Visiting Europe

Europe
31 june - 4th october

Visiting Europe was nice, but also made me think a lot. My mum picked me from the airport in Munich where I arrived after leaving Peshawar/Pakistan via Doha/Qatar.
The parking fees she had to pay would have even been enough to bring 3 or 4 sick people to the hospital in Chitral…
The first days I could not abandon thinking in this “currency” – what made me also save my own money. Every tea and ice cream I was converting in hospital visits – and rather left it. It took quite a while to get used to Austrian standards again.
Beneath quite a lot of work for my parents I visited many friends. In Innsbruck I met a former Bhutan group and had my knee checked, then on to Switzerland hitchhiking, where I meet former working colleagues and went for trekking. A little later my schedule took me to Vienna, where I again met a group I came to know in Bhutan and I got my Pakistan Visa. I also had to do an interview with one of the chief riders at the Imperial Spanish Riding School for a Pakistani Horse Magazine – Pakistan should also know that we Austrians know about horses – even if it is not about polo…
So even in Europe I kept traveling.
A special evening I remember was at a local farm restaurant, where they sell food and drinks they produce themselves. Great traditional food and the best was: suddenly a girl started playing accordion/concertina and singing folk songs. I remembered the music evenings in Biriu but was happy that this is also possible in Austria. I had never seen that before. We even danced there.
Another trip rises in my memory – I even thought about staying in Austria that day. With a good friend of mine I went to Gmunden, a lovely city at a huge lake. We hired a boat, got out on the lake and let the sunrays shine on us. Watching the calm surface of water I remembered how nice it was to swim and felt the deep desire to jump over board, which I did. A wonderful feeling, swimming in a lake without visible borders, just a shore on one side – far away. Though I had been in Austria for more than a month by that time, I never went for swimming. I felt strange after almost 2 years fully dressed plus scarf or headdress. Running around in bathing dress was unthinkable for me. Even while walking in the cities I tightly wrapped a scarf around my shoulders.
But with jumping in the water I also left all this shyness behind again. After that I felt comfortable in western dress again.

Other evenings – countless – I spent at my neighbor’s. First only for downloading my mails as there was no internet available in my father’s house. But somehow it became routine to open a bottle of red wine or two, sit, talk and fix computers.
I am missing nice wine again, still not used to this vinegar here.

After 2 months a friend dropped me at the airport, helping me dragging my bags along. I had got a special luggage weight extension. 40kg was my check in luggage, 10 more kgs were in my hand luggage.
Stuffed like that I was on the way to Pakistan again.