Dreaming of Il Barbone del Mare

The quarantine continues and it is becoming quite dull. If all goes according to plan, we have another 11 days or so inside. Most likely it will be extended. Dreams of sailboats are interrupting my work and CFA preparation and the tracks on my phone are my old sailing books that I put away years ago. When this is all over and life has returned to some level of normalcy, I will buy a small boat. The one that has caught my eye is the Albin Vega 27. It is a pocket blue water cruiser and I have known about it for some time. https://sailboatdata.com/sailboat/vega-27-albin

Dreams of blue water sailing vanished completely after a Sardinia - Mallorca cruise  against a Mistral in 2017 that had me laid out flat in the cabin and incapable of helping my very tough and battle-hardened sailing mates. Blue water sailing was lost to me on that cruise, but coastal cruising still remained an idea. For a few years we had a boat in Liguria and cruised the coast, always staying within sight of land and having a lot of fun visiting towns, swimming from the boat and just enjoying the life in and around the boat and the marina. 

This lifestyle is again a dream and a goal. A search turned up a number of these boats for sale. A few are in the Netherlands, one in Liguria and one in Greece. If I buy one in the Netherlands, I could imagine toying around with it up there for a few weeks and then dropping the mast and motoring through the canals of Belgium and France for a summer. Arriving in the Med I could leave it in a marina for the winter and then bring it to Spain the following year. Alternatively, I could motorbike down to Kavala from Romania this summer and check out the one available there. The biggest coastal cruising dream is to go from Spain to Greece over a summer. If I buy a boat in Greece, then conceivably I could do the reverse journey - spend a summer or two tooling around Greece and then sail the boat back to Spain over the course of a summer. 

All dreams, but good dreams and ones that keep me going during these odd times. 

Standing outside the gate

We are somewhere in the middle of the declared quarantine period. I have lost track or I don't want to think about it in detail anymore, I don't know. What I recall is that Saturday two weeks ago we were on the beach and heard that late in the afternoon the beaches and the paseo maritimo would be closed. The next day we still permitted to leave our homes and we drove around the town to see what the status was. Since then I have not been more than 150 metres from my kitchen. In the grand scheme of things it is not a big deal, and I don't want to sound as if I am complaining. It is new, however, and requires some period of adjustment. My wife and daughter are having fun with it, and I was also until recently. Now I am frustrated. We do consider ourselves lucky. The weather is beautiful, we have an amazing house with various terraces - one of which is on the third floor and views the sea and the mountains - an enclosed patio that I have converted to my office, two balconies and loads of space. We are fine in here, make a fire in the fireplace each evening, eat popcorn and watch movies. On that level, this will likely be a period of life that we fondly remember for a long time. 

On the other side of the world, my father is leaving this life. Whether he is doing so quickly or slowly, is a matter of perspective. The stroke happened December 2018, followed by a month in neurologic intensive care, during which we had no idea what would happen, and then a month in rehabilitation. He came out of it surprisingly well with weakness but no permanent damage. Over the course of the following 14 months I visited six times, spending a combined three months there. We had good times, going to the desert to see wild horses, for picnics, on a road trip to Palm Springs and boating on a lake for my 51st birthday. After a month of intensive care and a month of rehab, to live those sort of events again is like a gift from the universe. We all looked at it like that and really enjoyed those time. Now it seems that it is nearing the end. I would like to travel there again, but I cannot leave the quarantine and even if I could, I could not leave my family alone. The fact that we did spend these fun moments together is solace to me. 

Living this end of life phase through him caused me to think a lot about my own situation. There are not that many years left for me. In an even worse situation, one might think that maybe there are not that many healthy years left. Living this caused me to start thinking differently. Since connecting with Buddhism at around the age of 40 I have been much more awake and clearly was not walking around in a cloud. On some occasions more and some occasions less, I have been quite in touch with life and being mindful of the moment. So I am not coming out of the type of blindness I was in for the first 30 years of my life, I was already mildly illuminated, but now am touching more the fact of worldly limitations. As a result I started changing some habits - drinking less, waking earlier, planning the last few life goals that I want to achieve. That has been good for me and good for my family. Drinking less and waking early in the mornings gives me more time and a less cloudy mind. The few things that I still want to achieve require time and mind and, as a result, I am moving closer to those things. 

Being locked down for a month is accelerating my thoughts. Maybe we will never return to the (overly) free lifestyle that we have been living since the explosion of globalisation 25 years ago. This is a topic I will go into later - the possible consequences of this virus and the subsequent restrictions - and if so, then it is another reason to live today, and when this virus is past, in an even more consequent manner. 

This morning I walked around our urbanisation and even dared to walk outside the main gate and sit on a wall in the sun. Funny, just standing outside the gate, looking down the street at the sea gave an amazing feeling of freedom. Freedom to do what one wants, freedom to live, freedom to not yet be at the end of this life, freedom to undertake the few (or many) possibilities that are still ahead. 

Day 12 and dreaming of freedom

This is day 12 or 13...I have lost track. We have about another three weeks to go. Overall it is not really that bad, but it is new and for someone who is always out doing things, staying in the house for a month is not a normal thing. Finally the sun is shining after a week of rain. Today I will open the house and we will spend the day on the terraces and the patio and this afternoon do a 'beach party' on the third floor terrace. It views the sea on one side and the Sierra Nevada on the other. Since it is at the top of the house and up three flights of stairs, we don't spend enough time up there. 

The entrapment is making me rethink the next stage of life. Yes, I mentally overdo everything and what for my wife is an event that will come and go without effect, my weak mental state, or weakness, has me rethinking everything. This mental weakness, if it is that, is probably the main factor that has held me back in many ways. Something happens, I overreact, throw out all the plans to date and take up some flighty new idea. These days I am full circle back to my old sailboat dreams. In the mid 2010s I was fully into the sailboat life. For a few years we had a share in a 37 footer in the nicest marina in Liguria and spent roughly one week per month aboard. Those were amazing times. We became bored of Liguria and my wife does not particularly like life aboard, so we closed that chapter of our lives with wonderful memories. Now I am thinking of a next boat. This one would be smaller, less expensive and more solitary. My dream right now (will probably change soon) is to sail it to Greece from Spain in the summer of 2021. I could easily take two months of holiday from work and bugger off for that short time. Since my high-seas experience is not admirable - I suffer from really bad sea sickness - I would follow the coast and stay within short distance of land. In that way I can wait out and rough weather. Time is not an issue, so if I find a nice place I can stay there until I am ready to leave. Sailing mates from the past would laugh at my ideas when they think about my sufferings at sea. My level of seasickness should keep me far away from boats for the rest of my life, but I am not the only one to suffer and others have overcome it. Apparently Lord Nelson suffered his whole life from seasickness.
If the world returns, at least in part, to normalcy by this summer, then I believe that I will do a long motorcycle tour, rather than kicking back and relaxing at home. 

Day 8.....

According to the initial government decree, next Sunday is the end of the quarantine. It is highly doubtful, probably almost impossible, that it will end then. Even from the beginning the 15-day period seemed arbitrary. As if telling us 30 days would have put us in a panic and telling us a week would have seemed ridiculous from the start. Today is Sunday and the weekends are more challenging. At least during the week my daughter has classes online and my work continues as normal. She attends a private school in Marbella that follows an English curriculum and sees her dressing like the characters from a Harry Potter film each morning. It is a wonderful school and I am very happy to pay the significant monthly fees. 

I find that attending a different sort of school, one in which the children are treated in a particular manner, not in the main stream fashion is an essential investment. Public schools, in my eyes, are there to fulfil the basic requirements and build a certain foundation for the everyman. The likelihood of rising to greater heights from being among the everyman exists, but it is a harder climb. With additional attention and dedication and better content, I feel that a child is already cognisant that he or she is beyond the masses and can build a greater course of life upon that. This has nothing to do with the level of work that one must invest and the effort to succeed, that is the same regardless of where one finds himself, at any age. My belief is more about starting from a higher point. The effort is the same and the struggle are the same, but if my daughter can start already higher up the mountain and spare herself part of the lower level struggle, then this is what is my responsibility to do. She should start where I can put her, on my shoulders so to speak, rather than at the ground level. 

My work is helping me through this time as well. As a lawyer in the software industry I have been working on a remote-work basis for more than six years. Supporting offices around the world, some that I attend on occasion but most that I handle via phone and internet, nothing really changes for me. In a perfect world I look forward to Mondays and now just as much, or even more. I remember all too well hearing my father say every Friday, 'TGIF' -thank god it is Friday, after another week of suffering at work he hated. What a sad state of life. Tragic. I can only thank the universe that I don't have to live that way. I thank the universe and I also thank the circumstances that caused me to break out of that mould and move on to a life based upon self-confidence and self-belief and achievement. Those are the qualities that saved me from the path of misery that I was on for so many years. 

The sun is shining. I have opened the terraces and the patio, put them in order, turned on cafe tunes and plan the day. The CFA 3 exam, scheduled for June, was cancelled this week and now I have much more time on my hands. Studying was consuming two hours per day and I was already way ahead of the preparation curve. Now I will scale back, hit it for one hour per day and be very prepared for the exam in December. The materials are brilliant and learning them is a pleasure. Being a CFA charterholder won't change my work very much, but in the future it could be useful. 

Again, the sun is shining, we still have food and water and electricity and the internet. So far so good. I suspect those things will become harder to have in the near future. Let's hope that we manage. Dreaming of grill parties in Figino this summer.....

One week of quarantine

Today marks one week of quarantine. It has been quite easy so far. My work, which is remote anyway, continues as usual. Natasha's school moved online very quickly and she has lessons every day from 0845. Today, Saturday, and tomorrow are harder to handle without that regular schedule, but we are managing. Monday we will go food shopping! We are excited and regularly thinking of things we want to cook or bake and eat and adding to the already long list. By now everyone in the western world is experiencing a lock down, so I won't go into what a shopping trip entails. We have heard from friends and family about queuing outside the store and maintaining distance to other shoppers. My cousin in Hamburg told me that in the shops there not a word is spoken. The shops are full but one could hear a pin drop.
The situation around Europe continues to worsen. The Chinese have sent medical supplies and medical teams to Italy to help the overloaded health system. Our hope is that the results that the Chinese seem to have attained - stopping the virus in a relatively short time - will evidence themselves here also. The Chinese are surely better at quarantining people, though, so I doubt the results will be as quickly attained here.
On the geopolitical front the Chinese will make huge strides forward with these events. They were already on the doorstep to eclipse the west, but if it is true that they stopped the spread of virus and are now coming here to help us, that is another huge turn of the tide in global power.

9 years on and a brave new world

There are no police looking for quarantine violators at 6 in the morning, so I was up and out to get exercise before the sun came up. This is the fifth day of quarantine. We are in Spain. I arrived here in the last week of February and was going to return to Switzerland for a while in March to check mail, pay bills, ride my motorcycle and go to the office for a few days. We took a week of holiday to drive campers around Portugal with friends when the virus outbreak hit Italy. Portugal was safe while we were there and we watched events from far away as we had parties on the beach. Returning to Spain the situation continue to look dire in Italy, especially in Lombardia, which is only 5 kms from our home. Prudence - and my wife - told me to stay here in our house in Spain. The risks of passing through Malpensa were infection, the possibility of not being able to travel to Switzerland from Italy and also the possibility of not being able to return to my family in Spain. Although my wife and daughter changed their residences from Switzerland to Spain in September, I am still domiciled at home and pay my taxes at home. Although weeks before it actually happened, we envisioned a situation in which the countries would close their borders and since I have no right of residence in Spain, there was risk that the authorities would not let me reenter the country. 

All of February I had been in Switzerland and the US and it was important that I stayed for a while. This is day 6 of a 15 day quarantine. So far it has gone well. My work is fully remote, so for me each workday is basically normal, although there are new crisis-related legal issues to confront, along with ordinary business. If you ask me, the ordinary business will wind down to nearly nothing over the next months. The first half of the year is a wash and there is little hope for anything positive in the economy to happen. There is a lot of possibility for the society to behave differently and more consciously after this, and we will see if that happens, but for the most part people are blind and won't reflect on these events. More about that later. 

Into the Ukraine

My dear readers. It has been ages since my last post and for this I apologise. Traveling has become more intense, more challenging and has allowed less time for writing and philosophizing. In order to bring the blog up to date, I will do one long entry encompassing everything that has happened in about the last three weeks. There will be less detail but in the book I will write after this tour I will include all events I experienced.

Having left so early in the morning, by 800 I am at the port on the far side of the river from Galati in order to take the ferry across the Danube. Enjoy a coffee and watch the activity in the port. The sky is wonderful, I am feeling fine, full of energy and excited about crossing the border into the Ukraine. Galati proves to be nothing special – I did not expect it to be - and I am in and out quickly. In order enter the Ukraine I have to first enter the Republic of Moldova, ride about 5 kms in it and then cross into Ukraine. This meant a lot of border hassle. First to leave Romania, which was not too bad, then to enter Moldova, which I thought would be a big deal due to the reputation that Moldava enjoys. The border guards were however very professional and even friendly, laughing when I told them that I was going to ride to Odessa. They quickly stamped my passport and I was through. Moldova has always held a mysterious place in my mind and it was strange and exciting to be here. It makes me think of ex-Soviet bureaucracy, gangsters and gypsies. After a few kilometers there is a joint Ukraine-Moldovan customs-type check, though I am not really sure what it is. That was a bit more complicated and I had to wait in a room not knowing what to do. I was sure that I was going to be hit up for a ‘gift’ but that did not happen. It just took time. A few kilometers later I left Moldova and though had only been there for about 30 minutes had to go through the formalities again, and then both passport and customs to enter the Ukraine. In total there were 5 checks in the course of 5 kilometers, but it was nothing but bureaucracy, no necessary bribes and it was not bad.

Once in the Ukraine there are two routes to Odessa – the main route that re-enters Moldova, carries on for about 50 km and then re-enters Ukraine and means two more border controls – and one that swings way south but stays within the Ukraine. Having just gone through 5 controls I was not too keen on doing another two that day but the main route to Odessa was much shorter, so I chose to deal with the bureaucracy. Nonetheless, after just a few kilometers the main road changed from bad pavement to cobblestones. Cobblestones. This is the main route between Ukraine and Romania and during Soviet times surely was of significant importance but still, made of cobblestones. Such a surface on a bike is not a pleasure so I turned back and headed down the route that swings south along the Ukrainian side of the Danube delta. The route was piss-poor and the heat overbearing, but there was very little traffic and so it was ok. Hell, I was in the Ukraine, and on my way to Odessa, so feeling quite good about the adventure. The problem with riding in the Ukraine is that the towns are very far apart, the roads are bad and there is nothing to see except fields, fields and more fields. Every 30 kms or so one can see an old collective farm, but these are largely abandoned and so it is just fields and fields. Within days I was no longer looking left or right but riding along more than half zoned out and just staring at a point about 3 meters in front of the bike to watch for and avoid large holes. The riding was not pleasant.

As evening approached on the first day I was still far from the town of Izmail, which I had sort of selected as a target for that day. There was a collective on the horizon and I thought I might find a place there to pitch my tent. It was deserted however, but down the road I saw a sign for the town of Larschanka and rode toward it. In the town I stopped to talk to some townspeople about sleeping in their gardens but was not able to make myself understood or to convince them that I was not a threat. Whatever it was, I carried on through the small streets. At one point there was a house with a small market in front and many people milling about. I started to explain to them that I was looking for a place to sleep and suddenly a young woman appeared and talked to me in English. I told her what I was seeking, she communicated to the group and then all the people started talking amongst themselves about where I could go. It looked like a nice, friendly group and I hoped that I could stay near there and partake in the happenings of the street. Maria told me to wait a moment and then soon came out to tell me I could stay in her house with her parents and brother. They set about to put things in order and I sat on the bench across the street from their house and had a chat with Igor and Andrei. There is a lot to tell about my stay there, but for the moment I will just say that it was wonderful. Everyone made me feel completely at home, cooked great food, fired up the Russian sauna, had the neighbours around for a dinner and big talk and a lot of vodka. I had my own room and we talked a lot and on the first night I was invited to stay the next day to go fishing in the delta. The next day with vodka hangovers Nikolai (Kola) and I piled into the neighbour’s old Volga and drove down to the delta and in a filthy old wooden boat set out to fish for a few hours. Luckily we did not catch anything but did buy a load of fish from one Kola’s friends who is a professional fisherman. Later that day I was invited to the old Soviet shooting facility and fired some of the guns. The next night we had a huge pot of fish stew, a lot of homemade wine and more great talk. The whole stay with Kola, Mascha and Tanja deserves a chapter for itself and will get one in the book.

From there it was another three days of riding through fields and strong headwinds, the monotony being broken only by imposing soviet monuments. Nothing special about it but I was coming closer to the destination and counting the time in days and no longer in weeks or months. When I finally arrive at the Black Sea again just south of Odessa it is like a wave of joy to see something cool and inviting after days of fields. Here there are no long distance cyclists or other westerners with whom to stop and chat and break the routine. I am alone in the fields and although it is only for a few days, I am feeling worn down by the many thousands of kms, the headwinds, the monotony and probably also by all the drinking I am doing whenever there is occasion to do so. So when I arrive at the sea it is like a revelation and I feel renewed. I pass through small and simple beach towns and then arrive on a Friday afternoon in the Odessa beach mecca of Zatoka. It is the commencement of a three day weekend and there is a lot of action with massive amounts of holidaymakers arriving. I walk all up and down beach searching for a room for one night but because this is a holiday weekend no lodging wants to let a room for one night. I had basically resolved to hang out until late and then sleep on the beach but talking with two men on street who are advertising rooms for let, they ask me about my journey. Like almost all men here they have worked on ships and can speak some English. A group forms around us and all are talking about my bike and journey. One nice man hears that there is nowhere for me to stay and says “come with me”.  I follow him to where he is staying and tells the administration “this guy rode here 50 days from Switzerland and can’t get a room, do something for him”. I am able to get a very simple wooden cabin, more like a shack, for 70 ghrivna. The family holidaying in a cabin nearby from Kiev sees my bike and he and his family come over to talk. He is also a cyclist and I am soon invited to them to sit on their porch and drink vodka and eat Russian food. In the evening I visit the holiday town. There is loads going on and I have a beer and walk on beach.

In the morning the stench of the communal loos has me out early looking for a coffee. I spend a few hours in the town, visiting the beach, writing, repairing flat tire, then head out to Odessa. The ride to Odessa is only 55 kms but is hard because there is a lot of traffic and hilly. Kola, from Larschanka, is going to be arriving in Odessa today as well in order to work there for a month. He will be staying with friends in the city and I have been invited as well. When I arrive I start to ask around for the address he has given me. I am expecting an industrial city but find a very quiet town with peaceful, wide streets and general quiet that makes me think of Vilnius. I talk to some Azeris who are very curious about my journey from Switzerland and why I am in Odessa.