Hello everyone! After the surprise farewell committee had assembled at the airport (thank you Volker and Matthias!) a fairly uneventful trip evolved. Maybe I just did not notice much, since I slept like a baby after the two glasses of champaign I had so early in the morning. I was surprised, however, that Iberia would only sell overpriced sandwiches on the three-hour flight to Madrid and that, on the 12 hour flight Madrid-Buenos Aires, they would serve just lunch and a snack! More impressive was the drinking ability of many of the Spanish and Argentinian guys on the long flight. The highlight certainly was when one of them even lit a cigar at some stage. I have never seen so many heads turning in a plane...

With one of the chaps who certainly belonged to the top group as far as boozing up in no time was concerned - he happened to sit in the seat row behind me - I had my first real conversation in Spanish. Sort of. I have no real idea what it was about, actually. But he kept shaking the half empty wine bottle in front of my face and was really friendly. Later, he switched over to just burping and snoring.

And then Buenos Aires. I believe many books have already been written on the driving habits of the Argentinians, so I will keep my comments brief. But I am impressed! First I noticed, that nobody seems to really care about switching on the lights when driving at night, not even on the motorways. That said, many cars certainly do not even have a single functional light source anymore. I have never seen so many obviously totally crashed cars actually driving! This is clearly a miracle I will have to investigate a little more. Then I was pleasantly surprised about the paintings of the streets - in Europe we tend to call them lane markings. Here, they clearly serve only decorative purposes. And then I came to realize for the first time that you really do not need any more then about 5 cm distance between cars while driving, not even when going at 120 kilometers an hour... The taxi driver gave perfect proof for that. He was a very skilled also at managing to squeeze his vehicle into impossibly narrow-seeming spaces between other cars and elegantly taking over on the right-hand side wherever possible. Whow!

Today, I spent a couple of hours walking about. And yes Buenos Aires is big. Very big. And very crowded. Berlin seems a rather provincial town compared to this (not to speak of Dresden). And I do have to improve my Spanish. I am very grateful that all the folks I met were happy to have conversations with me in my non-existing Spanish, but it sure is frustrating if you can not even communicate the most basic things...

And it is a beautiful city.

...the great party. Thank you everyone for showing up and making this a memorable night! Very special thanks to those of you who have been coming such a long way just for the party - from Dresden, Florence, Barcelona, and even Sydney!
After only three hours of sleep, I am quite tired now and will turn in really soon, but I did enjoy the party heaps! Sad, we can not have another party like this for a while (at least not together). But there will certainly be a "Back-Home" party when I have returned. You can find a few more pics from the party on this site, too.
So now it just slowly dawns on me I will be off soon.

Why is he quitting work and life in Dresden? Just to travel? And what after that? - I can hear you ask those questions... Well, the answer is easy and difficult at the same time. First, I decided it was high time I realized my dream of taking some time off and go traveling. Friends will know I was pondering this move for quite a while. And they might already have been annoyed by this (hello L.!). The time is NOW. It is certainly no good to keep hoping for a better opportunity to do this in the future, that is never going to come. Plus, I am unfortunately not growing any younger. And then, I realized, I would be probably looking back to this time in a few years from now and think "why didn't I do it then..." In fact, my decision did not have to do much with work. Work is (was!) mainly fine. But work is not life. It is a part of it - an important one, admittedly.

So who knows - I might be back working for Inferno (oh, excuse me - but my ex-colleagues might appreciate this little pun!) in about a year from now. Or I might end up as a diving instructor on Bali. Or grow potatoes in Patagonia, or apples in Tasmania, or... Who knows. Any recommendations from your side? ;-)

In a nutshell, I am currently giving the realization of a personal dream priority over career. And what is to come after traveling, to be quite frank, I do not know yet. I feel, however, I do not need to have a set plan at the moment. But I have rarely been more positive about a decision in my life!

So what's the plan right now? - That is much easier to answer! I will fly over to Buenos Aires on October 5, improve my as yet almost non-existent Spanish, and then travel through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador. There is lots of opportunity for many a good walk and I will certainly take my camera... Once "done" in South America I will see to catch a plane to Oz and probably first settle for a month or so in Melbourne or Sydney. When I had enough holidays from traveling I will grab a car and drive around for a few months - looking forward to seeing all you friends down there! Oh yes, and then there is still the North Island in New Zealand which I almost entirely missed beginning of this year. After Oz/NZ  the plan is rather vague - maybe South-East-Asia, maybe an other trip to Japan (will you still be there, J.? considering you decided to take a one-way ticket to get there...), maybe Nepal, India... or on the Trans-Siberian back into Europe from China? I will see how things are the closer this gets.

So much for now. Let me know if there should be other questions not answered.

So here I am, sitting at my desk in Dresden. My last week at work - only four more days to go. Preparations are starting to get more stressful, more focused on the actual departure. Still have to arrange things with my apartment and the new tenant, where to leave my furniture, sort out health insurance etc. Still have not yet even booked my first flight... But the travel bug strongly comes to life, I can feel that. What a luxurious itching!

Today I had my appointment with the unemployment agency ("Agentur für Arbeit"), which was scheduled for three-quarters of an hour - and only took a quick five minutes. Dead easy. And I even had a competent person to deal with. What a surprise after my previous encounters. I just wish all the other paper work would turn out to be that simple.

Can not believe that in only a month from now the adventure will have already started! And I am sure looking forward to my great farewell party in Berlin on October 1st. See you there?!