Changes

For the last 2 weeks i worked as a cook in a beach kiosk.
I made money so i can afford to fly to Thailand.
I booked a ticket today.
The winter here was hard. people don’t heat their homes and most europeans agree that it is harsher than the european winters. Even though we get colder temperatures.
But the summer has started and i like it. Beaches with beautiful people tanning in the sun. Surfers waiting for the perfect wave. It feels like it has become a different place.
Yet i had enough.
I sold my car and i am getting rid of the stuff that i have accumulated because of it.
I am looking forward to the relaxed attitude of the Asians. It sometimes feels like most things here are about money.
I have an urge to not worry about money anymore to thrive and live, but australia seems so expensive you are on a constant survival.
It is going to be great to go back to asia, meditate and meet old friends before i go back home. Or maybe i will change my mind completely after meditating. Who knows.
I am looking forward to meeting my family and friends again, working in switzerland, and eventually starting to study there.
Loving life today, my job hired other people, so i am not working at the moment, but really enjoying my free time.
Here are some pix of the job.

The cook

The kitchen

The view

The Ice-cream

So long
Ole

Survival of the fittest

I am tired.
Not only in a literal sense, but in an emotional sense.
Australia is tiring me. Or i should say sydney is tiring me.
It is a great place to make money, but it is like a dark abyss, where when once caught it keeps you in.
That might be just slightly exaggerated.
I feel like i am having a normal life at the moment.
I feel like the splendor of past days has… well passed.
Working like a dog.
Every day I wake up in the morning walk along the beach to work. As a cook in a cute little beach cafe at Tamarama Beach. I work for 8-9 h and walk back home.
It is a simple life, nothing fancy. Sleep, work, sleep.
I get great food and my workmates are nice and money is good so that i am planning to go to Thailand soon. 🙂
My car is going to be sold and i will be a free spirit once again 🙂

No pain no gain, or so they say.
My neck is healing well, it is annoying, but not painful.

Actually i am pretty good.
Every day i see the surfers chillin on the swell, i walk to work on the beautiful coastal walk.
and i get to make nice food for people while saving money.
I have been invited to go surfing once my neckbrace is off, lets say what the doctor says.
On wednesday i will see him, and hopefully take it off for good!
I am investing my time… i learn a lot about kitchens, and business, it is very interesting, but work is exhausting at the moment.
I think i miss that counterbalance.
I am living together with 3 chilean guys, but they havent been home because it was chilean national day, and they have been out partying all night 😀
I am looking forward to the next week.
So long
Ole

Things Happen

Dear readers,
a lot has happened since i wrote last.

The Forest was amazing! We went on a little hiking trip up to a mountain called “pigeon House Mountain” which Capt’n Cook himself named.
Sadly my camera died before i could take a single picture…
But it was very relaxing. I did a three day fast and detox and felt so refreshed afterwards.

After coming back to Sydney, i finally couch-surfed again!
I wanted to show Rose how amazing the concept of CS. Our first host ditched us last-minute, but we ended up having the best host ever! Brett is amazing! He is a chef that lived in peru for a couple years and has traveled the world, i could immediately identify 😀
He invited me to come to an innovation and design exhibition, to which i sadly forgot my camera 😦
tsktsk

Then we went to a hip-hop club where rose DJed and i beat-boxed.
It was a lot of fun and it was my first time i have been immersed in Australian underground culture.
Apparently it is the only bar in Sydney that constantly plays old-school hip-hop.

Rose flew off to Europe 😦 but i will not let that take my fun away :DSo I went off to a friendly milliner (a hatmaker) to fix my to small hat. He told me that if i annoy him enough he will teach me how to do it.
So i did, hand he showed me. It seems the old traditional crafts are dying and nowadays people do it mostly for a hobby. But here in Australia people (meaning middle and upper-class women) actually wear little hats and fascinators, because horse and dog racing is still a big thing here down under. Old English traditions i suppose.

I went to a couple photo shoots and am trying to get another modeling gig to make some money.
I moved back to my favorite place, here in Coogee it’s just the best.
One of Roses friends showed me around in the music scene of Sydney. The event was called “Fringe festival”.
It was an event similar to the “Fete de la musique” in Berlin, where every bar has a musician in their window.
So many diverse bands played! I think it was the first  time since…
yeah since when.  I don’t remember when i saw a live concert last.
How long have i been gone?
Wow over 2 Years or 111 weeks, 780 days or 18,720 hours. ( ok just for completeness, i have been gone for about 67,392,000 seconds 😉 )
Loong time.
Well you guys might need to wait a couple more seconds before Ole is back.
But i will be back, maybe sooner than you think.

ok picture fix:

 

our hideout in the outback

its still winter here

lets get rid of the deathproof car!

DJing at Hustle and flow

Me and the Hatmaker. He is not quite as crazy as in the alice in wonderland story 😉

but his workshop reminds of Lewis Caroll

Musicians in music stores, cooperating with ballerinas

in bars

and fashion outlets

oh right, i forgot to mention

i fell and hurt my neck

Thats it from your outpost here on the other side of our little blue dot in the universe.
I have become a TEDicct. Meaning i watch 2-3 ted videos a day 😀 It is amazing how much you can learn if somebody puts it in digestible form!
I can only recommend downloading the mobile app.

So long and thanks for all the Fish
Ole

The catwalk games

hello dear readers,
I have made a very fun experience.
I was a commercial catwalk model for the fudge hair show.
I cannot really describe what happened.
So much glam! Makeup artists, Hairdresser and choreographers, all dressed in the latest designer clothes. It was very stereotypical to be honest.
I felt like a mix between Derek Zoolander and Katniss Everdeen. Tributes of Panem.
It was so surreal but the best paid job i have had so far…i was basically paid for waiting around all day 😀

The hairdresser who was a star among hairdresser apparently liked me so much they flew me to Melbourne, where i stayed at the Hilton…wow.
They put my hair up like Bjoerk or Gwen Steffani and clothed me in Pink…after the makeup i looked more like Olivia than like Ole 😀
It was definitely an experience worth making!
so long
Ole

So much colored hair

green

like in another world

the pants i wore stood up…

hello my name is olivia!

That was us, the Tributes…

Citylife is so draining!

p.s. I am off to the forest!

2nd Jubilee at a beautiful beach

Dear readers,
i live right by the best beach of Sydney, it is incredible. Coogee for the win!
Even though the job market is slowing down i enjoy the immense beauty of my surroundings.
I am going to stay here until the 3rd of August and then a couple weeks later hopefully get a job as a chef on daydream island, hold your fingers crossed for me 🙂

I cannot believe, that ii have been gone for more than 2 years now!
It is crazy it passed like a storm.
So many experiences, so many emotions, so many impressions, so many people
And as i said before i do not regret anything.
It has been a great ride and i am sure that my journey will continue to enrich me and hopefully other people as well…whether i am traveling or not.
I am looking forward to coming back to my birthplace, my homebase. I am anxious that people “don’t get me”, but i guess i just need to train my communication skills for that 🙂
But while traveling i must say i think i found the home in me.
That’s what i think is the significance of being uprooted for such a long time. You loose the attachment to your conditioned values, and you learn to love the whole.
I am not saying you have to be uprooted to find that, it might just be easier to find.
You see that things are evenly beautiful, evenly problematic, it is the same joy or despair wherever you go. My father always used to say: “The sum of all problems is always equal”
You are not attached to your ways of thinking as the only ones, there are 7 billion people on this planet and everybody has their own little bubble. Who am i to claim the only truth.
I am extremely grateful, that i am able to travel for such a long time.
There is not may people who travel that long or CAN travel that long for that matter…i think it is extremely giving to travel and it would be a great world if everybody would travel at least once in their life.

Okay enough cheesy thoughts
This Sunday i went to a Nigerian church. Last Sunday i told you i went dancing and in the bus back i met Victor a Nigerian petroleum engineer who invited me to this very cultural experience. It was a lot of fun.
I was the only white person in the room and attracted the attention of all the 2-4 year old 😀
It is crazy how there is a special Australian-Nigerian partnership program…Nigeria has the 3rd biggest Crude Oil reserve in the world.
It would seem as if Australia is doing some public relations here…

View from my kitchen

ZENsation chinese teastall

it was soo cool

hundreds of different teapots

my favorite part of the beach

the “rockgarden”

Me and Victor

the way to my little hideout with little opossums coming close to me

I found a little hideout in a teatree forest.
While meditating there an opossum came close to me it looked and came closer. Up to 1 meter!!
It was gone when i came back with an apple and banana.

So long Ole
p.s. i wanted to write earlier, but my phone doesn’t like the wordpress app…it crashed 3 times!

Ecstatic dance and markers

I got a new hobby, painting on things.
it is so much fun.
Maybe i can make some money from it… lets see.

I also went to ecstatic dance today.
It is a place where people of all ages meet at 10:30 in the morning and dance for 2h.
Strange? Maybe unusual, but it is great. Like a club but at daytime and without the alcohol. It is called 5 rythms dance and is supposed to be a form of dance therapy because you get a little voice guidance from the DJ (she said she is not a dj 😉 ) concerning awareness to your body parts, emotions and some ideas and encouragement to try, like dancing with a partner.

It is a very cool platform, because you can just sit on the floor and wiggle around, shake, hop, jump, twist, shuffle, scream or just be an uncoordinated bundle of flesh and nobody judges you.
No peer pressure of who dances the nicest nor the fear of embarrassment in front of “future” partners.
People come to dance and vent nothing else.
Yay 🙂
So long
Ole
P.s.  a short little something 🙂

My neighborhood and the blue mountains

Hey ho

i moved to Coogee, 4minute walk to the beach.
It is very beautiful. To bad that it is so cold, and it started raining today… but in the morning you can sit by the beach.
It is wonderful to watch the waves crashing into the rocks and if you are lucky you see whales breaching through the sea.
You can put up your hammock in the trees and just enjoy life.
Last weekend i went sailing again, the boat “Mojo” looks like a spaceship and gets really fast. Our bowsprit broke while flying the kite/spinnaker so we lost the race. Next weekend it will be fixed and we will hopefully win!

The Beach next door

like a spaceship

the mojo

i carried most of this junk

my job as a plumber

and demolitionman

chillin

waves crashing, and wedding pie island in the back

the other side of the bay

these trees are fascinating

the trippy sculpture in the park

my home, bream st. 81

This weekend Rose and I went for a trip to the blue mountains. It is the mountain range just 1.5h west of Sydney and it is incredibly beautiful.
It is a place full with steep cliffs and waterfalls everywhere. We slept in our car, but it got soooo cold over night. It is winter here after all, and in the mountains it is even colder.
The next morning was so freezing my hands turned all numb. During the day however the sun came out and it became nice and warm.
We saw the 3 sisters, a rock formation with a special story:

Three sisters, Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo had a father who was a witch doctor.
His name was Tyawan.
Long ago there was a Bunyip who lived in a deep hole who was feared by all. Passing the hole was considered very dangerous, therefore whenever Tyawan had to pass the hole in search for food, he would leave his daughters safely on the cliff behind a rocky wall.
One fateful day, Tyawan waved goodbye to his daughters and descended down the cliff steps into the valley. Meanwhile at the top of the cliff, Meenhi was frightened by a large centipede which suddenly appeared before her. Meenhi took a stone and threw it at the centipede. The stone continued on its journey and rolled over the cliff, crashing into the valley below which angered the Bunyip.
The rocky wall behind Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo then began to split open and the three sisters were left stranded on a thin ledge at the top of the cliff.
All the birds, animals and fairies stopped still as the Bunyip emerged to see the terrified girls. As the Bunyip began to approach the girls, to protect them from harm, their father Tyawan used his magic bone to turn them into stone.
Angered by this, the Bunyip then began to chase Tyawan. Becoming trapped, in order to flee from the Bunyip, Tyawan changed into a magnificent Lyre Bird, yet in the process dropped his magic bone.
Tyawan and his three daughters were now safe from the Bunyip. Once the Bunyip had disappeared, Tyawan returned in search of his magic bone, yet this was never to be found.
The Lyre Bird has been searching for this magic bone ever since. Remaining in rock formation, The Three Sisters stand silently overlooking the valley hoping that one day he’ll find the bone and turn them back to former selves.
When visiting The Three Sisters, if you listen carefully you may be able to hear the Lyre Bird, Tyawan, as he continues his quest for his lost magic bone.

So there is definitely magic in these mountains, and as if planned, we found a magic gate that took us to an enchanted part of the jungle where we got a little lost, found some Ents, heard Dragons and saw a bigfoot on the street 😉

the blue mountains at night

and day

steep cliffs

the three sisters

the minne haha falls

mini but HAHA

the magic gate

so pretty…

me inside the ent

it this a bigfoot on the street?

Roses visa is up soon, so she will do a visa run to Fiji and hopefully be back soon.

So long
Ole
p.s. i haven’t seen a single soccer world championship game. But i am happy we won the title 😉

Winter in Sydney

My dear readers,

Last time I wrote was when I flew to Sydney to see Rose again. Now I have spent more than a month here. Being a plumber, a carpenter, a model and again demolition man.

Sydney has a lot to offer. It was vivid Sydney, where they illuminated several big buildings like the opera house with projections and had open museums and galleries through the center. But traffic here is like the design of a madman.

There seem to be quite a few nude beaches around. We accidentally stumbled across one when we went to see the beautiful camp cove. It was the shortest day of the year, but it was so warm that i dared into the water.

After midwinter it got really cold however. Snuggle weather. Like really!

Ludo came back from cairns and we spent his last days in australia together. We really experienced quite some adventures together! It was weird bringing him to the airport. Has it really been 5month again? In 3 weeks i will have been gone for 2 years. It feels like i am ready to come back. I am going to stay in sydney until beginning of august and then try to find a boat to asia where i am going to visit some old friends and finish my journey with reflection in a quiet place.

Thats the plan. But if you have been following this blog, you know that plans are made to change 😉

So long

Ole.

P.s. pictures follow if i have a laptop again 🙂

 

Demolition man in Sydney

Who remembers the 80ies movie Demolition Man with sylvester stallone?
Well i am demolition man, and i get 22.50 Per hour.
Ludo and moi arrived in sydney and finally found a job.
We had a weekend some hours south from sydney in a little surfer town called Mollymook. Where we visited friends of friends.
Huge waves! Seriously 3m high. We did our best to wrestle them down and body surf.  We even snatched a surfboard of a couple of girls to try the real deal.
It ended up to be waay harder than expected.
But after several loads of saltwater, i could stay on it in the vertical position. I have not the slightest idea how people stand up doing it.
But i will try again.
We also went prawn hunting, but we didn’t catch anything.
But it was fun to walk through ankle deep water, with underwater flashlights on sticks in a moonless night.
Ludo wrote a nice article with pictures.
I am pretty exhausted from work, and i cannot stop thinking about whats going on in Europe.
But i am well, with a cheap car and good company.
I will write again, maybe on the weekend.
So long Ole

one big country

Australia is so big!
I was very lazy the last month to read what happened to me please read here… >CLICK<
As it is in German, i probably should at least write a little bit of what happened.
One friend of Boinga (the tree house owner) got us to build a fence for her. our first real working experience. She was an amazing cook and a super nice person. We ended up earning 200 unexpected dollar.
That paid for our trip to another voluntary job in the “Victorian Alps”.
We went and helped out at a horseback riding tour for 2 weeks.
It was a cultural experience, on our first day i thought i can ride and then i had to be a cowboy and bring the cattle over into another meadow and my illusions were shattered…well a little the next day it went waay easier and i noticed that my boss was merely testing my riding skills. What a cheeky bugger.
I played cricket for the first time and found out that it is a lot of fun, but even if i get harassed now it seems like a coward-game 😀
You basically never take risks…but it was fun anyhow.
So after 2 weeks of driving jeeps in 4×4 through washed out mountain tracks we are now in Sydney.
We tried some WWOOFing but we fled pretty quickly as the atmosphere was not really nice.
We just bought a car and got loads of free stuff (incl. a gas stove, a guitar and 2 camping chairs) for just 500$ it still has one month of registration. We will probably use it and then sell it for 2000$ or just continue using it.
This seems just fair as we got ripped off in Melbourne.

so long
Ole
p.s. i am really lazy in writing blog as you can tell but once i edited my pix i am going to give you a picture “caramblogage”