Party with the Germans!

After leaving Lilongwe Claire and I had been to Cape Maclear and enjoyed a few days by the beach before heading to Liwonde National Park and seeing plenty of animals out on the river. Then we’d made our way to Blantyre for a few days enjoying great food. But after all that we were back in the capital for a few days before finally making our way across the border to Zambia. Last time we were in Lilongwe we stayed with Anah, Johanna and Miriam. We were in Hannah’s room, as she was away with her boyfriend, but this time she was back, so we checked in at Korea Garden’s Lodge. That night it was a big birthday party at the house and Claire and I were both invited. Gerald, a German guy we met at The Mushroom Farm, and Hannah, whose room we’d borrowed, were both celebrating their birthdays by having a barbecue and house party. And, that evening was also the evening that Germany were playing Italy in the quarter finals of Euro 2016.

Once the party got going it was full of Germans. It’s safe to say that we wanted Germany to win in the football otherwise the mood of the house might well have hit rock bottom. When the game kicked off there were about thirty of us crammed around the television and the atmosphere was tense. When Italy took the lead in the penalty shootout the atmosphere became even more tense. Luckily the Germans pulled it back and won the game making it through to the semi finals. When the final penalty went in the whole house erupted and the party continued. It was great fun, despite a lot of the Germans wanting to know our views on Brexit which was a sad reminder of what was still going on at home. As always they were shocked and couldn’t believe what our country had voted for, not understanding the decision at all. It seems that lots of people from Europe were annoyed at the good deal that Britain got over their nations in the EU agreement, making it even harder to fathom why we’d opt out. It’s safe to say that we’ve gone down in the estimations of many. We agreed and tried to move on, saddened again at what we’d be going back to in a few months. After the party we made it back to our lodge at around 2am, having arranged to stay with Andreas, a friendly Spanish guy who we’d also met previously at The Mushroom Farm, for the next few nights.

The next day we made it to Andreas’ house on the outskirts of the city and settled in to our room. Claire wasn’t feeling so good – we thought she was hungover, but it lasted a few days so may have been a bug – so she went to bed early but I stayed up after dinner with Andreas and his friend from Japan who had come over for the evening. The three of us chatted, drinking red wine, and again Brexit came up. It really was hard to escape it, but at the same time it’s understandable that people from other countries in Europe want to hear our views. It was quite interesting to hear Andreas say that in Spain they get a lot of health care tourists from Britain. Apparently there are quite a lot of Brits who go to Spain to utilise their healthcare system, something that I was unaware of.

Andreas was a really nice host, giving us free reign of his house whilst he was out at work. We stayed there Sunday night and Monday night and I cooked him a dinner on Monday to say thanks for having us. But on Tuesday morning, when we were sure that Claire’s stomach was OK, we made our way to Zambia. We had breakfast at a café near Andreas’ house before getting a cab to the border. After making our way across the border on foot we changed our remaining Malawian Kwacha into Zambian Kwacha, before getting into a car on the Zambian side. Half an hour later we had made it to Chipata, the connecting town we’d spend the night in before heading to South Luangwa National Park for a safari.