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…

 

. . .

On:

Hello World!

Today is 27th April – this is my 30th day on the road, and this is the first rainy day – I had 2-3 days of windy, and bit chilly days before, but nothing really gloomy or annoying to be honest. This morning it was cloudy but still pretty warm and only started raining in the afternoon. Yep, you are free to hate me now (I know it was even snowing back home).

I am currently in Faro (South-Portugal), been here volunteering for shelter in a hostel for 10 days now and will probably stay for 3 more weeks. I came to this area primarily because friends of mine are staying on these parts at the moment, so hanging out with them is much more important then doing the sightseeing one usually does here so I felt a bit guilty about that. I’ve been working here for more then a week and I only went to the beach yesterday and the main motivation for it was that it’s pretty ridiculous that I still haven’t and I knew that rainy days were coming so I decided to make a quick trip there before my afternoon shift. So I said hello to the ocean, walked on the sandy beach barefoot for about an hour, collected seashells and was constantly fascinated about the fact that I am doing This.
What the hell am I doing anyway?

I still have no clue about what is happening with my life right now, but I enjoy it a lot. 🙂
Today my colleague said to me “I hate you volunteers – you come, I get to love you, and then you leave. Stay and work with us!”
I’ve only been here for a week and we only worked together on 2 shifts – this girl is adorable :)))

A few days ago I felt pretty sure that if I wanted I could actually easily convince the owners to hire me full time, and I was toying around with the idea – the owners are great, the team is nice, they definitely need a helping hand since they are reorganising things and opening new parts of the business and the season is just about to start…
I could learn things from them and I could also teach them about some things. They seem to be trusting my opinion in many things, I like the mindset of theirs and I’d be living close by to a friend, hell why not?
Well… because I’m supposed to _travel_ meet more people and not set roots on the first given location for example. 😀

So to kick myself out of this lovely “ohbutIcouldstayandhelpanditwouldbegreat” mindset that I was slowly sinking in, I started researching for my next stepping stone. I will have to be around Ireland in July, but it would be great to stick around this area for a bit longer still. Not having a clear path makes it really hard to figure out where I go next though. But I went ahead and saved many workaway links for folks who I’d potentially love working with and I’m going to contact them next week I think.
Being free as a bird makes me a bit lost as well – no wonder, they say that limiting your options can lead to better results. 😀

 

On:

Heyho!

I’m still alive – my laptop is at a friend’s place and I really don’t like writing on this lovely, useful gadget of mine, so I figure I would write on paper and just upload the photo. Good luck with my handwriting – though this is me trying to keep it readable.

Today I am not a beam of sunshine but don’t worry, everything is good​ – I had some really great days since I set off (almost a month by now…wow!)

 

And here are a few bits of the places I have been wandering around nowadays.

On:

I’ve been on the road for 2 weeks today.

So far:
– Visited 3 cities (Ferrara, Bologna, Porto)
– Stayed at 5 different people, all of them amazing folks I didn’t know before, plus spent 2 nights in a hostel
– Made about 15-20 plein air/urban sketching pieces, a handful of which I actually like, so that’s cool. If I keep it up I’ll hopefully have a series of good pictures at the end. Levelling up is sure due if I can consistantly produce some sketches with similar qualities.

Random bits of the trip not in chronological order:
– Had a long conversation with a guy who builds robots
– Was given a lift on a motorbike multiple times
– Painted on a naked man
– Met local artists and art teachers
– Went to a house party that due to many musicians being in the group randomly turned into a jam session
– Went to exhibition openings
– Attended the Bologna children’s book fair -went for portfolio reviews, listened to talks, collected business cards, handed out postcards, took notes, then organised my notes to a spreadsheet
…

Tonight I’m taking an overnight but to go to south-Portugal where I’ll be a guest of a friend for aw few days and then go to a hostel to volunteer there for accomodation for a month. (At least I hope so, we agreed on it quite some time ago, but they didn’t respond to my message that I’ve sent them a few days ago about the specific date I could actually arrive. I really hope they are still expecting me even though they didn1t reply :D)

Anyway, if the bus is spacious enough and I don’t/can’t fall asleep I’ll try catching up with some story bits of my trip so far – elaborating a bit on the some of the teasers above. If I fall asleep easily or it seems impossible to whip out my laptop it remains a pending quest. But I did take ‘diary bits’ notes and managed to get my photos to the computer already, so yey for that. :))

On:

As you can see this blogging thing is not really happening – I have a pile of notes in several sketchbooks, on pieces of paper and such, but the lack of laptop usage, wifi connection and the general rush and overwhelm that I had in the past days didn’t really allow me to write. There is sooooo much to write about though, so I really hope to get to it within a few days. 🙂
But travelling is about gathering new experiences, so I should probably go out and making memories now as well instead of typing out the previous days for a couple of hours (it would sure take that long) I will hopefully start to do so though. Now that the event is over days are supposed to be a bit less hectic. We’ll see how that turns out. 🙂

I am currently in Porto and I’m hoping to head town to Loulé / Faro two days from now.
Until you are left hanging without the stories and such, here are three pictures of the 3 cities I’ve been to so far (Ferrara, Bologna, Porto)

Not bad, huh? 😉

If you don’t want to wait till I upload sketches here,  head over to my instagram, I’ve some up there already – although probably more will be posted here later on. 🙂

 

On:

 

I’m currently sitting at my hosts apartment in Ferrara, and just taking a break from writing all the last-minute requests on Couchsurfing.

This city is adorable, I’ve been walking around yesterday and today, made a few sketches, talked with random people on the street, ate a nice meal, had a welcome drink, good coffee. Life is good.

Life is also pretty damn unpredictable. 😀
Today during the day I sat in a café, to try and figure out my housing for the next week cause multiple people offered to host me and then cancelled after we agreed, because as usual, life happens. 🙂 So I was messaging people, making arrangements, starting to get to know great people and so on, and landed on the happy state that I actually had my life sorted out until the 5th, when I would have had 2 “homeless” days to figure out later.
Things felt alright and I was happily walking around. Then came the struggle of trying to find a socket that actually takes my laptops charger… that was a challenge, but I managed to find one. Soon enough I learned though that this particular socket doesnt provide electricity :,DD So I was on to my next quest to find a socket in the apartment that not only am I able to plug my computer on, but that actually does the magic. After desperately running around for a few minutes, I succeeded in my mission. Yey! 😀

Later on I did go out to sketch again, and as people tend to, someone just started talking to me – actually asking for directions in italian ( I _totally_ look like a tourist, I don’t know why people ask for directions from me but it happens all the time :D). Anyway, since I don’t speak italian I asked if he spoke english and within 2 language rounds it turned out that he speaks hungarian, he actually is half hungarian. I’m not sure where he wanted to go originally when he asked for directions, but he sure didn’t get there cause he ended up taking me to a very nice park and we were talking about random stuff for about 1,5 hours or so. 😀
The world is just one big village indeed.
He invited me out to meet him for a beer later in the night so we agreed on a time and place, and I headed back to the apartment.

Where my host welcomed me with a kind, but sad and serious face ((How do you even manage to pull all that off together? )). “I have bad news for you” O-oh… Some family stuff is going on and he will have to host his brother… oookay. I was pretty sure that I was being kicked out for tonight, but luckily it’s not _that_ bad, but tomorrow and the day after is cancelled… So was my night out in a pub – I asked the guy to reschedule for a coffee for tomorrow, cause I have to sort things out now.

So here I am, after spending 3 hours of sending out last minute requests to many people in Ferrara and in Bologna and trying to figure out my immediate housing situation I still have no idea about where I’m gonna sleep tomorrow night. 😀
How to handle change of luck, lesson 1, Problemsolving lvl 2 and Introduction class to flexibility :DD

I think I’ll stop for now,cause it’s getting late anyway.
I just hope that I wake up tomorrow and have a goodnmorning message from someone who said yes from either city

Wish me good luck – and if you know anyone in Bologna who has a couch I can crush on, don’t hesitate to tell me! 🙂

On:

So… TOMORROW I’m gonna set off out to the land of unknown experiences.

Now the “I can’t believe this is happening” is mixing together with the “What the hell am I thinking?”.

Anyway, from tomorrow it shall be awesome. No other choice… 🙂

As of now, the beginning seems to be a bit mor complicated than I wished it to be.
I was gonna stay 4 nights at one person and 6 at the other – both being great and kind enough to offer to host me for the full 10 day stay, but I’d really like to stay in Bologna during the Childrens book fair since that the whole reason I’m going to the city.
But life happened and the my host in Bologna cancelled due to the change of his work schedules.
Now it seems like I have a set place for one night at one person a 3 day gap – exactly overlapping with the Fair, and the remaining 2 set with someone else.  Huh, this will be a challenge to not mess up. Oh well, let’s hope for the best! 🙂 Highfive to all the amazing people on CS that put up with my last-minute-panic-organising messages! I’m grateful to all of you! <3

So yeah, on the upside I shall meet an incredible amount of great people!
I’ll be meeting friends who I haven’t seen for ages, people I’ve only talked to online, one of my former teachers will be there, I poked a local art community to make a drink&draw… It will be awesome. The logistics will probably a nightmare, but the people experience is ought to be great.

Wish me good luck!

On:

Yesterday I had a goodbye party.

It was a short notice, cause I was swamped by all the things to do and not knowing exactly how I wanted it anyway I just kept putting it off, but it turned out great.

I told a couple of people in person in the beginning of the week that I might pull something together on Saturday, in hope that there was a chance for them to show up plus so that I’m held accountable for actually making it happen. I could have sneakily left without saying goodbye to many of them and I’m sure I would have regretted it…
So on Thursday I finally kicked myself in the butt, reserved a table to Saturday at a pub from the late afternoon, made an open call facebook event with a description of where-when and an FAQ about what the heck it’s all about, where do I go, whats the plan and schedule like.
Many of my friends found it hilarious and typical of me that I wrote an FAQ about my travels, but well… I wanted to spend my time with Them, hopefully hearing about things that go on in their lives as well, so for not spending the night telling the same story of where-why-when over and over again it seemed like a good idea. Especially since the idea was to meet anyone and everyone who is willing to show up, even if we haven’t talked in years, so letting them know whats going on made sense for me. As ridiculous as it may be, it worked. :)))

About 17 people came throughout the night from people I haven’t seen in ages to folks who I befriended not so long ago. Some were planning to go abroad soon themselves as well – all in different ways for different reasons, so we were also aiming to set dates for meeting up in different corners of the continent.

It was a great night, I loved it.

I was surrounded with people I love, we talked, we laughed, we drank, but not to the point of getting drunk (not me at least – I was there to make memories not to loose them), we ate, and talked some more.
I managed to have a one-on-one conversation with almost everyone.
I hugged them all multiple times.

Damn I’m gonna miss these people… and so many others as well…

Getting up in the morning I was wearing a silly grin for hours, just thinking through last night – love overflow.
My mind went off on a ride about all the things I’ve learnt from these people, things I’m grateful for, memories together, why I love them and all the small fragments of life that I treasure.
This is beginning to sound very cheesy, but oh well…

Anyway, so today for the most part of the day I felt all warm and fuzzy and just wanted to hug everyone.

Then I think my mind got exhaused with happiness or something, ’cause after that the lingering panic started to creep in the picture – I’M LEAVING IN 3 DAYS!
That paired up with the I-love-everyone flash and made a gorgeous mix of “what the hell am I doing, I’m gonna miss them so much”. Yes, feel free to laugh at my misery, I’m being entertained as well.

I know that I’ll be really busy being impressed by the world, meeting friends who I’m only keeping contact with online nowadays and just being in ADHD(squirrel!)  mode running around in generall, but still. Now it hit me that I will be missing out on being here for some people that I deeply care about. *sigh*

Hey Self,
Emotion roller-coaster much? 

feel_all_the_feels
Yup, it’s happening, memes are now part of my blog.
It was gonna be an honest corner of mine, so I guess it was inevitable, You probably all knew it was gonna happen.  ¯\_(ツ )_/¯

That’s it about me for today.
But hey, I actually wrote the blogpost instead of just ‘writing it in my head’ as I did with many before.
Achievement unlocked! 🙂

On:

So I already have 2 blogposts, that I half-wrote, but then never finished, because of the circumstances and so they didn’t get published… ohwell…

Starting the writing habit is a half-failure so far – I did start journaling lately, but as you can see, the blogpost/week had not been happening.
I’m going easy on myself though – I’m not on the road yet so it would probably not that interesting to read anyway, plus other things have top priority now. Like the oh so many administrational wrap-up, the packing and of course meeting friends, hugging people before I leave. <3

That’s just the way it is for now.
I’ll try to get better at it once I hit the road, though the first 10 days will probably be really hectic, but I’ll tell you about that later.

For now, I’ll go back to my corner and work on portfolio things as long as I can cause tomorrow will be all about friends and I should get stuff print-ready by Monday morning.

*hugs to all*

On:

packing

Slowly but surely I’m getting to the point when there are more closed boxes than open ones.

My space is still a mess and it frustrates me a lot, but bit by bit, I’m making progress.
I wanted to get done with 90% of the boxing by the end of February – meaning I wanted to have everything packed apart from daily used items and drawings. I have 3 more days, haven’t touched the my clothes yet, and I will probably have to go to work on all of these days.

Well…let’s see what I can do!