Most tourists come to Islay either by car or with their bicycles which is not the worst idea as public transportation is rather scarce. I don’t have either and using a bicycle on a windy island for hours wouldn’t be to my taste anyway. For Sunday I planned a visit to the Bowmore distillery which is about 11 miles from Port Charlotte where I’m staying. As I had to learn, there is no bus services on Sunday.

Islay, pronounced ‘Eye la’, is an island on the west coast of Scotland and home to famous whisky distilleries like Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Bowmore and others. The whiskys from these distilleries have an extremely smoky flavour and are uncontested number one on the list of my favourite spirits. Aside from the beautiful nature they are the reason why I chose to come to Islay. I left Glasgow by bus in the morning and one of the first stops on the way north was Loch Lomond.

Those were the words of the flight attendant announcing our arrival in Scotland. Edinburgh was sunny indeed and a big improvement over rainy Bremen were I left Germany at half nine this morning. Getting to Bremen was pleasantly uneventful, no trouble with the trains this time. At the airport Ryanair has a private terminal and they probably have that because no other passenger would want to stay there. It’s ugly.

Off to the highlands for a week tomorrow. I’ll fly into Edinburgh, immediately escape the festival madness there and spend a night or two in Glasgow which is just a 1.5h bus ride away. The following two nights will be on the isle of Islay and after that some place else. Today I paid Hamburg a short visit to get my visa for Thailand. What a pain, they changed the regulations about one-way flights and the lady working at the consulate was just plain rude (German of course, not Thai).

My plans for the time between Germany and New Zealand are getting more and more tangible. First of all, that time will most likely be extended. Hiro will be back in SEA on the first of November and we want to take the opportunity to spend some time together. On the 8th of September airberlin will hopefully deliver me at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport and I’ll spend the first couple of days in that dirty and fascinating chaos to accustom myself to SEA again.

German Premier League started this weekend and Bremen had a home game on Saturday. I wanted to see the match, preferably in the standing room where you can find the biggest fans/idiots and thus the best atmosphere. Unfortunately tickets for that area were sold out but usually there’s some for sale in front of the stadium. Bremen changed its ticketing system this year and holders of a season ticket no longer get a bunch of paper tickets but a chip card instead.

I feel like I should note that I just spent two weeks in the south, visiting the Karlsruhe crew. Seeing all the people again has been amazing and everybody provided the poor backpacker with food and accommodation, thanks guys! Unlike in earlier years I didn’t take the train for travelling this time. Instead I tried the rides offered on the internet (mitfahrgelegenheit.de) which are way cheaper. Everything went well there so I’ll use the system whenever no cheaper train tickets are available.

After a short visit to the cinema in Speyer on Sunday, I thought the city would be worth a second visit. It’s one of the oldest cities in Germany and features according buildings and a massive dome. Getting there from Karlsruhe is a bit of a pain as public transportation needs about 1.5h for the 50km ride. Worth it though, especially on a sunny day with blue sky like today.

Playing around with all that sliders in Adobe Lightroom turned some shots presentable that were formerly not properly exposed and that I didn’t wanted to put online. Now here’s some (late) impressions from the streets of Cambodia.

More than a year abroad and I didn’t miss Germany as a country once. Family, friends, cheap food, cheap beer, cheap everything, yes, but the feeling of living in the country, no. Thus it didn’t surprise me that being back feels ok but nothing more. Spending a little more time in other parts of the world is hence ok in that regard. Every now and then I’m asked how all that travelling is affecting my future, namely getting a job and later a pension.