My plane from São Paulo to Frankfurt landed around 11am. It took a while until I picked up my backpack from the baggage carousel but everything else went pretty quickly. I walked over to the train station for long distance trains and while buying a ticket to go to my home town Duesseldorf I noticed the next train will be leaving in 5min and jumped onto it. I really like the train system in Germany since you can easily travel from one big city to another one. Especially the connection between Frankfurt Airport and Duesseldorf is excellent since you have a high speed track covering the distance of approx. 250km in only 1h and 15min or so. Also the ICE (intercity-express) trains run very frequent which make them convenient and the preferred type of travel compared to flying or going by car.

I arrived at home no later than 2pm. On the table in my living room was my second passport with all the Central Asia visas which I will need for my next trip. My friend Michael did me the favor and got them for me while I was travelling in South America. Right next to it was a piece of paper saying “Welcome Home!”. One of my first actions was to call my friend Michael and my parents but I couldn’t reach both of them and left a message.

When you travel for a long time there are a few things you miss after a while since you cannot easily buy them abroad. In my case these were gummy bears and other types of fruit gum. So I went to the supermarket around the corner to buy some of them. When I checked out there were some thin healthy looking ladies behind me buying all sorts of vegetables and fruits. When they saw me buying all this junk food they might have thought I’m only living on this stuff.

In the late afternoon my friend Michael called me back apologizing he won’t be able to meet me for dinner since he was assigned to a time critical deal and will need to continue working all night. This is how crazy his job is and how crazy my job was. Even when your best friend is only in town for two days you have rarely time seeing her because your job is demanding it. With time I have understood no job and no money you making with it are actually more worth than the close relationships you have with certain people.

I spent the evening talking to my parents. Since they live 500km away from my house I have no time to see them within two days but I at least try to stay in touch with them via phone and email. I also looked into the visa situation for my upcoming trips and prepared the necessary visa applications. Lastly, I discovered my business notebook back home isn’t booting anymore and I called the technical support in India. Unfortunately they couldn’t help me but promised the local support in our Duesseldorf office will call me back tomorrow.