Medellin

Twenty-five years ago, Time magazine dubbed Colombia’s Medellin “the most dangerous city on earth”. Drug lords lived like princes, judges and policeman were regularly assassinated, paramilitaries invaded neighbourhoods and ordinary people disappeared overnight without trace.

Meanwhile the birthplace of Pablo Escobar has developed with an economy that is among the fastest growing on the continent, it is one of the great success stories of Latin America.

I had the great luck to stay at Basti and his girlfriend Juliana. He is an old friend of Mario and me and lives in Medellin for three years now, so he could show me the best spots of the city.

We went to nice restaurants, danced salsa, played soccer on a rooftop and visited nature parks around the city.

Actually I wanted to be on the Caribbean coast for my birthday, but since Jasper, a very close friend from Berlin arrived in Medellin on the 22. of march, I extended until the 24.

The evening before my birthday we drove home from a day trip at the mountain. The guys had to work the next day and I was thinking what I could do to enter my 32 year on this planet.
We drove by a huge Casino, when I asked the guys to stop over, so I could ask if there’s any poker tournament soon. Apparently it started in 30min, so I went out to tell the others I would stay and play.
The buy in was 100.000 Pesos (~25€) and around 18 colombianos took part.
Clearly I had my birthdays fortune on my side, but also played my best poker in a long time, so I was leading the table after a short time.
When we came to the final table I took out two players, so we were only 4 left. The third one would get 300.000, the second 600.000 and the first 1.500.000 Pesos.
I was very close to winning when I called an all in with my A,K against K,K and lost half of my stack. From there on the game turned against me and
in the end I became third place…

At 0:00 I went to the roulette table put some money on the 22 and the 3. Without luck 🍀 but with lots of fun.

Next day I had a nice brunch, went to the barber for a fresh cut and went by metro to the famous district of Communa 13.

The area is no longer known for gang violence, police raids, cartels and illegal trafficking.
These days, Comuna 13 is more readily associated with graffiti, street art performances and walking tours. New infrastructure, including a cable car system and six outdoor escalators, has made life in Comuna 13 a whole lot easier for residents and opened the area up to tourists.

After taking the cable “gondola” to see it from above I chose to walk parts of the huge area by myself and without a guide.
I felt a lot safer than I expected and the people were as mostly everywhere in the country extremely friendly, greet on the streets and are happy to help.

In the evening I met Jasper with his old guest family at a local pub. Basti and Juli also came there and we ordered Greek food wich was delicious 🥳

Jasper lived in Medellin for some time and decided to buy a property outside of the center in the nature, where he’s building a house on now, so he flys over from time to time to check the progress. The guest family wich he met in Argentina helps him with the building and the paper work since they’re neighbours.

That night they invited me to their house after the greek food and I slept there to see Jaspers property and the area the next day.
The father made us a huge breakfast + a even bigger plate for lunch later on.
It is a beautiful place in nature with a little spring and waterfalls running through.
We spend a really relaxed day there and even took the opportunity of their “turkish” steam bath.

In the evening we visited the football game of Medellin against Bogotá where we met Basti and some other friends of his again.
It was a burning atmosphere and a good game where Medellin won 1:0 with a player less.

I feel so happy to have had such great hosts and had the chance to dive that deep into the citys heart.
Basti even drove me with his car at 5 in the morning to the airport. There the flight got delayed 3 hours because of bad weather.

I arrived at 12 noon in Barranquilla where carneval would take place on the weekend. I was there two days before so I decided to drive 4 hours to the hippie village of Palomino on the caribbean coast line 🤩Read more