On:

I’m writing this on my way to flying home.

No, I am not “going home”, but I am flying home as part of my trip.
I have the chance to volunteer at an event in Croatia so I scrapped all my plans last minute and booked a flight to Budapest and then to move on to Zagreb.

I managed to jump on board with someone to an airbnb place for just 5 euros per night for the time of the event, so I’ll get to know new people and have a nice place to stay. Can’t wait.

Oh wait… actualy I can’t believe. 🙂

Every time something like this happens, I am just sure, that this is not happening. My life is sure not real, this must be the Matrix – things like this don’t happen to people. Except it does, apparently.

I was spending 5,5 weeks in Faro (Portugal) volunteering in a hostel for accomodation, and while I was spending time here I accidentally saw a message from a former teacher of mine (from College, studying Tourism) who just posted a line on Facebook asking if any of her friends are in south-Portugal for the summer and could help out some of her aquaintances. I “raised my hand” saying that well I won’t be here in the “summer” but am currently staying in Faro, so if there is any prep-work I can do to help, I am happy to do so. Turns out they were coming on a week that is still within the reach of my stay, so I agreed to help, even though I tried to hint that I am not a tourguide and I don’t want to lead sightseeings or such, so I could just help with other things.

Scared to death, I went for it anyway, cause I agreed to help and felt like not only do I not have a choice all that much, this year is about taking the leap anyway. Worst case scenario, I spend one of my free days with something I have never done before and that I was once interested and than later most afraid of going for. Now I tried and learnt some lessons.

Anyway, so they were really sweet and even though I feel that I was absolutely horrible (at living up to any expectations of mine anyway) I had a good time, I think they were really generous and also invited me for lunch.

What are the odds for me even seeing that facebook post? I don’t have Fb on my phone so I only see what’s going on there when the wifi and laptop constellation aligns. Then since she is not a highlighted close-circle friend or anything I had to be online in a very good time to actually see that post. And not only did I see it at the right moment, was at the right place (just 1 hour away from their booked resort) but even the timing was perfect – I was sure to stay until the 17th May, but I was in no hurry to leave, so staying until 21-22 was totally okay.

Then came the feeling of not knowing my next stepping stone. My boss started to ask me when do I leave, until when can she count on me and I didn’t have answers, but the question kept creeping in my head – I had to figure out where I go from here and when.

I started browsing for options, since the plan is that I will meet people in Ireland in July and I have friends all over the UK and even a friend who lives back home was going to visit UK I was mostly looking for flight options there. I gathered a lot of info, asked around and slowly and very unsurely made the decision to head to England. I was very hesitant, I didn’t want to book a ticket, I felt like something is going to hit and I will make the wrong step. But then I talked to a beloved friend, who was more than happy about the idea of me visiting, I found a flight ticket for a really great price and being scared of getting stuck and missing the beat I made the decision and booked a flight.

As usual, it didn’t feel real, I didn’t believe that I am doing this, but was excited to see so many friends who we were planning to meet up with.

Two days later (24th May) the expected “hit” came. I got an email, that stirred everything up – seems like I can actually be on the volunteer team of IFCC the first event that I have put on my list when I was starting to gather ideas for my travel plans and making a spreadsheet for all the events that would be great to attend. I repeatedly tried to figure out if I could or couldn’t attend before, I was even tempted to go to Zagreb in case I could not get to the event itself, just to have the chance to meet all the amazing people that will be there.

Staring at the email I didn’t believe that it was happening and I had no idea what to do. I just booked a flight ticket to England… and the event is next week. How do I even react to this? Should I go for it or should I jump?

Looked into my options and after researching my travel possibilities and finding out that I could actually book a flight to Budapest and then take an early bus to Zagreb, I gave the team a call to confirm that if I arrive on Sunday, they can sure get me on board with the team. The answer was yes, just make sure I write them an email. Okay… now let’s see if I could find accomodation. Bugging all my friends who were attendees, groupchats and facebook groups, browsing hostel options it seemed to be very likely that I will be able to find something.

Okay… you can do this. JUMP!

Airplane and bus ticket bought – let’s go for it!

Just to make things more interesting, yesterday (26th) I got an email from the bus company that due to technical issues the ride I booked got cancelled. Ain’t that great news?

Shrug… see the plans burn, remains get carried away by the wind and let’s keep moving. Messaging, researching bus schedules again, checking train prices, talking with multiple people in the end I managed to book a place for carpooling. I really hope this one will work out well. 😀

As of this point I still have no schedule or further info on what will I actually be doing at the festival, but I am most likely to be working 6-8 hours per day and hopefully be still able to enjoy what the festival has to offer. Worst case scenario I will still get to meet a lot of amazing people.

It would be great to befriend the team, meet with friends of mine, who attend and hope to get to know many other great folks.

I am terribly under-prepared for this one – I have never been to the event, nor to the city, I barely know anything about it, have no business cards ( though I have a few postcards that will be an okay substitute) and the portfolio I have is not exactly fitting this field. Oh well. At least I have nicel printed works of mine with me. That’s something, right?

Man this will be another round of “overwhelming, but amazing” stuff 🙂

On:

Seeing the gorgeous colors that the setting sun paints on everything makes me want to rush out there and paint – to try and capture the soft gradients on the sky, the warm touches of light on the otherwise painfully bright white buildings. Photos just don’t seem to work…

But honestly, I should really stop myself from painting at sunset, cause it’s the most frustrating thing I’ve been doing lately :DD I’m chasing cast shadow that slip away and meld into each other within twenty minutes. Colors change so fast that by the time the first layer of paint is down on the paper, the colors I’d put down as second layer don’t make sense anymore. Everything is changing and I’m on a constant race to try and match what I’m seeing but by the time it’s down on paper it is too late.

I’m doomed to failure.

I think for now I should stick to _enjoying_ sunset scenery, trying to capture it in my mind, study and absorb what I’m seeing. I need to level up many skills till I have a chance. :)))

 

(I wanted to upload a couple of photos for you, but the wifi is so slow at the moment, that it was a struggle to open the dashboard, so I guess you’ll have to do without the photos for now.)

On:

Some people say that if there is a repeating pattern in your life, the Universe is trying to teach you something. If you fail to learn the lesson, it will become more and more intense, until you break or finally get it. When you pass the test it will still come up every now and then, checking if you really understood the message.

I think with this particular bit, the Universe didn’t have a hard job – setting off travelling long term, being away and not having an idea where I land and what the next step is, pretty unrealistic already. Before setting off I didn’t believe it was going to happen and on the go, day after day, living it I still don’t believe it.
This is must not be real.
The message was clear for it’s first appearence already: This is not real. This is the Matrix. There is no spoon.

When I set off on my travels, the first stepping stone was Bologna.
I went there to attend the Children’s Book Fair, which was great, overwhelming and very inspiring, but there should be another blogpost to cover that.
During my 10 day long stay in Italy, I stayed in a hostel for 2 nights – by the time I got there, I was exhausted. A full day of wandering around on the Fair and then walking with my two way-more -heavy-then-healthy backpacks made me really grateful for the pack of ramen I had which meant that I didn’t have to pull myself together to go for a grocery run.
I went to look for the hostel kitchen to enjoy the graceful “budget tourist” moment of eating my dinner. The kitchen was huge – there were multiple stoves all over the place, several sinks, a few fridges, many tables and chairs.
I was really impressed – back home I worked in a tiny hostel that had a kitchen & common area that felt packed when there was 10 people in it.
This could easily host 80-90 people.
So I went to look for some basic stuff in the back corner – a kettle, whatnot, and going through the different cupboards and drawers I found that not only there is no soup bowl (or anything similar) but in the whole huge complex of kitchen I couldn’t find a single spoon.
What the hell?
…I’m sure that the sight of me trying to eat a ramen with a fork out of a teacup was rather entertaining for whoever might be randomly checking on the different scenes of the matrix.

Anyway, on to the next stop – I flew to Porto, to stay with an awesome guy from couchsurfing for a couple of days and enjoy the first few totally stress-free days since the beginning of my trip.
I had the greatest time just wandering around in the city and sketching a lot.
On the afternoon of my first full day in Porto, I decided to cool off a bit, have a few hours with just my laptop, catching up with messages and such – so I went to the tiny, messy kitchen of my host, to make myself a coffee. Yep, you guessed it… no spoon. Except for one big one – pretty unhandy when it comes to stirring your coffee, but oh well. Hint taken… I know it’s not real. I don’t care, I’m having a good time.

The next stop was a cheat, cause I stayed a friend’s house, where I felt so much at ease and at home that I can not thank her enough for it. It’s “sacred ground”, the Universe left me alone for a bit – except not really… On my first night we went to a restaurant and at the end we asked for a shared dessert. Guess who didn’t get a spoon? Yup.

Then I came to Faro, where I’m set out to stay for 4 weeks – working in a hostel in exchange for my accomodation. My first workaway spot. Yeey! So here I live and chill and actually start the real “slow travel” mode.
The hostel all in all is bigger then what I’m used to, since it has rooms in 4 separate building, but it’s nice and the main building has only a four private rooms and two dormitories so it’s a handleable amount of people. There is a rooftop terrace, a small patio, a common room, so there is space to mingle. The kitchen have a nice big table that could seat up to 10 people I believe, the counter is enough for about 3 people to comfortably work on their stuff side by side. Nothing huge – compared to Bologna, it’s tiny, compared to what I had in my homes, it’s spacious.
So here I finally started actually cooking proper meals for myself and that is when the next round came – we have no wooden spoons. None… and nothing even resembling the thing.
I’ve told my boss on the second day of my stay, that if we don’t want the nice, new pots and pans ruined by forks and such, we should get woodens spoons. She said okay – it was almost 3 weeks ago and we still have no wooden spoons.

And then today on a day-trip to a closeby town with a friend, we went to bakery and when buying my takeaway coffee, the lady at the counter gave me an apologising look and a straw to stir my coffee with cause they ran out of plastic spoons…

 

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