In July 2022 one of my best friends from Germany came to Bulgaria to travel and live with me for ten days. After I picked Michele up at the airport in Sofia, we went straight to the Rila national park.

We found a super peaceful and beautiful place in the forests. This spot… Absolutely fantastic. It was a pretty big area, that was very well-known by locals and foreigners, but it was not crowded, next to a small river and a good for Michele to arrive mentally and for us to chill.

We started to live together and had a super good time. After traveling alone for months after Cori visited me in Greece, I enjoyed the company of a well-known and deep friend. And at the same time, it was partly challenging for me. I love Michele and it’s nothing particular about him. He is a lovely, authentic, and open guy, who has inspired me so many times. I think it was just a transition from solitude into having someone around me. I felt like I got insecure and contemplative about things that I was thinking, feeling, saying, and doing. Nothing about this felt bad, but it felt like something is working inside of me.

One day, we hiked to the peak called Malyovitsa in the Rila national park. It was an awesome hike. For Michele it was the first hike that high up and long. During the hike, I felt like being in another wonderland in the Bulgarian mountains. It was magical. And it was so beautiful to see how Michele enjoyed the hike, nature, and the mountains. How he connected and got into all of it.

At one point of our hike, our route got very freestyle on steep, rough, and very loose ground. The last part of our route was very exposed, steep, and next to a cliff. At that point, we decided to abort that route and take another one. And even though that part was challenging for him, he and I did so well and always kept up so much compassion for each other.

After Rosinante got fixed, I visited Athens in mid-May 2022. Like before in Corinth, I just couldn’t pass the Akropolis. And like before, I felt like I’m at the wrong place.

With the Park4Night app, I found a paid parking near a pretty restaurant and right next to the Akropolis. The last time I paid for parking was in Austria but I found the location of that place so cool and wanted to make sure that Rosiante was kind of secure. I think, that I’m not a very anxious person but in the big cities, I’m always a little more defensive. I liked how the parking managers made sure that as many cars as possible go into the parking: they kept the keys for most of the cars and drove them out of the way if someone parked up wanted to leave. It’s been like these games where you are only allowed to push one piece at a time and there is always only one space not occupied.

The Akropolis was nice to visit but for some reason, it didn’t catch me. I have been thinking if the human-made stuff just doesn’t interest me as much as natural phenomena do. But that doesn’t seem to be the case: right now (end of July 2022), I’m writing this post sitting in front of something human-made, that absolutely catches me. You will see in one of the next posts. It’s so awesome!

As I’ve been walking through the cute and lovely alleys in Athens, I found some awesome sculptures made by an artist called Yanni Souvatzoglou. Here, have a look at his stuff. Most of the time, I’m not much into sculptures and paintings, but these ones are still extraordinarily appealing to me. I guess, they are reminding me of my mother and the funny and sometimes crazy stuff she used to put in her garden and house as decorations. Among those things were severed doll heads, a Batman action figure with fluffy angel wings, and a crazy lot more.

What is more, I see them as a great projection of the Buddhist principle of Duhkha and therefore about human existence and life. Here is the Wikipedia article about Dukkha and if you want to get into it, try these magnificent podcast episodes and articles: The Zen Studies Podcast.