Sumatra is not only home to jungles and wild animals, but also volcanoes and the world’s largest crater lake, Lake Toba. The Batak people live here, with their own language, writing and culture. German missionaries found their way here and brought Christianity to Lake Toba in otherwise Muslim Indonesia. Since then, the Batak are mostly of Christian faith combined with their own traditions. This can be seen particularly clearly on the graves, which are usually equipped with a cross, but otherwise use the classically curved roofs of the Batak architecture.
The traditional houses of Batak are built on stilts to shield themselves from the underworld. The heaven finds room in the curved roofs. In between is space for human beings. The fronts are decorated in red, white and black.
So far so beautiful. When we visit a place where the elders of the village used to hold their meetings, we learn that in earlier times convicted criminals or prisoners of war were not treated very nicely. They were put in garlic and chili and then cooked and eaten. Those times were quite warlike after all. The people preferred not to build roads to the next village. The next attack could come right from it.
In the middle of Lake Toba lies a large island that can be easily explored by moped. Here we stay for a few days and read, do sports, play table tennis and badminton. We circle the island and see the steeply rising mountains on all sides of the lake. This huge crater was formed after a super volcano eruption about 70,000 years ago. And if one may believe a theory, this enormous eruption had a decisive influence on the spread of mankind. At the same time, the human population shrank to only about 1000 to 10000 individuals. Thus mankind was almost wiped out by this eruption.
Today there are only a few hot springs left of that violent past. Only very slowly we enter the more than bathtub-hot water. The pleasant climate, the beautiful landscapes and the friendly people have tempted some visitors to stay here permanently. And so there is a “German Bakery” and handmade Spätzle to eat.
We enjoy the time here and relax. Until reality catches up with us again. Our visa is slowly running out and non-renewable. We definitely want to go back to Indonesia.
