On and on

            My trip has led me here and there without any specific route in my mind. All I knew is that I wanted to go to those places nobody knew much about or that someone had briefly mentioned in a story or short conversation. In many ways I have, from exploring every little corner of the Veneto in Northeastern Italy to living four months in the Balkans (mostly Kosovo) to hiking through forgotten caves and trenches in Südtirol to seeing camels in the middle of Austria to scavenging through an abandoned five star hotel in Macedonia to rowing a rubber raft through the Venetian canals to having coffee with complete strangers in Albania to sleeping with the homeless (politely invited). I’ve always gone to places trying not to backtrack too much and always compelled by a sudden curiosity to see what’s out there and try to understand it for myself instead of seeing it through the eyes of others. To understand it more than the casual tourist passerby that visits it, takes a few mental pictures and thousands of digital ones. If I were to compare it in those terms alone I’ve taken millions of mental pictures which are full of memory, sound, smell, taste and heart and considering my love for photography I’ve taken so much less of the kind you look at (the mental ones are not meant to be looked at, but transported back to and experienced again and again through memory). If I thinking about it halfheartedly I think I’ve taken a few tens of thousands of photographs, of which there might be a thousand worth showing and maybe less than a hundred from which any true feeling might be captured.
            Roughly, I’ve been to Northern Germany, London, North France, Switzerland, South France, Ligurian Italy, Lazio Italy, Triveneto Italy (it’s different everywhere you go), Austrian Tyrol, Bavarian Germany, Upper Austria, East Germany, Südtirol, Vienna (a different planet), Veneto Italy, Central Italy, Southern Italy, Albania, Macedonia, Eastern Kosovo, Northern Mitrovica, Western Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Southern Bosnia, Croatian coast, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Vienna… I write to you from the last where I delight in spending long afternoons by the Danube and entertaining evening with good new friends everyday. It is one of the few if not only larger city where I feel comfortably at home in cause for the most part everything is very efficient and from my perspective, free. Many of the places I just mentioned might not mean anything to you, they might also mean a lot but you’ll get to know them (through my mind at least)… I’ll make a big map of this actually (to-do list).
            So where am I going from here?
            South, towards Turkey and everything on the way there (it’s always been the direction my mind has always pointed to and it’s a more concrete plan than I usually have anyway).
            A few days ago someone offered me a bike, another offered me a bike luggage carrier, I found a helmet and slowly this idea of cycling down the Danube River to the Black Sea was brewing in my head. My brain brewery busy at the same time with the idea of meeting up again with Sara and go wandering and camping about. All the fermentation got cut short while I was transcribing this and read a job offer to me for an English speaking Summer camp in Ankara, Turkey, starting on June 11^th (which is a great opportunity in fact). Which would be a driving force, speeding up my trip South a bit, but also means goodbye to at least one of the other very attractive possibilities. So as much as the first two options speak a lot more to my heart and mind than something as grown up as a job offer, it might be the little push I need to move on with the journey, maybe it’s the right time. Arriving sooner in that part of the world also means I’ll have a whole new culture and people to dissect and other new concerns and conflicts to try to grasp. I’d also be able to meet my loyal friend and photo-journalist who is not far away, covering a certain conflict in a country whose leader receives those very harsh letters of concern from the U.N. while massacres are being carried out. That sort of letter little harmless friendly faced dudes like Kofi are able to send out to stop it. It would also men I could keep my promise to soon after come and visit Paula in Israel and maybe go live with the Bedouins in the deserts of Jordan… the brewing process begins again with more ingredients. Got some fine ales up in here, fine indeed.

Anyway, there’s still an interview before I know anything for sure. I hope they don’t notice I haven’t shaved today!