Tag: photo

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.

Erwin and a wonderful view at Corinth

It’s the end of April 2022 and for the first time in months, I’m getting close to a bigger settlement. After visiting Monemvasia, I got the feeling that visiting human-made sightseeing sites is not my favorite thing to do, but still, I thought that passing Corinth without visiting its famous sites, would be kind of stupid.

Half an hour before it closes down, I entered the ancient site of Corinth. I’m walking in between the old stones and especially the temple of Apollo impresses me. I’m enjoying visiting this place but I’m not sad that I have not much time left to check out all the ruins of this place. In my head, I notice something like a sense of duty. It’s weird. Like I have to be here. But of course, I know that I don’t. At one point I’m noticing that the mountain of Corinth with the ancient fortress of Corint on top of it, fascinates me the most. More than the ruins and by far more than the tourist restaurants and shops right next to the ancient site.

Before I have to leave the ancient site, I leave it and start driving Rosinante up the mountain. I take some offroad tracks and try different directions and in the end, I find an awesome spot to stay. After just a few minutes a young, cute stray dog approaches my little home area. He’s shy but looks very interested in what I’m doing. He looks hungry and so I’m taking a bit of the dog food I’m having with me and after a few minutes, he’s convinced that I’m a friend and I call him Erwin. From this moment on he stays at my little camp and follows me everywhere I go. When I’m sitting outside, Erwin lays beside me. We play around and take a walk. In the evening Erwin chooses a place under Rosinante as his sleeping spot. The next morning we take a morning run together and it turns out, that Erwin is a very good climber.

I’m thinking about what it would be like to have a permanent dog friend and travel companion with me.

Hiking myself free

It’s mid of April 2022 and I’ve reached the eastern nipple of the Peleponnese. Most people call them fingers or feet, but I’m preferring nipples. There had been a time, some years ago when I called most things nipple. Maybe it’s a residue of this nipple quirk left in my head…

The last few days, it has been very stormy and today it’s even crazier. I spent the night behind a beach, in a place protected by a big rock formation. In the morning, I took the drive to the Geopark of Agios Nikolaos, and here the wind is even stronger.

This wind is not the only stormy thing I’m dealing with: my mind is very stormy as well. I’ve been not very motivated for the last few days and I’m feeling kind of down for no special reason I know. I’ve been meditating and practicing the acceptance of my state of mind, but in the morning I got an alarming message from Germany about the health situation of one of my close family members. This message added some whirl to the wind in my head and heart. It leaves me like a sailor in the dense fog of life. Standing in the crow’s nest. Thinking and evaluating if my future me might cope with the challenges to come instead of sailing in this particular moment with what is happening now. I’m asking myself questions like “should I go back to Germany?”, “what will happen next?”, “what if…?”, …

In times like these, it’s the best for me to go outside and do something interesting, but not too challenging. In the best case, it’s something beautiful. Something that keeps me going without much potential to be negatively exciting.

The hike from the Geopark to Ekklisia Agios Georgios is exactly that. It’s super beautiful and the narrow path is interesting but easy to do. I’m hiking between the sea and the mountain. The mountain is protecting me from the wind and the whirlwind inside of my head loses his negative and destructive power. The sun of spring is getting me really warm and after an hour, I’m enjoying all this. I’m welcoming and congratulating a big part of me for making it back from the future into the present. It feels very relieving. I’m still not very positive or happy, but that’s fine. I escaped the black hole, that had me in its gravity field.

I think there is a big power in walking. Maybe it’s because that’s what nature made us: awesome walking machines. Especially walking through nature has so much calm, satisfaction and a kind of wisdom in it.