Tomorrow I’ll be sitting on a flight to Bangladesh and I could not be more excited! I’m also a bit nervous to be honest, since this is the second time I travel outside of Europe. The first time was in 2010 when I travelled to a holiday resort in Hurghada, Egypt. It was actually one of the first travels that I did. However, it took some more years before I truly fell in love with travelling.

What got me into travelling was my exchange year in Germany in 2016. During my exchange year I met so many interesting people from different countries. I started to feel like I want to go and explore the whole world and all the wonders that people told me about. I also realized that by travelling I was able to understand other cultures and the world in a way that I couldn’t if I wouldn’t be travelling myself.

Digitalisation has made it easier for us to stay in touch with our friends and to keep ourselves updated on what’s happening on the other side of the world. However, by reading news we can only see a small part of the story. If we want to truly connect we need to travel and get to know cultures, people and their daily lives. Thus, now I’m trying to make this dream come true by travelling as much as I can and connecting with the locals and travellers. What a better place to start writing about my travels than Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh, I will be staying at my friends family. I’m feeling extremely grateful and happy to have a friend who invited me to visit his home country. I believe that in Bangladesh I will go through a bunch of different emotions: gratefulness, sadness, anxiety, excitement, happiness.. a list that goes on forever. I was thinking about writing a short blog post about my expectations towards Bangladesh but I realized that I always try to connect with people without any expectations. Thus, I rather decided to write about how I experience Bangladesh when I get there and at the same time trying to show you Bangladesh through locals eyes. 

I’m looking forward to this adventure, hope you too.

Best,

Johanna 

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