Phobia. Defined as a „type of anxiety disorder, usually a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational. In the event the phobia cannot be avoided entirely, the sufferer will endure the situation or object with marked distress. Usually accompanied by strong physical signs of distress such as a racing heart, trembling or sweating“.

I can confirm all of the above. I’ve always suffered from arachnophobia, even small creepy crawlies scare me, and the movie of the same name is high up on my list of „movies I’ll never want to watch“. I’ve therefore hesitated quite a bit before booking my ticket to Indonesia as reports on the internet are not encouraging – the country was said to have huge spiders, and a lot of those. But – now seems to be as good a time as ever to get to grips with these things, so I took a deep breath and booked my ticket, feeling a bit anxious.
Of course, it only takes one day to see a spider’s web of nearly 2 meters in diameter, and in it a spider worthy of this web, the largest I’ve ever seen – very black, massive body, long legs – uuugh (I don’t manage a selfie with it, my hands are trembling too much). And I want to stay in this country for 6 weeks? I am sure of one thing – either I’ll be cured of my phobia for ever, or I’ll make my escape early. I won’t survive six weeks of „marked distress“. Watch this space…
And here a word to all those „oh, spiders are really harmless“-sages. Yes. I know. If they weren’t, my fear would be called „fear“ and not „phobia“. Saying it doesn’t help, so just leave it. Thank you :).

That evening, I am sitting on my bed, reading, when I see something dark scurrying across the floor. I jump, but it’s only a large cockroach. I get up and am still thinking how to get it out the door again, when it creeps underneath it and leaves – I am staying, as is the standard here, in a sort of cabin with all of nature in front of the door. Super. I wish for a mosquito net but there aren’t any. 6 weeks can be very long… During the night I notice that cockroaches can be very noisy, a new experience I could have done without. In the morning, I throw my new Buddhist principles overboard and one of the cockroaches (which just won’t stay outside) into the loo, another one I am still chasing.
So I’ve arrived in Indonesia. It is Ramadan and Indonesia is a mainly Muslim country. But here on Gili Air, they have a heart for tourists, we are allowed to eat and drink all day (apparently, in some places, also tourists are not allowed to publicly eat or drink between 4am and 6pm, not even drinking water, which I think is quite hard in these hot countries). Two days ago, there were presidential elections, and they currently have two presidents, because both candidates claim victory – wasn’t there a similar situation in the US some years ago?
I am on Gili Air because they offered a bargain yoga- and meditation course (which I’ll start tomorrow), and the island doesn’t look all bad. But it’s also a party island, not unlike a Hippie chavs’ island, but I can of course always go into a meditative state…

The Germany Brazil match I listened to on the internet radio at 4am – I do wish I were in Germany right now, but the joy has been sweeping over to here as well. The finals I’ll probably have to watch in a bar, at 3am, in Bahasa Indonesian, but I’ll do that for my country, and I can always fall asleep during meditation…

A few quick pictures: