Whether Georgian wine tasting or a houseboat in Masuria, Julia Finkernagel discovers the East.
Photo: © MDR/HR/Christian Cyfus
To Georgia and back in just 40 minutes or could it be Mongolia? In the lively and sometimes tipsy podcast “Eastward – Travel between wanderlust and faux pas,” Julia Finkernagel drinks her way across Georgia, sets up her mini-yurt in Mongolia to sleep there according to shamanic rules or visits a mountain lake in Montenegro where fairies should live. It’s all incredibly entertaining, but also educationally recorded. Nikolas Golsch asks the questions about the trips “to the East”, to whom the reporter explains everything in a good mood. At the end she gives him a souvenir from the respective country, which they eat on the spot.
Finkernagel, who always has a local companion explain her customs and faux pas, tries out a lot of things, not just culinary. She even slurps water that tastes like rotten eggs. You will find out why in the podcast. And also how to drink wine in the Georgian style at a Georgian banquet (Supra). Because there is a hard-drinking table master, Tamada, who thanks toast after toast for everything that comes to his mind. If he drinks, everyone else can raise the glass to their mouth.
The episode, appropriately called “Boot Camp for the Liver,” is quite wine-happy, and yet you take away more than just funny drinking stories. Finkernagel started in Tbilisi, from there we went to the Black Sea and the Lesser Caucasus. Most goals can be achieved within a day, said the reporter. For her, Georgia has something like paradise, and she unpacks a legend about why Georgia has both mountains, sea and fertile plains. And all in an area of Bavaria!
You can tell that Finkernagel, who swapped her life as a manager for life as a traveling reporter, is always looking for what makes a country special. In Georgia there are old values and traditions. Although she is not good on horses, Finkernagel rides across a national park with a ranger and mountain guide. If she falls into a meltwater river, she sees it as a reporter’s luck.
“There’s only one bitch riding along and that’s me.”
Julia Finkernagel
Finkernagel stays in each country for a few weeks. The podcaster selects the respective hosts via telephone or video call, and some of them she sees for the first time on site. Luvsan Munchtemuulen, Temuulen for short, in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, for example. He acts macho in the presence of Finkernagel, but she only understands this when she meets his wife. Temuulen immediately gets her involved in household chores, where she learns why you always have to stir the clock to the right, why making tea takes 20 minutes and why she has to do women’s tasks but is allowed to sit in the men’s corner.
The food is at the level of a “student kitchen” with lots of pasta. Finkernagel is reluctant to try the goat that was slaughtered in honor of Finkernagel. When she is then given the goat’s head, which is slowly stewing in the footwell of the car, it is clear: “There is only one bitch driving along and that is me.” But, Finkernagel rows back: If you are picky, then you can upset about the country’s food, but she raves about the nature, the country and the culture, which is completely different. Even smiling is considered impolite in Mongolia. Because whoever smiles shows his teeth.
Finkernagel visits a 25-year-old shaman who, while drumming in a trance, takes on the voice of an old man who speaks in an ancient language. When the journalist asks about her next travel destination, the voice gives her a riddle: “She sees the southeast, but believes in the southwest.” The riddle will probably remain unsolved forever.
If you’re really hungry for travel, you can also watch “Ostwärts” as a documentary series in the ARD media library.
Available in the ARD audio library and on all common podcast platforms