Travel Blog Mongolia

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one could go. (T.S. Eliot)

Dear all of you,

First of all I thought a very long time about in which language do I want to write my blog and I decided because of all my friends who actually do not speak German but are also interested in my adventures to write it in English. I hope this will be all right, for those of you who’s English is not the very best. Neither is mine and I hope you will pardon all my mistakes!

Next question: Why the hell am I writing this blog and why the hell am I going to Mongolia?

I started last October my master degree (french, englisch and business as my bachelor already) and realized – wow – in two years from now I will be working permanently and won’t be as free as I am at the moment as student. So what doing? My big dream was actually to do something different than Erasmus (as I did in France 2012-2013) and Au Pair (as I did in Australia after my A-Levels in 2010). I wanted to do into a third world country or a newly industrializing country to support the people there but without paying a fortune to do that.

I stumbled across the program of KULTURWEIT, which is supported by the German UNESCO Commission, and the Auswärtige Amt. Within the application it was not able to decide one country but rather sorting different countries by the help of a traffic light system (red = no option; yellow = possible option; green = yes an option). So sooner said than done. My favourite countries were Ruanda, Kenya and Mongolia – very contrasting countries. Climatically, culturally…. Africa, with over 30 degree versus Mongolia, with up to minus 40 degree in winter.

After filling in hundreds of papers and writing letters of motivation and waiting for ages at the beginning of April I got the “yes” from the german UNESCO Commission. Yeah, I was really accepted for the program J and yes I was about to go to Mongolia, a country totally unknown to me. I didn’t even know the name of the capital, what language do they speak there and what currency do they have, were just three of about thousand questions in my head!

Then the bureaucratic marathon began which took about 3 month after having all my vaccinations, papers, visa etc.

I bought a travel guide to read a tiny bit about Mongolia. The most surprising facts are:

Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital of the world

The currency is called Tugrik (1€ = 2160,00 Tugrik)

The climate is extremely dry and continental, which means hot summer and extremely freezing cold winter. In the desert Gobi up to minus 40 degree everything is possible 😉 see here: https://weatherspark.com/averages/34116/Ulan-Bator-Ulaanbaatar-Mongolia

Thanks to a good friend of mine I got contact to a Mongolian family living literally next to my house J. Happy about having some contact to real Mongolian people I bought a book to learn the language – at least a tiny bit before going there. I knew from starting Spanish at uni how hard it is to learn a new language and even worse I have to learn a new alphabet (Cyrillic). I know I won’t be able to speak a lot but this is one goal for me: to be able to do some small talk after living six month there. Moreover, I really look forward to plunge into a complete new culture, to experience a totally new intercultural situation, to grow by living a totally different experience and just getting to know a new country.

My tasks there will be teaching german and maybe also a bit of english at a huge public school and I will be there to represent Germany. We gonna see how this will be! I will have around 180 students in total.

I am fully excited to start my journey in about a month even though you always go with mixed emotions! I have so many extremely important friends all over the world, but especially in Giessen where I do live since the start of my studies in 2010. Thanks to modern technique it is easy to keep contact but even though that’s not the same as having them all around me. But I will see Mongolia as a huge chance and when I come back there will be a gigantic welcome back party!

This so far concerning the development of my ideas and how they came true and I hope by learning to freeze in Mongolia the following German winter won’t be this hard as the last ones 😛

A huge inspiration was as well the episode 2014/2015 from the European Outdoor Film Tour. Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDHqIe1d2io

One film is about 4 girls trying to explore Asia and Mongolia by kayak. The film is called Nobody’s River and shows the four women travelling 2 month the river Amur (an unrestricted river). The film shows how contrasting such an adventure could be: pain and happiness, discovery and farewell, beauty and decline. Absolutely worth watching and showing definitely the beauty of the nature and its virginity.

More information here: http://www.eoft.eu/de/programm/01-nobodys-river/ and here: http://nobodysriver.org

I am really looking forward to stay in contact with you all guys and I am very happy to read your comments, messenges and for those who want to write a german postcard to me as soon as I know where I do live I will let you know 🙂

So stay tuned,

Maren