oliabroad :: Oli on his way from Munich to Hong Kong

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2010-06-04
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Finally the pix are online! :-)

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Diary - 2009 January (India)

2009-01-08 to 2009-01-19

Palolem

Palolem is just great! Everything you need is in walking distance. And everything is cheap. Food is good, not to many beggars. And the most important thing it's just the perfect white beach, small island offshore, rocks and palms - just like on a picture postcard!

I just had to check the days I spent here already - I thought it was at least a month, but it's just about 10 days. We just have breakfast, eventually a swim, not too much sport, time for a book and of course the boogie boarding at turtle beach! It's a great life here! And so cheap! :-)

On my birthday I had a chilly day and then I met up with seven 'Palolem-friends' for the sunset having some cocktails. Later on we had a very nice Indian dinner at my place including perfect jumbo prawns and more cocktails. The programme for the night were the usual places - cafe del mare and cocktails and dreams - as too many people decided to buy me some drinks I had to go home at approximately half three - although the best at partying here is to see the sunrise and enjoy the early atmosphere on the beach. Anyway - I am 34 now and life's good! :-)

2008-12-30 to 2009-01-08

Visiting Oli in Goa - A guest comment from Timo

Do you know where to go after we have landed in Goa?, No, but I am sure Oli will pick us up directly at the airport with some beers.

Well, it turned out that this last Monday in December 2008 my wife Katrin and I were mentally still in cold Munich and needed some days to adapt to the place where we were travelling to: Goa in India. We were visiting my good friend Oli for 10 days. Oli left Munich during 2007 (or 2008, the correct date is completely open for interpretations) and since then is on a tour to Hongkong - by car.

During 2008, when I worked together with Oli in good old Sofia, Bulgaria on an 18 months project for the local telecoms incumbent, he finished his - more or less - detailed, final tour plan and explained to me that he will be in Goa for New Years Eve 2008-09. My immediate reaction was to promise him to visit him there. Flights (at this time) were supposed to be rare over Christmas and New Years Eve, so I decided to book a flight for me and my wife Katrin right away. After the horrible terrorist attacks on Mumbai during November 2008 the entire situation around tourism in India changed completely, but who had expected such a tragedy?

I had started a new job in September 08 which led to 4 months of very hard work and very long working hours. In fact these four months left me with hardly any energy when we started our trip to Goa. Katrin at this time still had to wake up 4-5 times a night to take care of our second daughter who just did not want to sleep through the entire night. What can I say, we were both desperate for relaxation.

In order to actually go on the trip to India we had to find a place for our two kids. Long story short, in the end we had planned a fully featured holiday schedule for our elder daughter Leena including skiing, swimming, horse back riding, visiting her cousins, grandparents and schools mates. Our younger daughter stayed with my parents (and nearly did not want to leave from there after our return).

Without the great support from my family, namely my parents, my brother and his family and our good friends Monika and Gerhard this trip would not have hapened! We are very thankful and impressed about all the great support that we have received from our family and friends!

Our trip started in Munich on December 29th at 8am at the Munich central station where we left by train to Frankfurt from where our flight departed at 3pm. After a 4 hours train trip, 2 hour 6 hours flight to Dubai, where we had to exit the aircraft we continued to Goa where we finally arrived at 5.30 am in the morning (GMT +5,5 hours). I think you can image in what mood we were; totally tired, sorting out our curly legs and verspannungen. I think at this time we both could exactly describe the term burn out.

The way through customs took ages, the luggage arrived fast. After we went through the Exit doors we were surrounded by a lot of people who wanted to carry our luggage, drive us to our hotel or anything that you want. I thought No problem, Oli will secure us in a minute. I scanned the entry hall, no sign of Oli. We went out of the airport building, no sign of Oli. We went to the parking place of the airport, no sign of Oli. We left the airport area, no sign of Oli. My immediate reaction was This does not work as planned, you should be sitting in a car by now drinking a cold beer on the way to a great beach!. It must have been a mental thing and the more I thought about it the clearer it became to me. How could we expect that Oli, after travelling for nine months through Eastern Europe, the Middle East and India, without a diary, without a watch, with hardly a plan, in a country like India, with all the relaxed atmosphere (at this time I actually did not know how relaxing life at the beaches of Goa can be, but I was just about to find out) that surrounds him could be on time at the airport. To tell you the truth, Oli was just 15 minutes late, which in India is a timeframe that people hardly count (I think they only count days, not even hours) but for us it was frightening. We should learn quickly how relaxed life can be and how unimportant 15 minutes really are. But at this point we were just tired and disordered. Anyhow, Oli turned up and all he wore was a pair of Bavarian Lederhosn (leather pants) and a shirt. It was so good to see my friend!

The whole take it easy mentality escorted us to the hotel (a 1 hour drive took us nearly three hours). From the minute when we arrived at the hotel our holiday begun and it should not end before the minute when we entered our plane back to Germany!

There is not much to say about the hotel: 5 stars, great rooms, great bars and restaurants, a stunning beach and a very nice pool. It took Katrin and me three to four days to completely recharge our batteries. I have to apologise that we were not 100% in party mode but again it was so nice to see how Oli gave us the necessary time to relax and recover from our past half year. Somehow I felt like Oli also needed some relaxing days though.

Of course we had a great New Years Eve party at the hotel. Of course we danced a lot, had some drinks and a bottle of Champaign and of course Oli invited the nicest girls on stage to join in. Unfortunately the Russian boy friends of those girls did not really like this a lot and sent their body guards to “save” the girls. In the end the three of us had a really great party!

More and more we began to start with some other activities than just relaxing at the pool. We went Jet skiing, Katrin went for some spa treatments; we even went to a finnish sauna twice. One night we joined a Typically Indian Festival organised by the hotel for the tourists. Well you make up your mind how “typical” this event was. For us it was again an excellent supper with lots of chatting, laughing, drinking and dancing.

We spent some nights at the beach bar with great food, nice Russians and funny music. One night in the hotel casino nearly refreshed our minds by showing us how much money you can lose in a very, very (!!!) short time. But we did not allow this to bring us down. I think we closed the evening after good food, some drinks and taking funny pictures of ourselves.

One day we went shopping - you know, all the gifts had to be bought at some time anyhow. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to experience real India - I mean the India outside our 5 star hotel. So we definitely have to go back to India and do some travelling. I am sure Oli can advise us where to go and explore this great country. During our shopping trip we at least saw some scenes of India - some were shocking, some were impressive, all were good to see. After 8 days Katrin had to leave and fly back to Germany. The flight departed at 6.30 in the morning. Of course Oli and I as real gentlemen drove Katrin to the airport. Travellers were advised to be three hours before departure at the airport. This meant we had to leave the hotel at ~3 am. At this time I think Katrin was very relaxed and has recharged her batteries, which was very good to see! I know that she enjoyed this trip very much and hopefully we will visit Oli again, some time, some place.

I had the great opportunity to stay two more days and Oli had a fantastic place for us - just 1 hour drive south on a lovely beach called Palolem. This place is very hard to describe but I will give it a try. Palolem Beach is ~1 km long in a little bay framed by palm trees. The sand is golden and the water is a mixture between blue and green, just so that you can still see the dolphins swimming by. The wooden cottages are built into the first row of palm trees and so are little restaurants, coffee shops and bars. In little shops at the “main street” you get what ever you need (for living, not for luxury). The

atmosphere is somewhere between Hang Loose, Let go and Take it easy. As I said, it is really hard to describe this perfect little place. I am very thankful that I could stay at Palolem Beach for two days. One out of the two days we spent at Turtle Beach, just 20 minutes south of Palolem. Turtle Beach is the same aa Palolem Beach just without people. It is unbelievable how gifted this country and its people is. We went to Turtle Beach to do Boogie Boarding - a funny and easy way of riding the waves. Ok, in some cases it was more wave diving than wave riding but we had lots of fun with Oli and Julia (a nice German girl that Oli knew from his tour).

My flight back home also departed at 6.30, so the second night at Palolem was fairly short and Oli was so kind to share the early wake up call with me to drive me to the Aiport (~1,5 hours drive).

Putting it all together, this holiday was fantastic, stunning, outstanding and so necessary. I have learned a lot and I have also taken lots of things back to Germany.

Again I want to thank everybody who enabled this trip for us! Especially I want to thank you, Oli for arranging this great time for us! You always knew in what mood we would arrive and thank you so much that you planned this trip (for us) so that we could leave India in a fantastic mood!

Katrin and I wish you all the best and we are looking forward to seeing you when the time is right!

For us it was just holiday, for you its live - enjoy it!

Warmest regards from Munich, Germany
Timo & Katrin


	Start: 2008-04-10					Oli on his way from Munich to Hong Kong				End: 2010-05-12