I can hardly belive that I've already been back in Germany for ten days now! It feels like yesterday that I arrived back in Munich. And I still haven't fully arrived. But I suppose that's hardly surprising after a year of travelling.

My mom and my stepdad picked me up at the airport and of course she was all in tears, so happy was she to see me again :-). The descent on Munich was really pretty too. The day I arrived there was still a lot of snow and the sun was setting behind the Alps just as the plane was approaching Munich. This view and being met by my parents at the airport already made coming back much easier. And then my friend Nino and his wife visited me for dinner (mom was cooking a traditional roast) and I already felt pretty much at home. My parents had also cleaned the apparment, stocked the fridge and refurnished some of the rooms and had done a much better job than I had done in the years before. There ain't a single naked lightbulb left in the whole place!

A few days later I also invited a few friends round to my place to catch up again etc.. Admittedly I found the turnout was a bit disappointing but then again I knew that a lot of people wouldn't be in Munich between xmas and new year.

Christmas with Family

Being home for christmas was nice, even though my grandmother was a bit hard to handle this year. She was just incredibly grumpy and really rude to my mom. Apparently this has been going on for some time but my mom can handle it. Still, it was nice to be home.

So what did I miss?

One of the things that surprised me most so far is how little has happend and how little has changed while I was away. Our politicans are still discussing the same issues, still agree on that these issues are really urgent but can't agree on a single thing. As the German magazin "Der Spiegel" put it: "This year showed that noone in Germany has the power to do someting but that everyone has the power to say 'No'."

Within my circle of friends not really all that much has happened, either. Two have married but aside from them it's business as usual. Many still have the same boy/girlfriends (though some are singles now - yeehah!) and all but one have stuck to the jobs they already hated last year. And of course they still hate they jobs.

I also noticed how depressed and lacking any confidence most people seem. Everybody seems to be worried about losing their job. But instead of thinking about what they could do about this, they huddle for cover and wait for the danger to pass. I also have to say that I don't have much patience anymore for people who are lamenting how hard their lives are. I know, this is a very easy point to make. But if you want to know what a hard life is, take a look at the Garbage Dump in Guatemala City, talk to someone in Cambodia or spend a night with a family in the hills of Myanmar. But please don't tell me that your life is unbearable because you might only be able to be able to go on holidays to Italy this year and not fly to Turkey!

Having said that, I do think that the amount of time some of my friends spend at work (and in jobs they don't like) is something I don't want to have anything to do with any longer. Yes, that will mean I will earn less money than I did before. But if there is one thing I learned on this trip that it's that life has too much to offer to spend 60 days a week in an office, toiling away for some anonymous corporation who doesn't care shit about you. Speaking of which:

What now?

It might shock you - but I have not discovered the meaning of life or even what I should do with my life. But at least I have a better idea than I did a year ago. I either want to work (preferably abroad) for an NGO or International Organization - and I think that lats years trip might actually improve my chances to get such a job - or I want to enter a rather esoteric field called "Search Engine Optimization" and earn my money on the internet. I have also conacted my old company and will meet with my former boss in the middle of january. But if I was to go back I wouldn't want to do it fulltime. That way I should be able to escape all the corporate-politics crap that is going on there and that makes life and work there so unbearable. But since I won't be able to raise to a level where I could actually do something interesting within teh next ten years (no, I'm not fatalistic. I could explain this part but most peopel probably won't find it very interesting) and since I don't intend to stay there for the next ten years I figured I can just as well stop trying to get there and concentrate more on the things I want to do while earning enough money to do them. If that sounds a bit like a fould compromise to you, it isn't. It's merely a stepping-stone.

So what are things I would do with that extra spare time? Well, one thing is that I really want to get more into photography. I'll buy myself a nice digital SLR and will really try to learn more about it, go to courses and take millions of photos (hmmm...I smell a photoblog in the making). I would also like to commit some time to UNITeS a volunteer programme run by the UN in which people with IT-skills help NGOs etc. it's "volunteering meets teleworking" so to speak. And I would also like to continue to do webdesign on the side.

What else?

At the moment it certainly feels like I have my hands full. I have to find a job a new roommate (my old one moved out in October and took half of my wineglasses with her), I have to sue someone who stole a 25.000 character text from me for a commercial website and get my insurances organized again. I also have to admit that Im feeling a bit lonely, now that I have left the backpackers trail. Where are all the cool people I was surrounded with day and night? Why don't they all live in my appartement? Well, at least I'm able to stay in touch with many of them by email and instant messenger. I'm have also joined the Hospitality Club and have already been a member of Globalfreeloaders, two accomodation networks for backpackers. I like the idea of having an open house. I also have four new girls living next door who seem to be good fun and I've even joined a local online-dating networks to extend my circle of friends and acquaintances. Not so much in order to get laid but simply to keep meeting new people, which in Munich is really hard work. Oh and btw: I'be also been a member of Friendster (Username: Timoluege) for a long time, another social site I can highly recommend. You see, for me travelling is very much about meeting interesting people. And I simply want to continue doing that now that I'm back. I'm back. I'm actually back, right? Well, for better or worse I am I suppose. Let's make the best of it!

On the web:
UNV Online Volunteering
Global Freeloaders
Hospitalityclub.org
Friendster