The Farewell

Do you believe in the MEDIA? The classical Greek philosopher Plato describe in his work "The Republic" a fictional dialog between His Teacher Socrates and his brother Glaucon. In this dialog Socrates uses the Metaphor of the Cave to describe that the reality is not always what you see. He exemplify with Prisoners in a cave that can only sees shadows during their whole lives, not knowing they are shadows, themselves start thinking the images they see are the actual reality. Plato lived 1500 years ago, but these metaphor still up to date. Television is wide spread throughout the world now a days, people use it more and more as their source of information. People believe what television says and less and less verify for themselves the information, people don't realizes that TV programs are edited. This put us in Plato's cave, we see shadows and believe it's the reality, and never go out of the cave to check out the real world. This trip was me and my brother trying to get out of the cave, see the world with our own eye's and experience it with our own senses. No more projected images and descriptions, but the real world, the real people, the real culture.

The great Brazilian sailor Amir Klink says: "Men needs to travel, on by it’s own, not by stories, images, books or TV. A man need to travel by himself, with his eyes and feet, to understand what belong to him. Then one day he can plant he’s own trees and appreciate his own work. Has to feel the cold to appreciate the heat. And the opposite. Feel the distance and the exposure to feel good under his own roof. A man need to travel to places he doesn’t know, and break the arrogance that make us see the world as we imagine, and not how it should be or could be; and which make us teachers and masters of things that we haven't seen. Instead of this we should be students, just go out there and see the world.”

Here we are, in a bus, in the country where all started. Our hearts doesn't know what to feel. Four more days and Claudio will be home, far away from his brother Fernando (he will go to Sweden). After spending 3 years, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week together, in all kind of situations, in all kind of cultures, surrounded by all kind of people, pleasure or danger. Always having one another to expose opinions and share ideas, to give courage to continue. As in Ernesto "Che" Guevara's book "The motorcycle Diaries", the split from Alberto Granado, after one year together in their motorcycle trip, was the hardest part of the trip.

Well let's get back to what happened. Because Germany and Poland don't have a border check, there is a lot of illegal immigrants and drugs that com by this route inside the country. So it took us about one hour to leave the bus, because all documents were checked and all luggage sniffed by dogs. It gave us a good sense of safety, after all, was 3 in the morning and we had to wait for the metro to start working to be able to get to our destination.

For the great farewell, we stayed in the house of someone known. We met Lisa in Vietnam and she offered her place for us to stay. From the many offers and promises of place to stay during the trip this was one of the very few that turned into reality. We also visited another friend Julie, that we met in Namibia and South Africa 2 years ago.

Germany was very familiar, but someway new. We think we have changed a lot during these years on the road. Because, even thought we have visited all the main attractions of Berlin in the first visit there they seamed strangely different this time. Someway less impressive and exciting and more real. The world became more real. We didn't look at the communism buildings and imagined fairy tales or movie titles, but we saw the marks on them and felt what might have happened. Not only this but we paid attention the other tourists too, walking with their cameras hanging around the neck, taking pictures of everything, so exited with the view, with the feeling of getting to see something new. This sight reminded us of ourselves a few years ago in the same situation, full of joy, dreaming about the trip we were just starting. Maybe one or more persons in crowd we saw were in the very first day of his new life, ready to open their mind to new experiences, new people and a completely new world! Good luck for you!

Departure day: We get to the airport exactly as described in the bus company website, by the seconds. German organization is impressive.

At the airport we didn't have much to say, probably we knew exactly what each other was feeling. We sat there for the last half hour with flashes from our trip passing in our minds like a movie and for sure thinking how important was the presence of a brother every single day. Claudio's flight was the first one, so we hugged and Claudio left. Fernando, alone, started walking to his departure gate too.
It's such a strange feeling...

These way finished the odyssey from 2 Brothers on a 3 Continents trip!

Fernando headed to Stockholm in Sweden to stay with his girlfriend Malin. Claudio after connecting in Barcelona and staying a night in his cousin Flavia (she was in Thailand with us) did another quick connection in Rome and flu to Brazil where he would, a month latter, meet his girlfriend Lili and go to Mexico.

Thanks to all readers for being together with us in this journey!
Thanks to our family for the love and support.
Thanks to everyone we met on the way, locals and travelers, you are the ones who did this trip so special!

See you in the next trip. The 3 Americas (North Central and South) are waiting for us!!

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