Heading west

My time in the Middle East is already up. Today I fly back to Zurich, with a short stop over in Istanbul, and then tomorrow on to Montréal. Here are the stats: Flight 22 to Istanbul Date: 24/06/2014 Code: THY795 from IST to TLV Airline: Turkish Airlines Plane: Airbus 321-200 Distance flown: 775 Miles Duration: 1h50 […] Read More

IST to TLV

Another city coming up, I feel like time speeds up more and more… I’m off to Tel Aviv now. Here are the stats: Flight 21 to Tel Aviv Date: 28/05/2014 Code: THY788 from IST to TLV Airline: Turkish Airlines Plane: Airbus 343 Distance flown: 800 Miles Duration: 1h40 We had a bit of delay, as a passenger […] Read More

On to Istanbul

And I’m off again, now to Istanbul. I’ll meet Sven and Kevin there for a few days, then my sister Sabine will join me for ten days. I’m curious to see if I can tweet from there now. Interesting times. Here are the details: Flight 20 to Istanbul Date: 04/05/2014 Code: THY1914 from ZRH to […] Read More

75825 kilometers

As I really like statistics and numbers, like the longest flight, the plane models etc, I kept track of all that data on my travels. After the first trip around the globe, here are the statistics: In total I travelled 75825 kilometers, which is roughly 1.9 times the circumference of the Earth. This figure includes the flights, the […] Read More

Full circle

Today, I am boarding my last flight of my first Round-the-world ticket, flying from Tokyo-Narita back to Zurich, where it all started 6 months and 26 days ago. I’ll have a short technical stop at Lake Constance, seeing my family and a few friends there, washing, changing clothes and dropping some superfluous weight before heading […] Read More

Osaka

These two weeks in Tokyo have passed way to fast. I do regret a bit that I did not stick with my initial plan to stay four full weeks in Tokyo. I had feared I would be lost in translation (and I am!) and be bored like in the movie… What a big error. There’s […] Read More

Train ride through Nippon

Next week, I’ll get my Japan Rail pass. I ordered it in New Zealand, as you can only acquire it from abroad. Two weeks for 330 Euros, (nearly) all trains except some few super-mega-express Shinkansen trains. But most of the high speed Shinkansen trains are covered… You just can’t beat that. So I had to […] Read More

NZ99

I had a great seat with extra legroom and a window… not for free, Air New Zealand makes you pay for that privilege, but I thought for an 11 hour flight, that’s worth it… The flight was good, even though we had to wear the seatbelt a lot flying through some ultra-high and grey clouds. […] Read More

Up north

Time to say good-bye to Te Waipounamu, the South Island. I’m flying north to Auckland for one last night at the airport, before taking the morning flight to Tokyo the day after. Here are the flight statisticss: Flight 17 to Auckland Date: 01/04/2014 Code: ANZ648 from ZQN to AKL Airline: Air New Zealand Plane: Airbus 320 Distance flown: […] Read More

Cook Strait

This morning I boarded the ferry to the south Island. 3h10 for the passage from Wellington to Picton, passing through the Cook Strait and Marlborough Sounds with its islands and waterways. The coast line in this northernmost part of the South Island is outright ridiculous, and reminds you of a fractal, in its endless repetitions. […] Read More

Travel rhythms

Time to say good-bye to Auckland, already. I’m heading out on my NZ road trip today. As always, I don’t want to leave, now. I always have to leave when I just start to feel a bit at home. It sucks. Well, #firstWorldProblems, I know. But I can see a pattern evolve in every city: […] Read More

24h plane travel

I always found this animation fascinating. It depicts the various planes during a 24h cycle. You can see the massive transatlantic traffic, the line from South America over to their former mother countries, the enormous air traffic in the United States… I’ll be one one of these soon again!   Read More