Culture Exchange in Serbia has been open for four years

I came back for the celebration, taking the time to appreciate and respect the project that we started all that time ago. Clearly so many people have contributed to make this place what it is.... and i feel great pride in it, how we have grown up from the kids that opened it...we are still kids inside but we learnt a lot. There is a strong energy of love and teamwork here. I am such an emotional person and i know its only the love that i felt for this place and from this place that kept me working tirelessly on it for 3 and a half years, and to work so hard last summer to keep it open, reinvest and reinvent. Just being here a few days brings my energy up again, i feel the strength of all that we did here. 

What a beauty it is...for what it is.

It never made money, but it made an impact. It brought us through so many highs and lows, and it squeezed us all and pushed us inwardly and outwardly. It may not be success in a definable way, but its successful in the most natural way. It's still open, it still works. 4 years.. i could have never imagined in the beginning that we would be around this long. I have seen almost every local in the area around us change owners, places close and open here so fast. It may seem not a big deal to be open for a mere four years, but anyone who has lived and worked in Serbia will understand, its pretty outstanding. 

The setbacks that CE experienced and all the things that could have closed us were many. We even had almost all the owners (apart from me) deported from the country, our name smeared with negativity in the public newspapers, our window smashed by right wing nationalists, and death threats. The story got better with each turn, as we survived against the odds and thrived in our own unique way. The support from Novi Sad and from the people that loved CE kept it afloat in moments of doubt. Last year I had to close CE for 3months because of the financial problems, it was a hard moment to see the windows covered with papers stating that we would reopen in 3 months, clearing out all the furniture, drinks and other things, cleaning it for what could have been the last time and trusting the future would somehow be OK. I remember all the sleepless nights wrestling with what to do from that point..should we just close it? One year later and we succeeded to keep it open. The next chapter of CE is going to be interesting.. i will be writing about what the plan is,but for now you can know there will be some changes. One thing we all have to accept is that nothing stays the same, everything changes and we can always choose how we see these things. Whatever happens in the future, we can always look back on the last 4 beautiful years, and deeply appreciate the wonders of life and all that transpired here in little Novi Sad in Serbia.

I want to express deeply the thankfulness I have for all our friends here and the staff who have worked in CE. guys...i am so grateful to know each one of you and to have had the privilege to be close to you. You are the secret ingredient that made this place wonderful, and everyone added their own special ingredient. Every single one of you is priceless and i love you all a lot. I will never forget this country and each of you, and i treasure it. 

Here are some of my favorite moments from CE in pictures

 

             Messenger Lessons...

I jumped my  first hurdle to work as a bike messenger alone. My life here in Graz has been filled with so many new experiences and I always have to fight my own demons of fear and lack of belief in myself. I am lucky to work for Veloblitz, the coolest group of guys who showed me so much support and trusted that in time I could be a good bike messenger.

I first did my training day over one month ago. I chased Sava (one of the messengers) for about 6 hours, even though I felt strong enough to ride, I also didn’t know much of the city and was not sure where we were for almost the whole time.

  Its better to do something badly yourself then watch someone else do it well, I knew I had to take the leap and ride alone. I was so scared and worried about screwing things up, getting lost and fucking it up. In everything we do, fear is there, looking at us and we need to face it down and defeat it. I always experience a lot of self doubt in everything I did, despite my fear.. I always push myself and go through it. I got lots of good advice from each of the experienced messengers, mostly to have no expectations and to do my best.

One thing the job taught me was about taking each moment as it comes and not worrying about the whole day and how I am doing.. how much money I am making etc… It teaches you to be calm in stressed situations.. it makes you push yourself physically while you tune in mentally to the route that you need to ride. It makes you appreciate your body and all it can do for you, it makes you stand on your own feet, depend on yourself and trust yourself. My boyfriend (who is a messenger himself) gave me lots of good tips and also rode with me around the city to get to know it better, he always told me that I can do I t and that he believed in me.. but no matter what other say.. the battle is always yours and yours alone.. and perhaps greater then the battle to make it to each job on time, I fight my fears and work on trusting my instincts.

I have had lots of funny moments already, going totally wrong ways, getting lost and bringing packages way too late… what I call all of this is ‘experience’. That beautiful thing that sometimes is filled with blood, sweat and tears. Sure I was late so many times so far… but I also gained knowledge of the city and rode faster then I have ever done before. The funniest moment so far was when I thought a line on the map was something I couldn’t cross and did a serious long detour… only to realise it was a random line on the map and totally crossable.. it was distressing at the time and I thought I was very stupid.. but now I laugh at it and regard it as one my finest messenger moments to date… 

It’s cycling season, and now I strengthen my body and work on riding as much as I can each week, normally 3-4 times a week. Together with friends I formed a beginners cycling group ‘THE VELOBITCHZZZ’, and we cycle together as much as possible. 

There are lots of lessons abounding in my life at the moment. I choose to accept whatever life is bringing me with an open heart and strive to see it all as a path for growth. After the last time I rode messenger, I was very discouraged and wrote the Furwerk(head-quarter guys) to tell them I was sorry for my poor performance. They wrote me back that no one expects me to be amazing at the beginning and that they know I can be super fast. There is a great support here for trying new things, and everyone knows what its like to start and to be in my shoes. 

In every area of my life right now I feel like I am learning a lot, pushing into new things and as much as possible trying to be open and loving. This is in every area.. my work, my cycling, and my relationship, I feel like for so long I have been stuck in the convenient confines of my previous mindsets and lifestyle, now I am realising things don’t have to be the way I have always thought were ok. I don’t have to live by any other rules then my own, the ones I set and the way I want to live. This is giving me a feeling of responsibility, control over my feelings and my life and also confidence in myself, as I see my choices are good and my reasoning is clear and rational. 

One of my greatest concerns this year was that I would struggle through a big depression, similar to what I had last year. I kind of accepted that every year in the summer (I know it’s a weird time), I would get depressed. I almost waited for the depression to hit me and if I had a bad feeling in the beginning of the year at any time, I would get worried that the great depression had hit me early. I always thought perhaps I was a manic depressive and something was wrong with me.. I thought I might need to take medication and see someone who could help me when those feelings of sadness were very strong. I realise now that there was nothing wrong with me, I am a balanced and sane person, it was the stressful and capitalistic circumstances of my job and the world that I lived in that created those feelings and pushed me into a stressful place. The world around us forces us into depression these days, the constant attention on work and success, the lack of rest, sleep, enjoyment and simple play.

 The last years in the summer, CE in Serbia would always be out of money, I felt terrible stress and pressure, I also let the expectations of unrealistic and very uncompassionate people matter to me. I listened a lot to ideas of those who did not really care about me, but just had their own interests at heart. All of this I thought at the time to be reality, now I realise that it was all the reality that I created for myself. Although last year was an important time of learning deep lessons, and its almost always through rough patches and deep sadness that we grow and learn many things, I now live differently, at least a bit. Even though I still work very much, I have detached my sense of self worth from my business. I know that no matter what happens at CE, I am a wonderful person, the future of my business does not say anything about who I am.  

I think the way we are brought up and raised in this society is wrong in so many ways. Of course its easy to look at the problems with the world and criticise things and that’s not what I want to do. I do however want to challenge some of the mentalities and obligatory restrictions placed upon us these days and at least question why. Let’s go back to what I discussed a little earlier… attaching self worth to acomplishments… I always felt that I was what I did… that I had to do so many things and please so many people. Who is to say what we are meant to do with our lives, whether we choose to study, work, wander the world or do nothing for a while, we shouldn’t feel that we are less or more of a person or less or more worthy of love or life. We are always glorifying people that work hard and accomplish big things, but not everyone is meant to travel that path. Work these days is basically slavery in return for a few gold coins, it adds nothing to the personality, stresses, drains and squelches human spirit. 

About one month ago I had a serious stress breakdown. I was working many, many hours each day for months on end. In the beginning I felt really strong and like I could handle it. Typical to my character, I took on way too many things, and started to also invest time in my hobbies.. this meant that all day from early in the morning I was on the go. I rushed around all the time, I didn’t have time for friends which meant that my relationships with people were not on a deep level.. this is very troubling for me and gave me a lot of insecurity, because I am an emotional person and relationships of all kinds are very important to me. It was one Friday in the middle of my 17 and a half hour shift that I rushed home do a quick one hour fitness training. All of a sudden I felt a deep sadness and pressure in my chest and started to cry. I called my boyfriend, but I couldn’t talk to him, I just cried and cried.. I went to see him at his place quickly, but the tears didn’t stop and the pressure inside of me made me feel terrible. I felt like I was just a working machine, with no real friends or love, the stress had blinded me to the beauty of my life and my workaholic tendencies had caught up with me. 

I really got to thinking after this mental collapse… why had this happened to me.. when I had tried to think of why I was crying so much, I couldn’t name it. It was not one thing, but the stress and confusion of work that had done this to me. I think we are all far more beautiful and free minded people then we realise, we are stopped from thinking and acting freely by the materialistic system that literally fucks us as we are forced to enslave ourselves.. but I had learnt my lesson. I never took such a long shift again and I determined to spend more time cycling and doing things I enjoy, going into the sunshine and into the wilderness.. spending time with people who uplift me and make me happy. I have enough money to live, as I think most of us do.. but I am a workaholic and I don’t know yet how to say ‘NO’ when people impress jobs on me. I still need to learn to respect my body and spirit and its needs. More important then anything you do.. is you.. and if you are stressed and unhappy…it’s not worth it. Nothing is worth killing your spirit for. 

I also now challenge societies rules on sexuality, relationships and love… I am able to do this together with an amazing person, and we are going into a journey together to open our relationship to other people and experiences. I am writing this on my blog, because I think that this is such a big topic that scares almost all of us. We are all pretty fearful when we are confronted with relationship issues. I don’t know how much to write here, because it seems pretty off topic.. but its definitely part of my journey of openness, love and honesty.

Optimism…  the way things are and the way we dream things will be

So our CE in Graz is still here.. and still without its licence. The last time we went to check on the progress, the man in charge of our paperwork had lost some of our important documents. Instead of calling us and letting us know he had misplaced them, he simply took his time. They love to do that don’t they, take their time and in the process take yours as well.

   The fact that CE in Graz feels a bit stuck in the mud in some moments can be disappointing for us. We only had the one business experience under our belt, the one in Serbia that is. When we opened CE in Serbia it was peaking in its first 3 months, packed with people, talked about in the media and getting well known in the city. The situation here in Graz has been very different, we did have some really strong days with concerts and events here, however after the fines and the confiscation of our licence it went very far down, now its climbing slowly up. I feel like the people in Graz and Serbia are very different, the crowd has a very different need. Serbia always needs entertainment and excitement, it needs to always be the ‘IT’ place of the city, where everyone is going. If people get bored of you there, they stop going to your spot and go to the next hot-spot of the city. Here in Graz I feel that people take much longer to get used to something, they really need to feel comfortable, try it out, take their time and go slow. Most of the popular places in the city have been here for decades. Its like a tricky puzzle that takes a long time to complete but once its done.. its done. Once you are in, you are in to stay. The battle of CE in Graz seems to be a battle of patience.

Every day when I come into CE to work and I see those moments where it is still totally empty, I envision this place full. I look into the future and imagine what could be, when it is full of people and brimming with positive energy and exchanges, I really believe it can happen. Even if this story does not become a success in the way we like to interpret it at the moment, I am glad that we are doing this and that we decided to try. The fact that CE has few customers at the moment is really just a part of the story.

Today I also did my first day as a bike messenger. It was a very tiring day, long and exhausting, but good as well. I  have a lot of respect for the guys and girls that are working this job, its really tough on your body and on your mind. You often have a short time to get packages from one place to the next, you need to orientate yourself, not get lost, be careful in traffic, avoid the people who are walking around  and not looking, and then also push to ride as hard as you can. I did my training with Lukas, who is such an excellent cyclist and really explained things as best as he could, even though I was pretty slow, he took time, slowed down at some parts and also pushed me pretty hard. The fact is that I still feel very overwhelmed if I think about going on my own and finding all these places, I am not the most oriented person, I often get lost in really stupid ways so its pretty challenging for me to think of doing this job. 

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