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 🙂

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 🙂

 

the Men from Snowy River

Hey there,
as i promised, here comes a picturesce post from the red continent.
We are in sydney by now, and i will slowly catch up with writing.
So enjoy.

a black snake, i almost stepped on it, but ludo saved my life

ludo and his new girlfriend

bird man strikes again

i got them all lined up just waiting for me 🙂

such amaze, much trees, many wow

a piece of real rainforest!

the concrete river

This is how i want my tattoo to look like 🙂

Mist after the rain

the view from Mt Donna Bueng

can somebody tell me hbow a car gets tracks like that?

me and kate, the friend of boinga who we built a fence for

the aequaduct

i am relaxing in the treehouse

The headquater of Boingaology

After Warburton we took the bus to Mansfield where Ron (one of the horseback riding guys) took us in his BMW and with his freshly amputated leg 3 hours in rollercoaster style to the horse hut.
The hut is right near to where the movie “The Man from Snowy River” was filmed, and the customers rode to see some of the movie sets.

Our first impression

strange lichen on every dead tree

we are cowboys…or how they are called here: Jackaroos

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing, give it a lick it tastes just like raisins”

strange insects

unicorns

showing their horn

relaxing in the hut

eucalyptus trees everywhere…with resin

we drove on washed out mountain tracks for hours, to carry the luggage of the customers

and we had good fun

the bushfires destroyed soo many trees, but they didn’t burn, they are just dead.

like ghost forests

safari feeling

our tents

after 2 weeks in the outback we went to canberra and stayed in a nice place…

We hitchiked to sydney from canberra.
Had a unfortunate WWOOFing experience and bought a car for 1/4th of the reasonable price.
but that is a story for the next post 🙂

So Long Ole

p.s.
If you are interested in a tour go >HERE<

p.p.s.
The song for today is: Look at my horse

Hobbit land

The time has come to leave New Zealand.
i had to push my flight to the 28th, because the Australian visa required me to make a spontaneous chest X-ray, as i have been out of Germany for more than 3 month…oh well.
Now i will be leaving Infinity on my birthday, leaving all my friends of the last 7.5 month behind and starting a new life. What could be more fitting on a birthday than a rebirth 🙂

I have spent the last 1.5 month in one of the most beautiful places in the world without even noticing, because i have been helping aboard the ship.
I did however do a few little trips venturing out of Auckland.
New Zealand basically looks like “Lord of the Rings” everywhere. The strange trees and plants that seem so fantasy-like in the movies are completely normal here.
I will come back here…one day, the south island is just to beautiful to miss out on it.

I feel weird leaving the boat, going into the unknown again, it is a strange feeling, but Australia is going to be amazing…

So enjoy your day, stay curious and look at the pictures 😉

parteeey

the capitan’s birthday and our christmas cake

these butterflys were so graceful, not like me trying to make pictures of them

new years eve on the hot water beach

hot water is seeping out of the sand, you just have to dig your hole 🙂

this looks like hobbit country

Ole, king of the straw

There are Kiwis eating Kiwis stuffed with Kiwis.

Kauri trees are gigantic! no really!

i am cleaning my “shoes”

taking my first hot bath in a year

our…their new engine

so long ole 🙂