Time to go home

It’s done! My trip is over! It’s time to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. How much is left of it? Where to start? Adventures end as fast and spontaneous as they begin. Ten month ago I threw away everything I had- My girlfriend, my job, my life. Travelling the world costs a lot. A LOT! Some stuff I got in return:
• A sore butt from- 6000 miles on a motorbike- crossing the U.S.
• Dirty hands from- Being a bike mechanic in Goa- India
• Terrible headache from- Teaching English in North East Thailand
• Very dirty hands from- Being a shepherd in New Zealand
• Freaking out from- Meeting all those incredible people
And now I sit here back in Austria, on my sore butt, type the last blog entry with my dirty hands and have terrible headache from thinking about my freaking little life :-)

Hi it’s me, Mike, and I am back!

It is time to say goodbye! Thank you for joining me on my way around the world. I really did not expect that so many people would read my blog. Hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed my trip. And if not.....get lost :-) I missed my friends and family and I want to see every single one of you as soon as possible. And to everybody I met on my way: Flights are cheap- Austria is fun!
Actually I am back since almost a week now, but I didn’t tell anybody in order to get a chance to calm down. Maybe some of you will ask me if I found what I was looking for. During my trip I was sometimes thinking for days about, what I should do with my life.
The answer is: stop thinking!

And one last thing: Go and do your own trip! Go! NOW! Yes,.....now!!!



By the way: meet me at the frequency festival in St.Pölten! -> 0043 680 2105238 the first three, who call get a beer!

It was good, really!

Walking down those well known streets incognito. Nothing has changed. The cars are the same, the buildings are the same, the people are the same. Still it feels like awakening from a dream. Memories from the past month flash through my head. They feel intense. At the same time they seem remote and untouchable. Those days will never come back. Never! Places appear in my head. Faces appear in my heart. Mixed feelings all around. Those who meant the most to me either don’t even know or I will never see them again. That’s fate.
From the distance I can hear their questions: “Oh you’re back! How was it?!”…. WHAT?! How was it? I cannot answer that and every second that passes feels awkward. What am I supposed to say? “Good” or “very nice” that doesn’t sound right. It feels like trying to tell a whole life in a few words. A sentence comes to my mind, back from India, when we were Bonnie and Clyde on our motorbike and Bonnie said: “We’ll never be able to explain this to anyone.” And she was damn right. It’s beyond all verbal possibilities. A silent minute has passed and my interrogator looks at me like I needed help. Finally I utter the words “It was really great.” Understatement of the year. I wish I had some supernatural mental powers to transfer my feelings about this to the people. They would see, they would understand, they would feel and go: “Really?” Then they would immediately pack their stuff and….. Well, I know it won’t happen. They won’t go. Instead they say: “Oh I am jealous and one day I will!” And then I know that I failed to share my story. I will never be able to share my story. “So, what are you going to do next?” …WHAT?! That question hits me like a sledge hammer. There is a life after?! Who could have expected that? My opponent notices my emotionless and puzzled face and regrets asking. It gets embarrassing. It is smalltalk. It is a way of being polite. But in that case it feels like eating delicate lobster with a dirty rusty spoon.


And then she appears,

After a week undercover, not telling anybody that I am already back home I decide to do something I was waiting for a long time. I decide to see her. I take a shower, decide which shirt to wear and take my “good luck”- flip flops. Getting out the door my heart starts pounding faster. What? Already? That can’t be! But there it is. The distance to her house is approximately 400 meters. I feel every meter right in my chest. Incredible. Standing in front of the door, ringing the bell. I fear that I won’t be able to talk as the sound of this factory inside my heart is just too loud. 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds. Nothing. No movement inside. No sound. Nobody home. I turn and leave. Jesus, that was close. Slowly I calm down. It takes forever until I reach a normal count of beats per minute. I don’t want to go home now. The city is my destination, after that shock I need a beer. The street seems familiar and I feel at home. 200 meters down the road a girl on a bike appears around the corner. Black hair- that movement- within the fraction of a second I know it’s her. She comes towards me. I stop and stare. I take off my shades and stand like a post, not able to move, not able to speak. My feet are out of stone and so is the huge smile on my face. She comes near. She sees me. She recognises me. She smiles. Shivers down my spine. In the middle of the street we stand like school children not knowing what to say. “Hi.” “Hi”- She caught me so off guard that I can barely understand what is going on. Then we stand here for some moments. Neither of us knows what to do or say. Nevertheless I love to be right here right now. “What are you doing here?” she asks “Nobody knows I am here!” I answer -“You are crazy! And I am confused.” We do smalltalk. It is the best smalltalk I’ve ever done. She tells me something about job and travel of hers. I don’t even hear it. Her face tells me other things. We walk back to her house together, then we split ways. 200 meters of pure excitement. What is happening here? What have I done 10 month ago? Things will never be the same again. And that is a good thing.


leaving on a jetplane

Boarding the plane. Business as ususal. Waiting for my set of rows to be announced to board the plane. Entering the plane on those long tunnels that always lead downhill a little and make people walk like they wore skiing boots. I give my tiny slip of paper with my seat number to the stewardess, who tells me that my seat is down there. How pointless is this ritual anyway? First of all I know my seat number and my row because it’s written on my boarding pass. And second the gesture of the stewardess is always the same, regardless where the seat is. Maybe some airlines sell tickets in the cockpit, then she would turn around and say: “Oh, mister you sit next to the pilot.” I’ve never experienced that. Anyway I find my seat being a window seat. I like that. Not so much because of the great view, which at some point is almost the same anywhere, but more because of the little gap between the window and the seat. Stuffing my sweater or a blanket into it provides me with a much better sleeping position then the seat alone. It will take a while until all the passengers are in and we start, so I take my preferred sleeping position.
I must have slept. A roar as loud as a gunshot wakes me brutally. We are already flying - kind of- but the scenery around me is surreal. The plane is moving sideways and up and down. People scream like crazy and a horrible shrill beeping sound feels like resonating in my brain. Babies in the back are crying their hearts out. The passenger next to me is screaming at me with eyes big as plates. The next second he gets shut up by a little Samsonite hard cover suitcase that hits his head. Now he is unconscious and bleeding hard from a big laceration. Everything is happening in slow motion, as I turn my head to the left to look out of my window and slowly realise what is happening. Where there used to be a wing, a burned and shattered trunk protrudes in the air. The explosion of the kerosene didn’t rip me to pieces right away. Lucky me! Another 15 seconds to live. It feels like a ride on a roller coaster, only that the screams around me aren’t out of joy but out of pure mortification. Obviously we didn’t make it very far. Still being overland as the ground moves nearer the plane falls into a counter clockwise spin that pushes me to my bloodshed neighbour. All that blood, it is gross. I hope I don’t get infected with something. Then I realise how pointless this thought is. The only infection that I could get from his blood that kills me before the plane crashes is the poison of the Austrialian fierce snake. Poor guy. One plane crash in a whole lifetime and he misses out completely. I’ve never seen those oxygen masks for real. My ears pop so hard that both eardrums burst. It doesn’t hurt anymore. No sounds, no noise, no fuss. Absolute silence. The lifeless body of the stewardess, who showed me my row flies by and gets wrapped around one of the seats like a rag doll. I look down on my seatbelt. Oh- now I know, what the seatbelts are for in a plane! A glimpse out of the window tells me that it is almost done. There is no fear and I don’t know why. Calmly I lean back and close my eyes. Surrendering I smile and think: “Life is good, and then you die.”
I spring to life and pour the cup of water, that the stewardess reaches to me, on my neighbours lap. Hey you guys are not dead- sweet. They can’t really follow, why I am happy, when I just messed up my neighbour’s suite. Next time I won't watch "Death on Flight 1977" before I get on a plane, I promise!

Una vacuna de fiebre Amarilla, por favour!

I got a vaccination. As Columbia is seen as one of the most dangerous countries for getting infected with yellow fever, I figured it would be a good time to get my vaccination. Looking for a proper place is the first objective. I really have to improve my Spanish! 15 annoyed people on the streets and one hour later I enter a little white room, where two cute giggling girls in white dresses are waiting for me. At that time I wonder if I asked for the right thing at the reception. And where is the doctor? Now they chat with each other and look at me from time to time and I don’t understand a word. I realise that they are the doctors as they prepare syringes and little bottles. After giving them my international certificate of vaccinations, where all my shots are listed I hope to have made myself clear what I need. They look at the little book like it contains rocket science. Great. Very international! In a one minute monologue in Spanish they explain something to me and I go: “HÄ?!” So I explain what I need in English and they go: “HÄ?!” One minute later I have a needle stuck in my arm and just hope that it was the right one. As I want to pay, they say that it is free. Possibly they injected sugar water into my arm- I’ll find out in a couple of weeks.


Tyrona National park, the beach paradise

After the track to ciudad perdida it is time to relax again- and of course there are some nice places to do so in Columbia. One of them is the Tyrona national park, where the last descendents of the native inhabitants of the “Lost City” live. To get there one has to walk one and a half hours through the jungle. Then the jungle clears up and the beach is right there. It feels like arriving at the movie “The Beach”. Tons of young people having fun in living in little bamboo huts and playing games. So you expect Leonardo DiCaprio to show up every second and act crazy. But the only ones who act crazy are three French guys, who run around like chicken, trying to find an ATM or a place where they can pay with credit card, because they have not one peso cash on them. Poor guys. Later they cross your way again, being proud of managing to harvest 6 mangos, which will be their dinner. Have a nice meal, guys!

Welcome to the jungle

It starts as a nice Sunday afternoon hike. You get to know the group and a light chit chat about origins kills time.
Three hours later.
After the first climb your clothes are soaked from your own sweat. Trying to not step into puddles seems as a pointless task as using deodorant. You walk one after the other through a thick wall of plants. The Green from the jungle replaces the Blue of the sky. It is omnipresent. You smell the trees, the creeks, the animals as it gets mixed with the odours of sweat. Your mosquitobites on your ankles look like out of a childs riddle picture book. If you connect the red dots you see the giraffe. The sun disappears. Why is this place called rainforest again? Oh, yes you remember. Now it is pouring down rain. The rocks you jump on are slippery and you hope you won’t wreck your mosquitobit ankles. The only reason you know where the path is, is because the water is turning it into a creek. So you walk in the creek, rather then anywhere else. You jump from one side to the other- As your landing foot slips away in the mud you hope that there are no rocks in the puddle behind you. Falling right into it seems like happening in slow motion and you find yourself lying on your back like a flipped beetle, covered in mud and water. You get up and keep on walking. The fact that some years earlier a whole group of hikers were kidnapped here by paramilitaries can’t cheer you up. On your way you pass little huts and villages of Kogi Indians, who live here in their tribals ways since centuries. At a higher altitude the scenerey is breathtaking.
At night you get food and before you fall asleep in your hammock, you hear a Russian lullaby, passionately sung by one of your fellow hiking mates, accompanied by the millions of birds, frogs, snakes, insects and hell knows what else, which try to attract females by letting the jungle sound aloud. It sounds like a choir and it’s only purpose is to get laid. 5 minutes later you hear a strange sound, which confirms, that the Russian guy was successful.
Wake up. Wake up. What?! Why wake up?! You didn’t sleep yet! What is going on? A glimpse at your watch tells you that you just slept 7 hours completely dreamless. Your kidneys hurt as you lost half of your blanket when rolling over. Luckily you managed to stay in the hammock. Packing up and getting ready for the hike. You know, what clothes you will wear today- yes- the same as yesterday. And don’t think they got dry during the night. At 5 in morning, the cold morning air surrounds you. You take on your wet, cold pants, socks and shirt. Goose skin. Immediately you are in your smell sphere again. Back on the track. Ten minutes later you find yourself wading through a river, the current pushes hard and the water is up your belly. Needless to mention that this was the first of nine river crossings that day. Nobody bothers to take off shoes or clothes anymore when getting in the water. Everything is soaked and dirty anyway. In the afternoon you find yourself on the first step of 1600 stone steps, that take you somewhere uphill. One step after the other. Another stone, another step. In the heat of the jungle- the humidity is causing you to sweat so much that you didn’t pee in ages. It’s exhausting. The backpack is cutting your shoulders. Your heart beats up your throat. Another step, another stone. Your legs hate you as much as you hate them. Anger arises from inside. You will not take a break. You will not drink water. You keep on till the end. COME ON! GO, GO. This is not some ancient stone construction. This is the freaking stairway to heaven! Another stone, another step- The sun breaks through the green jungle roof. Then you see the destination of the track. The “Ciudad Perdida”. The “Lost City”.
3 days later you are back to civilisation. After a total of 5 days in the jungle you sit with your fellow hikers at a restaurant and have some victory beers. Everybody agrees:
“The “Lost City” wasn’t that impressive- but the hike was fantastic.”