TED talk,

As I mentioned in my previous post I was invited to give a TEDx talk in Osijek this week. First of all I want to thank Ivan for not only inviting me to speak, but paying my travel expenses and being such a great host of the whole event. I want to thank my friend Mickey who picked me up from the train station, took care of me so perfectly and went with me to the TED talk. This world is full of wonderful and inspirational people, I feel like they should be up on the stage speaking instead of me, but they are inspiring me every day through their simple acts of love and humility. Surely this unseen kindness and love is a far greater power to change the world then all of our bigger efforts in business and visionary action.

To get to the seminar I first car-shared a ride to Zagreb, everyone I REALLY recommend you use BlaBla car when travelling in Europe, not only is is safe and cheap, but a great way to meet new people, share your story and make friends. After arriving in Zagreb I wandered around a bit to check out the city before continuing on the train to Vinkovci. The next morning we went to the TEDx seminar, my talk was at 7.30 in the evening, so I had plenty of time to watch the other talks and get really nervous. The stage was pretty small and not intimidating, but I always get really bad nerves when performing or speaking. I often start to shake or get a bad stomach before any such things and I was definitely getting nervous before this one, especially when I saw that most other speakers did not have notes. Watching some of the other talks really helped to inspire before I went on stage, even though all the local speakers were in Croatian, there were also videos shown from all over the world, with great life advice. I suggest you all take a look at some of these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBsl3j0YRQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

When it finally came my time to talk, I took a deep breath and told myself that no matter what happened it would not be the end of the world. I did feel really nervous but towards the middle of the talk it edged off and I felt strong confidence in my story and a real connection with the audience. Its such a fascinating story, its so hard to put it into 18 minutes and there were so many different phases we went through and so many things we learnt. To concise it is hard, to tell my life story or what I do in a few minutes is really hard… its such a big story with so many twists and turns, colours and shades.

I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the beautiful people that I met on this trip. I had the pleasure of staying with my friend Mickey for these two nights and met his mom. This crazy strong lady does not have a husband anymore and runs her farm single  she gets handed. 

She gets up in the morning to feed and care for the pigs and the chickens, to tend to their garden and clean and prepare food. She drives a tractor and is as tough as nails. When I look in her eyes I see a strong resilient toughness, a hardening from the many experiences she has had living in the part of Croatia that was one of the most violent areas during the recent wars. She must have seen so much sorrows, sadness and suffering. Yet shes not only tough, when you look at her you also see love, you see her care for me… a little girl from UK staying with her for just two days. Oh and did I mention she won awards for shooting a gun when she was younger, it was a really funny to see her take the airgun that they have at home in her hand, and practise her shots.

We also visited more of Mickeys family, all of them sure pure and beautiful.  I can’t describe to you how much I love these Balkan people, they are such good souls, so kind, so caring, so good from the inside out. I sometimes just stare at them and I am amazed, how can people who have gone through so much, been working their whole lives very hard, struggling for everything remain so pure hearted and good, with all the evil that they have seen, how can they do this. Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia…. Are truly special countries, truly special people.  You have to just walk into their homes to see that they are full of love, see the way they interact with each other, such strength,  such humour but above all such love. Everyone hugs and kisses each other, everyone speaks kindly, everyone shows trust and faith in you when you enter their homes. 

 The Flow State
 
Again a long pause before an article.

Now this one is going to be loooooong, its been a very crazy month and half. I wanted so many times to sit down and write what was going on because so much was happening, but with all the work and filled up days I just didn't have the time.
For the last 3 weeks or so i was working with Danny and Lani on rebuilding the CE in Serbia. There are no two people in the world that I would love to have such an experience with. If you ever meet Danny and Lani in real life, you should regard them with the highest respect and love, hug them lots and treasure them. They are real treasures, people with pure hearts and I could not be happier to pass the running of CE in Serbia on to the two of them. That's right, they will be the main people running the cafe and bike shop in Serbia, they are more then up for the challenge and will do an amazing job. Before we could open we had to get renovating, I don't think any of us really knew that we would be renovating the Cafe to that extent.

We got new ventilation through the whole place, really beautiful lighting, a new floor and remade most of the furniture. The whole project was a challenge for each one of us, but a wonderful one. There is something really special about working in CE, it has this great feeling, like you are doing something so worthwhile and special. I feel the Cafe in Serbia has had such an impact on its surroundings and its has a truly magical air about it. We had to learn to do so many things ourselves, me and Danny were youtubing so many of the jobs that we did not know how to do and learning it all from scratch. That's part of what CE means for me... doing stuff that you never did before, trying, sometimes failing... but in the end making it work. I learnt how to build a table-top, put a laminate floor in and use all the power tools... I feel really accomplished and grown from this time. Not only that but how incredible to see the work of your hands open, filled with people and flowing with positive energy. I feel so blessed from this precious experience and so thankful to everyone who came along to help us with all the little jobs.


To mention a few special people i have to explain a little bit behind the story. A lot of our customers who come to CE in NS kind of mention to us that the reason they don't come more often is because a lot of young people are hanging out there, drinking their hot chocolate and relaxing... I can agree that when there is a crowd of loud young people it can be a bit annoying... but i kind of think that goes for a loud group of any kind. I have to say that i love the young people that come to CE, they are the future of the city and I am happy that they have a place they feel comfortable and hang out, i got to know personally so many of them and share moments with them. They are so young and full of life, venerable and honest. In particular two of my young friends came almost every day to help us rebuild CE. Sara and Lea came after school and worked with us on so many annoying and tiring jobs, they never complained. We asked so many times if anyone wanted to help us with the work of rebuilding and many people came a couple of times (thank you so much). I just want to say that these young people (who I am happy to call my friends) are so inspiring and pure hearted, giving their time and effort without asking anything in return. CE should always be a place where everyone feels comfortable, and especially those people who care about it enough to not just drink a hot chocolate or beer there, but to actually work along side us and be our friends in every difficult moment.

Danny and Lani still have visa struggles in Serbia, actually they are waiting now, every day for their paperwork to come through. Apparently the police are pretty suspicious about why they are back, they think they are spies. All you have do it meet Danny to understand he would be a completely useless spy... i think they should consider that... I will admit Lani is a sneaky one,... but as far as I know she is innocent. Also even though I have a year working visa in Serbia, because I have given the company name over to Danny, I cannot work in CE.. its a the wild, wild east out here and its pretty hard to understand the logic behind rules such as that. I feel I have really adjusted to the Serbian way of life.. i take everything that happens now with a grain of salt and laugh a little about it.

I had some really interesting travelling during these weeks of going back and forth between Serbia hitchhiked with my friend Bozi from Graz to Novi Sad.. it was a wonderful adventure, we made it in 9 hours even though it was pouring with rain the whole day. Between the next trips I managed with car sharing (blabla car), the bus (which is super long and boring) and on this last trip, i did part by car sharing and part by hitchhiking. I broke my virginity of hitchhiking alone... It was a strange feeling to be standing on the side of the road with your little bag and ukulele and putting yourself out there. I thought of going back to my friends in Maribor and staying the night and then continuing on the journey... but then I thought how that will ruin my faith in life and in people. I want to believe that the world is good and that people out there are kind and want to help, just as I am kind and want to help them. I wanted to experience rejecting in any form that people wanted to give me. I stood there and thought 'I am here, I am alone, I don't have to be, but this is a choice i have made, and I am not afraid'. I realised then that through those hard depressing months in summer I had come away stronger, more courageous and that i was not afraid of the future. The questions about where I would live in Graz, what would happen to me.. would I ever find some life partner and all the rest just floated along on the calm seas of my mind. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing and I was there, young, strong and with a heart full of love and courage.. how could I fear? at this moment I knew that life is beautiful, a treasure and that i am thankful to be here. I have no idea what will happen in the next two months or so, I still need to find an apartment in Graz and find a way to earn some real money... but I believe it will come to me, that everything is flowing as it should.

So looking a few days into the future... I have a TED talk coming up, 10th of October. I am very excited... I have not prepared at all, but I will the next few days and will be posting the video of what I do end up talking about.
I want to talk for a moment about the CE team.. the ones that I work most closely with are Danny, Lani, Simon and Mary. As some of you may know, building CE and working on it has not exactly been a piece of cake. Every single one of us has made some sacrifices, lived on a tiny budget, given up some other dreams and worked very very hard. Lets talk for a minute about Danny and Lani, Danny and Lani are kind of from Miami.. as we know its most peoples dream to live and work in Miami. Danny's dad operates a successful business and Danny could work there too... Lani could live in a cute little house, go to the beach every day, have her kids taught in English speaking schools and go shopping with her friends. But these guys decide to come back to Serbia, the country they were humiliated and deported from. They decide to invest the money they have worked for 2 years to save in a tiny little cafe business with a bike shop, they decide to put their kids in a school where they don't speak the language, they decide to risk everything to try. Simon is from the States and Mary is from Greece, Simon was working in America and doing a successful job, their kids went to and English speaking school. They decided to uproot their family, put all their savings and time into building a new business in a country where they did not know the language, did not know anyone and had never lived or worked in. Their three wonderful children go to a school where they have to learn German, they work every single day all day on building a new concept here in Graz and work their way through the maze of heavy paperwork and physical work to make CE here real. Not only are they the hardest working people I know, but no one has a better heart then Mary, who works constantly and never gives up.
Why do they do this? why do any of us do this? we know its hard, we know its unusual, we know we will have to work very hard for an indefinite amount of time, we understand the risk.. it could fail, we could all be left with nothing, back on square one, forced to uproot and change once again. We all know that this is not an easy or well walked path. I know the feeling I have when I am working with these people, its the feeling that we are building something important and that lasts, the feeling that your life  is building into the future and that this project is worth fighting for. CE is very special because of the people that run it, the story that  is behind it and all the feelings and battles we have faced to get it to this point and we still have a long way to go.

Business 101

It appears that the Cafe side of the CE business in Graz has been closed down. In the recent months we have had a lot of setbacks in almost every area. The main problem being our full premises licence was not yet given to us. Because CE was never a cafe or bar location before, the assessment time and checklist is pretty exhausting and it takes a lot of time. We received a simple permission verbally from the officials at the baumant in order to start business... and we started on April 11th. 5 months since that day and we still have not received the documentation we needed to really assert ourselves a local business and be fully legally open. We didn't exactly tip-toe in our opening months and that is part of the problem, several loud shows and parties caused a storm of complaints from our ever vigilant neighbours, thus causing authorities to take action and indefinitely close the Cafe. This leaves the bike shop and the VELOBLITZ bike messengers (also co-renters of Grazbachgasse 47) as legal tenants... therefore our door is still open. We can conduct business on a very limited basis and the impact of this is working on the moral of all of us. We also got two large fines for the use of the outside area during the opening party and for the noise complaints from the neighbours. Its been a tough long road and i guess there are so many turns and twists that its hard to see straight ahead. Every one of us is trying to keep our chin up and see the positive in the whole situation. We have one Cafe under reconstruction to open and the second one under a temporary closure. We work around the clock and try to figure the solutions to each problem. But can we do all of this before we run out of money?

The weight of the whole situation sits on each one of us, we all understand opening a business is hard. We are also thankful for the help and support of friends who have tried to help us see our way through the dark maze of paperwork that we struggle through. The next step is that we have a meeting on the 17th of September with the people in charge of the business premises licence and in that case will hear what will be next for CE in Graz.

We have been told to make the cafe look as closed as possible in case of an inspection, so we put a sheet up to cover the main bar area and have to have the counters cleared, lights down. The space is still open because of the bike shop and the cyclists who can legally use the property. Its been a very interesting few months... and I feel this is the most positive way of saying it.

CE in Novi Sad is under reconstruction. Danny and Lani are there, also moving their family yet again half way across the world, working night and day on the physical labour of the interior and also on their visa paperwork to avoid deportation this time. We had to push back the opening till sometime around the 20th, it seemed that there was not enough days to do the work that we had to do. Progress is being made and although it is slow, its happening. We aim to bring CE back to NS in the next few weeks which means I will be travelling there tomorrow (attempting to hitchhike from Graz), I will stay there for 10 days and then return for the meeting on the 17th, head back to Novi Sad again for the opening and then back to Graz to finally find a real house and settle a bit. Are you confused? I am. For the last 6 months I have moved around constantly, between the two countries, in a positive light.. it has been adventurous and unpredictable. When I think of the displacement and lack of centre I feel, I think about the Syrian refugees and how they must feel... at least I have friends in both cities to stay with. We should always be thankful, if not for what we have... sometimes for what we don't have. I am travelling not from war, but for a purpose that I believe in and in that case... lucky me.


I have also been invited to give a TED talk in Osijek about CE (TED slogan, 'Ideas worth spreading'... haha.... hmmm). I was thinking to begin with... 'If you think opening your own business is a good idea, you are very wrong'. Just kidding, I will somehow muster up the strength to talk about the beautiful moments that we have all experienced in the last few years as part of the never ending struggle. The TED talk is on 10th of October... something to look forward to... stay posted

Patience, Bread Making and more Patience

Finally i feel the need to write a new post.

Its not that nothing has happened, its just every day felt like a very closely packed suitcase without one little space to spare, and I didn't want to share my thoughts at my tiredest point. I did not want to write all the thoughts that were clouding around me because I was feeling so exhausted, mentally, spiritually and physically. 

I knew that this summer would be a tough one, how did I know? I am not sure, I just had that feeling that there was turbulence up ahead.

After finding out about the situation in Serbia, I had to travel down there to take my things from the house. From here the news was that the landlady was changing the locks and keeping all my stuff, at first I thought it was funny and pictured her trying to fit into my collection of high collared shirts and high waisted shorts and enjoying the hipster gear I have collected over the years. Then of course I remembered my washing machine, fridge, stove and bicycle (the golden one that I designed). As it would be crazy to lose all these things I went to Serbia to clear it up. My schedule was very tight as I was working from Mon-Sat pretty much all day. However because it was my birthday i got Monday off (Oh yeah I am 27 now), and i did a weekend trip to pack up the house and move my things. I did have to pay her the full amount that I supposedly owed, but was happy to get the things out of the house, it was even kind of exciting for me to pack up a house as I had never done that before, I also had plenty of help from Danny and Lani and other friends. 

I then returned to Graz to continue my hard-working life, basically shifts all day every day. I also moved apartment (again) and i really felt good in the new place, i suddenly got my energy back, started training every single day and cooking and making music and doing all the little things that make me happy. Yes happiness... it always comes back, like an old lover that you think is gone forever but calls you again and just walks right back into your life and you feel wonderful again.

I read an article about making bread, it gave the full recipe for bread (the easiest thing of course) but then it finished with.... ' the final ingredient is patience and that is the reason you will never bake bread'. After I thought about this I realised that I am a very impatient person, in fact all of society is, we kind of want everything to happen right away. I want to be successful right away, have the relationship I want or learn everything I want to learn right away. The thing is that of course, this is unrealistic and the real ingredient I think I have been missing a lot from my life was patience. I started to get passionate about bread making and its one of my hobbies that i love to learn and improve in. I saw so clearly how like most things in life, you can make everything, but there is that period where the dough needs to rise... and you just need to wait and walk away for a bit, put it somewhere warm and let it grow, after that you have the again patience taxing process of kneading the dough (about 9 minutes by the way is the perfect amount of time to kneed your dough, or 3 songs on your MP3). The perfect bread recipe was told to me by my friend Thomas, who is  a world cyclist and bread expert, it goes like this.

4 cups of flour,
1 cup of warm water
Sprinkle of salt
1 packet of dried yeast,
+ whatever flavours or special ingredients you want to add to make it delicious

First put about 2/3 cup of flour with the yeast and add the warm water, it should not be a dough, but more of a paste, a liquid almost. mix it, then leave it for about 4 hours... yeah that's right... 4 hours.... the yeast will react with the flour and water and when you get back to it it should be all bubbly and have that yeast smell. then add the other flour slowly. till the point where you cannot mix it with a spoon. Get your hands in there and start to get the dough to a solid form, it should still be sticky, but not too wet. Flour a surface and your hands and kneed for 9 minutes or so. Add the salt and your special ingredients (olives, or sun dried tomatoes... pesto....). Shape it how you want, wet your hands a little with water and pat your loaf all the way around. If you want make markings on the top with a knife, this looks pretty and also helps you see how the bread has risen. Then its oven time, 180 degrees is the highest it should be. If you place a bowl of water under your bread in the oven it will keep the humidity in the oven be higher and this will give you a chewy crust and a soft inside. To test the bread, take it from the oven and tap it, it should have a solid kind of resonating sound, if you cannot tell, then just turn it over and check out the bottom of the loaf, it should be cooked and looking crusty. 

So there it is, my perfect bread recipe for now. For now, because I am learning still and its all a process, just like life. Chances are I will discover a much better recipe and better way of doing it, but i guess the point of lots of things is the learning phase and that we are progressing and making bread definitely increases your appreciation of this simple joy. We are so used to just buying what we want, getting it wrapped in plastic and never understanding the process that everything goes through till its ready and in your hands.. or your mouth. 

On the business side. CE in Graz experienced some pretty tough times too. We still didn't get our real licencing paper. It was a huge process and I don't think any of us were prepared for just how long it would take. Even though we received pretty much an OK to be open, we were told to be low key. However we had some gigs and party's here and the neighbours called the police a few times. It would not have been as much of a problem if we actually had our paperwork all in, but as we did not and the neighbours knew about this, they would purposefully send them to check just that. Just 5 days ago we got a letter in the mail, it was of course in German and we were not alarmed, until our unsuspecting friend suggested he read it for us and then said 'Oh it says you have to close'.... hahaa.... well this was a surprise. Apparently because of the complaints on CE from April and May, God knows what else we will get when we receive the penalties from the rest of the months. Anyhooo we figured out that because the bike shop is totally legal, the cafe can be open, but just cannot have gigs or parties. This was a set-back, because I had worked on September plan for ages, and also had scheduled a lot of gigs. Seeing as we mainly earn well during parties, it was kind of putting the business at risk of losing money in one of the months that we should do the best.
The thing is that now we have really gone through a lot with all these papers and legal procedures. I really feel almost numb to it, its like... yep here we go again, more obstacles. I guess I feel like they may always be there, and we may always have to jump the hurdles. Hopefully they won't always be so big like these ones, but it is a bit of a constant battle when you undertake such a big project, its a lot of risk, a lot of work and pressure. 

The CE in Serbia is about to go into the remodelling phase, that's another big job, so I am guessing next blog post may be about that.

SHIT STORM Part 1

The trouble with troubles is that they are like a big mound of rotting stuff, you cant quite see how bad it is until you start getting to the bottom of it, then you realize… that it’s a lot worse then you could see from the surface.

Where am I going with these deep analogies of life… these little pearls of wisdom? Yes my friends, I want to tell you about the shit hitting the fan, and how I am trying to clean it up.

The first thing I am learning from all of this is that business, paperwork, bills, and house care are actually serious matters that need to be thought through and personally and deliberately taken care of. My hazy brain is possibly getting super overloaded by all the details of what goes on in every area, this is normal, this is why we are blessed in this life with pens and papers… to write shit down, to make people sign and to check and double check important stuff like payments.

So basically me and a roommate have been renting a little house, some of you may know it. It’s a little pink house around the corner from CE, I adore the house and have loved living there.  Basically there have been some major misconducts of finances between the landlord, the landlord’s representative and us. Meaning that we have been paying him the

money to pay the bills and rent and he never gave it to her or something like that. We don’t really know what happened to all the money we have been paying these months, all we know is that the landlord returned to the house and gave us some absurd bills amounting to about 500 euros… basically one year of bills and demanded we pay everything or be kicked out. The frustrating part is that both me and my roommate are away (I have been away for about 4 months this year in Graz, but always left my share of the money). We are kind of powerless to really investigate the situation because of not being there. The last two days have been pretty stress filled, with lots of messaging here and there between all the different people to figure out what exactly is going on. In the end it seems we have no proof of ever giving any money to the guy.. oh foolish us… foolish me…. How could we let this happen? Well let me tell you simple negligence in very easy when you are constantly in a rush, forcing so many details into your brain but never really thinking through some of these things.

I am known for some sloppy money behavioural patterns, I often forget what I have given someone and when, what I borrowed, what I payed and what I didn’t. I always knew I should be more organised and think things through, but it was kind of one of those things that I was never feeling strong consequences from… because nothing serious had ever happened. Now I am in Graz, working 3 jobs, all day from morning till evening. I am trying to work on CE here, pay for CE in Serbia and pay for all living expenses.. and with this extra bill, it’s a pretty crushing weight on my pocket. In fact if I pay that I will have nothing for the renovation of CE that I intended to do. Wow…. Life…. It throws you curve balls and sometimes you seem to be facing the wrong way and get hit in the head. Already the golden lessons are abounding and coming at me super fast. I mean…. How can I be so sloppy and inconsistent when I am trying to run two businesses… how can I be so trustful when I know the way the world works, when I have experienced it and seen it in so many different colours. I guess I am nieve, but I truly think this is because I am not thinking enough, I am rushing, rushing and rushing more… thinking I have to do so much little stuff all the time and not realising that apart from all the exciting ‘I am a business owner in 2 countries’ there are some important details that if not taken care of can make the castle you are trying to build come crashing down.

I feel like I have made so many mistakes in the last year…. Probably every year, but this last year they seemed to be pretty big ones with nice juicy consequences. I feel really like an idiot for the amount of stuff that has kind of gone wrong. At the same time I know that I will learn from all of this, I will grow and be better and smarter, I really hope that I do.

So now the situation is I have some debts that are pretty overwhelming , I have no idea how the next bit of this will go. I feel like Annie in the movie bridesmaids 

Yeah this is life, but I guess if I learn these things it will be much easier for me and for those around me. I know I have a slight honesty problem myself (to be honest). I always try to look like the good guy in every situation and place the blame on others for stupid little things, its not that its hard for me to admit that I was wrong, its more of an automatic thing. I also sometimes pretend I don’t know about stuff, or have no  idea what someone is talking about.

 2 things I learnt

1.       First, be honest with yourself about each and every dealing, think more, check with your conscience on each decision and don’t cover things up or make things look better then they are just to save face

2.       Be Careful, watchful and faithful with your possessions and money, its hard work to earn it, and it hurts to lose it, especially to stupid things. I will now work all summer, all day to just pay off my bills…. And even then I doubt I can cover it, but you know what.... I am not giving up. I know I will be penniless, homeless and maybe in a slight depression, but I am going through life and learning. I am very stupid about many things, and I am trying to improve.