Hahn missed the boat

At 10 minutes past 5:00, I look at my watch, startled. “Your stupid rooster should have been shouting at us ten minutes ago. He seems to have overslept! Get up,” I say to Tanja and immediately start getting dressed. Because of the effort involved, we decided to get up before sunrise again to take advantage of the early morning hours when the master is still asleep. Because of the swarms of mosquitoes, we have to put on long pants and the windstopper jacket. Then we leave our fabric dwelling. Although we are very fast and forgo our breakfast, it takes us an hour to get our bikes ready to go. Then we push the trestles through high grass and through the spruce forest until we reach the road. The sun has recently risen and casts its light through bizarre holes in the clouds. “Ahh, it’s a relief to have escaped the mosquitoes!” I shout, leaving the dark swarms behind us. “Yes, it’s really good that they can’t follow our bikes,” Tanja replies, also relieved. Although there is still no breeze, we have to climb a slight elevation for an hour. Then we reach a small café. “Kuschet jeest”, ( there is food ) says the nice landlady. Because we set off without breakfast, we are now ravenous after 38 kilometers. I devour two Lachman and half a loaf of bread. Then we quench our thirst with a few cups of tea. Truck and car drivers also enter the service area restaurant. Although we are too tired to answer all the questions, we still explain our route to everyone.

Preserving the earth’s paradise for our descendants

“Do you have children?” a driver wants to know, as is so often the case. “Children? No, we don’t have any,” I reply as usual. “What, no children? Is everything all right with you?” he asks with a dirty laugh. “I think so,” I say, snorting loudly and laughing too. “Well, if everything is fine, you must have children, right?” he replies. As is so often the case, we then try to explain that we have dedicated our lives to traveling and that such often strenuous and sometimes dangerous undertakings are far too risky for children. The man doesn’t understand and shakes his head. For most people on this earth, bringing children into the world is the highest goal in life. Especially in Muslim countries. For almost everyone, trading children for a journey through life is incomprehensible and intangible. Soon every day we will be explaining why we are traveling, explaining that we want to build bridges of understanding between different cultures, religions and peoples, that we want to educate and dispel misunderstandings through our reporting, that it is our wish to leave a clean and viable world for the children of tomorrow, that they too will have the chance to see real trees and hear birds chirping and how important it is to keep our planet clean and to respect nature, to see it as inseparable from ourselves and although people are listening, many still do not understand how important the need for action by each individual has become. We often lack the language skills to explain such details. We realize that we cannot touch the hearts of everyone we meet, but the success of our work shows us that there are more and more people on earth who want to think outside the box, that there are more and more people who are using their strength and energy to save our life platform, Mother Earth, in order to preserve the paradise Earth for our descendants.

The master obviously shows mercy and blows into our backs at a slight angle. We enjoy and remain silent. Don’t want to make him change his mind again. We know how moody he is and how easy it is for him to make us flutter our eyelashes upwards.

It is only 14:50 when Tanja discovers a clay track leading from the road to a forest island. “What do you mean?” she asks. “Looks good,” I reply contentedly and let my bike glide down the embankment. Then we have to push again. A waist-high sea of flowers bends down in front of our front tires. Mosquitoes flee from their hiding places and birds chirp. I pause for a moment to concentrate. My gaze glides back and forth along the edge of the forest. A green ledge promises us a view of the road. “There!” I shout and we push our luggage further through the lush meadow. We find a suitable clearing under large birch trees. While Tanja catches her breath, I tread down the summer meadow and spread out our tarpaulin on which we settle down. It only takes minutes for sleep to overtake us. An hour later, we get up again to pitch our tent and put our sleeping gear inside. Then Tanja prepares dinner for us. “Look at the sky. There won’t be a thunderstorm, will there?” she asks. “Looks like it,” I reply, studying the fast-moving clouds. I’m taking a bite of my tomato-topped bread when suddenly a veritable wall of water approaches us at breakneck speed. “It’s a downpour! We have to get everything into the tent quickly!” I shout, but before we can get up, the rain catches us. We are barely sitting in the sweltering heat in the humid tent when the rain stops. We crawl back outside to continue our meal. The clouds are clearing and it’s hot. Ideal conditions for mosquitoes. At 21:00 we retire to the tent. As the evening sun throws its heat rays directly onto our dwelling through a wide corridor of trees, it soon becomes unbearably hot inside. We slither back and forth on our sleeping mats in our own sweat and suffer. We can’t stay outside because we are mercilessly stabbed and inside it’s like an oven. Even after the sun has set, the temperature reading on our thermometer barely drops. I don’t fall into a light sleep until four in the morning.

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