My Story

Hello guys!

Here I would like to introduce myself and give you some short insight about my story.

My name is Dennis Gutjahr. I was born 21 years ago pretty much in the centre of germany.

When I was 6 my parents deciced to relocate, quite far away from my former home. That time I experienced the first time to be on my own and tried to find new friends between people that obviously have never seen anybody with such a weird german dialect before (I was moving from a part of germany with one of the most awful sounding dialects to a part with a dialect that’s close to high- german).

So I started early to learn a new ”language” (yes, it’s a huge difference) in an entire new environment.

Although I managed to involve myself very well, I always felt kind of different.

People sometimes used to call me ”little Indian” because my family took me for vacations to India almost every year, since I was born. So I also learned to deal with entirely different cultures and languages (as there are thousands in India) in a very early stage of my life. Sometimes the journeys took several months That’s probably the reason why it was easier for me to imagine traveling for a long period, in comparison to most of the people.

When I was 12 my parents divorced. Was a difficult time for me at first… I was not used to being without father (as he relocated 200km) away. I got worse in school and I had to go to this stupid psychologist who actually didn’t really help me with my ”problem”, who just played games with me all the time…

Anyway, I don’t complain. My parents divorce actually was the best thing that could happen to me.

As I grew up as the only child of my parents I always wanted siblings.

My father and my new stepmother fulfilled this dream. In less than 2,5 years after the divorce I suddenly had 2 siblings. A little brother and directly afterwards a little sister and even an 1 year- older stepbrother who I could call my best friend from the moment we got to know each other. I was visiting them every vacation and every weekend I wasn’t busy with playing football ( my favorite hobby by the way). I’m so grateful all this happend, I love all of them as much as I love myself (no hate if that sounds selfish… I think loving yourself is important to be able to love others.)

By the way, I didnt always love myself. For a period of almost 5 years I actually hated myself. I hated the way I looked. I had very strong acne. I was afraid of looking in the mirror: waking up in the morning and going into the bathroom, looking at the new ”friends” in my face was the daily horror I had to go trough. Not to mention to see all those disgusted faces and hear the friendly comments I’ve earned in school. I never got any girl in that time, only because my self- confidence was on the deepest level it could get. I wasn’t even able to just look at most of the girls I liked.

As stupid as I was I started smoking with 16. I tried everything to get rid of the acne, from mascs over diet up to homoepatic medicin. It took me a long time to figure out how to get rid of it.

Of course it happend while my travels.

That’s another story… you can read that if you carry on until the part of New Years Eve 2015/2016.

Thanks to traveling I’ve got back my self- confidence, or actually earned such a huge amount of it, I could give back half of it and would still be confident enough to do whatever I want to.

Anyway, right after I turned 17 my mother had to relocate almost 400km away from me because of her job. That meant from that moment I was living entirely alone. At least 200km away of any of my family- members in a small flat in an ugly part of my city called Kassel, by the way.

For the next 2 years I experienced living on my own the first time. The only condition was, I had to get my final degrees in school.

Even though I was smoking a lot, not only cigarettes, I somehow managed to get even better marks in school and did sports every day of the week. I guess, thats the advantage of being free, you know you are on your own now and that’s what drives you to unimaginable things.

Although it was an awesome time in my flat I knew I had to change something rapidly, as my acne was still there, I was living very unhealthy in general (OK, I exercised a lot of sports, but I really smoked a lot and ate mostly pure bullshit), also I didn’t have any idea what to do in my life after school and as I am a very nature-loving person, I urgently wanted to get to see some beautilful places in the world I wouldn’t forget.

And yeah, so I decided to look for destinations. After I didn’t get the working-holiday-visa for Canada, my second choice was New Zealand as it was very easy to get the visa. Also, some people told me it’s a very beautiful country and easy to travel there because a lot of german travelers somehow find there ways to that country. Sounded perfect to me because I was not very confident with my English- skills. So I was happy to get a ”soft start”.

The plan was to stay only in NewZealand for the whole 12 months of my journey.

First, I was also not confident enough to trust myself in traveling alone. So I started looking for a travelmate or even several travelmates… pretty much that many to fill my whole schedule not traveling alone.

For me it was not hard to find travelmates for New Zealand, as there were at least 7 people of those who gratuated school with me with the same plan. One of them, a guy who became one of my best friends. What a blessing it was to know I would travel with that guy. Even though I knew he would arrive about 2 months after me one the other Island of NewZealand it somehow took a big part of my fear and gave me a huge level of excitement for the trip.

Still, I really wanted to find a travelmate for the time. Until I would catch up with him.

Fortunately, my stepbrother told me about one of his friends who I already got to know and liked, who had the same plans.

Perfect! I tought. It was…almost. His plan was to arrive almost a month after me but then to come to my place and travel together with me.

About a month before my journey started I started being afraid and was about to blow up the whole thing. Thanks to my mother I didn’t. She gave me power, faith and yeah, also forced me a bit to do it. But that was what I needed. Furthermore, she organized me a place to stay the first week in New Zealand at a friends house. I’f you read this Mom… I can’t describe how grateful I am you kicked my ass in that time. I will always be grateful you always support me. I love you so much !

By the 2.9.15 my new life chapter started.

That was the day my life started changing/developing rapidly in the most positive direction I could have ever expected.

I would have never thought a person could learn and experience so much in such a short amount of time.

Today I am in Peru, living in the beautilful city Cusco.

After I finished my first travels I had a little break back in germany. I planned to stay there for longer but my love to travel was to strong and forced me to leave again after a few months. That’s the biggest danger about traveling, by the way… It’s highly addictive.

I am in South America since about 3 months now and am planning to travel another 3 months until I gotta take a longer break for my studies. But I know, thats just the beginning… afterwards I will buy an open- return ticket and travel as long as possible.

I’m living my dream!

Thanks so much to everybody I met on my way so far. You all took part to sign what I call

”myself ”today.

That was a more or less short introduction about my life without the details of what happened while my journey.

I hope it didn’t bore you too much so you are still excited to read/watch the most important part about this blog, that’s coming right now.

ENJOY ENJOY ENJOY

Much love, Dennis

By the way… don’t judge me for mistakes, please. hahaha