Hello Hanoi!

So the big adventure began. Started in Hamburg, I first flew to Dubai, which presented itself to visitors as a glowing metropolis in the desert night. It all made an unreal impression on me, what was being created with funds from the Persian Gulf in the desert sand. After a two-hour stay in the airport building, it was time for me to board and continue.

Nestled in dense fog after a six-hour flight, there it was in front of me, the city of six and a half million, Hanoi. The place where I will live for the next five months. It could have dressed up a bit for me, but as I quickly realized, foreign visitors are no longer a rarity.

With a taxi ride, for which I probably still paid too much despite bargaining, I now reached the city center. From there, my driver connected me with a moped taxi driver, with whom I then drove to the given address. A classmate of my cousin with relatives in Hanoi organized accommodation for me with relatives for the first time. My Vietnamese vocabulary is quite limited. Besides Xin chào (Hello) and Tên tôi là Sören (My name is Sören), I couldn't say much. Luckily, the nephew of my hosts helped with translating and explaining. However, the first challenge was eating. Previously, I preferred to use familiar cutlery in Asian restaurants, but now I had to prove myself with chopsticks. The first attempts were very bumpy, but over time, I also became more and more proficient.

For breakfast in Vietnam, the national dish Pho is usually served, a rice noodle soup with sprouts, beef, and cilantro. Quite tasty, although the green cilantro leaves take some getting used to.

The next evening, the children, nieces, and nephews of my hosts, who were about my age, took me on a trip to the old town of Hanoi. Vietnam is a very young country, about two-thirds of all people living here are under 30 years old.

On New Year's Eve, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum. What Lenin was to the Soviets, the Vietnamese see their leader as their communist revolutionary. But first, we had to stand in line, and if we didn't do it properly in pairs, the attentive staff would immediately reprimand us. We walked on a plastic red carpet into the interior of the mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh was laid to rest in a glass sarcophagus. We also visited the buildings where he had lived and worked, as well as the museum dedicated to him.

We naturally headed back on the moped through the heavy traffic of the Vietnamese capital. If you think that the traffic in German cities is chaotic, you should definitely come here. Wherever the smallest gap appears, a moped, ideally loaded with multiple people or goods, quickly takes up that space.

Tonight, we will go back into the city to welcome 2018.

I suggest that I contact you again next year.