Yesterday it has been 2 years since I left Germany to become a homeless globetrotter.

So far, so good!

If you wanna find out, what those backpacker people are always talking about, you’ve got only choice, a flight to Bangkok from 535€ from Germany between September 2013 and march 2014, round trip

Update
in September already from 409 EUR!

And there is much more to see, if you like to. My bucket list didn’t get shorter during the last 2 years but longer:

• Silk Road
• Central America
• Indonesia, New Guinea
• Burma, Sri Lanka and Malaysia
• back to Mexico
• back to Bolivia
• back to Thailand
• back to India and Nepal

But for the time being, I’ve travelled enough.

Aber erstmal habe ich genug vom Reisen.
Catching my breath, time to digest!

This means the flocblog will also be more quiet. This is the 248th blog post in 2 years, which averages to 2.5 posts per week.

This frequency won’t stay as high in the future.

Past reviews:

• 2 months of world tour
• 1 year of world tour
• Back home in Germany

All travel posts of the past 2 years:

• 14 months on a round the world trip
• 8 months of expatriating

Thank you for reading!

When travelling intercontinental flights are what costs a pretty penny. My flight from South to North America in may was 317 EUR.

Add to that 39 EUR for getting from La Paz to Lima by bus and 45 EUR for a domestic flight in the US of A and you’ve wasted a monthly budget on transport.

The remaining expenses were manageable:

• 2 fantasticly cheap weeks in beautiful Bolivia
• 1 week in cheap Peru and Couchsurfing in inexpensive Las Vegas
• 1 week of free room and board at my girlfriend’s parents in the US

Many Thanks to my Couchsurfing host Gary in Vegas and special thanks to Michela’s parents!

Cheesecake donation activity reached a record level in may. The very first time, I was able to cover my Kaffeeklatsch expenses completely and there was still1 EUR left for 9 waffle icecreams in Bolivia. Thank you very much Stefan Steinert, Dirk Späth, Malte Sieb und Elisabeth Heide!

I will stay in the US in june and july, which will certainly affect the cost balance. In the “Land of the free, home of the brave” nothing is free and you really have to be brave to live in a country with prices like that.

We will see, how much this fun will be.

You can’t help feeling it in Cusco and in Mexico City (Tenochtitlan). A sense of overwhelming loss. Before Columbus came, these locations featured flourishing cultures with distinct languages, religions, world views and gorgeous cities.

But the precolumbian splendor was destroyed. When standing on the big plaza in Mexico City today, centre of the biggest city of medieval times and centre of the Aztec universe, it is hard to imagine how this place looked like, when the Templo Mayor still towered over Tenochtitlan.

Today there is a coarse cathedral at the same location, built from the stones of the temple.

As you switch to the other side of the world, from American Indians to Indian Indians, you don’t need any imagination. History is still there.
 

And a lot stayed the same in India during the last 4.000 years, the burning of the dead at the Ganges river, the full moon rituals
 

and the ancient temples.
 

In India too, there were violent missionary attempts by Christians
 

and by Muslims.
 

But Hinduism was already ancient, when Buddha, Christ and Mohammed were young and it doesn’t just vanish.
 

Besides, Hindus are flexible, not only because of having the choice for a god that fits you between 330 million gods.
 

Worshipping Buddha and Shiva? No problem!
Hindu temples shaped like churches? Looking good!
 

Mothere Teresa is a saint, why not?
Jesus Christ is the redeemer, but of course!
 

But taking that as a reason to stop believing in Shiva, Ganesha and Krishna? You must be out of your mind!
 

It might work like that elsewhere, but not in India…
 

Machu Picchu was a one-horse town compared to gorgeous Cusco and the pyramids of Teotihuacan paled besides the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan. But Cusco, capital of the Incas and Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztecs were reduced to rubble by the conquering Spaniards.

Even the Aztecs language was lost. When wandering today through Mexico City’s hipster neighborhood of Coyoacán, you can watch traditionally dressed people on the plazas, trying themselves on Aztec dances and songs. But nobody today can be sure, if the Aztecs did something completely different.

Compared to that, the Andes altiplano is relatively original. The Inca languages Quechua and Aymara are still widely spoken and the people still follow their customs in traditional clothing. But still, of the Incan religion, social order and buildings, only fragments are left.

Too bad, that such a pronounced multi-culturalism only worked out in India…

People in South America are more catholic than the pope.

That’s something you notice immediately in the cityscape of the former Inca capitals Quito and Cusco:

And no matter if Bolivia
 

Ecuador
 

Chile
 

or Peru, there are churches in every city.
 

But you also stumble upon churches outside of cities,
 

they are just about everywhere.
 

Statues of holy people are also popular
 

and crosses.
 

Inside, the churches are almost as neon-colored as in Vietnam.
 

and Christian festivities are just as colorful.
 

The bulwarks of the catholic church are sure nice to look at.

But isn’t it sad, how the native religions have been displaced absolutely?

“Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina” is what Yarita Lizeth from Peru chants. And somehow they all belong together after all.

But I only really like the music in Peru and Bolivia.

This time, I don’t have to ask for the best song. You only have to look at the variety of interpredations of Lejos de Ti to know the answer…

Live version

Feminine version

Super feminine version

Fancy version

WTF version!

Fortunately, there is no copyright in South America!

Thanks Chela for putting the many Lejos together.

69 Euro was the sum of our Kaffeeklatsch expenses in April per person.

69 Euro are a lot of money in Bolivia. For that kind of money you can have breakfast, lunch and dinner in local restaurants every day for a month.

We prefer to spend the money on Kaffeeklatsch (-;

You can get cappuccino and cheesecake in every bigger city in Bolivia.
 

A Cappuccino is 0,90 EUR – 1,30 EUR
 

A cake is 0,80 EUR – 1,10 EUR
 

A fancy cake is 1,40 EUR – 1,70 EUR
 

in Copacabana
 

in Potosi
 

in Sucre
 

in Cochabamba (Cafebamba!)
 

and of course in La Paz
 

We went without cake only very few times,
 

but sometimes there was cake substitute
 

and often we had 2 Frankencakes to share
 

Sometimes we went to the Cafe to work,
 

but mostly for pleasure.
 

Bolivia is a terrific country for Kaffeeklatsch. Cheesecakes in Mexico and Cheesecakes in Nepal sure are as cheap, but a fancy Cappuccino in a fancy Café sets you back less in Bolivia than in the other 2 cheesecake countries and is really delicious.

Our favorite cafes:

Cochabamba (Cafebamba!)

• Cafe Casablanca
• Eli’s Fast Food (no Wifi!)

Sucre

• Flavor
• Abis

Potosi

• Koala Café

La Paz

• Miscelanea (with Kindles for Sale)
• Ichuri (Rooftop Cafe Plaza Mayor)
• Toby’s Fast Food
• Kuchenstube (in Sopocachi)

Blogs are a part of Social Media and sometimes Bloggers even try to be social. For example in the case of Block Stöckchen (little stick), a blog game and a very smart method to get backlinks by pyramid scheme.

There’s one going around the German travel blogosphere, that got started on the Outdoorseite and I opened my mouth wide enough to catch it from Jutta and Tobias at kleineweltreise.de.

The Stöckchen question is:
Which are the 3 things I don’t want to miss in my backpack?

2. Wine bottle opener

This wine bottle opener from wine country Vietnam is worth its weight in wine – several times over. Every time, someone asks through the hostel, with a bottle of wine in hands, looking for a bottle opener, I shout out a loud here.

When I get a little glas of the grape juice in return, I make another mark into the tally with the little knife on my wine bottle opener.

The Stöckchen flys on to

• Dirk from skraal.net doesn’t get scared by difficult travel countries from Bangladesh to Usbekistan and even learns Hindi to better get around India. 2014 he wants to spend all year in Sub-Saharan Africa, which sounds like my worst nightmare.
  (in English and German)
   
• Morten & Rochssare from nuestra américa are going around South America since December 2011. They are still very curious about the continent and always write more deep reports no matter if it is Rio de Janeiro in Brasil or La Paz in Bolivia.
  (in German)
   
• Dani and Jess from Globetrottergirls are a German-American couple, that travels together for already 3 years. The 2 are digital nomads and like to stay at one place for extended periods, for example by House Sitting. Like that, they find out about all the insider’s tips, like Cafe con Piernas in Santiago and the Hostel Margouya 2 in Puerto Varas, where my girlfriend worked for a year.
  (in English)

Sucre in Bolivia is called Ciudad Blanca, the white city.

Why is that?

Is it because of the churches?
 

Is it because of the cebras or because of Herbie?
 

Are the stalls of the fruit salad senoritas or the milk foam responsible?
 

Is it because of the white dogs?
 

Is it about white eggs?
 

Is it the Gringo hordes?
 

Is it Maracuja Cheesecake or Tiramisu?
 

Are the dinosaur skeletons and other skeletons too white?
 

Maybe the white buildings?
 

The countless, countless white buildings?
 

Of course, I’m stupid!

It is the hostel cat!

Maybe it’s just that Sucre is too clean and boring…

If you are missing color now, just take a look into colorful Mexico.

How cheap a country really is, is easy to test. Just try to pay an everyday purchase with big bills.

Big is relative, in many countries, it is difficult to hand out a bill in the neighborhood of 5 EUR.

In Germany, you don’t get any change at all for a 5 EUR bill, because 5 EUR are seldom sufficient to buy anything!

Except for the other day in Copacabana: The ATM was making sounds like a decrepit printer and then it spit out 10s! 49 10s fresh from the mint! I’d won the jackpot. I was finally rich. I could buy anything my heart yearned for, even icecream!

Once I stomached this shock, I made my way right back to the same ATM. The solution of the riddle: It was out of money, the 10s were the pitiful rest. Because of the road blocks, it couldn’t be refilled for weeks.

Rather 100s than no money at all…

Potosi in Boliva was once the largest, richest and at 4,067m highest city of the world. Potosi was larger than London and Paris, richer than Antwerp and Sevilla and setting of a genocide, that’s second to none at one place.

Potosi was the Auschwitz of the new world. Instead of the inscription “Arbeit macht frei”, the so-called rich mountain, Cerro Rico was the last thing that about 8 million people have seen in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century. The people eating mountain.

8 million indiginous workers and slaves carried over from Africa, had to work themselvess to death in the silver mines and mints of the Spaniards.
 

Potosi and Sucre next door built an incredible amount of churches with the fortune,
 

at times parts of the city were plastered with silver and horses were hooved with silver, because iron was too expensive in Potosi.
 

Even today, people work in the mines and the crude methods haven’t changed much in the past 460 years,
 

but the miners aren’t slaves anymore. They are self-employed and very proud of their work.
 

Unfortunately, the silver veins have mostly run dry today. You have to look for fortunes in Potosi at different places in the 21st century.
 

Today, the world’s highest sky restaurant towers next to the Cerro Rico above Potosi.
 

The elevator doesn’t always work and climbing in over the fire escape, you are reminded of the mines vis-à-vis.
 

Here you can never escape Cerro Rico’s shadow anyway, not even in the Restaurant Mirador,
 

but instead of silver, blood and earth, here you get silverware and blood of the earth, cheers!
 

In fact in the Americas, you don’t have to deliberately mention the genocide. 50-100 million people, more than 95% of the indigenious population died in the 2 centuries after the discovery by Columbus 1491 in North, Middle and South America.

The American holocaust was the biggest genocide in history, bigger than Armenia, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Nazi holocaust, North Korea, Kongo, Ottoman Empire, Ruanda and USSR added together.

If you take into account the percentage of the world population back then, even the 20st century’s biggest genocide is dwarfed: Mao Ze Dong’s big leap forward and cultural revolution with a death toll of 49 to 78 millions.

Seen from that angle, Potosi was just murderous business as usual in the Americas…