Expo 2015, Milano (18.09.2015 - 20.09.2015)

As a quick getaway before the "real" holidays Melanie and I headed south to visit the expo. This years motto is Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life which especially interested me, with my little aquaponics setup at home ;)

Taking the train we arrived 3.5 hours and some metro ride later in our lovely AirBnB residence.
Earlyish the next morning we ventured to the expo. The many people luckily dispersed themselves among the many pavilions. Nevertheless were there some quite large queues in front of some nations. For example Japan had a sign that the waiting time would be 150 minutes for the 50 minutes tour! But probably the biggest line was in front of the Italian complex, all the narcissistic Italians ;)
We skipped the lines and usually headed to the next exhibition, a wise decision as later on many queues had disappeared. Sadly many nations weren't really showing any theme related exhibition, only propaganda and advertisement. Mostly the banana republics were displaying their great leaders, wealth and countryside. I don't know how this will end up with Kazakhstan presenting the expo 2017 with the theme of Future's Energy. Ridiculous as they have giant reserves of oil, natural gas, coal and uranium... Not exactly what I would call future energy sources... 

So the conclusion, skip the queues and visit the first world nations if you want to see anything food related. Nevertheless I can just encourage everybody to visit, if only for the gigantic choice of food and drink!

The next day we spent strolling through Milano as I've never visited the city before. One thing we wanted to see for sure was the Bosco Verticale (vertical forest). A "skyscraper" with 800 trees planted on its balconies! An awesome sight and makes you wonder how the cities of the future might look like.

Bosco Verticle, this is by the way not an Instagram effect but my camera which is slowly dying :(

Side note, what really astounded me were the amount of Chinese people living in Milano. A wiki excursion later revealed that 2% of the inhabitants are of Chinese decent, almost 20'000 people!

A quick stop at the gigantic cathedral and the market hall later we took the metro further south to the canal district. Here centuries ago all the merchandise got transshipped. Now this is the trendy and tourist place with lots of bars, restaurants and shops.

The last day we spent again strolling from cafe to restaurant before boarding the train back home. 

ElectricCastle.ro Festival (23.06.2015 - 30.06.2015)

As Patrick and Genti where driving to Kiev from Switzerland I decided to join them for the ElectricCastle festival in Romania. Halfway between Budapest and Bucharest, in the middle of Transylvania and (not so) next to Cluj lies the Bánffy Castle.

I flew into Budapest so the three of us had two nights of party before driving to Romania. Up to the border this was all smooth sailing over high ways. In Romania on the other hand only exists a highway from east to west through Bucharest, another one connecting Cluj (the second biggest city in the country) with the capitol is under construction.
Some potholes and overtaken horse carriages later we arrived in Cluj and headed on to the festival. The first night the locals went crazy for Fatboy Slim. More than two kilometers before the entrance cars were parked everywhere. With his better days already long behind him we skipped Norman Cook and headed over to the Staples stage. Situated in one of the buildings this stage presented us with firm and dry ground ;). Because of the rain the whole festival area was a gigantic mud pool. Patrick and I in our Converse weren't well prepared... ^^
After Sirius Modeselektor, DC Breaks and a short visit to Evil Nine we said goodbye and took the shuttle bus home.

The following day we spent shopping, as two of us needed sturdier footwear ;) In the evening the weather was a bit better than the night before so we could enjoy Glitch Mob and Netsky.

On the third day the weather was getting nice and sunny, so we could enjoy even some day light ours on the area. Red Bull had some dudes on bikes doing crazy stunts and also the mini ramp (surrounded in a see of mud) saw some action. The festival ground was actually really nice! With lots of different places to discover. Just bad luck with the weather, as we got told it almost never rains in these days.
Headliner (for us) of the day was Subfocus, the rest we spent more or less wandering around or in the Stapels ;) There some local DJs played some nice classic tunes. I can't remember who they were but one of them was so drunk that he broke the mixer trying to climb up on it ^^.  Afterwards Bass Turbat from Bucharest really picked up the pace, check them out!

The last day was again crazy with people, everybody wanted to see The Prodigy! We made the best of it (each of us having seen them multiple times) and enjoyed the party people. Did I mention we all really liked the Romanians? Friendly people and because it is a latin based language you're not completely lost with a menu ;) The whole festival remembered us a lot of the first few times we visited Exit festival in Serbia. Just a few foreigners and everybody amazed that somebody would travel all the way to Romania for a festival ;)

Sadly this was already the end and we headed for a final time home to our hotel. As mentioned the castle isn't next to Cluj. So depending on the lines in front of the shuttle bus we took the bus or taxi home. On our last night we took the cab, the "wrong" one... Listening to Modern Talking our driver raced his Dacia Logan all the way back to Cluj! The rev counter always in the red, overtaking cars which were overtaking other cars, signalling oncoming cars to go out of the way, etc o_O He managed the distance in half the time... I was sitting in the front with a seatbelt, the two guys in the back weren't that happy ^^

The next morning we had an early start for the massive drive to Bucharest. It was only around 600km, but with almost no highway, the Carpathians and some stops on the way it took us almost 8 hours to reach Bucharest. We did a little detour to drive the fabled Transfăgărășan, rated the greatest road in the world by Top Gear ;) Check it out:




In Bucharest we met up with Vlad and his girlfriend. Patrick and Genti had met him on the Mototaxi Junket in Peru. So we had an evening in the city to wander, drink, eat and sightsee. Especially the gigantic Palace of the Parliament at night was a sight. Some clubs bursting with people later it was time for bed and the next day to fly home for me =/.
Patrick and Genti continued on to Kiev, with Moldavia as next stop!

Solothurner Beerdays by Vespa (24.04.2015 - 25.04.2015)

The beer festival in Solothurn was a good excuse to wake our slumbering Vespas from winter sleep.
Together with three friends, all on old Vespas as well, we drove out into the wild west of Switzerland.

Of course the journey was the destination itself, for that reason we took quite a detour to Delemont and back south again. On the way (or not so on the way) we "did" three mountain passes. None besides the last one over the Weissenstein really taxing or worth mentioning ;). Nevertheless did we managed to drive almost twice the distance Google Maps had calculated directly ^^

The beer festival itself was quite nice. All the little breweries had stalls were you could taste and sample their trade. Definitely the way to discover some hidden and unknown gems (and also some quite horrible tasting concoctions ^^).

For the night we stayed at the nice youth hostel, located in the old town right next to the river Aare. The breakfast was a bit miserable, otherwise a good choice!

After some sightseeing the next day it was already time to mount our steeds and head home, hoping to arrive there before the rain set in.

PS: One of our Vespas broke down and had to be left behind, it wasn't mine! ;)

Remaining days in Khiva and then flying home (15.09.2014 - 20.09.2014)

After our visit to the former shoreline of the Aral Sea we drove back south to Khiva. Another city with a rich heritage on the Silk Road.

Here our main goal was to get rid of our car. So far it has been totally reliable and with no problems what so ever. Except the fact that I bumped the exhaust while reversing out of the Aral seabed and it now sounded like a racing car ^^.
Asking around we soon found different people interested in our vehicle. Especially its low price (free!) but also its low mileage on the odometer made it attractive. But alas, after a couple of days we still had no fix offer. The problem it seemed was the muddled and unknown laws regarding import of a car. Besides pushing natural gas over gasoline the government also tries to protect its local car factories. We heard all kind of stories, percentages of taxes and so forth. Arguing that 100% import tax on a car which costs 1$ would be no problem didn't count ;)
The locals told us that they don't have access to the laws, especially out here so far from the capital. Travellers told us to drive it to Kirgistan and sell it there for profit. But besides having no time for that we also had only a single entry visa for Uzbekistan and didn't wanted to risk loosing our flights home.
In the end a "businessman" with the right connections took it. All we had to do was go to the lawyer which set up a contract. It took them quite a while but we ended up with a fancy contract (in Uzbek and cyrillic letters ^^) in the end. We had to pay the lawyer but didn't made a fuss for the 4$ ;)

After the official business was done we snapped some pictures of the Iwans and so forth ;) Of course there where again the groups of elderly people and we even saw an overland bus tour. But wheres the fun in going in a gigantic truck all the way to China?!
I insisted we took a ride in the rusty ferris wheel outside of the old town. It looked exactly the same as the one you see in pictures of Chernobyl. There was probably only one model during soviet times ;). The owner didn't let us ride in the same cabin, makes the whole thing even more trusting, lol.

Late in the evening we headed to the local airport and boarded our Russian built propeller plane to the capital. It had seats which would fold forward, awesome feature to stretch your legs (as long there is nobody in front of you ^^).

In Tashkent we had to fill out a piece of paper like the one during entry. Genti decided to go along that he never got one as well. The security guard was friendly and didn't made a fuss. He said we had to fill up a new one for the entry as he couldn't let us leave with any money otherwise. This was it! Nobody asked for our car =/ And we had spent so much time getting rid of it legally... Almost a bit disappointing.

After the paperwork was done a police men approached me and I had to open up my big bag. The police had found something suspicious (keeping in mind that the airport security had already scanned my bag on entry into the building). It turned out to be my gasoline stove and all was fine.
Later when we headed to the departure gate there was another passport inspection and a military dude told me to follow him. They had scanned my bag and found something suspicious! Really!?! So I had to open my bag again and show them my camping gear for which they went nuts. They wanted to see how my gasoline stove works... I tried to explain them that isn't possible at the moment o_O But everything was fine and I could pack may stuff again.

That was it! A bit later we boarded our plane, had a stop over in Riga and arrived at home with no delay!

Genti is already talking about buying an old Mercedes and driving to South Africa, lol.

At the Aral lake or where it was 20 years ago (14.09.2014 - 15.09.2014)

Ever since hearing about the drying up of the Aral Sea I've been kind of fascinated with its fate. I don't know why but probably because it is kind of unbelievable that human kind could do such a thing to nature and therefore itself.

Back in the glorious days of the soviet republic it was decided that modern day Uzbekistan & Turkmenistan should be the cotton house of the union. With gigantic effort the Karakum canal was built to bring water into the desert with the same name. At the same time similar canals where built in what is now Kazakhstan. The result was a short period of world leadership in cotton production followed by a destroyed fishing and shipbuilding industry around what used to be the Aral Sea.

Once one of the four largest lakes in the world (almost twice the size of Switzerland) it is now at around a tenth of its former size. With the shrinking of the lake its previous harbours where left behind in the middle of nowhere. Muynak used to be a major fishing port but now lies more than 200km from the shoreline.
With the massive cotton production tremendous amounts of pesticides and defoliation substances (makes the cotton easier to pick, although not healthier...) end up in the tiny trickle which used to be the mighty Amur Darya.
All this mixed with the dust left behind from the receding lake gave way to the now infamous Aral Sea Dust Storms®. It gets credit for the high rate of respiratory illnesses and cancer in the region...

On the north side Kazakhstan has built a dam to at least save the northern part of the lake. This together with improving the irrigation system and water proofing the canals (sic!) has helped to stabilise it. Further improvements are under way and maybe in a couple of years the former port of Aralsk may open again.

In the south however no such actions have been taken. =/

You should see the satellite pictures...

It was already getting dark when we arrived in Muynak, the former fishing village. We drove out into what used to be water and made camp amid a ground scattered in sea shells.
A cold night later we visited the ship graveyard and its memorial. Driving around town we found an old abandoned canning factory.
Now everything is in ruins but still people endure, makes you think what keeps them here...