Trial & Error.

Okay, let's face it. I want to try it all. Sweet. Sour. Hot. Bitter. Loud. Quiet. Cold. Hot. Sea. Hills. Wind. Rain. Snow. Ice. City. Pampa. Woods. Desert. Sand. Stones. Soil. Tarmac. Bicycle. Feet. Car. Bus. Train. Plane. Islands. Continents. Enclaves. Rock and Roll. Electronics. Folk. Soul. Punk. Pop. Classic. Wild nights. Quiet nights. Facts. Stories. Leisure. Work. Eduction. Science. Art. Pleasure. Despair. Success. Failure. Politics. Philosophy. Doubt. Security. Ups. Downs. Heights. Lows. Beer. Wine. Water. Champagne. Tea. Coffee. I want to try it all. Live it all. Feel it all. And, I can. I am an incredibly lucky bee, and I am well aware of it. Making use of it. I am free to taste and try everything I hunger for. And there is no need to pick a favourite, to go for one option. I can have it all. Simultaneously or consecutively. In my head, in my heart there is unlimited space for a schizophrenic potpourri that on the face of it might not constitute the perfect blend. For me, however, that's the one nuance of perfection, I am looking for. I don't need to make sense. I don't need to have a top 5 list. I can put my iPod on shuffle without batting an eye if after a Bach prelude it presents me The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Doesn't go together? Well, I doesn't have to.

How can I find out what works for me and what doesn't if I don't try it out? How can I build my personal dream and accomplish it, if there are unknown variables hovering above that I haven't figured out yet? How can I understand myself if I don't expose myself to everything tickling my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue, my skin, my brain, my heart? If I don't try and watch it, listen to it, smell it, taste it, touch it, think it, feel it, the unwatched, unlistened, unsmelled, untasted, untouched, unthought, unfelt blows itself up into a question mark that will haunt me forever. So, I make use of my freedom and try it out, turn it into full stops, exclamation marks and spaces. Into things to keep and things to forget. Trial and error. The good ones go into the pot. The bad ones go into the crop. That's the way I do it. That's the way I need it to be. That's my way. You don't need to understand me. Just stick around and watch, listen, smell, taste, touch, think, feel with me.

"Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life." ~ Stefan Zweig

About a sleeping muse & the sour taste of La Dolce Vita

Six months in Italy. Six months, in which I haven’t uttered, written one single non-professional word. I have been holding my breath - in synch with my dozing muse. I have been idling, hovering above myself, waiting, holding out, hoping to wake up one day with not only two feet on the Italian soil but with my heart rooting within it. A futile attempt, a futile resistance. Six months later, the moment has come to confess that the Italian ground is offering not the right blend of nutrients for my heart to strike roots. There is no one to blame, however. Neither Italy, nor myself. It is the pairing that doesn’t work, like an equation that will always show a false result.

It is a well-known phenomenon that most of the people who spent some time living in London will always look back with nostalgia. In my case it is more than nostalgia as against the backdrop of Italy’s uniformity – that in my personal case translates into monotony –London’s qualities become a necessity without which I don’t want to live. There is no black or white, I am aware of that, but there are pros that weigh heavier than others, and there are cons that are more acceptable than others. For me, the aspects of England that one can define as negative are manageable whereas their Italian counterparts paralyse my very nature. The English delights, however, are dearly missed and beat the Italian equivalents by far. I won’t name any details as this piece is not being written to highlight my dislikes and affections when it comes to these two unequal countries. Each of them is what it is; each of them has a strong character and innate idiosyncrasies. But I am lucky enough to live in the European Union where I can chose freely where to stay, and I am even luckier to be in a professional position where I can move around the globe without the need to anchor.

It was my choice to come here and try out the “Dolce Vita”, and it was me who had to find out that the Italian way of living fails to taste sweet on my tongue.

I have been thinking a lot since I left my homeland behind three years ago, about cultural imprints and differences and the concept of culture itself. It is a multi-layered, complex topic that I don’t dare to touch upon but as an emigrant I can surely say that there might be only one place like home but that there are places outside your native country that to you feel more homey than others and constitute a home-like environment made up of like-minded people, sociological reference points as well as cultural and personal compatibility.

I have come to terms with the fact that there is a possibility of me never arriving, and I am willing to simply follow my adventurous heart – like I did twice – and go back to that place on the island to experience it with my latest findings in mind. I have the feeling that this decision will bring me home, afterall my muse found her tongue the very day my English nostalgia turned into the firm plan to leave Italy behind to reconquer that city called London.

“There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.” ~ Sappho



Good bye may seem forever. Farewell is like the end, but in my heart is the memory and there you will always be

Sitting in between boxes, getting ready to move to Italy, I can't help but reminisce.

I am thinking back to that day two and a half years ago when I first set foot on this island to embark on an adventure of emigration that was still unwritten. Little did I know then what to expect. My pockets were filled with most diverse sentiments, the heaviest ones being fear and anticipation. Both of them travel companions that I could have left at home - in Munich. Whilst trying to find my way in London, I learnt that nothing can happen to me as long as I trust myself and my instincts and slowly but surely fear turned into confidence. The same applies to anticipation, as how can you draw an image of something you haven't seen and experienced yet, how can you look forward to something so novel that you can't grasp it? Now I know that it doesn't make sense to look ahead and to waste energy on the absurd attempt to anticipate pitfalls and peaks, I learnt to let go and rely on myself and my talent of finding like-minded companions at every corner – no matter where I am. I am myself wherever I am and that's enough.

With another emigration ahead, I can unequivocally claim that my London adventure was worth every smile, every tear, every effort and every single minute. When I will depart in a couple of weeks with yet another one-way ticket in my hand, I will be fully laden with a million memories. And as time isn't linear and there is no difference between the past and the present, the moments that made me happy here, are going to make me happy forever.

I have met plenty of amazing people in this city and some of them have turned into true friends. London is a pool of creativity and as such hosts many brilliant minds. It is a pot of folly and individuality and has inhaled and embraced the virtue of tolerance better than many other cities on this planet. This above all is one of its most precious traits. But it has its downsides. As per the concept of superlinear scaling, the bigger the city, the more the average citizen owns, produces, and consumes - referring to goods, resources as well as ideas. We all participate in this process, manifested in the metropolitan buzz of productivity, speed and ingenuity. Doubling the size of a city increases wealth and innovation by about 15 percent but it likewise increases the amount of crime, pollution and disease by roughly the same amount.

So, no wonder London is bursting with creativity and ideas but also with their counterparts paralysis and monotony. And they walk hand in hand and create a big gap between the strong and the weak. It took me quite a bit of time to realise that something that on the face of it appears to be most heterogeneous can be very homogeneous within its heterogeneity. I also found out that the much cited fast pace of London is far away from being an abstract tale but as a matter of fact a euphemism. This place is operating in a speed that is infectious. At first, you don't realise and then somewhere down the road of acclimatisation you find yourself running instead of walking and whatever you do, you do it as quickly as possible even if there is no rush. I personally came to terms with the fact that the London pace had rubbed off on me when I went back home to visit slow and peaceful Munich. Measured against my inner London clock it felt as if the people on the sidewalks were crawling in slow-motion, and ironically enough it made me nervous.

But despite the hustle and bustle, there are plenty of friendly faces to be found here – wherever you go, a manner that also rubs off. Not so long ago I ordered a coffee in a bar in Berlin – in the London style by asking "Could I get a coffee with a dash of cold milk, please?" and the waiter looked at me slightly confused and replied "Yes, of course" - with his eyebrow raised and an insinuating question mark hanging in the air.

But in the end it always comes down to the people, no matter where you are. And also in this case, it was the people I met that turned my London experience into a chapter of excitement and inspiration. I didn't feel alone or bored one single day because I was surrounded by creatures that can only dwell in London. The density of human brilliance is certainly a result of the city's nature. But the good thing about people is that you can keep them if you want to.

And now it's time to follow the sun and my heart and focus on the next chapter of my adventurous tale. This time, however, I am neither scared nor do I try to anticipate what is going to await me there. I just pack my boxes, put on my travel boots and breath in deeply being grateful about living a life of surprises and adventure. Farewell, London and thank you for everything!

"You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other's imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine." ~ Jean-Paul Sartre