Christian had the idea for this blog. He had looked at my photos including comments on Instagram.
“You should actually write a blog,” he said.
“Why?”
“Your comments are good and in a blog you could write in more detail.”
“Hmm. How does something like that work?”
My generation you still wrote everything down by hand and you did it on paper and not online. Unfortunately, my travel diaries were all destroyed by a flood.
“Why not. If you help me.”
“Sure.”
No sooner said than done. From that day on I started preparing texts, looking for photos, which I later wanted to turn into reality with Christian’s help. The texts are not revised by a proofreader, but told as I tell them when someone asks me. 😊
My head was full of ideas and now it was time to sort everything out.
I love travelling. I think I was born with that in my cradle. My mother travelled with me and my grandma when I couldn’t even walk properly.
She took advantage of the fact that in the GDR, where I grew up, single mothers were given preference when it came to travel. Now some might argue that this was not so, but in my case it was true. So I spent every holiday somewhere in a socialist foreign country, because you weren’t allowed to travel anywhere else. I liked it very much. Sure, I can’t remember some of the trips as a toddler, but on the slides and old photos my mother took, I always look happy and laugh a lot.
When I went to school, my mother still made sure that we travelled together during the holidays. We were never at home during the holidays. Now we also travelled around the GDR together. The fact that my mother always got a holiday place was perhaps also due to the fact that she took what was available. No matter where we went and how often we had been there, there was always something new to discover.
Later, as a schoolchild, I had more holidays than my mother. But even then my mother always found a solution. Every company had holiday camps for the children of their employees. So in addition to our holidays together, I also went to holiday camps. Here, too, I was not demanding, but went to whatever was available, because here, too, there was something new to discover and other children to get to know.
The time of the holiday camps also came to an end, but after that there was Jugendtourist. Jugendtourist was the FDJ’s travel agency. To travel with Jugendtourist, you had to be at least 14 years old and a member of the FDJ youth organisation. The membership fee was very low and the trips were very cheap.
You could only travel to socialist countries with Jugendtourist. They were always guided group trips with a set programme. They were available from a certain day in the Jugendtourist office. On such a day, you had to queue at least 3 hours before opening time to get a place at all, and with a bit of luck you could then choose where the trip should go. Many only wanted to travel in twos, threes, etc. and not to the same destination twice.
Again, I wasn’t picky about the destination, no matter where and how often. I also always travelled alone. Since they were group trips, I met a lot of young people anyway. So everything was okay. Since I travelled somewhere every holiday, the travel agency manager slowly got to know me. If he couldn’t get rid of a single place, no matter where, he would let me know and so I could travel every holiday.
My mother supported me. “Travel while you can and see the world as cheaply as you can.” This sentence has stayed with me until today and I am very grateful to my mother for enabling me to travel.
In GDR times, I dreamed of travelling to China and Norway. Unfortunately, this was not possible in GDR times. So I travelled up and down the entire Eastern Bloc, criss-crossing it several times.
I will publish some funny anecdotes here a little later. I also made it to China, and I’ll tell you about that later. Also later will be the report of my first trip to Norway with the Hurtigruten ship “KONG HARALD” in October 2021.
First I will start with my trip to Norway in July 2022. This is also the reason why this blog exists at all.