Bintan Island
Upon discovering that the nearest Indonesian islands are merely an hour away, I decide to go and have a look. I need to fill in another arrival card, and there is a group looking...


Published: 27.07.2026
She stands out in the crowd. She has blond hair and fair skin. When she approaches me and starts talking I think that she might be Polish. Turns out she’s Russian and a digital nomad. She’s my first European encounter after two weeks.
She is very fond of saying when I will be, when you will be and the teacher in me is secretly correcting the “mistake” albeit I would call it an idiosyncrasy these days. We exchange numbers and she forwards an interview conducted with her a while ago. Her fiancé lives in Karlsruhe.
The train is belated. I was not going to head for the capital yet, it is only that the two cities I had been planning to visit are flooded.
At the hotel I meet a couple from France. Looks like Europeans rather flock here.
