinfektionsspray und den Sanitizer fuer die Haende habe ich gar nicht bzw. zum Schluss fast gar nicht mehr benutzt. Ich lief fast ueberall im Haus barfuss rum, egal was fuer eine Fluessigkeit den Boden gerade naesste. Auch das Essen mit der rechten Hand anstatt mit Besteck war zum Schluss Alltag geworden. Kurz um: ich bin erstaunt, wie gut ich mich hier im dreckigen Indien zurechtgefunden habe. Zu Haus achte ich bekanntlich ja sehr auf Sauberkeit ubd Hygiene, aber gluecklicherweise fand ich hier nen Weg auch trotz des Mangels dieser Annehmlichkeiten ohne permanenten Herpes rumzurennen 🙂
Bevor unsere Reise losging, hab ich mir viele Gedanken ueber die zahlreichen Vergewaltigungsfaelle und, damit verbunden, meine persoenliche Sicherheit gemacht. Gerade am Anfang wurde ich aber auch hier positiv ueberrascht: die Inder versuchten mich nicht zu beruehren und beschraenkten sich auf das (immernoch unangenehme) Angestarre. Aber kein Pfeifen oder Gegrapsche!!
Die Faszination, die Indien schon so lange auf mich ausgeuebt hat, ist glaub ich nach den letzten acht Wochen.ein.bisschen abgeflaut. Dafuer gibt es einfach noch zu viele Sachen, die hie geaendert werden muessen (z.B. Die offensichtliche Korruption ueberall, die Stellung der Frau usw.). Dennoch bin ich sehr froh hier gewesen zu sein. Noch froher bin ich, dass ich zusammen mit Rebecca hier gewesen.bin. Denn ich glaube, alleine haette ich dem immensen Kulturschock in den ersten zwei Wochen nachgegeben und haette ernsthaft ueberlegt die Reise in Indien abzukuerzen und woanders fortzufahren. So aber konnte ich ein bisschen in diese andere ubd sehr interessante Kultur eintauchen und viele einzigartige Erfahrungen sammeln. Auch trotz der eher wenigen schoenen letzten zwei Wochen im workcamp in Bangalore (es war hier einfach super unorganisiert und viel zu wenig zu tun), sitze ich jetzt im Flieger und schaue auf zwei meist positive Monate zurueck. Die letzten acht Wochen waren definitiv augenoeffnend und bildeten einen fulminanten Auftakt fuer das Abenteuer meines Lebens…
Wann (und ob) ich das naechste Mal nach Indien komme, steht noch in den Sternen. Fuer jetzt reicht mir das non-stop Angegaffe und das fehlende Verstaendnis fuer personal space erstmal. Aber solc Erlebnisse wie die Kamelsafari in Jaisalmer, der wunderschoene Ausblick in Udaipur oder die europaeische Atmosphaere in Mumbai sind unvergesslich!!!
Und es gibt ja auch noch die netten Inder und Inderinnen, die immer wieder mit ihrer Gastfreundschaft ueberraschen 🙂

Das ist genug, wir landen gleich in Malaysia. Ich denke oft an.euch Lieben zu Hause und schick euch ne feste Umarmung und allerliebste Gruesse aus der Ferne ❤

A short update for our English-speaking friends

Hi guys,
Time flies and we cannot believe that it has been three weeks already that we are on the road…
Soooo, where to start?! Just a quick review of what has happened during the last 24 days:

– We started our adventure on September 2. Saying bye-bye to our friends and family was difficult and very emotional. But the things awaiting us soon distracted us and required us to focus our thoughts on the “what to come” rather than on the “what/who we left behind”!!

– First stop: Abu Dhabi. We had an 18hrs layover in the United Arab Emirates. Just so much: it was hot, hot, hot!!! Thanks to airconditioned busses we still managed to see a lot of the city and ended the day here with a tour at the amazing mosque!!! At 22:30hrs it was time to board the plane to Delhi.

– Explaining how we felt when we first walked out of our hotel in Delhi is difficult. It was just overwhelming: so many people (mostly men) were starring at us and trying to talk us into something, numerous honking rikschas and cabs were making their way through the crowded streets and here and there cows were standing on the streets. Not to forget the dirt and dust everywhere. It was extreme!!!
We ended up discovering the city and its sights with a personal driver who would drive us to the entries of all the main sights and pick us up whenever we were done taking pictures and walking around. That made it considerably easier for us and still left enough room for our first encounters with Indian society.

– in the end, that driver also drove us to three other cities in Northern India. So our first week was rather protected and we felt safe in this new country. Berinda (our driver) drove us to Pushkar (small city with a holy lake in the center), Jaipur (the “pink city” where we also went to the Fort Amber (see the pictures with the elephants  )) an Agra (where we saw the impressive Tan Mahal at sunrise). It was amazing!!!! Five days filled with soooo many uniques experiences and great stips on the way!! Then Berinda dropped us at the train station in Agra and we took the train down south to Jhansi where a riksha drove us to Orcha. In this small village we stayed with an Indian family for three nights. And when I say small village, It implies all the prejudices one could think of: There were no flyshing toilets, the family’s cow was sleeping in the yard, no running water to rake a shower (a bucket full with cold water should do!) and having dinner on the kitchen floor and eating with our hands. The first night was very difficult, especialy for me. We came from our nicely organize tour during which we stayed at excellent hotels and now I was supposed to sleep in a room where lizzards where walking up and down the walls (from the INSIDE!!!). But in the end, I must admit, we had a great time there. The family was super friendly and the small communication problems were solved easily with a smile or some gestures. Lovely people who could tell amazing stories. And somehow this stay must have changed sonething inside us. Because when we returned to Delhi, we somehow felt that we had overcome the culture shock (for now).

– Brave as we felt then  , we decided against a continuation of the organized tour and booked train tickets instead. After an 18hrs train ride we arrived in Jaisalmer, the “golden city”. The absolute highlight here was the camel safari we went on. We loved it!!! It was great fun and we even slept in the middle of the Thar Dessert. It was us and the moon, sooooooooo cool!!!

– Next stop, Jodhpur, the “blue city”. Again we stayed at a guest house which was run by a family. It wasn’t the same like in Orcha but we still felt like being a part of the family since we had to take off our shoes when we entered the house and had a room just next to the kitchen were the wife would make us delicious pancakes for breakfast  The city itself looke amazing (we will upload some pictures soon) and we enjoyed the “cooler temperatures” (only 35 degrees Celsius). As I said, we had felt that we overcame the culture shock by then. But we could not have possibly thought off a situation like we encountered in the Fort Jodhpur, an historical monument visited by hundreds of (international as well as Indian) tourists each day. But despite its outstanding reputation and incredible architectures, it felt like all Indian people were mostly interested in trying to get as close to us as possible. And pulling out one’s cell phone and taking a picture of us (without asking) was not perceived as rude by them. But it was certainly perceived as rude by us!!! This starring and disregardin of our privacy was yet another challenge for us and we were fed up when exiting the place. The only thing that helped was a visit at McDonalds 

– Now we are in Udaipur and are having a great time. Despite the rainy mornings (and sometimes evenings), we had an amazing start here. The city is more touristy than the ones we visited before and soooo green  It is situated in a valley and the mountains around are covered by big, jungle-like trees. AMAZING!!!! Needless to say that the bus ride from Jodhpur to here was,thus, very lenghty since the Indian busses are not really made for going up a steep street 
We visited the City Palace at day and saw an impressive sound and light show there at night as well. But all the nice shops and beautiful views here put aside, I think, the craziest thing on our journey happened here as well.
Yesterday, I went out to do a tiny bit of shopping. And in one small shop – I meet a friend from EBERSWALDE whom I went to primary school with together!!!! The world is sooooo small. We were both so overwhelmed by this crazy coincidence that we went to the German cafe here first and sat down to have a coffee. He is travelling in India with his girlfriend and they just happen to be in the same city, at the same time, in the same shop like us/I. Rhis is just sooo funny  We immediately scheduled dinner together and also went to a cooking class today. There, Shashi, an amzing Indian woman who has gone through a lot already in her life, taught us how to make 10 Indian dishes: breads, chutneys, curries, fingerfood and the delicious chai (tea). Afterwards we sat down and ate everything and what shall I say – it was a feast!!! So good 
Today was meant to be the last day here in Udaipur but due to the heavy rainstorms in the south of the city, the train tracks on the way to Mumbai are flooded and our train got cancelled. So we came back to our hotel and are now sitting in the computer room figuring out alternatie travel routes. The concierge is super helpful, called the hotel in Mumbai for us and together we just had a goo laugh. So life is good and we will go to sleep thinking what a luxury it is to not feel pressured or stressed that we might need to stay a bit longer here than expected. After all, it is still India where things just are different  Aaaaaaaand, as the sign outside our hotel already suggests: Relax because you are on vacation!!!

So everything is good, we have managed and will manage all the little hurdles here and are enjoing life to the fullest in the meantime! We are thinking of you and are sending you a big NAMASTE from Udaipur!!! 

In diesem Sinne…