Tag: photo

Beglika part one: magic in the Bulgarian mountains, labor, and about motivation and beliefs (August 2022)

At the big lake, I decided to go one week early to the area where the Beglika festival would take place. I thought it would be nice to help build stuff that is needed for the festival and I hoped for some physical labor in nature and nice people that connect with nature, spirituality, and music.

When I arrived at the festival area I was stunned by the beauty of that place. It was located at about 1.300m and a wonderful hilly spot mostly surrounded by a mountain lake and woods. The whole place was not very big and not small nether. It was perfect. All that was already build-up, was made of wood and mostly natural resources.

A group of volunteers was preparing all kinds of things for the festival and a few locals camped at the lake. Everybody I met, was super nice, friendly, and chilled and I immediately felt that this place, the people were gorgeous and the festival would be like that as well.

I found a super nice spot for Rosinante. Next to the main area of the festival, there was a small forest up a hill. At the foot of the other side of that hill, Rosinante and I found home right next to the lake. A walk at the lake led me to my neighbors: two Bulgarians who were there camping, living, and working (online) for a week. They were spiritual topics and we connected very well. They even had a dedicated tent for meditation.

I went to the volunteers and joined them for most of the time before the festival started. We built big tarps, organized drinking water, prepared wood for fires and construction, cooked, washed, cleaned, constructed, ate, talked, and had a good time together. Some of the about twenty volunteers were already for weeks at that place. One group of French scouts had planned and organized their trip to and help at the Beglika festival for months. It felt good to work with them and the atmosphere was mostly harmonious and good willing.

Before I started my journey, I had been working at a software development company and had a lot of different tasks. One area in which I had been contributing a lot of my energy was the organization of working processes and addressing the people’s needs.

In Beglika, it was interesting to just flow with whatever had to be done. I did what had to be done and got not into optimizing or changing the way how it was done. This was a profound experience for me. I just flowed with whatever happened. It was interesting to observe how the motivation of the others was going up and down and what let them struggle. The organization was very loose and based on the engagement of everyone and I loved this approach.

This experience reassured me, that it is very easy to become encroaching. In the past, I had often been very convinced that I know how to do things. That doesn’t mean that I forced people into things. It just means that I had a strong belief and direction in the things I thought and did. And sometimes others welcomed this, I guess. It can give stability, hope, and direction. There have been times when that approach let me feel responsible for a lot and that turned out not to be healthy. At least for me.

At that time at Beglika, I felt that instead of giving stability, hope, and direction it would be healthier for others and myself to learn to keep up direction and the hope in it together. I mean less “this is the direction I’m believing right now, let’s talk about it, I’m happy if you believe in it too, take it” and more “let’s see together what direction we can come up with and develop intrinsic belief in it while doing so”. I’m wondering if I will ever build up/ work together at something in a group of people for a longer period. If I will, it will be very different for me.

I felt totally good to just do things. My favorite tasks were: cleaning tree trunks with a slicer and manually drilling holes for pillars. It was tough to drill into the hard ground, through stones and I loved it.

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…

Getting rid of stuff and lifting Rosinante (August 2022)

Before I started my potentially never-ending journey, I had been thinking about taking three bicycles with me. One trials bike, one gravel bike, and one mountain bike/ enduro. In the end, I started my journey only with the mountain bike and used it for the last time in Croatia in February. From then on, I had been carrying it along.

Back in Germany, before I started my journey, Enduro biking and downhill were my favorite hobbies! I think I did it something like three or five days a week. This sport got me deeply and I loved it. I had so many wonderful moments while doing it. With wonderful friends and in solitude.

There had been the option to spend this year’s summer in the alps going from bike park to bike park. But as I was traveling, I quickly realized that downhill was not the thing I was after anymore. I wanted to explore freely and not restrict myself to places with nice biking trails.

Quickly I realized that the places I prefer visiting and living at are no good match for biking. Actually, I barely did see any nice biking trails during my journey at all. Maybe that’s because I did not search for them or just was not after them anymore. The small tracks in nature I’m finding are much better or even only possible on foot. Biking would mostly happen on tarmac roads in the traffic and gravel roads and I don’t feel like going for that. What is more, I absolutely learned to love walking and running. To explore the areas I’m visiting, be in nature, relax, everything. It’s so calm, natural, and pure.

So I finally was thinking about selling my Enduro in Bulgaria. Because of some special repair, the bike had needed back in Germany, I did not feel good about selling it to someone else and so I decided to send it back to Germany where a very good friend stored it. With this, I completely let go of it and the hobby I had been so much into. Again. Like I did before with: playing computer games, watching tv series and movies, partying, trial biking, gravel biking, riding a racing motorcycle, etc. I’m curios which ones will come back…

While preparing the bike for shipping, I was thinking of what else I could get rid of. So I put all my clothes on a blanket and had a look at it. I had: 19 t-shirts, 18 long sleeves, 11 long trousers, 6 short trousers, 4 long underpants, 17 underpants, 30 pairs of socks, 5 pullovers, and 4 jackets. To much. I examined every piece and sorted the ones out I wanted to get rid of.

Being in the mood of sorting, cleaning, organizing, and letting go, I examined everything I had with me. All the tools, spare parts, and equipment. All the stuff. And after that, I thought that it was crazy and interesting to go through everything I owned. Compared to my life in a flat, I had so much less. But still, I had so much. And I guess about one-quarter of it, I’m not using it regularly. But these things are mostly repair equipment and spare parts.

I thought about how it would be to travel with a very small car or only with a mule. I would have even less. And I could have even less the way I’m traveling. But I decided it was enough for that day.

And I felt very good and kind of liberated. Now that I’m writing this post, I’m thinking that getting rid of stuff is without a doubt one of the healthiest things I ever did. This and starting a spiritual process or whatever you may call it. Having less and less and less. Every time getting rid of stuff feels like a weight gets lifted from my shoulders. And this is interesting: I’m absolutely sure that one could live with much stuff as free and liberated as with less stuff. But doing so is just more difficult. But think about it. If you would not attach to anything, it would not make a difference how much weight you are carrying, right?

After shipping the bike, I faced something that had been bothering me: lifting the cabin from the pickup. I had been thinking about what I would do if I would need to lift it. Normally you would do that with a special cart/ “stand with tires” but I did not buy that one and it’s way too heavy and bulky to take it along while traveling. I imagined different approaches to how one could do it and this is still my favorite one: Taking the winch rope, putting it up over a big branch of a tree, attaching it to two big recovery straps I’ve with me, and then lifting the cabin with the winch. In the end, it was much easier and maybe a little more reliable and very simple.