Category: overlanding

Flow, new friends, writing, and music at a big lake (August 2022)

My idea was to drive from the car service in Plovdiv south in the mountains. But because the friendly mechanic recommended me the area and lakes/ reservoirs from Batak to Dospat, I went there. It was just a little further west and I felt like it would be nice to stay sometime at a calm lake in the mountains.

The lake was really beautiful and its appearance and the weather changed every day. It was so nice to witness these changes and I had a very calm time there. After I had faced my boredom and experienced kind of a liberation from whatever I somehow felt I should do and not do, and getting rid of the stuff, I felt very easy.

During my time at the UFO, I had got more and more into writing a lot of micro and short stories and I kept doing that. My love for writing, especially with making up all sorts of universes and the simplicity of writing got deeper and deeper.

At the lake I did come up with a story, that I only built in my mind: I did not write anything down. I just repeated it over and over again in my head and every time I did so, it was changing. I feel, that all stories are somehow alive and keep on changing but that one was and still is as alive as a story can get, I think. If you like to have an experiment, just try it. One of the good things about it: you don’t need anything apart from yourself and you can do it everywhere and every time. For me, it felt like having some kind of a pet or a weird type of companion. Now that I’m thinking about this story, I feel like it is more a real memory than a story I’m remembering.

In addition to writing, I did make more music on my iPad, again. This was super nice as well and both, writing and making music, felt very free to me.

But the most beautiful at that lake was, that I met a lovely and gorgeous family. They were living in their big van and traveling around for months. We had an awesome time together and a lot to share and feel. Playing with the kids was so creative and free. I loved it.

One day, they told me that they had been at a festival about music, nature, and spirituality some weeks ago. I had been looking for exactly that kind of festival in Greece and Bulgaria as well. I missed it just for a couple of weeks. But they told me, that in just two weeks there would be another festival of the same kind at one of the smaller lakes just a little further south and up the mountain! I was super happy about that and appreciated how things were developing/ flowing.

And this festival… Let’s say it will have some impact on me and my journey…

UFO love, boredom, external affirmation and freedom (July 2022)

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…

My longest hike to a shelter rocket (July 2022)

The weather got colder and wet in the Rila National Park of Bulgaria and so Michele and I decided to move further east and north to the area of Kalofer and Botev Peak. I was struggling a bit to go there because I felt like there is something left to discover in Rila and I always try to burn not so much diesel for going back and forth. But in the end, it was a good decision. The weather near Kalofer was super nice and the whole area there is beautiful as well.

At the meadow which we called home there were horses and a kind of meerkats. They came every morning out of their little home holes to greet the day. Beautiful. We had some chill time there and one day it was time for Michele to take a train to Sofia to then fly back to Germany. The time with him was super nice and lovely and I always smile thinking back at it.

On my way back to the meadow where Sebastian and I had stayed for a couple of days, I refilled my water tank and canisters. While refilling, I put the lid of Rosinante’s water tank on the roof of Rosinante. After refilling, I forgot to put the lid back on. I realized that after driving about one kilometer away from the water fountain… And then I started searching for it… For about an hour. But I never gave up hope and when I finally found it, I was happy as shit.

I wanted to go to Botev Peak but the internet said it should be done as a two days trip. I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel like going to the mountain hut near the peak and so I decided to do it just in one day. It was an awesome hike. Especially the Tarzan Trail near the waterfall “Raisko Praskalo” I loved a lot. That part was a bit adventurous. The peak was a totally different world: flat, not very romantic, occupied by something that looked in between a rocket or a nuclear war shelter.

In the end, I did 30 km and 4.700 hm in 8 hours and felt awesome about it. Since I did this hike, I feel much more relaxed while hiking. It’s weird, but something changed in me. Before I sometimes hiked very slowly and sometimes fast. Sometimes I did some trail running, sometimes I took breaks of an hour or longer with meditation, etc. And I’m still doing it the same way. But still, it feels different… It’s really weird… I guess my ego feels like it has proven something with that hike. And just think about that. Isn’t it funny? Somehow something inside of me changed because of having done something. Somehow my inner concept of what is hiking or how I feel about it changed. But without an intention to do so. For me it’s just another example what the subjective reality is like: delusional and impermanent.