We embrace the world. Elena Kalugina
p>We embrace the world
Elena Kalugina
Adrian Ruchini
© Elena Kalugina, 2021
© Adrian Ruchini, 2021
ISBN 978-5-0053-2718-5
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
WE EMBRACE THE WORLD
Introduction
We are writing this book for our friends, as we have a lot of them, ourselves and for you – the person who is holding this book in the hands. So, do not be surprised if I will refer to «you». It was born out of a diary we kept during a thirty-six-day trip around the world. To get to all the places that we dreamed of, we had to get on19 flights, passing 65 thousand kilometres, 7 thousand kilometres driven by car and 360 kilometres travelled on foot. We have been waiting for this adventure for a long time and with such impatience that, in order not to forget anything, we recorded in the plane while flying, all our impressions and thoughts from what we saw in each country.
In embracing the world, we decided to connect our travel with a pleasant and unusual particularity of our trip and this was that Adrian, as a member of the Rotary Club of Slovenia, with the great help of the Governor of District 1912 Janez Lipec, who has supported the initiative allowing us to bring the message of Rotary and of Slovenia too, organized meetings with the oldest clubs on each continent, and this fact enhanced the whole trip very much, making it even more intense and interesting, bringing us the possibility to meet amazing people.
This book will not have a steeply wrapped plot or deep emotional experiences, at least we think so. But here you will find sincere impressions about the crazy experience and feelings that are difficult to get, being an ordinary tourist, about the countries and cities in which we were, about the people we met, about the food we ate, about transport, strange traditions and much more, we will not bore you with long lists.
It gives us great pleasure to write this book, because it is like we are going through every minute of this travel again and again.
1
So, We… and who are we? Our names are Elena and Adrian, sometimes we think that we have always been together, that we have known each other since ever. We almost never stay apart and do everything together, so we write the book together, because our voices sound in unison. So do not be surprised that there is no «I» here, but only «We».
You want to know what we think about life? Life is beautiful if you know why you live. After all, when you are born, you already know that you will die, and it would seem that you have no hope. Why you have to live if you have to die anyway? If you are not able to find the answer to this question, you can drag your legs in a sad existence in anticipation of the death, but you know that the meaning of life is in the other thing, in the OTHER! So, what is the purpose of life? In life…in love. In love, no matter how banal it sounds.
There is still «something» that gives meaning to life – a child. He or she your continuation. He or she is your chance for immortality. This is our simple philosophy, which we believe in, and which gives us energy and happiness.
In this book, we want to talk about the journey of a dream, our dream, which hasn’t happened suddenly but was pre-planned and prepared for the celebration of our hundred years in sum.
A hundred years for two (40+60), well, isn’t it a reason for a crazy holiday 36 days long? We start on Elena’s birthday and return for Adri’s birthday. Not very much for a round-the-world trip, but enough to immerse yourself in an adventure called We embrace the world – we decided to call our mission in this way.
Such a brave idea might have occurred to Him, of course. When one day he told: «Do you know that in two years we together will arrive to common age of 100 years? Imagine what an anniversary! What do you think about around the world trip? Let’s think about which countries we would like to visit.»
In the end, after some thoughts and discussions, an ingenious plan of a trip around the world was drawn up, according to which we will not only see many countries, but also visit some man-made and natural wonders of the world and have lunch at two of the 10 best restaurants of the world.
We spent two years thinking, planning, and anticipating, and now day X has arrived.
We fly from Venice to Istanbul, then we will have a long flight to Cape Town, then India, the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, followed by Thailand, where we will stop in Bangkok, Cambodia with a magnificent Angkor Wat, Vietnam, where we will see Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh city and sail on a cruise ship on Halong Bay, Taiwan with a magnificent Taipei, and Hong Kong will be the end of the Asian adventure. The next stage will be New Zealand. American story will include Argentina with Buenos Aires, Lima, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Miami, New York, Chicago, and Niagara Falls. We still can’t believe this is going to happen to us.
2
On a birthday, the best time is in the morning: you wake up in anticipation of gifts, calls, messages. March 10. The first anniversary has come.
There will not be a long celebration (by the way, they say that celebrating forty years is a bad omen), there is only time to collect our small suitcases and fly towards adventures.
Yes, this will not be an easy task, because we decided to travel only with hand luggage. This is very practical thing, just imagine what will happen if we lose a suitcase on one of the 19 flights! Where can we find it later? In Bangkok? In Auckland? In this case it will definitely be an adventure with a negative sense, and we do not want that.
Especially for women travellers. So, I take two pairs of ballerina shoes, a pair of pumps, a pair of sneakers, another pair of sports footwear and sandals. That is all from the shoes. Several dresses that are easy to dry (we will have to wash almost every day), trousers, skirts, leggings, tops, cashmere sweater and jacket. All this fit in a small suitcase. iPad, chargers and cosmetics will fly in the ladies’ handbag, as it has an impressive size.
The preparation, by the way, was also from the psychological point of view. It is very important to «not get lost» in time zones, and they will change frequently and in different directions. So, we decided that when we’ll arrive in a new country and in a new time zone, we’ll start living in a new time, without losing precious hours for acclimatization and adaptation, and we will have a rest in the plane during flights.
Our favourite pasta with broccoli and a little wine on the road, and here we are ready and prepared to start.
Venice sees us off with warm March weather. We are ready to make the first flight to Istanbul. How great, it is just the beginning! A business class chair and a champagne as a greeting is a great continuation of a birthday party. A smiling flight attendant holds out a menu. Turkish Airlines is one of our favorite airlines. It’s so delicious to eat and drink here. Yes, you need to be very careful with food, we do not want to go home fat after thirty-five days of gluttony.
At midnight Istanbul airport is full of people. Someone is asleep, someone is waiting for the landing and go to gate announcements, other are running with suitcases to the exit. By the way, this is the last month of operation of the old Ataturk airport, the new one is already built and was waiting for it to work at full capacity.
The birthday is almost over, a pleasant fatigue is already creeping up. We are not in a hurry; we go to the business class lounge to wait for our flight to Cape Town. This will be one of our longest flights. Tomorrow, or almost today, we will be in Africa, at the very end of it, right across from Antarctica. We will see the ocean, Table Mountain, and penguins! Oh, tomorrow would be incredible!
The waiting time for the flight passed quickly with the company of baklava and Turkish tea. We take our suitcases and go to board our Turkish Airlines plane; this is the second and last flight with them. We deliberately write down the names of all airlines in order to compare