Report from June 3 to 15, 2024
From: New Zealand
Karli flies home (from my perspective) - end of a phase
First steps in a new phase
Rule number one: things turn out differently than you think
End of a phase
I accompany Karli to the airport. To his flight home to Germany. It's a strange feeling. He hands over his suitcases and then it's time to say goodbye. For an indefinite period of time. After that, I sit in the departure lounge at the airport for another three hours and don't know what to do with myself. I feel lost. Weightless
I am alone.
It's not only the end of traveling with Karli but also the end of van life! Life in our cozy little car. Karli and I sold the van before Karli left. Maybe some of you are wondering why I didn't keep the van. Why we sold it before Karli flew home. I've already mentioned the stressful aspects of van life (showering, going to the toilet, lack of WiFi, etc.) in a previous post. That's exhausting after a few months of van life. Now winter is also coming. Above all, more rain, which means more confinement to the 3 square meters. And fewer hours of daylight per day. Which means being cooped up in the 3 square meters for even longer. The sun goes down at 5 o'clock. And from then on you just sit in bed for another 6 hours and try to pass the time. Day after day.
And that's the reason why I sold the van, even though I'm staying in New Zealand for a while. Right now I'm very happy to end the van life.
The day after Karli's departure, my emotional state slowly changes again. The feeling of being lost turns into a feeling of weightlessness. And hidden in this weightlessness are new options. New opportunities, new challenges, new experiences. My courage and confidence are slowly returning. After a few days, my head is bursting with ideas again. I have hundreds of ideas about what else I would like to try out here in New Zealand: working in manual trades, for example woodworking, e.g. carpentry. Or working in construction, I spoke to a German who did that and it sounded exciting! Or 6 weeks on a commercial fishing boat. I would find a job at a company that makes personalized signs very exciting. A friend could arrange an internship for me with a house builder. I have no shortage of ideas!
A new phase - first steps
Out of these many possibilities, the first opportunity is in the direction of woodworking / carpentry. I was particularly looking in this direction because I really want to refresh and deepen my knowledge here. I have a bit of experience in this area because I once built a wooden bench. And I also have a lot of motivation.
Exactly, so in the direction of carpentry, woofing (volunteer work) spontaneously came up. In a narrower sense, "woofing" means "working on organic farms", i.e. helping someone on an organic farm. In a broader sense, it is not limited to farming, but helping someone somewhere with something. And in return for board and lodging.
My two hosts, Amanda and Parshant, responded to my ad and are currently building a house. After 6 months in New Zealand, I found out that the easiest way to find woofings (volunteer work) is actually via Facebook. The house is a tiny house. In other words, a tiny house. About 40 square meters small. We discuss the situation with my hosts on site. Among other things, the insulation has to be installed in the roof of the tiny house and then the plywood panels have to be fitted as cladding. That will be one of my tasks. There is no plan for how to do it. None at all. I have a free hand. I then carefully said that I thought it was a really exciting job, but that I'd never done it before. My host then said that I couldn't do any worse than the craftsman who built the house. In fact, his work had to be undone. The already installed interior paneling made of plywood boards had to be taken down again because the craftsman didn't install any insulation and there were 10 cm wide slits between the boards.
OK, I think I can do better than that.
2 days later, the tide has turned 180 degrees. Tiny house construction is not working as planned. Neither for me nor for my hosts. Time and again, I come to the conclusion with my hosts that a "normal" approach is not possible with this house. Because the tradesman who was originally contracted did too many shitty things. For example, the roof is actually just lying loosely on the walls. This problem has to be fixed before I can redo the roof insulation. With every task I want to tackle and implement, new problems suddenly crop up. That frustrates me. My hosts are very nice, but they're totally overloaded with other personal and professional issues. So my hosts and I both independently come to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense. In a joint discussion, we come to the agreement to stop woofing.
Falling down
In retrospect, I describe this phase as "falling down". Not that I personally failed there, but I've actually been longing to be somewhere again for a while. To simply find a place to stay for at least 2 weeks. To have a routine. Now I'm "back on the road". I've been thrown back a few steps again. I have very nice hosts who don't kick me out straight away. I'm very grateful for that. So that "is back on the road" But I still have time to look for something new. But of course it's pretty short-term. And I realize how these constant changes of location sap my energy. The situation frustrates me. Overall, the past few weeks have been like a huge, never-ending rollercoaster.
In the blog, we can only describe a fraction of what keeps us busy all day and what happens. This example from the past few weeks and my upcoming birthday illustrate just how much changes "in the background" that we sometimes don't report.
Because I'll be 30 years old in four days. Yes, I know, scary. I mean, I don't care much about my birthdays. Completions, because I find it hard to be the center of attention. But still. Somehow, in our society, the 30th birthday is seen as something very special. The beginning of a new decade. "The end of youth". The decade in which many become parents, get married, build houses. It is and remains a birthday that is full of meaning. And that's why, a few weeks ago, I found it particularly difficult to decide whether or not to stay in New Zealand alone. Because it involved the question of how I would celebrate my 30th birthday. I don't want to be alone on that day. It would be nice to have at least one or two people around me to give me a bit of attention.
With the end of this voluntary work on the tiny house, the question of my 30th birthday suddenly pops up again. As I stand there in front of this "failed" woofing, I suddenly realize how many other plans have "failed" in the last few weeks. It's not the first time that my "plans" for the coming weeks (and therefore also my 30th birthday) have been thrown out the window.
A few weeks ago, I thought I had found the perfect place. My friends' landlord is a carpenter. Our friends offered to arrange an internship for me. I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, a few things then escalated, so this opportunity was off the table. Then I had another option, a volunteer placement with a nice family. They had to cancel at short notice because they fell ill with Covid. Then I came here for the current internship and everything seemed super mega great. Until the second day. And now I'm standing here....
Perplexed.
Exhausted.
I just want to be in one place for two weeks and have a great birthday.
It's amazing how often my plans have changed in the last few weeks before I thought about my birthday. Maybe that would have been better. Now that I think about it, it doesn't make me sad.
I don't think I would have thought about all these options if it wasn't for my birthday. I wouldn't have paid any attention to them at all. Fall down, get up, straighten your crown. And that usually works automatically for me now. Without me even thinking about it. The less attention I pay to the "failed" options, the less they weigh me down. The less they slow me down. There were phases, for example when we arrived here in New Zealand, when I put a lot of energy into these "impossible" options. Which cost me a lot of "useless" energy back then. In this respect, I am very grateful that when something doesn't happen the way I wanted it to. That I then just shrug my shoulders and carry on. I think I learned that during this trip. During a trip like this one, plans change at breakneck speed all the time. So I've learned a lot in that respect during the trip. most of our plans are overturned one or more times. The ability not to get hung up on it, not to think about it too much and to look ahead instead has become very important to me. But of course it still sometimes works better and sometimes worse.
Get up and carry on
I find Angela on Facebook and stay with her for 10 days. Another woofing - a few hours of work a day in exchange for board and lodging. Angela has a cattle farm, a few Airbnb, some warehouse sales and other businesses that she manages in parallel. I tidy up her workshop, build a wooden fence, sand boards. Nothing exciting, but that somehow suits me at the moment. There's a lot going on in my head at the moment. But I'll go into that in the next post.
Jane is here with me. Jane is also a backpacker, but from Taiwan. I get on well with Jane and learn a lot about Taiwan during this time. There are also a few horses on the property, two adult dogs and a cute puppy. He's always stealing my shoes or other things from me.
My 30th birthday ends up being really unspectacular. But that's okay. In 10 years at the latest, nobody will care anymore. And I had a fantastic 29th birthday instead.
The future
As you can see, my life has been like a rollercoaster over the last few weeks and months. The plans, my emotional state and my plans for the future. Everything is a rollercoaster. And that's how it looks in my head right now with regard to my future plans. I once promised Karli that I would come to Germany in 2 months, at the beginning of August. To be honest, my plans keep changing from time to time. At the moment, my opinion often fluctuates from "I'll fly back to Germany in two weeks and build myself a cozy nest there" to "I'll emigrate to New Zealand and do a carpentry apprenticeship here" to "I'll do like Nick Martin and just never stop traveling". My head is bursting with ideas of what else I could do in this world. I could go over to Australia and work in a mine there. That would certainly be exciting too. I can also apply for a working holiday visa in Japan. And I actually wanted to sign on to a sailing boat here in New Zealand and then head over to one of the islands in Polynesia or Micronesia.
There's a side of me that loves to try things out, that does crazy things.
Side note on the photo album:
I only took a handful of pictures of this time with my cell phone. I do have a few more pictures on the GoPro, including some of the tiny house. But I simply haven't had the time to drag the pictures from the GoPro to the PC, sort them out, adjust the dates and then upload them as soon as I have the internet. That's why there are no photos of the tiny house in there, for example
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