Tag: photo

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.

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…

Meeting the loveliest family, a stone man, a real man, a wooden bird, real insects, a waterfall, the water itself and feelings (July 2022)

After another hike near the meadow of horses and meerkats, I restocked my food supplies and drove about 50 km to the next home. On the way, I stopped at that big rock man. Monuments like that are pretty common and to me, they feel a bit weird. Maybe because they are so heroic. I don’t know…

The next home was a picnic and barbeque area. A really big one with a soccer field, multiple levels, a playground, and everything else.

Most of the time, I was in solitude but on the weekend other people came along and I met this wonderful and lovely family! They were just gorgeous and we spent some time together. Went together for a swim in the nearby river and had dinner together. The grandmother (not in the photo) tried hard to feed me with all their homemade and super delicious food and we had a great time. The daughter mostly translated my English into Turkish and partly Bulgarian and it was awesome to have this time with them.

The other day, a Sunday, the place got crowded. It had been very quite and relaxed and out of nowhere two small transporter arrived next to Rosinante. Out of the transporter jumped about twenty children and from there on it was a colorful and vivid place. Soon some more guys joint with their horses and cars. One guy drove his VW Golf through some trees over crazy roots to play, what I should learn later was, Bulgarian gypsy style music as loud as possible. It was like in a movie for me.

The other day, I did a hike and met a super nice Bulgarian. We did most of our hikes together until our paths took different directions. It was super nice as well to hike with someone again and to talk about the Bulgarian culture and living in this country.

Despite the company of the lovely people I met, I started to feel somehow lonely at that time. In the beginning, I felt kind of left behind. And started craving for connecting with other people. Now, in retrospective that appears pretty clear to me, but at that time, I was just confused. I even installed dating apps to get to know someone. I felt somehow underfucked as well… Maybe one thing that called these feelings inside of me had the time together with Michele. For me it’s life is different when I have someone around me most of the time. And maybe that contrast of being mostly in solitude again let something pop up inside of me. I never felt really bad or sad, but I was somehow unsatisfied with something. I meditated as usual an it was interesting to observe these feelings.