When you told your colleges and friends that you were about to visit Colombia, most of them warned you about the country. They even research in internet and found just bad news, that if you put them together you will have kilometres of wasted paper. “It is a very dangerous country” reply all, when you mention your plans for the next holidays.

Your friend picks you up at the “El Dorado” international airport. Once at home, your friend brings you a big glass of a cold green and plenty of seeds beverage that you have never seen before, though you have been travelling a lot. “Please, drink it!” says your friend, and suddenly all the bad stories about this land come in to your mind…You want to lie saying that you are not thirsty, that the airline was very generous and offered you more liquid you could drink… For some reason you keep silent and sip the green liquid. Its sour flavour combined with the sweet of the sugar and the ice makes you feel so good…

“What is that?” you asked with eyes wide shut. It is called `lulo´s juice´ replies your host as it were the most normal thing in the world. “But it must cost an arm and a leg” you added with such excitement. And he, in a sympathetic attitude, pats your back.

The next day visiting the surroundings of the city your host stops in a gas station where there is a small shop plenty of fruits. Some of them like the oranges, apples, mandarins and bananas you have seen in the “Obst & Gemüse” of your neighbourhood, or in the “Wochen Markt”, and others in the exclusive section of delicatessen of some “Einkaufzentrum”, where they charge you astronomic prices per unit. But here you see all of them together, as it were a bounty carnival. Blackberries are next to passion fruit, which in turn are above granadillas, and papayas, and guanabanas, and so on and so forth. You decide to try a new juice, though that lulo was so fantastic…

Curiously enough you have a “mal du pay”, homesickness for this land, as if you had been expelled from the paradise, and now you are coming back. Still you are in the big city. You have not seen the green hills of the coffee belt, not the beaches at the Pacific and Caribbean, not the desert with its pink flamingos, not the Amazons. You have not dance salsa, nor merengue, but just drank a juice. Then you realised how dangerous this country can be and sip your juice, with satisfaction, once more!

Dear Juliana,

thank you very much for telling us this little story about your home country!

You are right, the only thing I read in our newspapers or I can see in the TV, are stories about kidnapped persons, drugs and jungle war in Columbia.

Your story gives us an impression of the other 95% percent of the live over there.

I would appreciate if many more of our users tell us about their homes. Just read the explanation of our new Forum:

http://www.trust7.com/en/forums

'Meeting the World'

Again, thank you Juliana and welcome on board the 'trust7 boat'.

Detlef