I just received a mail telling me I finally got accepted at the UCSB! I wouldn’t have believed that it might work this fast, but it’s nice however. Now everything will work as planned if I manage to get the acceptance package sent to Perú and get my American visa from here…
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First day in Lima
Because I was not really tired, I decided to stay up till the early evening to avoid jetlag. So I enjoyed my breakfest and the very friendly owner of the hostel gave me a map of the area and explained how to get to the important places. I went to a supermarket to buy a few things and get some soles. Fruits are really cheap here (0.50€ per kg of melons for example), but things like ham and juice (whyever) are really expensive (apple juice starts from about 1.40€ per liter which gets you organic juice in Germany).
Afterwards I was tempted to go to the beach, but decided it might be smarter to explore the way to the office without my laptop. I was told there was a microbus running from only two blocks away until a few streets away of IBM, but I couldn’t find the right line and decided to walk to a metro station, because I wanted to try it anyway. It was about 2.5 kilometers, but the area felt save to walk. The metro works like in New York, you only get on with a valid card which you can preload with money. Every ride costs 1.50 soles, less than 40 cents.
Buying the card was a bit difficult, because I didn’t have my passport or ID, but after some discussion it somehow worked without it. The trains and stations are in operation only since a few months and look really clean and well-maintained. Trains run every 15 minutes and are very punctual. I went three stops to a really big road called “Javier Prado” where I finally had the courage to try a microbus.
It’s a really interesting experience. You have multiple lines going through the city and the buses very from very old and rusty to new and big with up to 40 seats. Some just show a number on it, most also some places they’ll be driving to. There is always a driver and a – let’s call him conductor. The conductor always stands in the door and operates it manually. At every stop or simply when there are people on the sideway he tries to get people on the bus by shouting places it goes by. Also those conductors try to speed up people getting on and off by shouting things like “baja, baja, baja” at them. During the drive the conductor also collects the money from people (as far as I figured out between 1 sol and 2.50 soles depending on the trip lenght).
The second one I asked whether it goes to the end of Javier Prado said yes and even offered to tell me when I had to get off to walk to IBM. That worked perfectly, I paid my 1 sol and walked to the office to take a few pictures.
On the way back I wasn’t this lucky and got on the wrong bus, which went to Miraflores (I had asked for that), but not near where I wanted to go. Fortunately I had Google Maps so I got off when it became clear we were heading to the wrong direction and walked about 7 kilometers home, which was nice to see the city and take a few pictures. In general it feels very save (I haven’t been to bad areas though) and is also amazingly clean, you see guards, cleaners, gardeners and policemen everywhere.
Lima!
I just arrived in Lima. The LAN flight had even better service than British Airways and I did not have any problem with my visa. Admission took about 60 seconds. At the customs section I was then lucky. There you have to press a button and randomly a red or green light appears. I had the green light and didn’t need to have my bag checked.
When I got out of the gate I already saw the sign “Mr. Hoffmann” and was greeted nicely. We rode a new Toyota through deserted streets (at 5 a.m.), which are very clean and in good condition, thought some neighborhoods around the airport do not look very appealing. You also see people sleeping next to the steet, but it’s not really many of them.
Because my single room is still occupied until afternoon I now have a group room just for myself even with a balkony. So far Lima looks really nice 🙂
Miami
Till now my travel was smooth. I sat next to a women from Spain on the flight from Berlin to London so we ended up talking about traveling, music and South America mostly in Spanish which was a good start for me, but also reminded me of my limited ability to communicate (understanding works quite well though) compared to English.
On the flight to Miami I unfortunately did not get the seat I booked but a window seat which was nice to get an overview of the Miami area, but a little bit unconfortable as it is more difficult to just get up and take a walk. I had ordered a vegetarian meal which usually is better than the standard meals in my experience and also in this case. The “special meal” passengers got their food before the regular meal was served and it was really good. Unfortunately 10 hours don’t pass that quickly so I read half of the book “My Exile Lifestyle” from Colling Wright. My thoughts about it are covered in this blog post.
Generally the flights till now were better than I had expected, the British Airways staff was really nice on both flights and I did not leave the plane hungry 🙂
It is 20:30 in Miami right now. We arrived from London early, but the passport check took about an hour. Afterwards I actually wanted to go searching a geocache, but as soon as I went outside I had to admit that idea was a bit to spontaneous. Although the area is nice, there are steets and cars everywhere and it is pretty impossible to leave the airport walking.
So I just sat outside for a few minutes enjoying the 30°C and afterwards took the Miami Mover (a train-like, automated bus) to the car rental center to get a little closer to downtown Miami.
There wasn’t much to see over there, leaving the trip itself (3 minutes) to be the main attraction. At this point I realized I would have to spend the remaining four hours differently and went searching for a wireless connectivity inside the airport. I ended up in the Miami International Airport Hotel Lobby with some food and drink from Starbucks (which was quite cheap compared to what else is available here at the airport) and no internet writing this blog post to submit it later (technically tomorrow) in Lima.
Thoughts
I already mentioned the interesting blog of Collin Wreight I found while (not) packing my bags. I wondered about whether I could read it during the trip and the $1.90 book “My Exile Lifestyle” in the Kindle Store seemed to be a good and cheap way for not having to think of a quick way to convert the blog for reading on the kindle.
After having read half of the book on the flight to Miami, I wondered about my motivation to read about other peoples’ traveling experiences and whether it might impair my own desire to explore or instead widen my horizon and thereby encourage digging deeper or at least experiencing a similar experience.
I came to the latter conclusion, because I think traveling is not mainly about going to the sight one after another, which are indeed less interesting the more you already know and have seen about them.
The most interesting aspect of traveling in my opinion is what you can experience in situations, that are at least to some extent unplanned thus allowing and unbiased view on things and the flexiblity to do just what your gut tells your in that very moment or decide between very limited options. Those are the moments where it’s easy or even neccessary to get out of the comfort zone. Now you know the main reason why I usually don’t care about reserving seats on trains.
The journey begins
Though it’s not as fancy because I’m not one of the last passengers exploring the world starting from Tegel Airport as planned, I’ll still start my journey here to arrive in Lima early tomorrow morning after a nearly 24-hour flight (including 8 hours of waiting in London and Miami) totaling to about 12000 kilometers which means a 1/3 earth circumference 🙂
I suffered from procrastination again yesterday morning while trying to pack my things, but as always found some interesting stuff (could read on for hours, the guy really reminds me of *someone*) on the net and still got everything done.
Fortunately I have my business visa, will be picked up from the airport and my accomodation in Lima is organized as well. Obviously I’m very excited about Perú, its people, traditions and whether I’ll be able to communicate 🙂
What I’ll miss:
- My family and friends although I guess that doesn’t come unexpected
- Summer (although winter in Perú is not that bad)
- Our standard of public transportation (even the S-Bahn) and my bike
About this blog: I’ll be writing regularly, whenever I consider something worth sharing. I have thought about which language is most suitable for this blog and decided to write in English not because my English is so nice (it actually isn’t but I’m still trying hard), but because I want the people I meet in Perú and the U.S. to be able to read what I write about my experiences as this will most likely involve them as well. Of course I know this blog is available to anybody on the internet including evil search robots, so I will not mention personal information or names.
Harzquerung
Motivated by brilliant sunshine with 25°C and a good friend whom I met four times during the run I finished the 51km Harzquerung successfully on Saturday, April 28th 2012.
I have to admit that although I did train for about two months in preparation my largest training distance of 32 km was more than a joke compared to the actual run. I wasn’t sure whether I would make it to the finish line in an acceptable time both before and during the race. Nevertheless I had thought about what time might be possible and concluded that based on my training experiences I might make it in 6 hours which would be 8.5 km/h overall.
During the run my main problem was the altitude changes, because I was not used to that at all, so I underestimated the uphill parts. For the first 15 kilometers I really wondered why everybody walked uphill instead of running, so I surpassed several runners (which was difficult on those small paths) only to see them again when we got back down, because most of them sprinted downhill which I considered too risky (I care about my knees). Of course running uphill didn’t continue when I reallized how energy-draining it really was.
So in general it was a huge success and another important milestone, I met nice people, had a nice trip through that wonderful area and enjoyed the good weather. I finished after 5:41:31, so my average speed was 9 km/h for 51 km (1300 meters ascending and 1400 meters descending).
Thanks a lot to the organizers and volunteers who supplied us with food and drinks along the route! I’m pretty sure I’ll do this again 🙂
Previous milestones:
- 10km “City-Nachtlauf” in Berlin on July 31st 2010 in 0:41:43 hours (14.4 km/h)
- 22.1 km “Stadtlauf” in Berlin on August 28th 2011 in 1:33:00 hours (13.6 km/h)
- 10km “IGA-Lauf” in Berlin on May 20th 2012 in 0:44:45 hours (13.4 km/h)
2 minutes or GTA in Munich
It began with a peaceful gathering at our place to eat some delicious Chocolate-Cherry cake and having fun watching “Big Bang Theory”. We then wanted to try the Michaelibad as part of our traditional swim on Sunday, but I thought the train would go 21:18 not 21:16 so we missed it and took the next one to Max-Weber-Platz. There we would have to wait for 8 minutes so I suggested using DriveNow, the next Mini Cooper D was just 150 meters away – this is were the GTA part began. We picked the car, got in and rushed to the Michaelibad – definitely not exceeding the speed limit, but making full use of the car’s acceleration. After a few minutes I noticed some blinking light in the rear mirror and read “STOP POLICE”. I sighed, thought about what I could’ve done wrong and stopped. A friendly policewomen approached us and asked for my license and our destination. She told us we we’re heading in the wrong direction (which turned out to be wrong) and asked whether I’d taken any drugs. She asked over and over again whether I could pass a urine test (“it would reveal consumptions of a few weeks past…”) and we started getting annoyed – since every minute is worth 0.29 € you can’t like pointless conversations with (even though friendly) the police. When she let us go we noticed that we were driving without light. I was used to stop worrying about light, because all Drive-Now cars are equipped with light automatic. I didn’t consider the possibility to switch it off, though. Why didn’t the police say anything about driving without light? I can barely believe they didn’t notice…
We reached the Michaelibad about 10 minutes later than we would have taking the next train and I hit “stop booking” at the screen. It said parking there would be 11 point something €, because we were out of the city zone – of course it can’t be this easy. So I let my friends out and drove west to park in the first parking spot which *was* in the city zone. I left the car at about 21:55 and sprinted around without much orientation, looking for a suitable bus or tram stop, but didn’t find one. My goal would now be to reach Michaelibad again before they close and swim at least 100 meters. So I finally ran to Leuchtenbergring, one minute wait, one station to Ostbahnhof, arrived 21:14, took the U5 at 21:19 and arrived 22:26 (90 seconds late) at the subway station Michaelibad.
I ran to the entry, but nobody was at the cashier’s desk. When I asked an attendant how I could get in and he said it was too late. About to give up I looked around and spotted a machine labeled “tickets”. I feeded it properly and managed to get in at 22:30 (definitely felt a lot better than winning in a computer game), so I was in the water at about 22:35 and still managed to swim 250m and then met the others in the outdoor pool – target exceeded by 250% 😉
Who needs computer games when reality is this thrilling – if you just get the train departure time wrong by two minutes 😉
Weekend
Since ltur offered ICE tickets to Munich for 19€ Fried visited me for the weekend, so we spent the time having fun in Munich 🙂
On Friday evening we did some cooking, enjoyed the brownies and watched “Into the wild” together with two other friends of mine from IBM. I really like the film – it is based on a real story instead of a random hollywood plot and one of those movies you need some time to think about afterwards. As all of us are also adventure seeking to some extend we found the film quite inspiring, but at least I also identified strongly with the criticism about consumerism and its implications on society and personal happyness (which can and will never live up to what is suggested in advertisements in my opinion).
On Saturday we got up a little later than we had wanted, so we couldn’t go swimming in the Danthe-Bad as planned, but as we had some technical difficulties with a certain product we spent an hour or two at the Apple Store instead. Afterwards we met Lud, invited some other friends over for lunch and then tried to find a geocache. We tried using our phones only if absolutely unavoidable, because it was so cold. Unfortunately this lead to a 10 km walk from the train station to where we would’ve had to climb a fence and gave up – the way back was just 3 kilometers, but at least we did a pretty nice walk…
Directly afterwards we were invited to a little homeparty where we ate some nice vegan food and then played kinect for the rest of the night, I even had to survive a bootcamp 🙂
For Sunday we had planned to eat organic Weißwurst at the Milchhäusl and afterwards take the train to the Bodensee, but again the time plan was too tough, so we went to Schliersee, which was beautiful, the lake was frozen so we went to the little island and looked for another cache. We couldn’t find it – most probably it was hidden under snow and returned to the civilization to get warm feet again. When we arrived back in Munich we then caught up to visiting the Milchhäusl and had some great food there. What a nice weekend!
Brownies
I got a truly wonderful recepe for American Brownies from a collegue. It is quite easy, genuinely American, and really tasty. I tried it twice already, it’s really nice if you get some visitors because a baking tray worth of brownies can sustain 4 people for a whole day 🙂
Here’s the recepe (yes, it’s that simple):
1,5 cups = 180gr cocoa
1,25cups = 150gr wheat
0,5 spoons of salt
3cups = 675gr sugar
6 eggs
2 TL vanilla flavour
12 oz = 335gr melded butter
Mix all the ingredients thoroughly and pour it onto a baking tray. Bake at 180°C for 15 minutes. Afterwards it will be very soft, just wait until it’s cold and enjoy perfect brownies!