People's stories

During our Sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands one of our little projects grew quite a bit. Sharing the boat with 25 other people provides a lot of sources for stories, sayings, travel advice, life advice and foreign characters written into my red travel diary. (Though it doesn't quite look like it, I am very excited about this!)

By now I have collected thoughts and well-wishes in Chinese, Hindi, Farsi, Korean, Dutch, Swedish, French,  Australian, Maori, German, Swiss German, Bavarian, and, of course, English. The topics range from travel advice to folk music to life advice to surgical insights as well as direct orders from "commander fun". Thank you to everyone who contributed - it is so inspiring to read from you. As promised I will read out all your pieces of wisdom on New Years Eve somewhere on a Fiji beach. For those who did contribute a song, I will sing it, whatsoever (perhaps I should give Philipp Oropax for x-mas ;-P ). All those who also want their words to be read in Fiji on New Years either book your flight now or post something into the comments.

When I was a little school girl we had these books that were supposed to hold poems or little drawings from your class-mates - mine was blue with flowers. If you were very brave (or an absolute geek-nerd) you would also ask your mean English-teacher to fill one of the pages. She did ... with the poem below, which left me wondering what she wanted to tell me for weeks. I was scared!

There was a young lady from Riga,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.

They returned from the ride
  With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Another poem proved itself right so many times already:

The crossroads of life don't come with any directions.
(Translated from the German "An den Kreuzungen des Lebens stehen keine Wegweiser")

Especially these days it puts a little smile on my face, considering who wrote it into my poem book about 25 years ago. Thanks, Mum ;-)


Our own (travel) story currently takes a rest in Sydney. We enjoy a few days with no big plans before we leave the country heading to New Zealand. Our Whitsunday pictures are online now. Check out the album to see all pictures from this beautiful place on earth. 3 days on sea also brought our "Natural Tan" project a few steps ahead. Martina proved that 30+ sunscreen actually works - IF you are capable of applying it properly ... And Philipp decided to go for the "Natural T-Shirt" version. Glenf and Sören of course are way ahead in terms of coloring. So far, so wonderful ;-)