Digital Detox by mistake - and why I do not regret it

Just a week or so before I left for holidays to Brazil, I made the decission for myself to reduce my online activities (Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, E-Mail, ) for the time beeing and focus purly the experince of getting to know a foreign culture, people andl landscape. So I left Germany, just 1 day after amazing #DigitalX in Cologne on the 30th of October.

After only a few days it turned out, I can be really successful in #DigitalDetox.

You may ask now why and how did he do that for almost 3 weeks? Did he cut-off his fingers for fingerprint? Did he left his AC-Adapter at home or did he not manage to buy a SIM-card (which by the way is indeed pretty tough for a foreigner in Brazil!).

The answer is no. None of the above has happend to me.

I was just so impressed by the massiv appearance of waterfalls in Foz de Iguazu, that I in fact prepared my beloved #FF2 with 2 zip bags but it was my fault not to check in advance those have tiny holes :-|.

As my travel buddy and I signed-up for the "splash-tour" (which I overall still do recommend a lot to anybody!!), the phone in my hands had to swollow about 10l water per second and when I realized this after 5 seconds, my only chance was try hiding it in the wet pocket of my wet trousers. Once our speedboat left the massive natural power of the Cataratas (port. catadupa) there wasn′t much for me to do rather than freeing the battery from the running cellphone and try to dry the components with a sodden hand towel, which was a bit of a useless undertaking I admit ;-)

After I had dried the phone in the evening on the other day for 1h including using hair dryer, it took me 3 more days of absolute patience, to not turn it on again. On the 4th day after the "accident" I was confident and lucky enough to see the display with Fairphone′s statement "FAIRPHONE - Change is in your hands".

One minute later luck was abandon and display turned into black again. 

I had to sigh and kept silent for a while and put my nose into "The Inevitable" by Kevin Kelly and alternatly in "Permanent Record" by Edword Snowden (both hardcopy ;))

That minute, I had not yet realized, yet, that all my photos and short videos have been backuped all-over to my trusted cloud provider. Yiiiiiiihhaaaaaa!!!!

So, my lessons learned is A) make sure you have a well-tested security plan (in my case zip-bags) B) a proper Backup-plan (#e.g. #cloud) where you stick to no matter what happens and C) better have a second Backup (in my case cellphone to switch).

Sure, I could have bought a new smartphone imediately, even though, #Fairphone is not available in Brazil, yet, there would have been plenty of options on the first or second market.

But this would have been far to easy from my understanding of #sustainability and would have let to an inner conflict why I had bought this pretty #FF2 about 1 year ago.

So, I decided to disassembled the phone again, put it next to a small dehumidification pillow (which came in handy with my latest backpack :-)) and will shortly order a display directly at #Fairphone to see if there is any chance to revitalise it (will report results!). In the meantime, I am using my backup-phone which of course had been stored at a save place far, far away from where I was :-))

To sum it up, Brazil was an amazing experience for me with lovely, warmhearted and extremely helpful people, as I have rarely experienced in this form on my previous travels (..that were so many). The fact, that going online for me was somehow restricted, gave me the opportunity to fade-out what′s called " Web 1.0 + Web 2.0" and enjoy moments and atmosphere, as if it we are no mobile devices at all.

I am more than happy to share more details in dialog. If you ever thought about visiting Brazil, just do it. Now, or in case you love hot temperature, wait until they have Summer ;-).

One more thing.

Please, if either you, your parents, or your children & grandchildren want to visit #Brasil you have to take 1/2 - 1 day of to see Museu do Amanh? (Museum of Tomorrow) in Rio. Museum of Tomorrow is an Applied Sciences museum which explores the opportunities and challenges which humanity will be forced to tackle in the coming decades from the perspective of sustainability and conviviality, launched in December 2015. 

It′s one of the best museums I have ever visited in my entire life because the information plus the way they transfer those to your senses, are just breathtaking!!

More info on https://museudoamanha.org.br/en/about-the-museum