"With an eagle we did laps over the Alps"

"Reisen Reisen" - that's the name of the travel podcast by Michael Dietz and Jochen Schliemann, under this title their first book has just been published, and with "Reisen Reisen live" they're going on a tour of Germany from April.

WORLD: What is a podcast stage show, please?

Michael Dietz: These are very lively evenings full of travel, wanderlust and fun with the audience.

Jochen Schliemann: We read from our new book, tell stories in a live podcast, paint pictures with words, set landscapes, smells, tastes to music, explain places with their characteristics and how best to travel there.

Dietz: Sometimes we also show pictures of how we traveled in the 90s, but the outfits from back then are such a mess.

Schliemann: Nobody has a bigger collection of ugly sunglasses than Michi.

Dietz: Don't distract from the topic! So podcast stage show means that every guest can confront us with everything. Of course, many of the questions are primarily about travel. Places, tips, advice, routes, assessments. We can often help with that.

Schliemann: But somehow there are always things like: "When did you guys really fail?" and "When do you two really get on each other's nerves?"

Dietz: That's often very funny, also because Jochen and I have different perspectives and experiences.

WORLD: You have now produced over 130 podcasts, which were heard over four million times by the end of 2022; Which programs have the highest number of hits?

Schliemann: “On the night train to Paris”, “Hiking in South Tyrol”, “Roadtrip Australia” and “Eating in Japan” are doing particularly well.

WORLD: Food in Japan? Can you chat for an hour on this topic?

Dietz: It was even an hour and a half. Food in Japan is a topic that fills an entire evening, and you can lose track of time over it. Once in Kyoto I almost missed the train because I couldn't decide on a dish. The selection is absurdly large, everything that is edible is presented in endless variations so beautifully that you want to try everything.

WORLD: At the train stations?

Dietz: Yes, even in the most remote train station in the country's smallest backwater, travelers are offered freshly prepared, tasty food of the highest quality. Food eaten on the go or while traveling is called bento in Japanese. And bento that you can buy at train stations are called ekiben.

WORLD: Bento and Ekiben do not appear on the list of the best in your book “Reisen Reisen”, Mr. Dietz.

Dietz: But just not. Sorry, this world is full of deliciousness, I could do a top 100 of favorite foods and it would still be missing dishes that are world class.

Schliemann: But Japanese food is on my best list, I like to eat just as much as Michael, and in the city of Fukuoka, in a tiny restaurant, I ate the best Negitoro Temaki of my life. The nori was crispy, the toro was creamy, the rice was warm, the wasabi was so mild - I had the Negitoro Temaki wrapped up as a bento.

Dietz: The Ekiben, which I really think is the weirdest, is what was offered in the artists' town of Kanazawa on Honshū, the main island of Japan. Ekiben is sold there in a box that looks like a dresser with drawers – eel on the left, shrimp on the right, and if you want fresh vegetables, you can find them in the top drawer. How great and detailed is that?

WORLD: Has food always played such a big role for you?

Schliemann: We're not cheap airline bookers, bargain hunters, weekend flyers. We are concerned with real travel, with emotions, with human encounters, with culture, with sensual experiences such as Bento and Ekiben, with what traveling can do to you.

Dietz: Right, for example when you order a khachapuri full of anticipation somewhere in the Georgian hinterland. Because in the villages, the yeast dough is still made in-house and is allowed to rise for a long time. Then suddenly there is this wonderfully soft cheese bread with the egg on top in front of you and I could lie in it and drink Georgian natural wine with it. What is becoming hip with us, i.e. natural wines, has been made by Georgians for thousands of years.

Schliemann: To cut it all short – Georgian cuisine is just amazing!

Dietz: And affordable! People from all over Europe come to the Georgian capital Tbilisi to party, it's exciting, wild, but safe, and the people are open and curious. The Caucasus, but also the Balkans are great regions for young people to travel on a small budget. Albania is super exciting. So much is happening there and you have everything: a capital Tirana that is just reinventing itself, beaches and bays that are as beautiful and lonely as seldom on the Adriatic, and the mountains are an absolute dream for hikers.

Schliemann: Thailand and Indonesia are also perfect starter destinations for individual travel in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is still cheap, not as extremely cheap as it was in the 90s, but if you don't act like a package tourist, the money will last longer than it currently does in Germany.

Dietz: If you immerse yourself in the regional cuisine in Thailand instead of ordering schnitzel and Kölsch, eat in small restaurants and sleep in local accommodations, you are closer to real travel and at the same time more sustainable.

WORLD: Sustainability - good keyword: In your book you write that you believe in the feasibility of sustainable travel. How do you feel about sustainability yourself?

Schliemann: We both travel by train in Europe whenever possible. And if it goes further away, then we plan the trip as a trip of a lifetime - as long as possible and only once. We also compensate all our trips with our partner myclimate.

Dietz: Individual and sustainable travel even inspire each other! When you wake up after a night train journey and roll along the Côte d'Azur at sunrise...

Schliemann: ... or arriving on the Faroe Islands by ferry or looking out at the jungle of southern Thailand while brushing your teeth from the carriage – that's better than any short-haul flight. It sounds terribly overused, but the journey is actually the reward.

Dietz: It cannot be a solution that nobody travels anymore and everyone stays at home. Traveling is a cultural technique to gain understanding for other ways of life, to form one's own picture - this is essential for a tolerant, peaceful world community. Especially in times like these.

WORLD: In times like these, however, one also wonders whether it is morally justifiable to travel to this or that country. For example, would you go back to Putin's empire after the sanctions on Russia were lifted?

Schliemann: We would not go to Putin's empire, but to the real Russia, which certainly thinks and feels differently than this dehumanized warmonger. In countries where you can travel individually and have few points of contact with state institutions, the risk of aligning yourself with a regime is low.

Dietz: That's why North Korea is out of the question for us, because you can only do state-guarded bus tours there, far away from everyday life.

Schliemann: I also thought for a long time whether I should go to Myanmar, which is ruled by a military junta - and finally decided to do so. Luckily, because I experienced one of the most wonderful journeys of my life, because I was outside the system in contact with the ordinary people with whom I ate and stayed. That was also possible in Cuba. You have to inform yourself, weigh things up and set priorities.

Dietz: In order to travel the way we mean, you don't have to jet to the other end of the world - the Müritz, the Breisgau or the next village can be an adventure.

WORLD: Adventures in Germany? Give an example.

Dietz: Paragliding in the Allgäu. For almost my whole life I have dismissed the Allgäu as a pensioners' paradise where my grandmother used to go. Then I happened to be there – and was blown away. The mountains, the waterfalls, the dumplings. From the green hills around Oy-Mittelberg, over the summer pastures and mountain lakes. And only the romance of a town like Wangen. And you can see all of this from above, because the Allgäu is a paragliding stronghold.

WORLD: Was that your adventure?

Dietz: It may be that a tandem flight leaves you cold, but I'm 1.97 meters tall and therefore, contrary to the rules, I had to piggyback the flight controller and play the pilot myself, which means running towards the cliff and jumping.

Schliemann: Luckily you didn't stumble on the edge.

Dietz: I can't even remember the jump. My brain went into self-defense and erased everything. But I will never forget the flight. Together with an eagle, yes really, we made majestic laps over the Alps. Splendid!

WORLD: These casual chats between you, which you can easily listen to while ironing and cooking - is that the secret of your success?

Schliemann: Maybe yes. We tell stories from exciting places. From Australia to the Eifel. Without filter.

WORLD: What do you think you should have done once in your life?

Dietz: Just set off without a concrete plan.

Schliemann: And leave all work passwords at home.

Dietz: Go on a road trip.

Schliemann: Eat something you've never eaten before.

Dietz: Take a longer break – to travel. And before that, read our book and listen to travel-travel podcasts to add to the to-do list.

WORLD: You occasionally invite guests like Farin Urlaub, singer of the band Die Ärzte, to your podcast broadcasts. Is his pseudonym related to his enthusiasm for travel?

Schliemann: Yes, he just loves vacations, or rather traveling, because it writes the best stories and, on top of that, makes you smarter, more respectful, more tolerant and more humble.

Dietz: For at least that one hour in our podcast, the rock star is like us, our listeners, and everyone out there who thinks alike: a curious traveler. No more and no less.

Schliemann: In the end you said something nice after all.

Dietz: That only happened because I spend so much time with you.

Schliemann: I have to go now, it's getting uncomfortable for me right now.

Michael Dietz and Jochen Schliemann have a lot in common, the same year of birth (1976), the same job (they work as journalists and presenters for WDR, among others) - and both love to travel. They have already seen over a hundred countries and still have wanderlust. In 2018 they launched the podcast “Reisen Reisen”.

The book by Michael Dietz and Jochen Schliemann "Travel Travel: How we want to discover the world" has been published by Malik Verlag, 208 pages, 18 euros. Further information on the German tour “Reisen Reisen live” can be found at reisen-reisen-der-podcast.de/events/.