Balkan Summer

Monday, October 3rd, 2011 | bulgaria, france, germany, serbia, travel, turkey | No Comments

No, I really did try. I did try to come home. It just wouldn’t work for me. There was a mysterious voice in the air, calling: ‘Leave! Go travel some more! It’s summer here in Europe, after all!’.

So I had to. Italy & southern France to warm up, the climbing was as excellent as always. Just a bit cooler that year, but this only meant that we could head straight for the south faces. And get a good tan, too.

What followed a just few days later was an adventurous journey through the Balkans, a region I long wanted to pay a visit. I added ‘adventurous’ with a purpose there … have you ever tried to take a night train from Beograd to Sofia? You should. Anyway, the trip started off with a real proper train up to big Berlin, examining some great graffiti there. Then, by now we (that is, Maria and I) headed down to Dresden just to hear the accent (and some very knot-y climbing in the Elbsandstein) before following the call of Budapest. I’ve been dreaming since years to check out this praised city, and this year, our timing was even perfect: Sziget Festival! Being one of the biggest music festivals worldwide, it also proved to be the most amazing one I’ve ever attended. A whole island, literally in the middle of a stunning city, filled to the bursting point with world-class gigs and people rejoicing at the sun. Beat that!

The next stop was Beograd, capital of proud Serbia. Once again, wandering around and getting lost turned out to be a superior tactic to explore the very heard of it; At the end of the day, we’ve had a cheerful (and also considerably hungover) group of locals showing us all around their city, inviting us for local food and, of course, beer & home-brewed rakia. We even ended up driving to the favorite local ‘pool’: A dammed up side-arm of the Danube. Where all we planned to do was to lie in the shade of a tree to take a rest from the train ride … well, didn’t quite work out that way.

But after that, we’ve had enough of big cities and the Bulgarian mountains were luring us into their endless serenity. To start things off properly, we unexpectedly found ourselves (by utter random chance, as so often) amidst the annual gathering of a nature-worshiping cult, praising the sun. Nice people, though; Quite fascinating to witness a few hundred people dressed in pure white dancing and jumping around in huge, concentric circles. And so we wandered on, worshiping the sun, too. Besides that, the Rila and Pirin mountains of Bulgaria seem to have a liking for crystal-clear mountain lakes – perfect to pitch your tent just right next to (anyone agree with me that there is no such thing as getting up at sunrise and splashing ice-cold creek water all over your face?).

Turned out that it is actually really hard to communicate with people in Bulgaria; Furthermore, it doesn’t really help what everything is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. At one point, we ended up in a border town and our plan was to cross over into neighboring Macedonia, through Albania, and up to Montenegro. But all we got was a lot of ‘No bus! No bus!’ and so we figured what the situation probably won’t be much better in the countries to follow. And we needed a shower anyway. Thus, we decided to take a route a bit less complicated and headed south towards Istanbul, the promised city (by, well, just another night train). What we experienced there was once again mind-changing. The hostility of the Turkish people was simply incredible and CouchSurfing turned, as so often, out to be an unforgeable experience. Great folks, great days. And that is in a mega-city of 13-or-so million people; I’ve only heard the stories of other traveler’s experiences in the countryside. There’s a lot to learn for you, Western Europe!

Off The Road

Monday, May 30th, 2011 | australia, indonesia, nepal, new zealand, singapore, thailand, travel | 2 Comments

‘What are you going to do with yourself, Ed?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know’, he said, ‘I just go along. I dig life.’
- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

I think it was Alexander Huber who infested my with this idea of viewing ones life as a big book, every single day represented by a blank page that is yet to be filled. Some pages will display only a few words scratched on them, some are more like a whole magnificent book by themselves, featuring coloured illustrations and all. I still like to live and think by and with this analogy, it’s a beautiful one; And accordingly, I’m about to close a big chapter, 206 pages long and a hell of a read.

Flicking through it, one can read of snow-covered peaks, of real-life dragons, of endless road-trips, of those miseries of packing up a wet tent in the morning and putting it up again in the evening, of insightful conversations with total strangers that are about to become respected friends in just a minute’s time, of days filled with the longing for a home, of endless and empty beaches, of the best sunset imaginable, yes, one will even be advised to absolutely never leave the selling of a van to the very day prior to your departure. In short, I’ve done my best to fill each and every of those blank pages as colourful and vivid as I could. That was my mission – I think I did pretty well.

People will continue to ask, ‘So, tell me, what’s your favourite place of all?’ Well, there is no such place. It’s neither A nor B that matter, it’s everything in between. It was proven once again that flexibility is a traveller’s very best friend. In a nutshell, Nepal was a beautiful culture shock, still vivid in my mind. Thailand was a holiday from Nepal, a delight for all senses. Singapore a huge, modern city (yes, and it still is, in face I’m writing those lines whilst patiently waiting for my final connection at Singapore International Airport and, as it turned out, they offer public Internet kiosks free of charge; brilliant). Indonesia an adventure for its own, featuring a paradise of a millions islands and day-long delayed ferry rides. Australia a big and exciting road trip and a lot of deep blue. New Zealand an even bigger road trip (6349 km, in fact), a lot of magnificent rock and even more magnificent people. But you shouldn’t put anything in a nutshell, frankly – go ahead and write a book.

So, even seven month of intense travelling around the globe have to come to an end, eventually. It will be a whole new idea to work through those memories – there were simply too many to be processed instantly. Doubtless to say, those seven month were the most adventurous and exciting of my life. Of course. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. Of course. I would do it again. Of course.
But now, I’m off the road, I’m coming home. And I’m glad to.

If there is one sole conclusion that has to be drawn from my first extended trip around the world, than this is it: It surely hasn’t been my last one.

Rock Deluxe

Sunday, May 15th, 2011 | climbing, new zealand, travel | 2 Comments

Now, New Zealand isn’t Europe, but it still got some quite decent rock. And, that’s for sure, some very, very decent scenery to play in.
After not climbing for a whole month in Indonesia (imagine that!), I just had to pin the climbing mission high on my flags for New Zealand. Could not help it. What followed was an epic two-month road trip throughout the South Island, chasing the sun and the crags. For some reason, we had five days of straight sunshine down in the Fiordlands, a place with an annual rainfall of 6000+mm. The regions around Queenstown entertain you with some Schist that actually holds your body weight and lovely Wanaka had us come back three times.

Bouldering in world-famous Castle Hill is, of course, a must-do. This magical place offers some 10000+ boulder problems. Literally. But those weird rock formations make sure what you won’t find a single one of them since you won’t be able to spot a single hand- or foothold. But running into some local-pro’s helps a lot to get you psyched for the day. “So how are you supposed to get up there?!”, a common phrase.
New Zealand’s sport-climbing Mecca Paynes Ford got me bound for three weeks (it happens to everyone). But who could possibly defy days of two-hour break-feasts, perfect sport climbing, and legendary campfire-circles nursed by the conversations of beautiful and strange climbing bums? Right. Might as well stay another day. But now, unmistakeably, winter is creeping in, slowly but surely, so I have to flee to the North, counting the days. Counting the days!

Instant Kiwi

Friday, May 6th, 2011 | new zealand, travel | 1 Comment

So apparently, it has been two month now since I arrived here, virtually at the other side of the globe. No one really knows how that happened. But, I guess, living life as an Abligo [Abligo (n.): One who prides himself on not even knowing what day of the week it is] while chasing the sun and the best climbing crags just makes time fly. Especially, chasing about anything with my own (!) ride (my very first car was even easier to purchase than I imagined, which was already pretty easy) is heaps fun (picked up that kiwi slang) and a definite upgrade in luxury compared to the month of tent camping and floor sleeping in Australia. I can now store things! I do have a home! The home has four wheels, even, which makes it all the better.

So, New Zealand, aye? The one place I was always looking forward to visit, the paradise of my dreams. Well indeed, as it turned out, reality matches those dreams pretty closely. To fly into the Nations second largest city a few days after it got severely destructed by an epic once-in-a-century (so we all hope) earthquake made for quite a special situation. The following weeks were strongly characterized by this event. But one thing struck me above all: How whole New Zealand united in an almost inconceivable way, their spirits raising higher than ever, ready to rebuild what got destroyed.

(four landscapes? really?)

Kiwis spell ‘colour’ and say ‘bro’ quite frequently. They are hostile, humble, and surprisingly friendly, it a very honest way. They are proud of their little nation, but without waiving a flag to show it. And I’m not even talking about those wildly varied, unspoiled landscapes that appear in a beauty beyond my words to describe. An endless autumn. I’ve just added a few pictures therefore, judge by yourself. Sometimes, I get reminded of home, the mountains and cows and all, just that those here are surrounded by an ocean. To make a long story short, this place really appears as a kind of paradise. As a place that makes you feel welcome, that makes you feel home. An Instant Kiwi.

Praise the Wombat

Sunday, March 27th, 2011 | australia, climbing, travel | 7 Comments

Rainday. Restday. Internetday. Reason enough for one of those sparse update here within (does anyone out there actually care? I’ve now spent over an hour on this!), after all it’s been almost three weeks since I’ve left Oz and a lot has happened since. But I’m slacking, no hurries, mate, as the Aussies would say, thus one step at a time. Featured continent of the day: Australia!

Randomness had me stay for precisely one month, as it turned out, down in Down Under. After couchsurfing Sydney for about a week, I decided on a spontaneous road-trip some thousand kilometers up the coast, from Melbourne to Adelaide. Of course, it was great times and even the Japanese groups posing in front of the Twelve Apostles somewhat amusing; but I don’t need to tell you about those, you’ve heard the stories, you’ve seen the pictures. The things that were much rather interesting were the small pleasures of life, e.g. camping on a golf course, bouldering in sandstone-paradise of the Grampians, or those funny creatures hopping ’round the camp-spots, trying to steal some of your freshly-grilled Spam (Uh yes, Spam indeed). Correct, we were living up the camping (or as some might call it, the cheap) life, because Australia is, apart from being massively huge and vast and wild and beautiful, mainly: ridiculously expensive (especially coming from Asia leaves you with a rise of prices of literally 3000%).

My favorite little place, however, was the island of Tasmania. It had the deepest blue I’ve ever seen, anywhere on this planet. This fact alone made me stop about a hundred times, gazing down some 200m cliff-face straight into the ocean, and think out loud: ‘Wuuh.’ A magnificent and fascinating place; Driving around, in this vast remoteness, is a treat by itself: You’ll get the most stunning landscape without seeing anyone else, for hours (minus the millions of road-kills of which you could feed a smaller city with and the Wallabies obviously trying to commit suicide, for whatever reason). And above all, I’ve seen the most adorable living thing imaginable and from now on my official favorite animal of all times: A Wombat. A life-changing experience.

My Asia

Thursday, March 10th, 2011 | indonesia, nepal, singapore, thailand, travel | 2 Comments

[warning: this might get a bit poetic.]

My Asia was a bucket shower.
My Asia was a million smiles.
My Asia was the best food I’ve ever had.
My Asia was bitter cold and blazing hot.
My Asia was a scorpion in the bathroom.
My Asia was the ugliest place I’ve ever been to.
My Asia was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to.
My Asia was a hazardous motorbike ride.
My Asia was a great novel.
My Asia was a shitton of rice.
My Asia was a cheap drug.
My Asia was cruel poverty.
My Asia was a canceled flight.
My Asia was a rooster in the night bus.
My Asia was a real-life dragon.
My Asia was climbing way too high up.
My Asia was one hard bargain.
My Asia was an overcrowded bus ride.
My Asia was a ridiculously hot cilli sauce.
My Asia was an extended love affair.
My Asia was a mosquito bite.
My Asia was everything between -30m and +5450m.
My Asia was a Bintang Shirt.
My Asia was an elephant ride.
My Asia was facing real poverty.
My Asia was the wonderful people I met.
My Asia was 91 days of pure excitement.
My Asia will see me again.

[I just couldn't help it.]

The Ugly Side of Travel

Thursday, February 24th, 2011 | general, travel | 2 Comments

Because travelling is not about visiting beautiful places but about truly experiencing a country, one will face images not pictured in travel magazines. Here are a few of them.

Enjoy your day in paradise!