What's next?

I am back in Berlin, but I am not settling down - I am already preparing my next trip!!!!

Originally I had planned to hike through Europe now, but 2 things will prevent that. First, I have come back way too late from my round-the-world trip. I had planned to be back in May 2009, but after being sidetracked by my cycling partner John I arrived in Germany in September - and that i is way too late for a hiking trip through Europe. And second, the US$ / Euro exchange rate is too good to be missed - at least for Europeans going to the US (not the other way round....).

So my next trip will start in the US. On January 6th I will fly to Miami and hike the Florida Trail (www.floridatrail.org). I know, I know: The Florida Trail is not too popular in long-distance hiker circles. It is totally flat and the 1,100 mile long route through the whole state of Florida still contains about 300 miles of road walk. I don't mind the flatness, but I am not too happy about the road walk. But the Florida Trail will show me an eco-system I have never seen before. I will hike (or better wade) through swamps with alligators as companions. Not to mention the poisonous snakes (but it can't be worse than Australia in that respect...)

I will probably finish the Florida Trail early to mid-March 2010 and once in this area I want to do something else as well. I will probably do some paddling or cycling around Florida or even hike on and continue on the Alabama & Georgia Pinhoti Trail (www.pinhotitrailalliance.org).

Next on the agenda is the Arizona Trail that has only recently been declared a National Scenic Trail (www.aztrail.org). The Arizona Trail traverses the whole state of Arizona including the Grand Canyon in about 800 miles. I have always liked the desert Southwest and I am really looking forward to that trail - especially since it does not contain lots of road walk...

If US immigration has given me another 6 months visa I will have one month left of that period once I finish the Arizona Trail end of May. I still don't know what I will do then but I am sure something interesting will come up.

Next is Australia again!!!! I liked Australia a lot and I missed out on a lot of hiking last time. I had somehow assumed that summer is the hiking season there as anywhere else. But that 's wrong. In most areas in Australia summer is just too hot for hiking and some trails are even closed because of fire danger then. So this time I will come back in their winter time and hike what I missed last time.

First on the agenda is the 1,200 km long Heysen Trail in Southern Australia (www.heysentrail.asn.au). This trail is closed from November to April due to fire danger in summer, so I could not hike it last time (but I have already bought the guide books).

The Larapinta Trail runs close to Ayers Rock smack bang in the middle of the Australian outback. It is very short with 225 km, but I would love to see Ayers Rock and therefore can combine it with some sightseeing and maybe even some cycling.

Another trail I missed last time is the Hume & Hovell Track (www.lands.nsw.gov.au/...tracks/hume_and_hovell_walking_track). It is located in Southeastern Australia and follows the trail of the two Australian explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell for 440 km.

The Australian Alps Walking Track (www.australianalps.environment.gov.au/walktrack/index.html) will be last because of its relative high altitude (for Australian standards). The highest point with 2,228 meters is Mt. Kosciuszko, the highest mountain in Australia. And because of snow you cannot hike this 655 km long trail in Australian winter. I really wanted to hike that trail last time, but the guidebook for it was out of print and nowhere to be had. I would have had to buy the maps and they would have weighed a ton and cost a fortune, so I postponed this hike.

And after all that? I don't know yet. I will not buy another round-the-world plane ticket that time because they are only valid for one year. I will just by plane tickets as I go to be flexible. I will end up in December/January in Australia and can then continue on back to Europe via Asia or back through the US doing some cycling. I will see - and a lot of things can happen in one year. And if you have any inspiration, ideas or advice for me, please let me know.

The end is near or I am going to have a break

John and I in Korea

Tomorrow I will fly back (home?) to Germany. I could say "the end is near", but I do not want to look at it like that. Sounds too final and this will not be a final return for me.

I have travelled much longer than I had ever anticipated mostly due to the fact that I have met John and we got sidetracked a lot just having too much fun. I had planned to be back by mid-May and now it will be mid-September. I had never planned to cycle in New Zealand. I wanted to cycle 1 or 2 months in Japan and it turned out to be 3 months. I never even thought of going to Korea. But I had a wonderful time. And I would the exact same thing again...

In fact I enjoyed it so much that I can't stop it. Also the US$ exchange rate is just too good to be missed - I just have to go to the US again. Probably the Florida Trail and the Arizona Trail will be next and I will fly to Miami around Christmas. So flying back to Germany is not the end of the trip, but just a break. A holiday from a holiday so to speak.

The hardest part is parting from John. For the last 7 months we have been together 24/7 - sometimes arguing, but mostly having a great time. He will fly on to San Francisco to finish his cycle trip around the world. I do hope to meet him again some time - we have a lot of ideas for future trips.

So tomorrow a wonderful chapter of this trip will end, but I am already looking forward to the next one.

Cycling South Korea: Conclusion and Tipps

Yes, I would definitely recommend cycling in South Korea. I still prefer Japan, but I enjoyed South Korea as well. What is so good about it?First of all it is a very safe country again. There is no apparent crime, people are very friendly and I have always felt safe, even when free camping. There are hardly any tourists in South Korea and therefore no tourism-related crimes or scams. Traffic was not too bad either although I felt safer in Japan, but South Korean drivers are usually very polite, too. Unfortunately, some roads have poles in the middle to separate the lanes and cycling here feels incredibly dangerous because drivers cannot move over to the other lane to pass you. But luckily we did not encounter too many of those roads.

Like in Japan there is so much to see: Temples, caves, beaches and folk villages - and almost everything is rather pittoresque. Again, we took loads of pictures because everything was so interesting. I did not know much about Korean history but I was fascinated about what I found out. From the 6th century kingdoms of Silla to Japanese occupation and the separation into South and North Korea there was so much I had not had a clue before. South Korea is worth visiting in order to learn about its history alone! South Korea is a rather small country making it an ideal destination for a 2 or 3 week bike holiday. It offers enough to keep you busy (we spent 6 weeks in Korea), but you could get a complete overview in a relatively short period of time.

I especially enjoyed the food - because here in Korea we could at least afford it! Barbecues, Kimchi in all variations and fantastic Western-style cakes - we ate in luxury. South Korea is not a very cheap country for Asian standards, but a lot cheaper than Europe or Japan and travelling with a bit of luxury was no big strain on our budget. We usually ate out once a day and stayed in hotels half of the time.

Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

When cycling in Korea keep in mind that the gradients can be brutal and the humid climate torture - plan your mileage accordingly. I was always wearing a cheap little wet towel around my neck to wipe off the sweat. Maps of Korea in English can be found everywhere, but do not rely on them - they are usually not very accurate. Various times we were looking for roads that only existed on our map but not in reality. But as Korea has a good road system you can usually find an easy way around it.

New lessons in modern Korean history

I have done so much interesting sightseeing lately that I cannot spare you another lessson in Korean history - it is just too fascinating.

Chapter 1: It is all the Japanese's fault or Seodamun Prison in Seoul: Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and a colony in 1910 and the Japanese who had only very recently been "awakened" themselves by the Americans modernized Korea within years. Modern textile, steel and chemical industries emerged along with new railroads, highways and ports. By 1940 the Japanese owned 40% of the land and there were 700,000 Japanese living and working in Korea. This modernization left Korea much more developped in 1945 than for example Vietnam under the French, but Korea had to pay a high price for that: Japan tried to destroy the Korean sense of national identity. Koreans were forced to change their names and not speak Korean.

Millions of Koreans were used as "mobile human fodder" for the Japanese doing forced labour in Japanese mines or forced into prostitution as "comfort women" for Japanese soldiers in WW II.Any resistance was brutally supressed and this is were the Seodamun Prison comes in. The Japanese built this prison in the early 1900s and it was soon filled to the brim with male and female Korean resistance fighters who were brutally tortured and executed. The prison has been restored with a lot of effort and after visiting it I could understood very well why the Koreans still dislike the Japanese. Koreans love life-size modells in their museums and therefore this prison is full of torture exhibits with a lot of fake blood and piercing screams - definitely not for the faint of heart....

Chapter 2: The Korean War or the Korean War Memorial Museum: We should have been warned: This museum would be big. But it was not big, it is huge! It took us 3 hours to work our way through learning everything we always wanted to know about the Korean war and did not dare to ask. In fact we learnt more than we ever wanted to know and were totally knackered afterwards. To sum it up this is what happened: After 1945 Korea was divided into a Communist North and Capitalist South with the goal to have joint elections soon . Only that this never happened. By 1949 both the Soviets and the Americans had withdrawn their troops. North Korea's Kim Il Sung launched a surprise attack on South Korea on 25 of June, 1950, when the border was almost unguarded: The South Korean troops had been dispatched to help the farmers during rice planting season... The North Korean army swept over the South and occupied almost the whole Korean peninsula.

For the first time in history the UN authorized a military intervention and asked its members for military help which came mostly from the Americans. And this is when General Douglas Mac Arthur enters the world stage again at the tender age of 70. He is extremely successfull and turns the war around with his famous Incheon landing. Unfortunately, the Chinese do not like that and entered the war on the North Korean side. For 3 years the war is waging back and forth and Seoul alone changes hands four times. Soon both sides realised that no one could win this war but truce talks took 2 years until an armistice was finally signed in 1953. The South Korean government never signed this armistice as they did not want the war to end without re-unification. After 3 years and 1 one month of war and 4 million people had died, North and South Korea were divided more or less at the same demarcation line as in 1945....

Chapter 3: The war goes on or Lee Seung-bok Memorial Hall: There weren't many sights on our route to Seoul and so we were quite interested when we came across a signpost to the Lee Seung-bok Memorial Hall. The only problem was: We did not have the slightest clue who this Lee Seung-bok was! The Memorial was huge and we were the only visitors - and everything was in Korean. We were greeted by a big statue of a little boy and figured out that this Lee was born in 1959. So who was he? A former president? Wouldn't he still be alive then? And why did we find all sort of childhood memorabilia? It took us quite a while of cluelessly wandering around until we found some English explanations and realised who this Lee was. And that is the story. Lee was 9 years old in 1968 when the North Koreans decided to infiltrate South Korea and recruit members for the Communist Party to stage a Communist Revolution in the South. Their 'recruiting methods' were rather strange though:

They assaulted Lee's family in the middle of the night. But Lee had been a good student at school where they had told him that the Commies are the bad guys. So when the Northern guerillas tried to talk to him he just told them: "I hate Communists!" The Commies did not like that of course and cut his mouth open, killing him and his entire family. I am not surprised that they did not recruit many people on their trip. Lee became a hero, a modell of good education and had a huge memorial hall dedicated to him. Maybe it would have been better to keep your mouth shut - this is what I thought...

Chapter 4: The daily war at the border or the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone): A definite highlight of our travels in Korea was a trip to the DMZ. The way these tours are conducted are very telling. First of all only foreigners are allowed into the DMZ itself. You have to take a tour and even have to obey a dress code: No jeans, sandals, provocative T-shirts and no 'Gangster look'. You even have to change buses to get into the JSA (Joint Security Area) itself, which is shared by Southerners, Northerners and the peacekeeping nations. In the DMZ the war goes on a little bit every day giving the whole area an eerie feeling. We were told not to communicate at all with the Northern soldiers, even if they show us a middle finger.... The Southerners all wear sunglasses (so they can avoid direct eye contact if they end up in a staring contest with their neighbors), stand around in a sort of aggressive Taekwando position (looks more frightening) and have ball bearings in their trouser seams (their tingling makes them sound more in number than they actually are). And the Northerners are not short of provocative actions: In 1978 they brutally killed two American soldiers who wanted to prune a tree in the JSA (it was blocking their sight)- with an axe, later known as the axe murder incident. They erected a flag post in their propaganda village close to the border and when the Southerners built an even higher flagpost, they responded with an even bigger one. Right now we are at 100 m in the South and 165 m in the North (with a 35 m long flag!).

In order to infiltrate or even attack the South they built various tunnels under the border, one of which tourists can visit. When the tunnel was discovered, they claimed it was an old coal mine - but unfortunately this area consists of granite and there is no coal whatsoever. The most 'hilarious' accident however took place pretty recently in the joint conference room in the JSA where you can actually cross 2 meters into North Korea - the room is literally built on the border. On the Southern room side flags of the UN nations participating in the Korean war were displayed until the visit of President Bush. What had happened? During the visit two North Korean soldiers tore down the American and South Korean flag to clean their shoes and blow their nose with it..... Now the South has substituted the flags with plastic plaques...

Jeongdongjin's interesting claims to fame or Korean history part 2

We are staying in the seaside resort of Jeongdongjin right now and this place has a interesting 3-fold claim to fame. First of all Jeongdongjin is in the Guiness book of records for having the world's closest train station to the sea - and it is very close indeed. Actually one of the train platforms doubles as the seaside promenade. Secondly, it has a cruise ship on a hill. Yes, you have read correctly. Here you can see a complete life sixe cruise ship set up on a hill high above the sea. The whole thing is a huge hotel complex and a major tourist attraction. And no, it has not been a real cruise ship before. It is a hotel built in the shape of one. Very clever business idea. They even charge admission to have a look inside.

But the biggest tourist attraction is a real North Korean submarine. And I will also give you the story behind it. In 1996 (!) the North Koreans launched a submarine to spy out South Korean military installations. 3 spies went ashore, did their job undiscovered and wanted to return to their submarine. This is when everything started to go wrong. The submarine got stuck on rocks in heavy sea. The captain apparently did not trust his crew, because he shot the entire crew of 11 men before setting fire and destroying all documents. He then went ashore with the remaining 9 soldiers (apparently more trustworthy than crew members) and tried to return to North Korea.

It took the South Koreans 49 days (!) to catch and/or kill these 'Red Army bandits' and 11 South Korean soldiers and 6 civilians 'died a glorious death' in the process. The stranded submarine is now set up in a 'Unification park' right next to an American warship that served in the Korean War and is a gift of the American government. It was interesting to see that the Germans are seen as sort of heroes in the accompanying 'security exhibition' where there were loads of references to the German re-unification.

Weird sightseeing part 4 - the Willy Park in Sinnnam

To explain the this towns main attraction, the 'Willy Park' I want to quote my guidebook: 'Sinnam legend has it that a young virgin drowned within sight of her boyfriend on a small rocky island offshore. The boy had hoped to save her but was unable to because of the rough seas. Shortly after her death, fishermen noticed tht the catch was dwindling and soon the town was sure that this 'unfulfilled' girl had cursed the fishing grounds.

All hope seemed lost, but when a fisherman heeding the call of nature did so facing the ocean, the next day's catch increased. Soon the village erected, um, erections in hopes that the penises would placate the frustrated ghost. The fishing yields returned to normal, and Sinnam's custom of showing Mr. Willy to the water remains to this day.'


The result is a Penis Sculpture festival including a giant phallus-carving contest. The festival's products are displayed in the 'Willy Park' and make for a great hour of sightseeing. See yourself in the pictures! By the way: It was awfully uncomfortable being the model in this picture. The sculpture was made out of plastic and awfully hot in the midday sun....
Unfortunately we heard rumours that fundamentalist Christians want to prevent further Willy festivals.

Weird sightseeing part 3 or caves and the like

I maybe better explain the meaning of this title a little bit more. As much as I like Korea now, I must say that there no real 'world-class' sights here - nothing like the pyramids in Egypt or the Acropolis in Greece. Still we are having an awful lot of fun sightseeing, because the Korean sights are usually very tacky and/or action oriented. So the attraction lies more in their weirdness than in their cultural significance.

One sight that could classify into world-class category though is the Hwanseon cave, one of the biggest caves in whole Asia. But the way to the cave is steep and long - it is a tough 1,3 km uphill hike. Not the nicest thing in the sun, but well worth the effort. The cave is indeed the biggest one I have ever been in. It even has various streams and waterfall running through it and therefore you have to walk on metal walkways. The whole circuit through the cave is 1,6 km and a constant up and down.

They somehow had to illuminate the whole scenery and for some reason they choose different coloured neon light chains for that. The whole thing now looks like a disco cave! But there are more interesting things: The cave features were given titles. And so we walked up to the 'summit of hope' descended into the 'valley of desires' crossed the 'bridge of love' into 'hell' and walked over the 'bridge of confessions' to see the 'mountain of life'. And after 1,5 hours in the cave's 12 degree C we were chilled enough to continue cycling.

But that was not the end of cave fun. Samcheok, our next stop boasts 2 cave museums. The buildings alone are worth a visit. One looks like a huge wedding cake dripping with brown icing, whereas the second one is shaped like a bat.

The second one was a real hoot. It consisted only of various cave mock-ups and was action filled. You could do some cave climbing on ropes and strangely enough there were no safety features there whatsoever. I wonder how many people had already injured themselves there. But beside somewhat scientific cave models it also displayed cave creatures and we could happily watch a dragon flashing his red neon eyes around. The fun factor was very high!