2016 Is here

It’s a whole new year, 365 days.

What is going to happen? I am really excited because this year there are so many uncertainties, perhaps more then ever before. I kind of feel like I am in the middle of a gripping series and this year is the end of an episode with a multiple choice ending for the next one.

 Last year was a big year for me, certainly a year of change and movement. For one I moved from Serbia to Austria, and also moved a lot imbetween, for most of the year I was travelling back and forth, one month here and one month there. If you had told me one year ago that everything would be the way it is and that I would have actually moved from Serbia, I think I would have had a hard time believing it. The other day I tried to remember every place I stayed in, actually I tried to remember all the places I had woken up in this last year. I really struggled to bring to mind all the places I had been.  Without the help and flexibility of many wonderful friends, I would for sure have been homeless many times. To mention a few people who gave me a place to crash.. sometimes for more then a few days I have to thank Kristalina, Magda (the two sweetest sisters in the world), Sarah (a lovely American), Tanja (this girl....),Hagob and Nata, Ciss (the hot one), Jakob (personal trainer), and finally Sofia (for really giving me her room in Graz), Malene, and Martin (my now awesome roommates). 

With every change comes a bit of commotion, and in my case hardship. It was for sure the year with one of the biggest depressions I ever had and with strong feelings of pressure. In particular I have to remember around the time from May-July when I really did not know what was happening with Culture Exchange in Serbia. The weight of the whole business and the decision of whether to keep it or close it felt absolutely huge. I could not sleep at night and when I did I would wake up with a feeling of panic almost every morning, I felt like such a failure and like everything was crashing in on me. I also felt totally disconnected with myself, as I was under so much stress that I felt I had no worth as a person, that I was such a loser.

During this time when I was feeling this way, I wrote a diary to remember how it was, here is a short excerpt JUNE 22 ‘I can’t sleep, I wake up early in the morning with worries crowding my mind. I fear so much and feel so small. I don’t know how to write down these feelings, but I want to, I want to remember this time. I just feel like I am so far behind, I cannot even take care of myself. Why? Why am I this way, what is the purpose of my existence? Why am I the way I am? Its such a lonely moment, but I feel so disoriented, so lost. How will anyone ever love me’

Now when I re-read that I feel like, wow how could I ever have written that, this is one reason why I like to record my thoughts and feelings, to see sometimes how absolutely crazy it is that we get into such a negative thought pattern about ourselves. How can we allow ourselves to believe that we are worthless or unlovable? But sometimes it happens, and when it does its good to remember that this is not the whole story of your life, but just a difficult part. I know that I had so many pressures and stress at this time and that it really brought me to a very low place, but I also can see how all of that pushed me to grow and I am far away from that place today, but I had to go through it. It’s actually a bit emotional for me to look back and see how bad I felt and how strong those hard emotions were. I am a very emotional person and I think I will always feel things vividly and with great intensity. I kind of feel like I live in a very dramatic way, when I am good, or when I feel happy, I feel it very strongly, I feel moved by the beauty in the world around me, but when I swing to the other extreme I also feel negative emotions very hard. All of this is who I am and I am thankful for it.

Why am I talking so much about depression and hardship? Because it was a big part of last year for me. The decision to move to Graz and to let Danny and Lani take over our CE in Novi Sad changed my life path and pushed me out into a whole new world of experiences and also some really tough moments. I remember at one point I was like… its getting so bad, its got to get better eventually. I knew that there had to be a turning point and that things were going to change. Change they did and in a wonderful way, in August a friend invited me to live at his place (because my house in Serbia got closed down, I was penniless and got cheated from all my savings… ). This friend really helped to give me some confidence in myself again. For one he started training me physically and teaching me about building body strength. He had been doing this for a profession before and really knew how to instruct and teach. I told him about my dream to one day do competitive cycling and he believed that I could do it. At this point I had been working so much that I hardly had time at all to work out or train. Jakob (my friend) made a big impact because of his interest in improving my life and helping me to be stronger.. because of this I got happier almost right away. It also gave me a personal goal to work towards that was not all about CE and business (which basically my whole life for the last 4 years has been about). It was still hard to train myself when I had a lot of work to do, but this gave me a lot of energy and I would get up early to train before getting to work, or train when I came home late. It was also cool to see how happy he was when I was progressing, when I could lift more weights or do better push-ups. Isn’t it amazing when you have a friend who is happy for your progress and for your improvement, not just for their own. Now I am training cycling much more seriously, I train every day in body strength and aim towards some pretty big challenging rides this year. This reminds me of something so important that I learnt. WE ALL START SOMEWHERE. No matter how you feel or where you are, you are at the perfect place to grow, you can improve and in order to get anywhere you start where you are, any steps forward from there can bring you closer to your goal. So many times I guess we don’t want to start something because we feel so far away. I know I am a long way away still from competitive cycling or from being a good cyclist… but I am also so much closer then I used to be, so so much closer and I have grown so much, so sometimes if you look ahead and see… shittt…. There is such a long road up there, maybe you also need to look back and see… yes it is a long road, but I have also come a long way and I am closer now then ever before. KEEP TRYING. A star looks tiny from far away, but close up it’s a big burning ball of fire and light… that’s what we are… anyone can look at you and see you as that tiny dot.. that is just one perspective, you are so much more. You are that ball of fire and light and you will burn it up.

Other highlights of last year included rebuilding CE in Serbia with my wonderful friends Danny and Lani. My heart fills with joy every time I think about CE in Novi Sad and that it is still running thriving. I have to admit, I feel so proud of my achievement with that business, and also of all the people who are part of the story and even prouder of Danny, Lani and the crew of CE over there. The staff there remain to be very dear to my heart, and I love them all very much. We went through some real tough moments together this year, and when I was at a very low place the staff of CE came together and said they wanted to fight to keep it open. Without them, CE would be nowhere close to where I t is today. 

One special part of this year and of working in CE Graz has been our collaboration with Veloblitz, (bike messengers). Such an unusual and wonderful crew of people, very hard-working and alternative. I am so thankful that they are part of CE and hope they continue to be with us for as long as possible. When you live away from your home and family (like me), the people around you become your family. Veloblitz are with us every day, I learnt a lot from all of them and also.. how cool to have a bike messenger base inside our café.

I learnt a lot last year, and I struggled a lot. I am proud of myself and thankful for every moment. The top five things I feel I would like to share are.

1.       Everything passes, keep fighting for what you want no matter how you feel, from a further distance things look so different.

2.       To get different results, you have to do different things. If you want to have changes in your life you have to force yourself out of the comfortable and into the danger zone of new opportunity and risk.

3.       Other people’s opinions are just their opinions, caring less what others think is very difficult if you are an emotionally sensitive person, but with time you can get better at it.

4.       Your 20’s are a difficult time, cut yourself some slack. No one is as far ahead and awesome as you think, it’s a struggle (thank you Kim for the right advice in the right moment, you know what I mean)

5.       Life is full of ups and downs, highs and lows, happy moments and deep sadness. The colours of life are all beautiful and make the picture complete. When you are in the low, keep pushing as hard as you can, its going to get back up again eventually, it always has before.. so why not this time. 

What do I want to strive for next year,

Well I always love to set high goals and sometimes they are a little bit too high. With all the other stuff I have to do every day, adding big ambitions can be a recipe for disaster. Last year I tried to section my goals into months and focus on one thing every month. This didn’t work for me, most of the time I forgot what I was meant to focus on. However when I see it at the end and think about it, I kind of covered all those goals but in other months then I intended.

Something exciting is that I will be working as a bike messenger  with Veloblitz, starting in February (hopefully). I have really bad directional skills and also pretty poor German.. so this is going to be interesting. Even though I may not be the best bike messenger ever (could be the worst), I still want to try, I love cycling and this would be a dream come true.

Also I stopped smoking (10 days in so far)

I intend this year to ride my bike a lot, compete in some hard bike races….

Check out this one I registered to… If I can train enough to get in shape for it  

http://hardcro.com

I also intend to try a lot, which probably means I will fall a lot… metaphorically and for real. I don’t want to stop doing anything I want to because of fear that I wont be good at it or that others will laugh at me. What does it matter anyways? Life is too short to spend time stopping yourself because of other people. 

I intend to improve CE as much as I can…

I intend to live in peace and love in every way and spread harmony to those around me if I can.

And yes if you are wondering why I am so happy and excited, it could also be because of the small matter of falling in love with a wonderful person. Yes the year finished better then I could ever imagine. So that’s all for now

Here is a link to the TEDx talk I did in October if anyone missed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZIaSi-POyU

A bit of back and forth

Photo by the evil genius Khan Kanga

Serbia feels like home, its so familiar and comforting, so warm and filled with the faces of people I love and have been through so many experiences with. I am just visiting for a few days because I will work in CE in Graz next week, so it does not leave much time, but its so wonderful to even have this short time here. Every time I arrive at the bus stop in Novi Sad I feel so excited. I look out of the bus window all along every street I know, and just wait for it to stop, then I take my things and walk as fast as I can to CE. Serbia has been my home for so many years, I also did and experienced a lot of crazy things here, for me… this is the one place on earth I feel a true connection with (so far) and every time I come back its very special. This time my friend Zapa (from Graz) travelling down to Serbia with me, adding a lot of cool moments to the trip.

 

I had a real adventure getting to Novi Sad. Recently I have really rebelled from the mainstream transportation, mostly because its boring, but its also expensive and takes such a long time. I normally travel either with Blabla car or with hitchhiking. This time I found a shared ride going to Zagreb and took it, I knew I had friends t here I wanted to see, and also I like to mix it up a bit and not go directly. We were driven there by a catholic priest, pretty funny, I am sure he had a lot of interesting things to say but I slept most of the way.

When we arrived I went to see two friends who I had met during the TEDx, Martina and Khan. Martina is from Zagreb and Khan is from a bunch of different places, they met in San Fransisco and recently moved back to Croatia. Both are designers and work on many exciting projects. They are such good hosts and made a wonderful dinner for me, with lots of wine and Rakija and made me feel so warm and comfortable. They really showed me what it means to be a good host of people and how to welcome people into your home and life (the lesson is to always have Rakija available to guests). 

 After this we attempted to hitchhike first to Osijek and then on to Novi Sad, however we were pretty slow and went at our own pace, in the end we got a message from a car share going to Osijek and took the ride. Gordan was our driver, a very interesting fellow from Osijek, he owns Tufna, one of the biggest clubs in Osijek, he also owned a few smaller businesses and  hostel. This was lucky for us as the last bus to Novi Sad had already gone and we needed to stay the night in Osijek. He is a very interesting guy, working his way up in the business world, starting from square one to finally get to where he is today. He is a high energy person with lots of good business advice, I enjoyed sharing with him the story of CE and my small experience in business. Seeing as we got on so well, he invited us for dinner in an adorable little traditional restaurant, we drank a lot of wine and rakija (again) and had a wonderful time with him. It’s so amazing to see the people that you can meet along the way of your travels if you are open and have respect for other people. I always find someone to connect with and learn from, everybody has something to share. 

 

 Carrying on we went to Novi Sad early the next morning and spent the next 2 days there. During this time I got the chance to see many of my friends and spend time with them, I am so lucky to have so many beautiful people in my life, supportive, kind and inspiring. I also got to do a short TV interview on ‘Just Give’, work on my connection to the TEDx team (I will be giving some input to the Novi Sad TEDx crew), and get a tattoo… what a packed weekend.

 

CE Novi Sad is blossoming, not only does it look beautiful but the vibe and atmosphere is as sweet as ever. Looking around the city of Novi Sad I saw so many cafe's and bar's that were closed since the last time I was here. In the time CE has been open, so many cool places have closed and opened for different reasons. I am never happy to see another shop owner go out of business, but it does make me appreciate the length of time that CE has been standing its ground. We have really been through so much, a scandal, deportation, renovation… we have gone through real depression with the business and also experienced such feelings of joy and satisfaction. I really see CE as a pillar in the community of this city. Most people know about it, have been there and enjoy the place in so many ways. I am so proud of it, of myself for being part of it and for every person who contributed to making it what it is. There is no café like it. Of course there are many cool culture spots in the city, but one thing that makes it so magical is the story behind it, a real story of perseverance, courage and determination. We didn’t give up, even when all the odds were against us, I feel like the CE team has really big balls to do what they have done, and CE today still stands as a testimony to their diligence and courage in the face of many obstacles. A diverse team of 7 young people, coming from no where… to where we are today… what a wonderful story and what a wonderful life. 

Looking over at the story in Graz and how its developing, there have been many roadblocks  that we continue to face. The situation with our license has been a continual source of frustration. After our meeting with the main inspection officials of the city and some of our neighbours, we pressed forward with the changes that the government wanted us to make to fulfil all requirements of the license. These included creating sliding doors to the bathrooms, sealing off the 2^nd door and creating a automatic door in our front entrance, not such small things. We did everything that they asked and got the stamps of approval from all of the inspectors.. all but one. The main guy in charge of the paper refuses to stamp and sign the last document and send it to us. Apparently it is sitting on his desk and he just does not have the time to do it, nevermind that we have been doing the paperwork for one year now, and fulfilled all requirments around 2 and a half months ago, nevermind that we are a group of struggling young people who need to earn something to survive, nevermind that this is a start-up business and not a huge corporate entity, he does not have the time to stamp our paper and send it. To make it even more unbelievable he told our friend who regularly goes to talk to him about the progress, that he did stamp it and it was in the mail, every day we were waiting and then his secretary told us that he never sent any completed paper to the post. So we are still waiting. However because we have the news that the paper is completed (or so we assume) we are moving forward with the progress of CE and getting the business to run a bit better. We did some advertising and can now post our menu online, we also are able to host a few quiet gigs, though its kind of in experimentation. Altogether in some ways it means we are moving forward, for sure we are closer to getting the license paper then before (I guess we cannot be moving backwards). All over the story of CE has been one with many giants that we have had to fight and it is a struggle, but we all feel like it is worth it and will be worth it even more then now in the future. Whatever we do, I guess we want to know that we gave it our best and we put 100 percent . 

We are all working full time at the shop in Graz at the moment, which is me, Simon and Mary and Oli too, but he is travelling a lot at this time. After working the whole month we are really left with very little money to live, and I mean really little. I guess it can be discouraging to see that you are not earning anything with so much work and most people are earning a lot more but with less work. Of course I am not saying that they do not deserve it, but it is a hard thought sometimes when I realise I am definitely living with less then a third of what most people do here in Austria. I do feel that CE in some way will one day be financially successful, its been successful in so many other ways already, I really feel its only a matter of time before it grows in every way that we need. Even if it dosen’t, we all gained so many amazing experiences from this whole journey, it really toughened us, I feel my character and depth grew so much since the beginning 4 years ago. I cannot imagine my life without CE, with all the joys, happiness, magical moments, depression, sadness, and yes.. a lot of tears, also a lot of work. I do feel privileged in many ways, blessed to be able to live a lot of my dreams, work on something I care about and be my own boss. With all of these great benefits, the lack of money seems a small and insignificant detail, considering that so many people with so much money would for sure wish to have some of the wonderful life moments that I have had. 

There is just no way to compare or put your life in its entirety up to another persons and decide what would be better or worse, we all got our cards and we are playing them the best we can. What is important to me is to be happy, but also to be a good person, to work on my character, to see the traits of love, understanding, passion, dedication, honesty, integrity, and compassion grow in my life. It’s also important to me to be of service to others, I need to feel like I can give something important to my friends and family, all of the things I have gone through with CE have definitely given me lots of love and friendships that I treasure. May I take a moment to just breathe and say… all in all.. if I had to do this over again, if I had the chance to go back, take a different life path, study, work in a good job or go back to the UK.. I would still start CE with those 6 crazy people, I would risk it for that biscuit, because it’s a good biscuit and I like it, YUM

As you all know I like to include Adventure stories on my blog, to show some of the amazing people all over the world who are pursuing interesting dreams.  This year I met lots of cool cyclist personalities who were living an alternative life, living on the road, cycling long distance to many destinations all over the world. One such person is Manuel, I met him in Serbia, somewhere in the middle of his journey towards Istanbul. I asked him to answer some questions about his trip. I hope you all enjoy it!

Where was your adventure from and to?

I started in Rosenheim Germany, a small city between Munich and Salzburg, Austria. To get into cycling I decided to follow the river Inn and the Danube through Austria. From Linz I went down to south through Upper Austria and Steiermark to Slovenia. I followed the Drau in Slovenia and Croatia to Serbia. After that I made it on the EuroVeloRoute6 through Volvodijna to Bulgaria. After that I went down south, through the Balkan mountains, had a sneak into Greece and followed the D100 in Turkey to Istanbul.

What made you want to do something like this?

Well I finished my studies at University. Last few years I was busy with work through study breaks and time for a quite long bike trip. This year in summer I decided to cycle down to Istanbul just for doing it. Being by myself was the idea, to do something on my own. And I wanted to do something special for myself. Getting inspired by nature, road and people.

What was your favourite country and part of the journey?

The longer I was in a country I enjoyed it more and more. I guess Bulgaria was the most impressive country with the Balkan Mountains. I do like the climbs, and so I liked Bulgaria. I didn’t have any bad impressions about a country I have been in but the most hospitable people have been in Turkey. On one day I got invited twice for dinner. I was so full because I couldn’t refuse as they didn’t understand any English or German.

Were you afraid of something and if so what was it?

Before I started my trip I informed myself on cycle forums. Anybody was discussing about the wild dogs. So I got scared to. There have been some chasing and yelling at me. But that’s it. So maybe I was lucky, or maybe its better than everybody says. One guy in Croatia said: “Don’t be afraid about the animals. Be careful with the people.” – But even he was proved wrong. Some parts of Bulgaria have been scary a bit if you are on your own. But there wouldn’t be an adventure if everything would be nicely, straight and easily. And if you are through it, it makes you feel bigger, stronger. It makes you think different about countries and things you would have been saying before there is now chance doing that or this.

 Why do you want to travel by bicycle to these countries and do your travelling in this way?

My opinion about cycling is if you are using it for travelling is you’ll get to see the most of a country in less time. If you are in a airplane you will miss it all. If you are in a bus or a train you can’t stop where and when you want. If you are in your car your behind a window. If you are with your motorbike you are to fast. If you are on your feet it takes you ages. The bike is giving me the chance to see whatever I want, to stop wherever I want, it makes me feel tired, it makes my hungry to see more, I hurts, and it makes me screaming and above all. If there is just you and the bike it’s getting your Wilson and you know what’s happening – you start talking to it.

What would you share with other people to inspire them?

If you could give someone you meet one important piece of advice for their lives what would it be?

Go out there with your idea, whatever it is, and don’t start thinking about how should this work?  Just get a goal and go for it!

What are somethings that you have learnt in your adventures so far?

1.     There are good people and there are idiots

2.     Animals are not dangerous, people are

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.