-Chapter 2- The Three-Day Flight

October 1, Tuesday night, half past 3 in Schwerin South: We had huge eye bags and our backpacks were so heavy that we had to walk like Quasimodo. For a brief moment, we thought the train was delayed, but fortunately it was just a false alarm. Celina said goodbye to her parents (Celina's mother: 'Two girls from Pampow all alone in the world') and I said goodbye to Mom, who lifted my 20 kilogram backpack onto the train. The transfer in Hamburg and the search for the right S-Bahn for Cologne Airport went smoothly. And that even though we could only walk 50 meters at a time without running out of breath...

After 4 hours, we landed in Istanbul at sunset, which looked really beautiful from above. Luckily, we had a 6-hour layover there because the airport was extremely confusing and we got lost after just 5 minutes. After an unnecessary trip outside and another check-in, we finally found the flight to Kuala Lumpur. We were especially thrilled with Turkish Airlines, who provided us with thrombosis stockings, a sleep mask, a toiletry bag, earplugs, lip balm, and of course, hot food at 3 a.m.

When we finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur 10 hours later, we realized that getting thrombosis is not as unlikely as we thought. It was somewhat worrying that Celina's feet were swollen and my legs felt like I had severe muscle soreness. The airport was so huge that we had to take a train to the baggage claim. We checked our luggage again, had to show our visa for the first time, and had to show our passports about 30 times. We also chugged our water bottles in one go, found out that Malaysian Airlines had two terrible accidents in recent years, and went through the same security check twice because we wanted to be touched by the same employee again. On the 10-hour flight to Auckland, we had to fill out a form for entry, scan our luggage at the airport, and answer questions about it. When we arrived in Auckland, we couldn't believe it. We had never been so far away from Pampow before.