Well I'm back at work again, on my second run of shifts since returning home. Before my shift this evening I went to see a movie in the German-French film festival that's currently running in Wellington. "Keep Surfing" is about the Eisbach river surfers I saw when I was in Munich in August.
Actually, it's not about the same guys. This documentary film was made a few years ago. Apparently there are hundreds of people who river surf in Munich. Now I know the individual stories of half a dozen of them. Seeing the film took me back to that afternoon when I sat on the banks of the river watching their skill and taking some photos.
So my long journey ended last month now. Looking back I recall that and other highlights. I've stood in Red Square in Moscow, and been inside the Kremlin. I've attended Chile's celebrations for 200 years since independence and photographed the President at close quarters. I've been to the Evita museum in Buenos Aires, and to the cemetary where she was laid to rest. I've attended the wedding of two dear friends in southern Spain, shared meals with a former colleague while we were both in Vietnam and made new friends in many countries.
I went to the site of a mass grave in Cambodia, to one of the cities where the Americans used weapons of mass destruction in Japan and walked alongside the Jewish memorial in Berlin. I caught colds in Hamburg and Bali and got bitten by bed bugs in Agra and Ho Chi Minh City. All my flights took off and landed close to their scheduled times. One of my trains had to be replaced by a bus. I kept track of how much I was spending as a daily average, but can't tell you the total cost of my trip. A lot was pre-paid during the planning process, and it will take a great effort to find all that on my credit card statements and calculate the figure.
In 161 days I saw and did so much. Now it's almost as if the adventure was a dream. I am, of course, making plans for future trips. I believe I've seen 70 or so countries. That's about one third of the United Nations-recognised world. My new goal is to have visited half the world.. meaning I've got to get another 35 countries under my belt. I relish the challenge :-)
