Welcome to Medellín

I will not be able to write everything about Medellín because we spent a lot of time here. Tati and I flew from Lima to Medellín, where I first had the opportunity to meet Juli's parents and brother. Everyone is very nice to me, even though communication with the parents is difficult as we do not speak a common language.

We celebrated Christmas relatively similar to our German traditions - except that it was pleasantly sunny at around 30 degrees, the Christmas tree flickered like a disco ball, and Juli also has her birthday on December 24th. 😃 In any case, we enjoyed the 12-year-old Ron Medellín. 🥃

Basically, we relaxed most of the time until the new year, although we spent quite a lot of time in shopping malls. 🙄 Due to its very violent past, social life in Medellín has focused heavily on shopping malls, as they are considered safe. I didn't really enjoy it, but I believe that these concerns about the streets have simply become too deeply ingrained in people's minds. So I'm not a typical tourist here. 🤔

As a change, we took a day trip to Guatapé between the holidays, a very colorful small town about 2-3 hours away from Medellín. The tour included climbing a 700-step high rock as well as a boat ride on a lake, where some wealthy people and celebrities (such as James Rodríguez) have built their villas, although one of them has been crumbling for decades: Pablo Escobar's. If I understood correctly, the ownership of many of his buildings is so complicated that they cannot be inhabited or demolished. In general, it seems that people in Medellín prefer to forget this part of their own past. I doubt that is the right way to do it. 🤷🏼‍♂️

New Year's Eve was similarly quiet. The main difference was that we had the "festive meal" in the new year. So we didn't eat until around 1 am, which meant that everyone was so hungry beforehand that we stuffed ourselves and then fell into a food coma and went to bed at 2 am. 😂