Look at me, I am evolving!

They said "don't do it", "you can't", "you are not prepared".

But as always, I listened to no-one. I know myself, I know what I want to do and I am no longer blabbering. When I say "I want to do THAT" it means I am doing it and it 's only a matter of short time. 

Life is way too short to be wasted away to promises of "when X, then I will Z". Fuck it. Do it now.

What am I talking about? Oh, well, I took a stroll and I rode an old, rusty bike from Tilburg to Turnhout. Huh? Let me explain.

Tilburg (where I reside) = Netherlands

Turnhout (the destination) = Belgium

Yes, I crossed the borders on a bike. Why? Because I wanted to. Total ride: 40 klm one way. Stayed overnight (I m not an avid bike rider of course). 

Don't ask how long it took me, because honestly I was enjoying the nature. Let me walk you through and share my experience in this little private space of mine.

 You still don't believe that I did it? Oh well...

Anyway, let's start from the beginning:

In the edge of the city 

The weather forecast said it would be windy and rainy. They were mostly right. But I was also lucky to encounter sun and animals (that was not part of the weather forecast obviously, lol).

Moooooooooo

Oops

Did I say rusty bike? Yes, I did.

Mud everywhere, yay! (not)

I had my first stop at Alphen and it was the first uphill situation I encountered. Valid enough, there was a bridge to cross a busy street. 

I had some rest and lunch and avoided a good chunk of rain. Onwards to the borders. 

Eventually the next day I did some reading and it turns out that Baarle- Nassau is a very special place where the borders are kind of everywhere. Wikipedia says something about "exclaves", which in simple words, are bubbles of foreign territory in a country. In that particular town there are many of them (30). So yes, I was going in an out of two countries for some distance and therefore I saw the borders many times. Seriously, there was no way of me getting lost, because there was kind of no many ways of getting lost in a straight line (that was an accidental pick). 

Well, later I had a stop in the town of Turnhout to get a coffee and something for dinner (yes, I got chips, don't you dare judge me, Belgium is hella expensive) and I (not so) gracefully arrived finally at my destination, which was outside of the town (so, even further). Here is the room:

The next morning I had an amazing breakfast which was so worth it, even took a thing or two for the way:

And then I took off!

Singing Paola down the road:

Somewhere on the way I am signaling that I am ok, amidst storm and cold:

So, some of my readers come from places where a bike lane is a dream or even never heard of. Well, this is a quite crucial part in order to understand that my trip was safe. It was mostly nature and partially civilization:

look at the horsie! 

Enjoy some Belguim:

The only problem I have now is that my thirst is not quenched. I know that this was the first of many more trips to follow, with a bike, because this experience was only a test. 

I enjoyed my solitude, listened to many different books and encountered a bunch of different people and animals (deer, cows, sheep, alpacas!, horses etc). 

I also feel I leveled up because I was riding under rain for 40-45 minutes straight (no stop, but to wear an extra raincoat, which was not so much of help).  However, now I know which items I was missing and I may need in the future, as I passed by other countryside riders who were much better prepared for the storm. 

What do you think? 

Going on and going up!

At some point you stop making mistakes. Or when you do, they are not the same as they used to be. Life gets into a shape, where control is easier to be taken. You stop having others as priority and you prioritize what's necessary: you. You look inside and you dare. 

Dare doing all what you wanted. You dare reaching for the sky even when it feels unreachable. One step at a time. Sometimes though, you run up the full ladder. 

Soon...

15.04.2015

Dreams, an amazing world

   Following an extensive conversation last night, I got a night full of dreams. Those weird, non-sensical I used to get long time ago. Of course, now that I am a full time student, I understand that it is affected by... studying as the REM sleep kicks in to consolidate all the newly acquired information (true and amazing fact). 

   However, I still have to explore why I see the particular dreams that I see (one of my professors that I have mostly followed through videos- live and pre-recorded- and only briefly encountered while riding my bike on campus). I won't get into details of what I saw, because it won't make sense if I write it down. I prefer holding the images, dearly in my memory (!) along with any feelings produced. Who can blame me anyways? A sleeping person is passive of what they experience (see, feel, hear etc) during the REM sleep (smirk). So, let this world be untouched from the reality, we anyways get so much bullshit daily, that the dream world shall remain pure. A retreat. 

   I enjoy so much that lately I fall asleep while studying... So many times I had to get up and leave the laptop on my desk or woke up with the book next to my head, that I had to make some significant alterations on the "bed time" rituals: I now have to have my teeth brushed when I see that my energy level is going down and not wait till I "go to bed". Because if I fall asleep, it is then so damn hard to keep my eyes open even for extra 5 minutes. In short, this is a new experience, which explains quite some things that used to happen long time ago.

     For now, I have to go back to my books. Kisses.

Daydreaming

There are some nights, when I should be doing X, but I am doing XZ. Multitasking? Not even close. Most likely Z is taking my attention from X. 

I daydream. And I have a very particular scenario, where I sing on a stage. Not my karaoke songs of Ricky Martin, though, but a kind of particular playlist with Greek songs. I sing and I pour my heart out, in front of an audience. Sometimes the audience is very particular and some others it is random. 

But I have fun. 

Let me close this post with this indifferent song from Fiki (it 's a clip to be watched rather than listened to)

Late night thoughts

It's difficult being away from you. Difficult not to be able to look and touch you.

It's also hard to fit this new reality in my small brain. So many changes, so quick. 

You know, I live by myself, again. Like in Liberec. But everything is so different than then. 

Starting from my age, the amount of money I need to spend just to get by, moving on to the daily routine I have here (I m currently studying and not doing my internship in the local library of the university), ending to the fact that you are not here. The biggest part of the experience back then!

I feel so small, like I cannot comprehend the time passing around me; I 'd like it to pause for a while, for me to catch a breath. But then again, you can't have it all. My days are spent by riding a bike and doing trivial chores, such as shopping and cooking - speaking of which, I am indulging in instant noodles, just because I didn't do it on my first studies.

If anyone asks me what I am chasing, the obvious answer is "a better tomorrow", a not so obvious but personal truth is "knowledge" and some other stuff I gotta figure out with my psychologist in our sessions.

Look, I am moving on. 

Getting where?

As I was saying to a newly acquired but very dear friend, "I don't know where I am going to be". The question was if I am going back in summer. Where is back? 

I do everything in my life in another order. Sometimes I feel proud, just because I can. Though some nights I get so frustrated, because the path I select frequently (if not always), is the path that's not yet walked. And I have to live with the consequences. My nights have so many ups and downs, that I seem as a bipolar, however that's far from truth. 

Surely, the stress level fluctuates too, given that exams are around the corner (a week to be precise). Am I anxious? Not for the test day. I have taken and passed so many (interestingly I had failed only one during my lifetime), that the notion of anxiety for a test is funny on its own. Whether you know something or not. And as a grown adult, the consequences are just plainly in front of me. I think that's what used to make me anxious as a kid at least - not understanding the consequences, or misjudging them so much that it seemed like the end of the world. 

OH look again, I diverted the topic from pouring my heart out. It's not happening again. And don't you tell me that it's ok if I don't feel comfortable doing it. Nobody managed anything from their comfort zone.

Any choice is a risk. Relationships too. Any commitment is a risk. And no matter the ritual you go through with another person, if the love and caring is not there, the whole thing is over. 

Friendships go quite similarly. It takes two to tango. But for this tango, you need a rhythm, timing with the actual time. And it boils down to distance too.

Once more, I wrote so much, but not what all I wanted. As if the screen would ever get tired. I know nobody reads all this text anyways. I know because I rarely get comments.  But that is not my focus, because in a sense, these pages are a diary or my soul and I let you all in. 

Have a good night you out there.

Ήρθε ο καιρός (Κωστόπουλος), πιες πιες κ.α

 

Και μου μπαίνουν τρελές ιδέες, μου μπαίνουν!

Τι πάρτυ γίνεται απόψε, παρέα με το excel , οεο;

Σε λυπάμαι- Οικονομόπουλος

Ο καλός Οικονομόπουλος είναι ο παλιός Οικονομόπουλος! 

Throwback με αφορμή τα νέα του τραγούδια, που δε με έχουν ενθουσιάσει ακόμα, όπως και το απαράδεκτο μαλλί του.

Κουρέψου Νίκο!