Tag: nature

Gorgeous times together in Rila national park (July 2022)

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.

What a beautiful place in nature right next to Athens

After I had taken Cori to the airport in Athens at the beginning of May 2022, I went to a car service to have Rosinantes crocked steering repaired. It has been a Friday, and we had to wait for some spare parts to arrive the next week. More on that in my next post.

One of the nice mechanics recommended the area of Lake Marathon as a home in nature for the weekend and so I went there. This place is really awesome. It’s right next to Athens and wonderful. I found a nice spot, did some walks and runs, spent my time next to a creek I was living next to, and enjoyed my solitude.

My way of forgiving myself and love again

After Cori and I had screamed at the ocean, we found a very special and beautiful beach and decided to live there until she would have to leave Greece and head back to Germany.

The weather got a lot brighter and so did my mind. After days of despair and a lot of negative thoughts, swirling around the same again and again, I did finally find some clearness. It’s been like I was able to feel myself again. And through this, I was able to accept myself and gain back my balance. It felt very relieving and enabled me to describe my feelings and what had been spinning inside of my head for days. And finally, I could start to forgive myself and love again.

We spent some wonderful days at this awesome beach. Rosinante parked right on the beach and behind her, a river went by, took a turn along a magical grotto, and finally found the crystal clear water of the ocean.

After we ran out of gas for cooking, we cooked outside on fire and had the most delicious self-made bread and curry of all time. I don’t know if we would have cooked on the fire when we still had gas, but this way it was just perfect. One day, we hiked along the river, that flows into the sea at this magnificent beach. The hike was super nice and beautiful. You can enter it here.

After some days at this paradise, it was time for us to drive back to the airport in Athens and Cori headed back to Germany.

A part of me had wished, that our shared time would have been more harmonious all the time, but more and more I became thankful for this experience and how we lived through it togehter. In the end, we never blamed each other and were always empathic and loveful.

My key learnings:
🤗 Seeing people, I’m interacting with, as training partners really can help me. All of us seem to be training to live all the time and like in every training, things can get wrong even though they are not intended to.
😇 Seeing things that keep my mind spinning as super important and life-threatening/ changing doesn’t help. In the end, almost everything seems to be very less important and big seen from some distance.
💫 Describing my pure and honest feelings to someone else, without intellectually analyzing and reasoning or explaining their origin, helps me a lot. When I’m really out of balance, it helps me when the other person assures me, that my feelings are not wrong.

In the end, it’s all about remembering that I’m perfectly fine the way I am.