Monat: Dezember 2019

Vom Flughafen zur Unterkunft, zur Tagestour, zum Restaurant, zur Autovermietung, zum nächsten Ort…

Viel erlebt, aber gar nicht so viel gespürt. Das kann passieren. Eine Reise mit allen Möglichkeiten kann eine regelrecht künstliche Welt schaffen. Fernab vom lokalen Miteinander. Die Aussage „Ich fühle mich wie ein Tourist“ schwingt in unseren Köpfen und das nicht immer mit einer positiven Bewertung.

Reisen verbindet. Echtes Reisen findet draußen unter Menschen statt, mit ihren Geschichten, ihren Kulturen, ihren Sitten und Bräuchen. Der Austausch mit „Locals“ kann inspirierend sein, bleibt in Erinnerung, erklärt uns ein Land, eine Gesellschaft. Und es kann neue Freundschaften bringen. Beim TFL20 sprechen wir, ganz konkret Yvi Strüwing mit OhneHeimatKeineReise, einen Appell an die Menschen auf unserer Reise aus mit dem Ziel: nicht verstecken, sondern neugierig bleiben!

I am Albrecht Ihlenburg from Germany and I have been travelling for more than two years. During that journey it was not important how fast and where to go but instead I decided for different rules which guided my way from my hometown in Germany to Mexico: I wouldn’t want to spend money for transportation or accomodation.

That means I had to hitchhike, couchsurf, work for bed and board or camp. It was quite easy-going until I reached the Atlantic Ocean to cross the sea. Here the real adventure started.

In the end I learned how to slow down, be humble and patient to fulfill a dream I always had and to meet the most amazing characters throughout this journey.

After another two years living in Mexico I decided to go back home. In an interview on stage of the TFL20 I will talk about what made me go back and how I felt arriving in a place I know so well, called home.

Albrecht Ihlenburg
live on stage on the 18th of January 2020

video message
and more about him on Facebook.

Rory Macleod is a writer from California. In 2015, he was working as the head writer for Apple HR and living in San Francisco when he decided to quit his job, give up his apartment, and sell off all of his belongings to pursue his dream of bicycling across America.

His original goal was to just ride from Oregon to Maine, but after getting to the east coast he decided to keep going. Since then he has biked more than 55,000 kilometers through 35 U.S. states and 44 countries across North America, Europe, and Africa, and raised more than €40,000 for World Bicycle Relief, helping people in developing countries receive access to healthcare and education.

Now Rory lives on an island in Croatia, in the tiny village of Pučišća, where he is writing a book about his travels, learning the language, and discovering what life after a long journey looks like.

He did not return home and will tell you on the 18th of January 2020 why and how it is not to come home.

Rory Macleod
live on stage on the 18th of January 2020

video message
and more about him on YouTube

Coming home after traveling, coming back after being abroad for some weeks…or for years, is a typical end of a journey. Or maybe not.

Especially for planning a BIG trip it is often the case that travelers give up everything. Their apartment, their job, their membership in certain clubs, everything. We heard them saying that it is to have a real „restart“ or to afford their trip better or to feel the next steps more intensively. No matter what. This decision is big.

And not many people think about the end while being in the middle of an adventure. And then the bombshell drops: the trip is over and we have to decide either going back to the life circumstances we had before or starting a completely different life. Continuing traveling or settling down somewhere transitionally. There are many answers on how it can be after the originally planned trip is over.

We want to hear more about coming home or not and we invited two travel enthusiasts – Rory Macleod and Albrecht Ihlenburg – who will tell us how it feels to stand right in front of the decision of what to do next, how it is to come home and how it is to decide to stay away, without beloved ones, without the „safety“ feeling at home. Welcome to TFL20, with a talk about homecoming on the 18th of January!

We have some time off, we are looking for a change of scenery, we want new perspectives. And mostly we want to do something while being out of our daily life. Something with a meaning – small or big. A project. A task.

There are plenty of organizations and opportunities that open their home and their mission to share and to integrate. In our home country and abroad. And usually volunteers are most welcome to pitch in. Depending on the duration of time the task can reach from assisting to conceptional work.

Working with organizations, especially abroad, shouldn’t be about „white saviors“. It is not about rescuing. It should be about the interest in a field of working, in human beings, in cultures.

The winner of our TFL20 wild card is the NGO Rugby Tackling Life who will explain you how it is to work with NGOs, how a cooperation can develop, what kind of tasks can be expected.

I’m Tony Giles from the UK. A totally blind and partially deaf solo traveller who’s visited all 7 continents and over 123 countries, alone!

After meeting and loosing people, after some tough time episodes of doubting, drinking and mourning, I decided to move on. I studied together with students, most who were non-disabled. I backpacked independently, I did a year-long journey, I undertook my first solo hike, I crossed the Arctic Circle by boat…

I like to bungy jump, raft rivers, have adventures, share stories! I published two Ebooks about travelling blind!

And I love sausages!

We see each other at the Travel Festival Leipzig :*

Tony the Traveller
live on stage on the 18th of January 2020

more about him and his adventures on Facebook

It is obvious: traveling can be exhausting, it needs effort, it is tiring sometimes. And now imagine how it is to have a problem while being abroad…having an accident on a trip and depending on support for example or carrying your very own, personal boundaries. Bad right?

Our problems feel like chick poop, if we look around. There are people with handicaps and they travel. They handle basic conditions for disabled people in certain countries, regions or cities. They improvise and stay focused on what they want: exploring foreign territories!

We invited Tony the traveller to the TFL20. He has visited all 7 continents and over 123 countries, alone. Basically he is a super traveller and he will tell you how it is to travel with handicaps and not being influenced, not being impressed by that.

Ich hatte schon immer ein Faible für Politik, alles ging los, als ich mit elf eine erfolgreiche Kinderpartei mit 25 Mitgliedern gründete. Nach dem Abi in Bonn wollte ich dann mehr über die Welt lernen und ich entschied mich für einen „weltwärts“-Freiwilligendienst in Togo. Die Frage danach – warum die Welt so unfair eingerichtet ist und es so viele Probleme gibt – hatte ich anschließend im Soziologie- und Philosophiestudium in Hamburg und dann im Master Gesellschaftstheorie in Jena vertieft.

Die Zustände so zu akzeptieren, wie sie sind, kann ich immer noch nicht und engagiere mich mittlerweile hauptsächlich feministisch. Im Sommer hatte ich meine erste Webserie produziert, in der ich als „Wessi HennaFontana“ mit meinen „Ossi-Kollegen JoNasty“ Youtuberin wurde,  durch Sachsen, Brandenburg und Thüringen reiste und verschiedenste Menschen zur Wiedervereinigung und den Nachwendejahren interviewte.

Beim TFL20 beschäftigt sich Hannah Schlüter mit Sinnfragen des Reisens,  mit first world problems und dem Gleichgewicht zwischen Reisenden und den bereisten Ländern. Geht das überhaupt? Muss das sein? Und was wollen die meisten beim Reisen denn eigentlich?

Hannah Schlüter
live on stage am 18.01.2020

Videobotschaft
und mehr noch auf Facebook und YouTube.

Wir reisen, viel und gern und vor allem viel. Und weit, immer weiter. Und warum das alles? Weil wir uns nach „Exotik“ sehnen, wir wollen überreizt sein von neuen Eindrücken.

Reisen ist ein Privileg. Rund 55 Millionen Deutsche sind 2018 verreist. Oftmals verfolgen wir beim Reisen den Wunsch nach interkulturellem Austausch – doch ist dieser überhaupt möglich, wenn Ungleichheit herrscht? Was sollten und könnten wir tun, um das Abenteuer und die persönliche Weiterentwicklung, die eine Reise mit sich bringen kann, zu erleben in Zeiten von Flucht, Klimawandel und Kluft zwischen den Lebensbedingungen der Reisenden und den bereisten Ländern?

Reisekritik, eine Reflexion des Privilegs zu Reisen, first world problems…all dies gilt es zu besprechen. Beim TFL20 begrüßen wir Hannah Schlüter, Autorin von „Was soll der Müll“ im der Freitag, auf unserer Main Stage, die sich mit diesen und vielen weiteren Themen auseinander gesetzt hat und sich die Frage stellt: warum in die Ferne schweifen?