Fernweh

In about 24 hours I’ll be home in Switzerland after about 11 months. How weird is that?
I’ve had a lovely time here in Singapore despite my nasty cold, doing shopping and eating yummy food with Amy. Also, again I managed to be here for the Lantern Festival in the Chinese Garden – this year’s topic [...]

Arrived in Singapore and was met by Amy last night. Unfortunately I now have a proper cold/flu and am coughing and running a temperature, in addition to some inexplainable stomach problems. Despite this I’m enjoying spending time with Amy again and we had fun shopping in the city today. Monsoon is early this year, so [...]

I’ve paid the first half of my plane ticket, so I now have a schedule for leaving New Zealand. Needless to say I’m not happy about it.
But here are the dates:
June 19: last exam
visit Denise, pack and ship all my stuff
June 28: Meredith moves into my room
travel the South Island, spend a couple [...]

I took almost 400 photos over the course of the five weeks – visit my photo album to see all of them!

As I'm trying to find my footing here again, I've played around with something: Before I left, I created a 'good stuff' playlist – just random songs (74 of them) I enjoyed, some new, some old.
I actually didn't listen to as much music on this trip as I normally do, mainly because in Japan [...]

So now I'm on my way home and Japan is really behind me. Had a lovely day yesterday, though – karaoke in those little karaoke 'boxes' really is a lot of fun, and the National Museum was very interesting, too. I even managed to fit all the books and souvenirs I'd bought into my suitcase, [...]

Today is my last day in Japan – tomorrow will be spent traveling, and Monday morning I'll arrive in Switzerland. Because my plane will arrive early no train from Basel gets to the airport in time, so I'll have to make my own way home, sadly enough… But enough of this, as I'll have six [...]

Slowly but surely it is getting to the point where I have to count the hours I have left to spend in Japan… On Tuesday, after traveling all day, I was picked up by two friendly young ladies, Nozomi and Mie (who is half-Swiss French) at Tokyo station, who brought me safely to my hostel [...]

Had a lovely relaxing time in Sounkyo (although the weather didn't always cooperate and the famous gorge was partly closed due to rockslides) and the farming village of Bibaushi, where I rambled over the fields and stayed up late (until almost 11pm! *g*) chatting with a nice bloke from Amsterdam.
Only back here in familiar [...]

I must say, it feels good to be out of cities for a spell… Much less stressful rushing around, more just taking the beautiful nature in. Of course, the mountains are not specifically Japanese, but they're sporting the most beautiful autumn colors – and yesterday, I even saw snow!
Glad to say it was only [...]