Category: thoughts and feelings

When the thunder strikes you on the mountain high (May 2023)

I really love thunderstorms. The nice, exciting atmosphere, the rain, the dynamics of the wind…

But being inside of one just between the summits of the Karasay and the Eznevit at 3500 meters altitude was a very different experience.

When I started the ascent, the weather looked good and after some kilometers of walking on nearly flat ground the real ascent started. It was basically just going up, up, up the steep slope.

When I was about 200 meters away from the top, the thunderstorm rapidly arose and I was standing on the very steep, snow covered slope in my snow shoes and thought about what direction would be better. Up or down? No cover in any direction. So I decided to go up between the two summits to have at least a less steep place when the thunderstorm would hit me.

I found a tiny spot, sat down, wrapped myself in my emergency blanket to have some protection from the wind, hail, snow and whatever there is to come and looked in the direction of the approaching thunderstorm.

I saw big lightning hitting the rocks of the mountain in front of me and it looked so impressive. But after just a couple of minutes the view drastically deteriorated and everything went white and the storm was tugging and pushing my blanket.

But sitting in the blanket felt ok to me. The lightning did not close in on me which made me feel pretty safe. But still I had some interesting thoughts. For example, I thought if there is something I should do before I may die in this thunderstorm. I guess I was very far away from dying up there but still this thought occurred to me but I did not find anything and just continued sitting.

The whole time I had this song from East 17 on my mind: “When the thunder calls you, from the mountain’s high, it’s time to spread your wings and fly”.

After the thunderstorm had passed, I just ran/ slided down the slope and felt totally pumped.

One final reason to stay on Cyprus? (April 2023)

After the Teletubbies-garden I went again to the southern part. Some people of the talking circle community were planning to do a nice two day hike on which we would sleep for one night in one of the many abounded villages on Cyprus. Sounds awesome, right?

One day in advance I met one of them and she showed me a super nice beach where we stayed and had such a nice time together. I don’t know for sure what activities are appropriate in abounded ruins of little chapels but I guess some that are a lot of fun may be more inappropriate than others.

The next day it was raining so the hike got cancelled. Instead of the hike, we visited the land of one of the talking circle. It was a super nice and beautiful place in nature. With a lot of animals, plants and clever ideas. We talked, cooked, watched the stars and spent a wonderful time together.

I was feeling that the connection between me and her was super nice, harmonic and exciting and in the next weeks we met several times. I’d say that different things we experienced in our lives were pretty bounding and I loved her for being straight forward and some more private reasons.

But this time, I felt very clear that I would continue my travels at some point. Back in Bulgaria, I was feeling different about that. There I felt that even staying in Bulgaria would have been an option. What is more, I did not want to say something like “I’ll continue at some point. Could be tomorrow or in a year”. It felt unfair to me.

So I did my best to communicate that I’ll continue in about four weeks. I was in a mood of “experiencing everything as long as it lasts” and  although she understood that, she did not feel like that. Joining me in my travels or continuing our relationship on Cyprus as long as I would stay there were no options for her as well and so we ended our relationship before it really had started. Although I felt so connected with her, I felt ok with that