Längerer Beitrag – schneller Überblick:
Sri Lanka - here we go!
Today we are on the road. At last we're off. The night was strange, somehow I wasn't excited at all, but still couldn't sleep that well. My toothache woke me up at 0 o'clock. Hach, I think I am excited after all.
In the morning, when the alarm clock rang, I was also immediately awake and had to get up - something quite rare. Apparently I am more than excited...
So, off we go. Into the great adventure. Into the adventure of Asia. All four of us are in Asia for the first time and each of us probably has different expectations.
Meanwhile, my personal ones have been scaled back completely. I'm a little scared of all the new things, the language, the noise and the smells. I love all that. But all that scares me a little. As much as I like new things, a mixture of fear and curiosity makes me tingle.
I have no idea how the four of us will get along. Our Kathi has been living alone for so long now, will we be able to adapt? Our Moppi is a bit older now, can he have fun with us?
All these questions are running through my head. Will my toothache go away? The cold might also go away. Will we have a good holiday as a family? What will we experience? What will be the memories of our trip? The most important thing in life is probably that we have shared experiences and carry them in our hearts forever.
Thinking about it, my wish for this holiday is that we will plant some beautiful memories in our hearts. Each to his own. To each his own.
Our Poschi leaves at 8.14 a.m. for Düsseldorf via Biel and Basel. I picked out a very early train connection. Okay, maybe a bit too early. Because the Deutsche Bahn had completely punctual arrival times today. So we arrived in Düsseldorf at 14.30, Kathi was already there a few minutes earlier, she was from Hamburg.
The joy that we were now all together was enormous. Mausi had brought a French roll for all of us, which we greedily devoured on the platform - what a great feast on Christmas Eve.
Then we went on to the airport. Here we wandered around for a short while. Until we decided to have a nice meal at the hotel and have our visas printed out. We had forgotten to do that at home. We were the only ones in the restaurant - who goes out to eat at 4 o'clock on Christmas Eve?
We stayed there until shortly before 6, then we played a few rounds of table football in the hotel corridor and went to the toilet to change. We put on all our summer clothes, stowed winter shoes, jackets and scarves in a travel bag, which we were finally allowed to leave at the hotel for the next 2 weeks after a bit of stress with the luggage office (closed at 3 pm because of Christmas Eve).
Now we were already quite busy. We checked in, handed in our backpacks and bags and went through security. Okay, here they noticed our baked apples in the glass and we were not allowed to take them inside. Great danger...
So we left the security zone again and ate the baked apples in a café in the airport building, with fresh cream for those with a sweet tooth. To warm up the baked apples a bit, we ordered some tea. Totally improvised, but hey, we're backpackers and mega cool.
Round 2 through the security check and this time everything is tiptop. Off to the plane and off we go on our Sri Lankan adventure via Dubai. Emirates, here we come.
Ah well, just for a moment, we are really light on the road, Kathi and I each have 4.8 kilos of luggage, Moppi even less and Gerd is the only one with a bit more in his rucksack, because he got all the sun creams, mosquito sprays and chargers packed in...
Now we are sitting in the Airbus 380, a huge machine with 2 floors. Such a huge thing, insane. Super-friendly staff, mega-cool entertainment and the vegan food was awesome. So, after eating and watching a film, we snooze for another 3 hours and we're in Dubai.
I am so grateful for the journey. Gerd, I love you for doing all these things with us. I love our children that they travel with us and are somehow already really cool. They go along with my ideas, respect my quirks (i.e. my grandiose surprises) and as a team I think we are super.
Info:
Flight with www.emirates.com
Rail travel in Germany is included with Emirates, see here for info (Unfortunately, this info is no longer available).
Travel guide: Stefan Loose Travel Guide Sri Lanka
Great Facebook group to travel in Sri Lanka
Shownotes: https://www.leben-pur.ch/002-sri-lanka-tag-1/
