Ostwärts

Travel tales of a backpacking trip from Leipzig through Eastern Europe to Mongolia

In this book based on the successful MDR TV series "Ostwärts," the talented journalist Julia Finkernagel humorously and wittily recounts her personal debut as a "Go East" traveler, sharing the unique travel highlights as well as the smaller and larger disasters encountered on the journey from Leipzig deep into Mongolia. The amusing absurdities that never made it to the TV version are also included in these insightful and humorous travel episodes!

A behind-the-scenes look at the TV series "Ostwärts"

Contrary to popular belief, Julia Finkernagel did not travel with a large television crew, but rather alone with a cameraman and a porter, managing the trip on a tight budget. The necessity for improvisation leads to some of the best punchlines in her entertaining travel reports, and much of what happened behind the scenes is revealed in the book.

A backpacking journey through eleven countries and regions

In about 25 short travel episodes, the journey departs from Leipzig and travels through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and across Georgia, southern Russia, and the Caucasus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, all the way to Mongolia. Julia explains how to eat soup with your hands in Uzbekistan without needing to change afterward and shares a story about the Mongolian family that offered the film crew a freshly slaughtered goat's head as a sign of friendship. She recounts how she felt spooked at the castle of the Blood Countess in Slovakia, ended up in jail in Russia, and explains why tea is poured back into the pot three times in Kyrgyzstan. She also doesn't shy away from mentioning that she actually met Peter Maffay in Romania.