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…

. . .