I always expected to be hitchhiking to Asia some day. The proper way to do it seemed to be by making a two or three year long trip, and spend this time living in the Middle-East, exploring India, Nepal, Tibet, Indonesia and Lao, and many other countries on the way. There’s nothing quite like slowly travelling 1000’s of kilometers overland, and seeing the landscape, customs and climate change little by little, while all the time meeting random friendly people on the road.

Today there are no little changes though. My whole biorhytm just got shifted by five hours, the climate just went from nice & fresh to very hot and humid, not to mention that I’m 8600 kilometers from home, deep into Asia.

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So, how does a nomad settle down? It is quite strange to live in a house, even when it’s a beautiful place in the middle of Berlin, with some lovely colourful people as roommates. So it’s been a couple of months of really starting to appreciate Berlin, and some short hitchhiking trips to Holland, for a bit of work, meeting friends & family. The first time back in that country was quite surrealistic, after having been gone for more then a year. Despite my mind being so full of new impressions and new memories of different places and people, it’s still a place I know so very well. In a way, it’s like nothing has changed, and in another like everything has changed. It’s more a place where I grew up, then a place where I now belong.

But well, I’m back in Berlin, it’s an early Sunday morning, and I’m inside a church. Which is a place where you can find me even less often then in Holland. I’ve never considered myself a religious person – I do respect some of the Christian values, but it’s hardly a good reason for me to visit a church on an early Sunday morning. Today there are very good reasons though, some reasons which have little to do with the original message of Jesus or whatever interpretation modern religion might have of it.

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It never ceases to amaze me how easy everything comes to me, how easy life can be – all the oppurtunities which present themselves and which I just have to grasp.

It’s Sundaymorning. Somethings happening, but I have no idea what. I move around a bit, trying to get back to sleep. Somebody is talking though: “Hey, I feel like going back today.” It is Rieke, on Thursday we hitched here, to Copenhagen, from Hamburg to celebrate midsummer with the Danish. We did not make any appointments about going back together though: ‘Fine’, I think: ‚´Enjoy the trip‚´.

I’ve got enough reason to be grumpy, I guess, when somebody wakes me up before the afternoon has even started.

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It’s Thursday, the 24th of May. Since the days and nights are hot the windows are wide open and thus I wake up to the sounds of a busy morning in Granada. I’m staying here with some students, one friend from Poland and another from Italy. At breakfast I meet them, and of course they ask me what I’ll be doing today. I reply that’s it time to leave beautiful Andalucia with it’s palmtrees, lazy Spanish, delicious tapa’s, and great alternative atmosphere in the street. It’s time to go south, make some stops to visit an old friend from meditation in Malaga, see the small English settlement on a rock on the south of Spain, and then hitch a boat to Africa. This continent is so close, how could I ever have waited so long with going there anyway?

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It‚´s late at night. Or, at least, the sun is down and the moon has not yet risen. Which is about as precise as my awareness of time usually goes these days. I‚´m lying on the floor in our simple bamboo hut, and through holes in the ceiling I see the stars above, while through holes in the wall I see the dark waves hit the shore below. Wave after wave after wave, in the sea‚´s own rhytmic motion. Meanwhile Sky, an English guy and my current roommate in our lazily patched together shelter, lies stretched out on his back and is playing guitar – inbetween the sounds of the sea I recognize the sound of Pink Floyd; Comfortably Numb.

For a week now I‚´ve lived here in this gathering on the beach, in a small bay on the south coast of Spain. Some days of this week have done justice to the picture many people have of Spain as a hot country – on these days it was comfortable enough for nudism on the beach, even in March. Most days have been rainy and cloudy however, and I spent these wrapped up in two warm sweaters reading some Eckhart Tolle or playing chess under the shelter which is our kitchen.

No matter though if it‚´s some abandoned Spanish beach, a mountain top in Poland or some kibbutz in Israel, the places I go to are actually only the superficial layer of my travels. Of much more significance is the personal journey – the journey to get to know myself. My own mind is in the end a lot more important in creating happiness or misery for myself then anything outside can ever be.

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September 2005. It‚´s a while back already that I left into the big unknown! Back then I didn‚´t have much perspective on what was happening; I was only following my heart, which just told me that I really, really had to go.

The months before I left many people where continuously projecting their doubts on me; ‚¨How will you ever find a job now that you didn‚´t finish your study? You‚´ll never manage with money!‚¨, ‚¨You are crazy! You will never find a house so nice as this again!‚¨, ‚¨If you don‚´t have a house, where can you go when your tired of travelling? You‚´ll have no place to go!‚¨, ‚¨How will you deal with this, how will you deal with that?‚¨, etcetera, etcetera.

I just ignored all this chatter, much like I nowadays am learning to ignore the continuous background chatter of my own mind.

So, am I sorry that I followed my heart? Of course not! For sure there where some difficulties, challenges, depressions, a quarterlife crisis and what not, but that doesn‚´t mean I regret anything.

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