So...

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... what happened so far?

To make a pretty long story short... it would be quite a large novel to write down everything that happened since I am here, therefore, just a short summary and some 'best of' stories later on...

Travel itinery:
I arrived in Colombo the 23nd of December and stayed for a week in Ambalangoda (little town at the beach), together with my parents and their group of ex collegues of the German railways, all around 60, the "average Germans (think of nice white skin colour, red face and a nice beer belly:-) ...
It was quite fun to spend some time with them, hear their comments about what SHOULD be done here to improve the (environmental, political, social) situation... yes, they really got over that state of criticism (we Germans are good at that, no?:-) and tried to resolve, theoretically, Sri Lankan problems while they tried to squeeze in little tuktuk's, ate spicy Sri Lankan food (the red face again) and took photos of trains and houses, crushed by tsunami...

I befriended with the tuktuk driver of the hotel and did some nice and interesting excursions all around the Southern part of Sri Lanka, beaches, fishermen, coconut palm trees (quite dangerous sometimes as they don't mind to let their fruits drop when you pass by), churches with portugues graves, mosques which you (as a woman) can't enter, temples with lying buddhas, eating food with fingers, using newspapers as napkins (yes, actually they are quite good in recycling here - they use old newspapers, cut into little pieces as napkins in some restaurants - those in which you probably wouldn't go if you didn't drive around with a local person), seeing tents in which some people still live since the tsunami as it's more profitable to rent the houses which have been build for them by foreign aid organisations than living in them themselves, getting used to the traffic here (you ever crossed the road, having the feeling that you've forgotten to check on the right side if there are cars coming? - I feel like that every time I do a crossing as I haven't got used to it yet that they drive on the other side of the street, like in GB)...

I left Ambalangoda quite a while ago and travelled to Kandy by train (an adventure by itself, with stunning views on rice fields and rather frightening outlooks on very poor villages build next to the railway). Kandy is up in the mountain and it's therefore much colder than at the coast - nice European climate:-) It's a very nice town with a beautiful big lake, a park with all kinds of exotic plants and the famous "temple of the tooth" (buddha's tooth is taken care of here... if it's really there, you'll never know as you are not allowed to look on it, you can just worship the "box" in which it is supposed to be).

From Kandy, I headed further South but even higher into the mountains to Nuara Elyia (even for a German, it was VERY cold at night!) where I visited a tea plantation (quite interesting to see how tea is produced after having consumed tea in tea bags since you are little) and had a stop over at an "elephant ressort"... Imagine 60 elephants taken their bath in a river, the little ones being fed with milk in those big baby bottles by the people working there)

Right now, I am in Colombo - the big, smelly and very busy capital of Sri Lanka. I am fighting to survive whenever I cross the street, I bargain hard with tuktuk drivers in order to get local prices for their taxi service, I have visited the German embassy who gave me a long list of quite important people in Sri Lanka (who are now, naturally, in possesion of my cv:-), I got to know some singalese and tamil people, have talked to expatriates and quite long to the owner of my guesthouse who happens to be a well known writer about Sri Lankan history and culture.

Anyway, Colombo is really a very nice place to be but all the companies and organisations I could work for are located here and at least I am preparing like that for busy Indian city life:-)

So good, so far... 'best of stories' will come later on.

Best,
Ulrike

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Comments

[Lutz]

Elephant Resort
I had a visit there, too in the 1980s. They raise orphaned elephants. The small ones are so cute, that if they weren´t so big I guess many people would pack them to bring home.