Tag: beach

Sorry Rosinante, finally a warm Winter, Turkish hospitality, practicing cajon and serious music production (November 2022)

On Uludag mountain, I decided to head south towards the Mediterranean. Back in Bulgaria, the weather had started to get colder and in northern Turkey, the temperature was dropping day by day. I felt that my dream was finally coming true: for the first time in my life, I would have a warm winter!

After descending from the mountain, I made a small detour and visited the manufacturer of the Capra Camper camper cabin. Months ago, I had learned that the frame of my pickup camper, Rosinante, could potentially snap. This idea had never occurred to me before, as I had assumed that the stronger suspension meant that it could carry more weight and withstand heavy use, such as off-roading. However, I had heard of instances where the frames of all types of vehicles, including pickups, jeeps, and trucks, had snapped. For example, the frame of a Spanish couple I had met in Greece recently broke in Georgia. The realization of snapping frames had caused me some concern, but I had managed to let go of a lot of my fears at the time I had been at the Beglika festival. Nonetheless, something was still bothering my mind and I was curious and wanted to see what a smaller cabin would be like. The team at Capra Camper were extremely friendly and we had a great conversation about cabins, off-roading, the van life, Turkey, Germany, and more. They were so kind and gave me some parts I was searching for for free. I had a close look at their cabin and from that point on, I always recommended it to anyone looking for something simple, minimalistic, and lightweight for moderate temperatures at a good price.

But to be honest, from my perspective, the Capra Camper cabin is hardly comparable to the Fernweh-Mobil cabin of Rosinante that I call home. Although both cabins are detachable pickup cabins woth pop-up roofs, they are so different. That showed me once again how incredible Rosinante is in every regard. Since that day, I have met many people with different types of mobile homes: ordinary cars, caravans, jeeps, vans, off-road vans, pickups with other cabins, motorhomes, Landcruisers with pop-up roofs, Defenders with rooftop tents, and off-road trucks. Seeing all these different concepts has only made me love Rosinante even more. It has reassured me that she is perfect for me. Of course, there are things that I need to take care of and changes I would like to make, but overall she is perfect. And if her frame were to snap, I would try to have her fixed. And if that is not possible, I am sure that I would handle it as well.

It’s interesting how a comparison like that can ease my mind and bring me happiness. I mean, in the end, it “doesn’t make sense” to base my confidence and happiness on external factors like this comparison. It can become unstable at any time. But in a way, it feels like that comparison helped me to calm down the part of my mind that was unsatisfied and afraid. It made it possible for me to see things more clearly . Like it lifted a veil of fear and thoughts about a potential future. I think in the end, it helped me to let go.

I rarely drive long distances in a short period of time, but the call of a warm winter was too strong to resist, and so I drove straight to the Mediterranean coast without making any stops. I traveled from Bursa to Bademli and found my first home on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. The next day, I continued further south and on a large sandy beach, I met a wonderful and interesting couple from Germany. We immediately started having engaging and deep conversations. If you’re interested, you can follow them on Instagram.

The next day, I made my way to a beach near Demircili, where I stayed for a couple of days. I enjoyed the warm winter weather, with temperatures around 18 degrees during the day and 12 degrees at night.

Every day, I practiced playing my Cajon, and my playing started to feel natural, flowing, and even a bit groovy at times.

That beach was frequently visited by locals on weekends. They were all so lovely and welcoming. I was invited to a Turkish breakfast and had great conversations with different people. I found it inspiring how open and unafraid these locals were in making connections with others, despite the language barrier. Most of them only spoke Turkish, but that didn’t stop them from reaching out to me and making me feel welcomed. They just did it with ease and it was truly heartwarming.

Hooked by the warm winter, I ventured further south to the peninsula near Marmaris. Many other travelers coming from the east and locals had recommended the area from Bodrum to Antalya, stating that it was one of the most beautiful and warm regions in Turkey. I was excited to explore this area and experience the natural beauty as well as the even warmer temperatures of this region.

The first beach I visited on the peninsula was beautiful, peaceful, and I did some hiking through the hills surrounding it. One day, a German couple arrived at the beach and we had a lot of conversations about various topics. They were considering moving to Hamburg once they returned to Germany. Talking about Hamburg reminded me of the beauty of this city, where I had lived for the past 14 years. It felt good to be able to help them by recommending places to visit and the best spots for car living. One of them was particularly interested in FPV drone flying. Check out his Instagram, his work is incredible and of very high production value.

I took advantage of the Black Friday deals and purchased a large package of music production tutorials and samples. Before that, I had watched free tutorials on YouTube and read free articles from many music production teachers. I was producing music mostly every day for hours and I felt like I wanted to take my music production to the next level. I was curious about how paid courses were structured and what they could offer me. I thought that it might be possible to make money from my music production at some point in the future. I knew that this step and these thoughts could potentially cause some internal conflicts and affect the joy I felt while making music. But I underestimated the impact it would have and soon, it would escalate into something else…

Entering Turkey, first impressions and getting bugged down hard on a wild beach (October 2022)

After having a magical time in Strandzha in Bulgaria, I crossed the border to Turkey. The border crossing went without any problems and I got the first stamp in my fresh passport.

In the first city I entered, I immediately felt how different Turkey was. It seemed very lively to me. In every settlement there was something like a central area where people met, hung out and lived their social life. I very rarely eat meat or fish, but when I saw the Köfte restaurant, I couldn’t resist. I’ve loved koefte for years and the ones I got there were minimalistic and delicious.

I took a long walk around the small town and bought different foods to try, a sim card, talked to a lot of different people and got a bit of a feel for how things were going in this new country. What impressed me the most was that the Turkish people seemed to be very talkative. They weren’t afraid of language barriers and seemed very friendly, interested and hospitable.

After that, I continued my trip and went to a wild beach on the Black Sea coast. This beach reminded me a lot of the big beach near Varna where I had spent a lot of time. But to get to this beach in Turkey, Rosinante and I had to go through some muddy off-roading and very narrow passages. We even got lost, but some friendly locals helped us finding the right way. That was a lot of fun. When I reached the beach, I met a very friendly goatherd and we had a nice conversation via Google Translate.

I stayed for a few days of hanging around at the beach, bo staff training, meditating, making music and so on and during these days only the goat herder visited me again, then I continued on my way. Because it would have been be an insanely long trip to return to the road and continue from there, I decided to take the shortcut and drive along the beach. I scouted the beach first, because I didn’t want to hopelessly bug down Rosinante on this wild beach. So I dropped the pressure in her tires to about one bar and took off. Everything was going great until we approached the last little slope that would lead to the exit of the beach. All the momentum I had built up was swallowed up in a second by that little slope and Rosinante’s tires immediately started digging themselves into the sand. Looking at the situation from the outside, I knew this was going to be a tough one. The sand was super soft and Rosinante’s rear axle was already touching it. I took my time and dug very well. I placed my two large aluminum recovery boards and the two small leveling blocks to get a little more traction. I locked Rosinante’s rear differential, let her slowly crawl onto the boards, and once she was there, I let her take off and build some momentum. The little slope swallowed it all with a big appetite. After three meters, Rosinante lay down on the sand like a sleeping whale. So I dug again. And it took me some time to find the leveling blocks because they were buried deep in the sand. After the second digging, I sent Rosinante forward again. The appetite of the slope didn’t seem to be satisfied. Again, it swallowed Rosinante’s entire momentum in just a meters. So I dug again. I dug out and placed the boards and leveling blocks. I launched Rosinante. And the slope got another feast of momentum. So I dug again, dug and placed the boards and leveling blocks, launched Rosinate and… finally we reached solid ground again.

A more natural approach, letting go and Zen (October 2022)

Continuation of the previous blog post.

When it came to spending time together and showing romantic love, I was all in. I did seek to be close to Artha and learned that she needed more space than my ego was feeling to give without struggling. I believed that the general circumstances put some pressure on our connection as well. I was in Varna because Artha was there. If we hadn’t met, I most likely wouldn’t have been there. We spoke about this, but I thought it was just something “hanging in the air”.

Sometimes Artha built up what felt to me like a heavy energy and it felt like the interaction from her side switched entirely. From what I felt was loveful, warm, and close, she switched to ignoring, cold and distant. Sometimes just from one hour to the next. That triggered a lot inside of me. In times like this, I felt like I was losing her and that unique connection between us. I could not get through to her and a part of our connection got interrupted. Fully connected we looked each other in the eyes for long moments and it felt like I could look right into her. Seeing her completely as she was. Feeling everything there was.

When our connection got interrupted like that, we did not look into each other’s eyes. It just did not happen. A part of me did not want to have this. It felt like a threat to me. I was struggling with this switching between us and with me getting triggered. And I realized that my perspective was at first very self-centered. These occasions let me think about how Cori may have felt when she had been visiting me back in Greece (open blog post “There is no love left”). It felt like I switched places in something very similar.

At first, I felt like I was responsible to help Artha, to heal her from having that heavy energy. That is a pattern I was feeling and following for a whole lot of my life and still, it is present inside of me. Maybe it’s one of the patterns that let me suffer in my life the most. Throughout my life, I felt so often responsible for the emotional states of others. That let me feel like I have to do something to help them. And I think that it was only to feel better for myself. I was mostly rejecting bad feelings and negative energies. I just did not want to have them around me. I started a long process of letting this pattern go long ago, but during that time with Artha, it felt like I profoundly experienced that I was really allowed to let it go, that it did not have to be a part of me. But even after realizing this, it was not easy to let it go and still it sticks with me. But I felt like I did a big step. And one thing that changed my perspective on that pattern was, experiencing that in the end, there was nothing that Artha would need any healing for. That I was thinking she needed to heal started to feel encroaching and self-centered. Partly I just wanted her to not have this strong energy to spend time with her and enjoy the light and deep energy between us. But the times when my pure and egoless compassion for her felt stronger than the cravings of my ego.

That time did let me experience and learn how much heavy energies can help and heal if I let them. How wonderful it is to welcome and accept these heavy energies and let them transform themself into something else.

Disregarding the healing that took place in me, I still felt the demanding romantic ego love inside of me and I was struggling a lot with how to deal with it. I thought letting it all out felt encroaching and self-centered and I thought suppressing it felt wrong and unnatural. I just thought so much…

During that time I was reading the book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki (via Google you’ll find a pdf of it). I had read it years ago but back then it did resonate with me at all. But at the time in Varna and on the beach, I connected very strongly with it. I loved how it was trying to describe the non-dualistic nature of “everything there is” and how straight, pure, and “Zen style” it was. And especially the repetitive style I liked. For me, it felt like this book was trying to help its readers to not think so much but instead trust in themselves and live more. What is more, it described a lot about the “big mind” and the “small mind”. Basically, I understood, that the big mind is living without adding stories to the things we are doing/ living and the small mind is the part of oneself, that tends to add thoughts and stories to everything we are doing/ living. So the big mind sees and lives things “as they are” and the small mind adds delusions to that. These delusions then are causing suffering. Although I had read similar things hundreds of times before, something inside of me started to change those days. Somehow a seed got planted in me at that time. From then to now, my perspective about all of this has already changed and at that time back in Bulgaria, I only got a glimpse of it. But that glimpse felt good and healthy.

It felt like I experienced seeing the concepts in my mind differently. But just a tiny bit. Like I was able to open a door just a tiny bit and got a tiny glimpse of what was behind it. I was aware of some of these patterns and concepts before but now my belief that they were ok and I did not have to suppress them. Instead of analyzing, trying to understand, and changing them as I had in the past (see the last post), I started to accept them more as what they were and live them.

This experience let me start to change how I dealt with whatever was arising from inside of me. I started to open up to myself. It felt liberating. I think, I always had been a very authentic and pure human. But the glimpse through that door let me see that the authenticity of my past was like an idea or a concept I had come up with and which I had been living and sticking to. Like I had been living in a frame made by myself.

I started to partly let go of some mental concepts that made me feel unnatural. Following them let me feel like I was holding back a part of myself. And this part was mostly the one that I was suppressing because it did not feel “right”, “mindful”, “spiritual”, or “healthy” to me. When these parts had arisen before, I was suppressing them with my thoughts in a compassionate way. I was thinking something like “nice that you are here mind pattern but I think you are quite unhealthy so please go to sleep or away”. Now I started something in the direction of acknowledging, respecting, and accepting them as they were. In a way, I tried to live all of myself and not only the parts I wanted to have. But it was just a tiny step and it was irritating, weird, and demanding.

Being as analytical as in the example of the last post felt unnatural as well. It felt like coming up with concepts to explain concepts. Like stacking up concepts of and for the small mind high in the sky. I felt like being more direct and more natural. Less analyzing, more living, trusting in myself and seeing what would happen.

When my ego was demanding things, I told Artha. I tried to do so with as much love and compassion for her and myself as I could. So I did not act like an unleashed “ego devil”. At least I think so. It felt good and healthy and like I really could have a look at what was coming up from inside of me. The holding back and thinking about these things which I had done before, started to feel more and more theoretical and unnatural. But at the same time, not holding back most of what was coming up felt self-centered and still like I was managing it with my thoughts.

A lot of the time, I was thinking a lot and still the romantic ego love felt partly unhealthy and I was struggling to accept it. But I felt that that glimpse through that door opened up a deeper, more healthy, more true, and more natural perspective on a lot of things. And the unconditional love and deep connection between Artha and me felt so strong and unique…