Autor: Carsten Nolte

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Enjoying great wine in North Macedonia (March 2025)

Hello all!

Another new country on our list: North Macedonia. A quick visit we had. Very positive was driving through pretty mountain areas and experiencing the good quality of wine in North Macedonia.
Especially Skopje was special because they had a kind of restauration project running some years ago and they built a mass of statues and historically looking buildings all over the city centre. An amazing result but be careful not to stumble over one of the statues… they are everywhere, looking at you 🙂
The little city ‚Ohrid‘ at Ohrid Lake left a very special impression on us (a recommendation for a visit!). Even as spring was only just starting, we still got a bit the feeling of being in Tuscany/Italy. The architecture and colours of buildings did remind us, so did the flora. We found very pretty little mountain villages and it was good to visit them on the motorcycle. Unfortunately, we had bad luck with the weather so that we had to move on after only one week (did not have that much bad weather for 3 years…). So we were heading towards Albania earlier than expected. North Macedonia, we will return!

Greetings from
Heike & Carsten

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Here you find some pictures from North Macedonia

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Bulgaria for the second time (March 2025)

Hello all!

Crossing the border back into the EU was a bit scaring because if you return with your vehicle after more than 3 years of absence an import tax can be asked from the customs. That would have been very unpleasant because this potentially would have been very expensive and stressful for us. But (once more) crossing the border at weekends is a good trick. Not much traffic and not many people who like to work at Bulgarian customs. All was a bit sleepy. So the whole thing (exit of Turkey and entry to Bulgaria) took only 1 hour and nobody asked any questions at all. We were happy and really relieved!

We gave ‚Riaan‘ a visit at his new camper stop and visited the pretty little town ‚Plowdiv‘. We did not visit Bulgaria for a long time but had a positive impression at all. Obviously, it felt different than being in Turkey, no more big Muslim influence. Maybe Bulgaria felt a little less warm in welcoming foreigners. The overall impression was: a nice country site, rural and in parts poor. And of course, we were very happy about being able to have plenty of pork meat again (yummy!).

Greetings from
Heike & Carsten

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Here you find some pictures from Bulgaria

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Turkey: Back in Europe – with great happiness (February 2025)

Hello!

Coming back from a very long trip through Persia, Arabia, Pakistan and India we were very much looking forward to visit Turkey again in February. Back in Europe! That maybe doesn’t sound like a big thing, but it was, for us. Even if travelling in foreign countries and different cultures is so much exiting (it really is!), you are never able to completely really understand the spirits and behaviours over there. Returning to Europe means ‚returning to better known habits‘, returning home. And this starts in Turkey, a country that is a mixture of Muslim and the Western world. It may sound funny, but it is relaxing to live again in a better-known environment, life is just simpler to be managed, and everything is much easier to understand. This is not only about languages, it’s about understanding cultural and religious habits, gestures, mimic and gestic.

The memories from our last visit of Turkey in 2022 were so fabulous that we were very happy to return. Arrived we saw again the wonderful Mount Ararat with blue sky and snow at the top, a great start! Unfortunately, we could not enjoy the East part of Turkey extensively since we had an appointment in the city ‚Adana‘ (at the coast). We got 4 new batteries for our cabin since the old ones were dead after 14 years of usage (what a good result for Victron AGM batteries!). Heike took a flight home to Germany from Adana to do tax statements and to organize some bureaucracy. During the 2 weeks of her absence, I used the time to get some more things fixed at the truck. That worked very well at Mercedes Tarsus so that Wischnewski is almost completely prepared for our trip to Africa (that will start in September 2025). After Heikes return we spent another 4 weeks in Turkey, and we enjoyed very much to be able to shop groceries in real supermarkets (real bread and real sausages!). A big surprise was the price level in Turkey. 3 years ago, Turkey was a very cheap country to stay for us, but it is not anymore due to high inflation. A very beautiful event was visiting Cappadocia with its special mountain formations and almost 100 balloons that we could watch lifting very early in the morning. Another special site to visit was Istanbul. We had extraordinary look to meet friends from Pakistan (Hussain from Lahore) and Oliver & Michelle from Germany, they also visited Istanbul when we were there too. What a nice coincidence!

Greetings from
Heike & Carsten

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Here you find some pictures from Turkey

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Visiting Iran for the third time (January 2025)

Hello all!

Our general idea for Iran was to visit some (few) cities and do some repairs at the truck. That way we visited Zahedan, Bam, Kerman, Yazd, Isfahan and Tabriz. After long weeks with bad air in North-India and in Pakistan (smog, everywhere) it was like wellness to breath the fresh air in the mountain regions in the south of Iran. That was unexpected, …but so nice!

The Iranian technicians are well-known to be very handy and to find solutions for all kinds of technical problems. So we could fix a long list of things in Isfahan supported by a new friend ‚Vrezh“ (from Brother Overlander Workshop). Now we have an AC in the driver cabin, what a luxury! Impressiv to experience how the workshops and technicians work in Iran. You don’t have to make appointments, you just show up and they begin to work, very pragmatic. In Germany we would have needed a least 2 months to fix all the things that we got fixed in Iran during 1,5 weeks (and I guess we only paid 25% of what we would have paid in Germany).

During our first 2 visits of Iran we found some new Iranian friends. So this time we had the pleasure to visit some of them in Isfahan: Simin & Jakob with their wonderful family. That was a great experience to be so close to a local family.

It was nice to be back in Iran, and it will not be the last time to be in that wonderful country with it’s wonderful people!

Greetings from
Heike and Carsten

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Here you find some pictures from Iran

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We are happy to be back in Pakistan (December 2024)

Hello all!

Christmas time in Pakistan, that sounded like an interesting idea (:-0) Anyway, we were looking very much forward to visit Pakistan again. During our first visit in January 2024 there was not much time available to dive deeper into this country since we were on a hurry to arrive to India. So, this time we gave ourselves a little more time to investigate Pakistan. And that was good.

Different than you would expect Pakistan is not ‚full of terrorists‘ (of course not). It is the other way around: very friendly and hospital people wherever you go. And often very nice landscapes e.g. the mountain areas in the north like Karakoram, Himalaya and the Hindukush (we could not see as much as we would have liked since it was wintertime and too much snow on the roads and passes). And in the west, there are the deserts and some more mountain areas (we liked to drive there very much).

Pleasant in Pakistan was that the people are not so pushy and not so close (compared to India). They are very interested, but they gave us space and time to get in contact. You could immediately feel the Muslim spirit (this is why they are more defensive and with more distance, in a pleasant way). We felt good in Pakistan. We were very much looking forward to visiting our good friend ‚Hussain‘ in Lahore and also to see Islamabad for the first time. Both cities have busy areas and especially Lahore has a lot sights that could be visited. After a long time with only a little meat we were very enthusiastic to go to a BBQ restaurant at the first evening in Lahore (thanks, Hussain J). We did a lot of visiting of local markets and I (Carsten) did also a long overland tour with the motorbike through the villages – very interesting! Driving on Pakistan steest still is challenging but not to be compared to what we experienced in India… Christmas was a bit slow this year. Fortunately we could find a nice hotel (Serena) that offered a (wonderful) christmas brunch.

The second part of our trip in Pakistan was the transit through Belutschistan (on our way to Iran, Turkey and Europe). 1500km driving more or less in one passage. In that (very rural and poor) area you are not allowed to drive alone. We were guided by a police escort until you arrive to the Taftan border (our entry point to Iran).

Greetings from
Heike and Carsten

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Here you find some pictures from Pakistan

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