We were stuck in Cartagena for a couple of days and mostly stayed inside the air conditioned room so there is little to say about it. It doesn't matter though, because we were not going to bore you with another post about all the amazing things we did and saw anyways. Instead we wanted to take the opportunity to for once tell you a bit about the other side of the medal. So we did. It's a one time thing, so enjoy it while it lasts before we'll go back to good old boring stories about our awesome, perfect experiences...:)
The good.
We have been traveling for quite some time now and we have taken you on our journey so you know it: we are having a great time, meeting awesome people, seeing incredible things, trying out new activities and diving into fascinating different cultures. We are definitely living our dream and would never want to change any of it!
The bad.
Traveling is not easy. It's not sleeping in, staying out late, eating fantastic food and forgetting about all your worries in the meantime. It is actually hard work. Not knowing where you'll get your food from, where you will sleep and where you'll be tomorrow can be exhausting over such a long period of time and there are days when we could fall asleep instantly at any given minute.
Having a routine at home might sound boring for most of you but for us it sounds pretty good because it actually means not having to make decisions about every little detail of your daily life. While traveling you don't have a routine so not only the question of what to buy but also the ones of when and where to buy it need answers. Finding a place to stay, deciding for a restaurant and choosing a dish from a menu are no brainers – but having to make hundreds of these little choices every day make them add up to become quite the toughies. Add to that the immense mass of new impressions that constantly cram your brain and you understand why we are tired after almost 10 months on the road.
Unfortunately you don't get to sleep that tiredness off in your own bed. Instead you end up in too soft or too hard beds in too hot or too cold rooms that you mostly share with everything from 4 to 20 people, half of which usually go to bed at unnatural times while the other half snores louder than a helicopter.
Privacy is a complete luxury – especially when it comes to bathrooms. Imagine not taking a shower without your flip-flops for 12 months, always having to hold your thumbs for hot water (or any water at all...) and sharing your toilet with tons of people of which a couple always have travelers diarrhea and you get an idea of a typical bathroom-situation. Speaking of diarrhea – no, we won't get into details here, but lets just say you get what you give, and we have eaten pretty 'interesting' stuff from time to time...
Regarding food – it's fun and most often delicious to try out new stuff, but sometimes a good piece of bread or some comfort soup from mom or just anything you know would be nice for a change. You can't imagine how much a person can crave Quark, certain cakes and a good cold Hefeweizen in the sun...
The ugly.
It is one thing to travel in Australia, New Zealand and the like. It is a whole different thing to go to countries like Cambodia or Bolivia. You see things you never thought being possible – what people do in order not to starve (children working, women selling themselves, men on drugs to not get hungry and animals eating each other are the least horrible of many options) and the way they have to live without house, water, bed, power, nutritious food and mostly any affection is unbearable at times. It challenges our emotions more than we would have thought possible, especially having to realize again and again that there is nothing we can do to help these people. The massive inequality of rich and poor in this world is something that we witness all the time and the guilt of being so rich in relation to the people we meet and still being so helpless when it comes to changing something about their situation is our most loyal travel companion. It's a beautiful world we live in, but not a fair one.
There are many more annoying things (the feeling of having seen this before, getting stuck with your transportation, running out of money with no banks anywhere close, making plans that just never come together, all the bugs in food, beds and clothes,...) that are part of traveling and make the whole difference between what we do and going on vacation for two weeks.
Don't get us wrong – most of the time we just enjoy. The shared bathrooms are clean, the changing beds are good enough for sound sleeping and the rowdy people in the dorms are also the ones that we like best. We eat great food, fight off the few bugs that attack us with a whiff of deet and try to support poorer communities in responsible ways through eating at their restaurants, buying their crafts and the like. Annoyances are just some hick-ups that we expected to happen so they don't bother us so much and actually make us laugh most of the time. Still this is surely not for everyone. So, to sum it all up: We absolutely love what we are doing but there is also no reason for you to be jealous! And whenever you get bored by any of our good time stories just remember that we probably had to fight off a huge old spider that was crawling up the laptop while writing it down – maybe the thought of the look on our faces doing that makes you laugh as well :)
We have been traveling for quite some time now and we have taken you on our journey so you know it: we are having a great time, meeting awesome people, seeing incredible things, trying out new activities and diving into fascinating different cultures. We are definitely living our dream and would never want to change any of it!
The bad.
Traveling is not easy. It's not sleeping in, staying out late, eating fantastic food and forgetting about all your worries in the meantime. It is actually hard work. Not knowing where you'll get your food from, where you will sleep and where you'll be tomorrow can be exhausting over such a long period of time and there are days when we could fall asleep instantly at any given minute.
Having a routine at home might sound boring for most of you but for us it sounds pretty good because it actually means not having to make decisions about every little detail of your daily life. While traveling you don't have a routine so not only the question of what to buy but also the ones of when and where to buy it need answers. Finding a place to stay, deciding for a restaurant and choosing a dish from a menu are no brainers – but having to make hundreds of these little choices every day make them add up to become quite the toughies. Add to that the immense mass of new impressions that constantly cram your brain and you understand why we are tired after almost 10 months on the road.
Unfortunately you don't get to sleep that tiredness off in your own bed. Instead you end up in too soft or too hard beds in too hot or too cold rooms that you mostly share with everything from 4 to 20 people, half of which usually go to bed at unnatural times while the other half snores louder than a helicopter.
Privacy is a complete luxury – especially when it comes to bathrooms. Imagine not taking a shower without your flip-flops for 12 months, always having to hold your thumbs for hot water (or any water at all...) and sharing your toilet with tons of people of which a couple always have travelers diarrhea and you get an idea of a typical bathroom-situation. Speaking of diarrhea – no, we won't get into details here, but lets just say you get what you give, and we have eaten pretty 'interesting' stuff from time to time...
Regarding food – it's fun and most often delicious to try out new stuff, but sometimes a good piece of bread or some comfort soup from mom or just anything you know would be nice for a change. You can't imagine how much a person can crave Quark, certain cakes and a good cold Hefeweizen in the sun...
The ugly.
It is one thing to travel in Australia, New Zealand and the like. It is a whole different thing to go to countries like Cambodia or Bolivia. You see things you never thought being possible – what people do in order not to starve (children working, women selling themselves, men on drugs to not get hungry and animals eating each other are the least horrible of many options) and the way they have to live without house, water, bed, power, nutritious food and mostly any affection is unbearable at times. It challenges our emotions more than we would have thought possible, especially having to realize again and again that there is nothing we can do to help these people. The massive inequality of rich and poor in this world is something that we witness all the time and the guilt of being so rich in relation to the people we meet and still being so helpless when it comes to changing something about their situation is our most loyal travel companion. It's a beautiful world we live in, but not a fair one.
There are many more annoying things (the feeling of having seen this before, getting stuck with your transportation, running out of money with no banks anywhere close, making plans that just never come together, all the bugs in food, beds and clothes,...) that are part of traveling and make the whole difference between what we do and going on vacation for two weeks.
Don't get us wrong – most of the time we just enjoy. The shared bathrooms are clean, the changing beds are good enough for sound sleeping and the rowdy people in the dorms are also the ones that we like best. We eat great food, fight off the few bugs that attack us with a whiff of deet and try to support poorer communities in responsible ways through eating at their restaurants, buying their crafts and the like. Annoyances are just some hick-ups that we expected to happen so they don't bother us so much and actually make us laugh most of the time. Still this is surely not for everyone. So, to sum it all up: We absolutely love what we are doing but there is also no reason for you to be jealous! And whenever you get bored by any of our good time stories just remember that we probably had to fight off a huge old spider that was crawling up the laptop while writing it down – maybe the thought of the look on our faces doing that makes you laugh as well :)
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