After having spent a week on a beach at the end of May 2022 on Evia in Greece, a storm came up and I decided to seek shelter from it. And I think, I found the most beautiful shelter in the shadows of a small mountain surrounded by the wonderful facets of green.

When I moved on, the storm was still blowing and spinning the huge wind turbines on Evia. These turbines are really massive. Maybe they have the size of small offshore ones. And because there is nothing preventing the wind to hit them, they have pretty small towers in relation to their blades. Standing underneath these blades feels like they will cut you right through.

A friend reminded me that standing underneath these wind turbines is like Don Quixote’s famous battles against the windmills. And that’s where Rosinante’s name is coming from: I love sci-fi and was enjoying the book series “The Expanse” a lot when I bought Rosinante. In the books, there is an interesting crew living adventures on a space corvette called Rosinante. They name it after the horse Don Quixote is riding on. I like how the name sounds in German more than in the English version “Rocinante” and the name stands for more than just a spaceship and a horse. As far as I got it, nobody can say for sure what the stories about Don Quixote are standing for. I like the image of a confused guy who thinks that he is a noble knight riding on his noble steed and accomplishing adventurous missions, taking glorious battles in the name of his princess love, followed by his loyal companion Sancho Panza and therefore getting highly regarded by the people. But in truth, he’s just an old, run-down guy on his old nag confused by having read romances and doing stupid things. I think we are all Don Quixote. Some more, some less.

When I had started my journey, I had been more Don Quixote than I’m now, I would say. I’m quite sure, that a part of me wanted to go on a glorious world tour in a magnificent offroad camper to have breathtaking adventures and get highly regarded by others for it. That part had been like chasing happiness by fighting windmills and I’m happy to have given up that fight.

And there is another cool story about the name Rosinante and overlanding. But I spare that one for one of my future posts.

I knew that my next home would be special, but I did not anticipate how much I would love this UFO and what I will experience there!

The UFO is called “Buzludzha Monument” (see it on Google Maps). The official story is, that the communist party built it at some point from donations and they used it for meetings of their party. You can go with that. But I have a strong feeling that this thing is a UFO! I think, somebody built it to launch into space but somehow they had to cancel the build. That’s the reason why the saucer part is still in front of its launch socket/ tower.

Regardless of what the truth may be: I love this UFO! For me, it’s the coolest human-made building/ UFO that I’ve seen so far. It’s magnificent, extraordinary, perfect! I found an awesome spot right at the foot of this spaceship and my little spaceship (Einraumschiff) Rosinante looked very good/ fitting next to it, I would say. The weather was changing all the time from sunny and warm to cloudy, rainy, crisp… But I couldn’t resist and stayed longer and longer awaiting no wonder… That’s a rhyme and I guess it’s fine.

Down at the foot of the launch pad and UFO, at my home place, I met some super nice people. One day, a German family who call themself staubteufelchen on Instagram arrived. They had a rather fast way of traveling and so they stayed only for one evening and morning but we had a good time together with a lot of bo staff training and chatting.

The other day the couple of One Try Productions came along. Initially, I just wanted to sell some of my GoPro accessories that I did not need anymore but then we spent some time together, talked about mostly everything, and had a super good time. It’s crazy interesting what sort of things people are doing in their life. Imagine someone puts you on rollerblades and makes you race through exploding cars and fire while you are filming so that you get burned several times…

These guys made something wonderful to enable everybody to experience Bulgaria in a digital way. Make sure, you give it a try, I think it’s super awesome and it’s free: Explore 360 degree Bulgaria

Another day I saw more people than usual at the UFO and for a second hope arose inside of me: would they continue the UFO construction? But it was only a super crazy and crowded celebration of a communist party or another group of people with a lot of red flags, folk songs, sausages, beer and speeches.

During that time down at the UFO, I observed my feelings of loneliness and “left behind” (that I mentioned in my last post) more and more and came to the conclusion, that I was just bored and lacking external affirmation from other people. I felt a little like being empty. In a way like: “is this it or is there more?”. After I was contemplating this stuff, I mostly accepted the lack of affirmation or pushed it somewhere. I deleted the accounts on the dating apps because they just did not make any sense to me. And I countered my boredom by playing games on my iPad. If you ever want to play something really cool on an iPad, make sure you try “Race for the galaxy”, “Root” and “Through the ages”. These are awesome games with unique mechanics, no subscription models, etc. While playing these games for hours, I somehow developed a guilty conscience. I remembered myself being a child, playing computer games in my room while nature was so close and magnificent outside. So I played a lot outside in front of the UFO.

It may sound silly or whatever to you, but somehow this time down at the UFO let me profoundly experience that I was really in the privileged position to do whatever I wanted. And if that was playing games, it was just that. And if I was feeling like wanting to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually close to someone, it was just that as well. And if these feelings were just a way of me dealing with my ego, it was just that as well. Somehow I felt liberated at that time. I still don’t know from what, but I can clearly recall that feeling. And from my current perspective right now while writing this post on a beach in Turkey in December 2022 (wearing a t-shirt in December!), I must say: these days I’m feeling liberated as well. In a deeper way. It seems like that just never ends…