All farewell is difficult...but also beautiful ;)

Today is the big day finally arrived. At 22:20 my plane (Emirates Airbus 380) will take off in Frankfurt and first take me to Dubai before continuing to Auckland. At 3:00 German time and 13:00 local time, I will set foot on New Zealand ground for the first time on Wednesday.
Before my trip, of course, I said personal goodbyes to many of my friends - unfortunately not all of them. It all started on 21.8. with a small family celebration at my home. I said goodbye to my cousin and my three cousins (see photos) as well as their parents.
On 31.8. it continued. I was in Trier on this day anyway and took the opportunity to say goodbye to Mariel and Ina (see photo), who unfortunately could not come to one of my two parties. So I was very happy that I had the opportunity to see them again.
With my birthday came the highlight of the celebrations. On 3.9. there was the first celebration at my home.

After I and my parents set up our tent and a grill in our garden as well as enough tables together with our neighbor Ruurd from the Netherlands during the day, the first guests gradually arrived, first Florian, Max, Till, and Dominik. After a shared dinner and a round of Sjoelen (Dutch board game), we sat together comfortably while the next guests like Nico, Andrea, Stefan, Barbara, David, Yannick, Christian, Philipp, Ben, Fabian, Peter, Dren, and Matthias arrived one after the other (see photos). In the late evening, Bernd and Thomas from the old gentlemen of the OASF, my soccer team, also joined us. After a few rounds of Uno with the last remaining guests, the celebration slowly came to an end. I really enjoyed the atmosphere during the celebration and had a lot of fun with all the guests. After a shared breakfast the next morning, it was time to say goodbye to those who had traveled from afar and had therefore stayed with me overnight.

On Monday, there was the second celebration in Trier, which took place in the Bowling Room. Contrary to what the name suggests, we didn't go bowling, but played laser tag ;) After a short but cozy get-together (see photos), after which I unfortunately had to say goodbye to Anne, who had injured herself while playing table tennis and couldn't laser, Lena, Catha, Julia, Jenni, Theresa, Till, David, Philipp, Vadim, Ingo, and Dominik went together to the main program: 2 hours of laser tag, almost in one go. Although we were already soaked in sweat after the first round, 10 of my 11 guests stayed until the end and created an evening that I will not forget so quickly. It was exhausting, but for the fun that we all had, it was worth it :D

Overall, it was very nice to see my friends again before going on the trip. Thank you again for being there! I will miss all of you :/ In the last few days, I spent my time with general preparations as well as packing my trekking backpack, which is now fully packed ;) I also had Jerry, Boris, and Edwin from the Netherlands as couch surfers as guests during my last days in Germany.

Yesterday, it was time for me to say goodbye for the last time, namely to my soccer team, the SG OASF/Barweiler. Although my farewell match didn't go well, as we unfortunately lost and were displaced from the top of the table, I still enjoyed my farewell celebration with my teammates. For my trip, the entire team gave me a nice hoodie as a gift, which I naturally packed in my backpack and will definitely wear it often in New Zealand. Thank you again and good luck and success in the remaining games. I firmly believe that you will have a good season and I will follow your results very closely from the other end of the world :)

To illustrate everything, I have attached some photos of course. I hope you enjoyed the report and I say goodbye from Germany with this! Hopefully, the first travel report will come from Samoa ;)

See you soon!
Your Max