Sight seeing in Yogyakarta

The mor­ning starts as hoped at the cheese buf­fet, the­re are real Kiri cream cheese, real Gou­da in one pie­ce and other cheese and I real­ly have to pull mys­elf tog­e­ther to not smugg­le the who­le pie­ce of Gou­da under my T‑shirt out of the break­fast room. Ins­tead Vero­ni­ca and I plun­der 90% of the cream cheese and try to behave at least half­way. Well, let me put it this way: At least there’s a litt­le bit left for the other guests.

At 9am we dri­ve to Param­ba­nan Temp­le, a lar­ge Hin­du temp­le com­plex not far from the cent­re of Yog­ya­kar­ta. The sun is alre­a­dy shi­ning from the sky with at least 12 bil­li­on watts and in any case a good por­ti­on of sun pro­tec­tion fac­tor 50 is neces­sa­ry in order not to look like a fresh­ly gril­led lobs­ter in the next 10 minu­tes. By the way, today we’­re buy­ing real tickets to cele­bra­te the day and unfort­u­na­te­ly we’­re pay­ing the full pri­ce. The temp­le com­plex is more than worth see­ing, in the cent­re are seve­ral poin­ted buil­dings, which are deco­ra­ted with beau­tiful reliefs.

Ente­ring temp­le num­ber 2 some school child­ren again dis­co­ver­ed us. We’ll have to go through it. Today every girl wants to take a pic­tu­re with me and it takes 15 minu­tes befo­re I have made ever­yo­ne hap­py. Then even an older cou­ple is brought on stage, who should also get a sel­fie with me. But I’ve lear­ned my les­son and I’m rea­dy to coun­ter­at­tack. Ever­yo­ne who wants to take a pic­tu­re with me today is film­ed in return and somehow I am quite sur­pri­sed that real­ly ever­yo­ne grins hap­pi­ly into my GoPro.

The others are­n’t doing any bet­ter eit­her, you are addres­sed and obser­ved at every cor­ner and ever­yo­ne wants to be our fri­end. But I still don’t under­stand the back­ground, at least I hope that I will beco­me famous and can stay right here. Due to the per­sis­tent heat, howe­ver, we soon visit a win­dy spot whe­re we can cool down our body tem­pe­ra­tu­re again by 10 degrees. Shadows are out of the ques­ti­on, as the sun is now upright in the sky. At 10 am the­re are ‑10 dry spots on my T‑shirt, but at least +100 pho­tos. A suc­cessful catch, I’d say.

After a short break in the par­king lot, three buckets of drin­king water and a kilo of snake­fruit, we are all streng­the­ned again and hop into the air-con­di­tio­ned van with reli­ef. Final­ly we want to see more of Yog­ya­kar­ta and con­ti­nue to the Sultan’s Palace and the water castle.

The water cast­le is quite nice, but not neces­s­a­ri­ly a „must“ on the hit list in Yog­ya­kar­ta. But Mir­ko dis­co­vers a T‑shirt shop whe­re he can spend all his money and for the rest of the team the­re are hand-made scar­ves. Bes­i­des, we’ll find a new fri­end. Some guy from a sou­ve­nir shop has appar­ent­ly deci­ded to show us around and so he runs ahead with devo­ti­on to gui­de us through the small vil­la­ge around the cast­le. I assu­me that our visits to the „best sou­ve­nir shops in Indo­ne­sia“, which he has wide­ly announ­ced, are not com­ple­te­ly unsel­fi­sh. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the­re is not­hing I would be inte­res­ted in and so we end our tour wit­hout souvenirs.

Also the Sul­t­an­pa­last is in my eyes not a total high­light, but nevert­hel­ess quite nice. Here you can admi­re the com­ple­te tab­le­wa­re of the ruler and learn some­thing about his life. The guy even got a Fede­ral Cross of Merit for his efforts in Ger­man-Indo­ne­si­an rela­ti­ons. May­be just becau­se he was the king. You don’t know for sure.

In the evening we are drawn out into the streets of Yog­ya­kar­ta, becau­se we are hun­gry again. The choice of restau­rant natu­ral­ly depends on the cheese on offer and so we end up in a small restau­rant who­se chef is a Ger­man. Here, too, we behave like the mil­ling machi­ne in the wood, five of four orde­red dis­hes sud­den­ly arri­ve, but of cour­se this is no pro­blem at all for us. Only 10 minu­tes later all pla­tes are emp­ty until the last drop of sau­ce and the guys want to have dessert.

It can be found quite quick­ly at one of the num­e­rous street stands. Howe­ver, the sel­ec­tion is limi­t­ed to meat and fish and other inde­fi­nable things from ani­mals, which brings Mir­ko and Pierre into a fee­ding para­di­se. Once again the enti­re holi­day bud­get is inves­ted in ske­wers with sate, octo­pus, crabs and other meat and it can only be minu­tes befo­re Mir­ko emer­ges from the turm­oil with a who­le lobs­ter on the ske­wer. Short­ly befo­re the dead­ly rail­road bar­ri­er, which is of cour­se still pushed back and forth by hand, the­re is ano­ther feast. Dum­plings with a deli­cious con­tent that should not be miss­ing from the menu. But what exact­ly is insi­de remains a mys­tery fore­ver. Some­ti­mes a lack of know­ledge is a blessing.

Con­ti­nue: Off to East Java