So organized that even ducks stop for a red traffic light. They only cross the road as it turns green.
What you cannot see in the video, is that the ducks had arranged the walk two weeks in advance and that none of them was late (not even the girls). Also, they elected a group leader for the excursion, and as they are walking into the pedestrian zone, they all locked away their bicycles.
If you are 18 years old this summer (2018), you could be very lucky. The European Union is giving away 15,000 travel passes for individuals or groups of up to five people.
You will have to apply online between 12 and 26 June 2018. The application form will be available on the European Youth Portal. There will be a quiz about European cultural heritage and if you win, you would be asked to include at least one European cultural heritage site in your itinerary. Coincidentally, 2018 is also the Year of European Cultural Heritage, so there will be plenty of events.
In order to apply, you need to be 18 years old on 1 July 2018 and be a citizen of the European Union. British teenagers, this is your last chance! ;-) Note that you need to have EU citizenship, but you don’t need to be living in the EU. That’s another reason to investigate your family tree and find out if you have a German or Spanish grandfather or a Dutch or Irish grandmother, because that could be enough to obtain EU citizenship. (I have written extensively about the paths to German citizenship, but it also works with many other EU member states.)
Winners will be notified in early July 2018 and you can undertake your journey between July and September 2018. You have up to 30 days and I recommend that you use every day of that!
Your itinerary needs to include at least one other country than the one you set out from, and can include up to four countries. My advice is not to go where everyone is going (Berlin, Rome, Paris), but to use this opportunity to explore something completely new, somewhere where none of your friends are going. Belfast instead of Berlin, Romania instead of Rome, Piran instead of Paris.
The EU will pay the train fare (or if necessary ferries or other transport, but there is nothing more relaxing and romantic than the railroad). Accommodation and food won’t be paid, which is another reason why I suggest a route off the beaten track. If you are from Western Europe, you might be surprised how affordable large parts of Eastern Europe are. Also, consider Couchsurfing to find locals to host you for free and to show you their city. It makes for an even better experience! After all, the whole idea of #DiscoverEU is to get to know each other as fellow Europeans.
(This was also published by Medium. – Und hier gibt es diese Informationen auf Deutsch.)
It’s so easy to tell a professional from a non-professional. The former have business cards.
After my first set of photo cards was exhausted – and because I have a new phone number and new URLs for my blogs – it was time to make some new cards.
The choice of photos was not easy, but I narrowed it down to six photos of memorable places that I visited in the last two years.
Here’s what the photos show:
These cards should be nice conversation-openers. The previous set of cards actually saved my life once. I had gotten terribly lost in Bolivia and was close to dying of thirst, when a young shepherd discovered me and led me down into a canyon where there was some water to drink.
He was very interested in my camera, asked me to take a photo of us together and then wanted to keep the camera. Firm to my belief, I respectfully declined. He picked up a large pebble stone, ready to smash in my head and extended his demands to money. “I don’t carry any money when I walk into the wilderness,” I lied, but took a few business cards from my shirt pocket instead. “I only have some cards with photos from Europe with me. Let me show you where I come from.”
As I was showing him photos from Estonia and Macedonia, Lithuania and Italy, he let the stone weapon fall back to the ground. I gave him all the cards I had.
If you also want life-saving business cards, you can get them from MOO.
I had been hiking on the uninhabited side of Easter Island for a half a day already. The northwest coast was not only devoid of people, but also completely barren. I hadn’t found anything to eat or drink. The sun was shining relentlessly.
Along the way, I had come past several cadavers and skeletons. It began to dawn on me that I too might leave my life on that island if I couldn’t muster the strength to keep walking until nightfall. In light of that danger, I had just begun to record something like a good-bye video when I remembered the most important survival tip. Just in time.
Saved and strengthened by the bananas, I did indeed manage to continue the hike until I reached the beautiful bay of Anakena in the north of Easter Island.
There, I could finally get the much desired Coca Cola.
In 2017, I actually got around quite a bit. So much that my passport fell apart. But instead of souvenirs, I only brought back dozens of notebooks, filled with stories to be told, and a few photos to accompany them. (Actually, some of you did get souvenirs, but that’s for the elite circle of supporters of this blog.)
2018 will be a much quieter year, with a focus on university and on publishing articles about past travels. To help me decide with which stories to begin, I’ll give you an overview of what happened in 2017 and expect your comments on what you are most curious about.
The year 2017 began at one of the most beautiful places, at Lake Titicaca in South America. First in Puno on the Peruvian side, then in Copacabana on the Bolivian side.
And wow, was I happy to be back in Bolivia, which remains my favorite country. If I ever have to pick one city to live for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t hesitate to move to Cochabamba. But that time, I decided to stay in La Paz until April.
I was lucky to be there on 21 February, the anniversary of the constitutional referendum, with manifestations from both sides.
But even if I had missed that, I needn’t have worried. There were protests and marches every day. Living quite centrally, I was awoken by drums or fireworks regularly.
It was almost too late, however, that I discovered a wonderful hiking group, Free Trek, and so I could only join them once. Valle de las Animas looks like out of this world, but it’s actually just a short walk from the bustling city.
But the best adventure during that time was my walk to Chacaltaya.
In April, it was time to fly to Colombia, where I was very positively surprised by Bogotá. An organized, bicycle-friendly, green, cultural city full of bookshops, exhibitions and chess players in the street.
But I had to move after a few days because I had already rented a small house in the countryside.
I was about to leave Colombia and South America by boat, so I had to go to Cartagena, the port city in the Caribbean. Cartagena looks beautiful, but it’s the opposite of Bogotá: hot and humid instead of mild and pleasant, hedonistic instead of intellectual, and superficial instead of cultural. Where Bogotá had chess players, Cartagena had beauty queens.
By May, I was already looking forward to return to Europe and happy to get on the cruise. Two weeks on the high seas sounded like an enticing prospect, but it wasn’t really as relaxing as my first cruise. Maybe it was too much Cartagena and not enough Bogotá.
But that way, I got to some islands which I would otherwise never have visited. On Sint Maarten/Saint Martin, I even had a friend waiting for me, who took me around the island, providing lots of information on the politics, economics, social structure and race relations of the island. And when we crossed from Sint Maarten to Saint Martin, I was already back in the European Union – in the middle of the Caribbean!
A few weeks later, everything was destroyed by Hurricane Irma.
The same fate befell Antigua, where I was surprised by how British-colonial everything still looked, despite most people being the descendants of slaves, who, by the way, staged a revolt in the 1730s. Yes, the climate was so hot and humid that I preferred to spend a few hours at the local history museum in St John’s.
The last island stop on the cruise was Madeira. Returning to Europe was as beautiful as I had hoped, with mild climate, flowers blooming, and finally a city where I could sit in the park and read a newspaper without having to listen to everybody else’s music at inhumane volume. I almost wanted to quit the cruise and stay in Funchal for longer.
But luckily, I stayed aboard until we reached mainland Portugal. I already liked Lisbon, where I only stayed briefly, but Sintra blew me away. Castles and monasteries, hidden in the forest or perched on mountaintops, all connected by hiking paths, and with beautiful gardens, romantic ponds and mysterious tunnels. A magical place!
And then I was back in Germany. Well, at least it was summer, so it was sunny, green and perfect for hiking. And not having to worry about anacondas and piranhas was a bit of a relief.
But somehow, I can never stay in Bavaria too long without getting depressed by the petite bourgeoisie there, so already for my birthday in July, I fled to the Caucasus.
In Tbilisi in Georgia, I was lucky to stay in a part of town that hadn’t been modernized yet. Beautiful old courtyards, crooked buildings, wooden balconies, with elements of Persian architecture.
It immediately struck me as a city where I could imagine living, but Kutaisi and Zugdidi were nice, too.
Yerevan had more concrete than green, but still a nice cultural vibe, while Dilijan turned out to be the hiking paradise in Armenia.
In Azerbaijan, I felt the weight of the one-family autocracy in Ganja, while Göygöl was completely different and welcoming.
But the biggest surprise on my Caucasus tour was Abkhazia. The capital Sukhum has the grandeur of a Black Sea resort with a long tradition, but, as an effect of war, flight and emigration, a decimated population. Even at the height of summer, the city was never crowded.
As some of you know, I have been toying with the thought of moving to a Russian-speaking place to learn Russian. Because nobody in Abkhazia expects anyone to learn Abkhaz and because almost everyone is bilingual, but not many people speak English, it seems like the perfect place for such language studies. (Transnistria would be another alternative.)
As I returned to Germany, I met a former classmate of mine who was living in Britain at the time, in Lancashire to be exact. It was wonderful to see how well we got along after not having seen each other for at least ten years, and he invited me to visit him in Lytham St Annes, that “bubble of happiness”, as he called it.
But we also had time to explore the seedy side of Blackpool, watch an impressive airshow in Southport
and go hiking in the Lake District.
Once again, I realized how perfect Britain is for hiking. Not only the beautiful landscape, but also a really good infrastructure, with public transport, pubs in every small village and even food deposited by friendly people along the path.
And then I returned to university in October, and traveling was over. Well, I did go to Hagen in Northrhine-Westfalia for one week. Allegedly, it’s Germany’s most boring city, but I honestly didn’t find it too bad. But maybe that was due to an intensive week of history lectures.
Now that she is retired, my mother is becoming more interested in traveling, and so she suggested a trip to Prague for a couple of days in autumn. It turned out to be the perfect time because it was still warm, but the leaves were already golden and red.
In Germany however, November was becoming more and more depressing. I urgently needed to escape and chose to move to Kotor in Montenegro for three months. I had been there before and liked it a lot, but this longer stay reconfirmed that Kotor really is one of the most beautiful cities in the world – even in winter.
So, now it’s up to you. Let me know what you are most interested in, and I will get cracking on the articles, edit the videos and publish more photos.
That calls for a break every now and then.
Photographed in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Last night, a man threw a grenade at the US Embassy in Podgorica. Nobody was injured because it was midnight and everybody was at home. Disappointed to discover this, the man used his second amendment grenade to blow himself up.
That is sad, particularly for the people who need to clean up the mess. I hope they get some extra pay.
Anyone who knows me knows how outraged I am about people making noise, whether by fireworks, church bells, music, terrorism or parties, particularly late at night. But in this case, I am almost more annoyed by the media reports about it, particularly in the US press.
They all explain that Montenegro is a country and where it is. As if nobody knew that! Anyone who has seen Casino Royale, conveniently released in 2006, just as the country became independent, knows Montenegro.
Nonetheless, I can still understand that. Better safe than sorry. Better explain it once again than have readers confuse Montenegro with Madagascar. Also, the articles need to be filled with something.
But what outrages me is that every report in the US press uses the word “tiny” to describe Montenegro.
For example USA Today and Fox News:
Montenegro borders the Adriatic Sea in southeastern Europe and its capital is Podgorica. […]
The U.S. established diplomatic ties with the tiny Balkan state in 2006 after it split from much larger Serbia.
Or the New York Times:
Montenegro, one of the world’s youngest nations, is a tiny country of 640,000 nestled between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania. It was once part of Yugoslavia; later, it became half of the nation of Serbia and Montenegro before declaring independence in 2006.
Or NPR:
Montenegro is located in southeastern Europe and was once part of Yugoslavia.
The U.S. established diplomatic ties with the tiny nation in 2006 after it split from much larger Serbia.
First of all, what’s the informational value of that adjective?
Second, it’s not true. Montenegro is NOT tiny! If you think it is, try to walk from Herceg Novi to Bijelo Polje! Microbes, atoms and prematurely born mice are tiny, but not Montenegro.
Granted, with 13,812 square kilometers, Montenegro is no Russia or China. But there are smaller countries or states that I never see referred to as “tiny” in every newspaper report: Qatar, Jamaica, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Cyprus, Bahrain, Singapore, Delaware and of course the Vatican. Why do we not regularly read about “the tiny country of Lebanon” or the “tiny state of Delaware”?
If there is one adjective that should accompany Montenegro in every report, it’s “beautiful”.
By the way, if there will be a travel warning issued by the US State Department, you can safely ignore it. Montenegro is safe and friendly, definitely safer than the USA itself. And we all know that the State Department tends to overreact with their travel warnings (example 1, example 2).
But remember: It won’t end well.
You have been warned. Quite graphically, even.
Another tip: If you are cheesy in public, holding hands, kissing and such, try to imagine how silly you look to others.
So, no public affection please!
(Photographed at the cemetery in Kotor, Montenegro on Saint Valentine’s Day 2018 because I had nothing better to do that day.)
The Happy Hermit 