Who wants to live forever?

Ok, so now I sit in Probolinggo to join the deluxe-tourist-bus to Yogyakarta. I still have 3 hours to kill. So lucky that internet is cheap here.

The last two days were quite busy! Yesterday I got up at 3am to have breakfast and then to jump on the motorbike (with driver) and ride the road to hell: 3.5 hours of bad roads with a crazy driver and me going nuts singing: "who wants to live forever? "... My muscles were sore before we reached the starting point for the short trek to Gunung Kawa Ijen. But who wants to complain? The trek was covered with fog and it rained and it was getting cold. But seeing all these Porters of Sulfur I thought: "Why the hell am I complaining? My life's toooooo good!"  
In Ijen they collect the sulfur spraying out of the volcano by cooling it down in big pipes, gathering the clumps of yellow stones. Then they pack it in big baskets and carry it up the crater wall and then down to the Base-Camp... You can't imagine but they carry 70-80kg each! I tried to lift one of these baskets... NO WAY! We're Europeans! We're too weak! I told the tour guide that I think most of the Europeans were too week to survive in such conditions. He meant that it's because we have a choice and they don't! We can chose if we like the work we do or not. For them it's a mere question of surviving some more years (and the work shortens the life span dramatically... they inhale Sulfuric Gases all the time).
Here's my question to all of us: Do you think, if you had no choice, you could lift up 80kg and carry them 200m up and then 800m down (altitude, the path winds 3.5km) twice a day??? I think most of us would die within a few days. So how comes that they're so strong? Is it pure will-power? It's absolutely crazy!
So on the way back on the motorbike I still sang the same queen song because my muscles were aching but it had a different quality! The song became different then before Ijen.

In the afternoon bus to Probolinggo I could sleep a couple of hours. When I got out I couldn't believe my ears: "Sorry the last bus to Bromo left already, but you can still go by motorbike..." So again I took a motorbike, but this time with all my luggage and rode the 1.5 hours to Bromo without complaining but singing the painful version of the Queen song.
The arrival in Cemoro Lawang was quite disappointing. The hotel and the stuff were just boring and absolutely overpriced. But what the hell was I expecting. It's BROMO! THE tourist attraction! So this morning I woke up at 3.30... oh no wait a minute. At 3.15 there was this guy knocking furiously at my door: "Mr. Andreas... you going to Bromo today?" - "Uhm, yes..." - "It's at 4o'clock!" - "Uhm, I know... Is it 4 already?" - "No but you need a jacket, only 20'000Rp!" - "Uhm, no! Thank you." - "Yes it's very cold." - "I have one, thank you!" SILENCE So I wanted to get the rest of the remaining 15 minutes sleep. But suddenly this man tried to open the door... "What the hell?" - "Show me your jacket it's not enough! Sometimes freezing outside!" So I showed him the 3 layers of clothes, my sweater, my jacket and the two blankets I brought. "Oh, this is not enough! Buy jacket!"
Ok, I am really patient with the touts (I learned from my sister and now I'm very friendly with most of them...). But not at 3.20am! I told him: "Trust me it is enough. I can stay with these clothes in -20 degrees for 3hours without freezing... THANK YOU!"
Whoever wants to live forever... Don't wake me up at 3.15am to sell me anything I don't want.

The "sunrise" at Bromo wasn't really a sunrise... It was more a riddle: "Behind which of these clouds is Bromo?" So we continued the road through the rain to the rim of Bromo from where you had a nice view to the bottom of the crater where all the sulfuric smoke rises. It's miraculous. It's one of the last mysteries of this world. Nobody has ever seen what lies behind these layers of stone, beneath the thin layer of the thin eggshell we call earth. The last mystery! Perhaps some day mankind will invent some machine able to resist the immense heat and entering the streams of lava they might find some new world. Just as Columbus did 1492...For a short moment I though: "If only I lived long enough to read the news in the year 2525... What will they know we don't know yet?" But then again Freddy Mercury tickled the inside of my auditory tube: WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER?

It doesn't matter if we can chose or not! In the end it's all a long road we walk upon (sometimes we ride it on motorbikes with crazy drivers). Some are blessed with luck some with misfortune. Some are blessed with the choice of work , some with the sunrise above Bromo and some are not like the sulfur-porters of Ijen or the Jacket sellers of Cemoro Lawang. The biggest blessing though remains happiness. And believe it or not. The Ijen-Porters were still able to smile and to make jokes. BIG LESSON TO BE LEARNED!
And happiness is the only thing we can gather without buying it before all starts to crumble. (Some might mention love as well... But love is just one form of happiness... isn't it?) And as long as each of us manages to carry 70-80kg of happiness in his heart it's not all lost! But beware: carrying something up means carrying it down again. The porters will tell you!
Maybe the year 2525 will be different... But who wants to live forever?