How is it that flies can find their way in through a tiny gap in the window but never out again?
Posts between 2019/01 and 2019/02 (28 out of 28)
- Started travelling, around Europe, mostly. Did not fly.
- Finally wrapped up the last Social Web WG specs.
- Left OCCRP and joined ODS.
- Drafted half a novel.
- Went to a couple of conferences, for either fun or profit.
- Refaced my website.
- Made many new friends, some fleeting, some lingering on WhatsApp or Signal.
- Words
- Travel
- Work
- Code
- Stuff
- January: travel practice
- February: re-finding my nomad
- March: slow down
- April: new experiences, and academia flashbacks
- May: beaches and history and solitude
- June: home again home again
- July: off-route
- August: back on plan
- September: Lithuania is underrated
- October: writing, stability, then a detour
- November: I LOVE POLAND
- December: to the sea, better late than never
- Reflection on 2018
- 2019
- Long stays: Austria (18 nights), Bosnia (49 nights), (new:) Estonia (26 nights), Georgia (15 nights), Greece (26 nights), Hungary (16 nights), Latvia (23 nights), Lithuania (27 nights), Poland (51 nights).
- Short stays: Bulgaria (2 nights), Croatia (7 nights), Czech Republic (12 nights), Finland (2 nights), France (6 nights), Malta (3 nights), Serbia (2 nights), Slovak Republic (8 nights), Slovenia (3 nights), UK (34 nights total, not consecutive), Ukraine (4 nights).
- Transit-length/single day stays: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey.
- 5 months, 13 days, 10 hours, 7 minutes and 7 seconds on an adventure
- 1 month, 24 days, 1 hour, 49 minutes and 38 seconds at home
- 21 days, 17 hours 44 minutes, and 22 seconds out getting food
- 20 days, 15 hours and 55 minutes with logging turned off
- 12 days, 13 hours, 1 minute and 33 seconds in an office
- 6 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes and 59 seconds in meetings
- 3 days and 6 hours at an event
- and was out exercising for 2 days, 1 hour and 10 minutes.
- alephdata/aleph
- alephdata/flexicadastre
- alephdata/followthemoney
- alephdata/memorious
- csarven/articles
- csarven/lr-thesis
- linkeddata/dokieli
- linkedresearch/linkedresearch.org
- occrp-attic/exactitude
- occrp/tech.occrp.org
- open-contracting/extensions-data-collector
- open-contracting/kingfisher-scrape
- OpenDataServices/cove
- OpenDataServices/developer-docs
- OpenDataServices/fireproofbox-standard
- OpenDataServices/lib-cove-web
- OpenDataServices/sedldata
- openownership/cove-bods
- perma-id/w3id.org
- rhiaro/admin
- rhiaro/birds
- rhiaro/cashcache
- rhiaro/ch-seco-sanctions
- rhiaro/evieblue
- rhiaro/homeiswherethehammockis.com
- rhiaro/ocds-memorious-crawlers
- rhiaro/pym
- rhiaro/questforbrothers
- rhiaro/salvage
- rhiaro/sloph
- rhiaro/sloph
- rhiaro/unknown-sample
- rhiaro/vocab-logs
- rhiaro/zulip2md
- w3c/activitystreams
- w3c/credweb
- Set up a real travel blog style website. Instead I improved my photo galleries and general display of rhiaro.co.uk though.
- Complete a draft of Quest for Brothers. I did a little bit of writing and editing, and a lot more planning and world building though. I guess I thought I'd write QfB for this year's NaNoWriMo, but I wrote Birds instead.
- Write endings to Of the Moon and Milo's World. Just didn't happen.
- Write a short story every month. I managed one month and then dropped the ball.
- I didn't go to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro or Romania, and I only passed through Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey.
- Changed my job, which was a very tough decision but I'm pretty sure I made the right one.
- Zigzagging so much to visit the UK and Sarajevo for work and Georgia and France for conferences.
- I went to Georgia, Ukraine and France, and spent more time in Austria than expected.
- Took a ferry across the Black Sea. I was saving that for a future braver me, but it was fine.
- I read much more fiction than I expected, I think.
- My Fairphone made it to December! But it's on its very last legs, and as of the beginning of Dec I'm only turning it on in emergencies because the batteries are pretty fucked and charging is agony.
- Came in well under my budget for the year; months I overspent were still outbalanced by months I spent little. This is definitely thanks to spending about 4 months total rent-free with friends and family or on Vipassana retreats.
- Albania
- Belarus? Maybe
- Bulgaria
- Greece
- Kosovo
- Macedonia
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Romania
- Serbia
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- Was pretty much rained in all week. Also lazy. It snowed in the mountains, but not at the coast. Pretty cold though.
- Worked on a bit of OCDS scrapers stuff and a bit of CoVE stuff.
- Proofread a chapter of a thesis I really hope will be finished soon.
- Looked at the ocean.
- Re-implemented burrow (ActivityPub checkin client) and started on farpoint (ActivityPub travel log client).
- Listened to the ocean.
- Eleni and Dmitris took me on a mini roadtrip to Skala Sykaminias, a super cute tiny village by the sea in the north of Lesvos. It was much colder and windier there.
- Did some more work with Scrapy, fixed some bugs, made some new bugs, found some holes in the plot, generally a bit frustrating.
- Eleni and Dmitris took me on an adventure to Sigri, to see the petrified forest, associated museum, and a monestary on a mountaintop.
- There were some really good storms.
- Started reading The Disposessed.
- Spent a day in Mytilini with Eleni, stayed overnight in a hostel, then caught the ferry out to Syros early in the morning. Farewell, Lesvos. It was fantastic.
- Settled into a nice hillside studio across the bay from Ermoupolis, Syros.
- Went for a wander around town and nearby hills.
- Remotely attended ~3 days of ODSC OGM and co-working time.
- Little bits of hacking on sloph and burrow.
- Thought about DIDs and Verified Credentials.
- Met a cat called Zizi.
- Lazed around a bit.. read The Disposessed.. somehow finished Pine Gap, Secret City; started Discovery S2; a ton more Travelers; and a few movies :s
- Edited a thesis chapter.
- Finished The Disposessed, started Left Hand of Darkness.
- Enjoyed some lightning storms.
- Stayed in bed a lot. Finished Travelers, and some movies.
- Did some editorial work on the Verifiable Credentials and Decentralised Identifiers specs.
- Changed my end-of-Feb-March plans.
- Submitted a paper to Rebooting the Web of Trust 8.
- Started on internationalising the BODS documentation.
2018 in review
In 2017 I finished my thesis in Malaysia, flew back to Europe, got a job in Sarajevo and settled down there for a bit. It would have been easy to stay. Too easy. Being comfortable makes me uncomfortable, so in 2018 I became once more an everything-I-own-in-a-backpack no-fixed-abode full-time digital nomad.
I posted logs or photos or blogposts to my site 4,817 times and posted 9,520 individual photos.
tl;dr
Goals for 2019: Proceed on current trajectory, but write more.
Skip to:
Words
I wrote 437 things. On my site I posted 350 short notes or commentary with photos, and 87 longer articles. I also logged non-blogpost writing 34 times. These all comprise approximately 122,401 words in total (47,804 off-site). That's a mean of 335.35 words and 1.20 posts per day.
I wrote about 217 different topics, with the most common being travel (181), life (89), food (46), week in review (44), vegan (38), hacking (26), Georgia (the country) (13), sloph (13), tourism (12), Sarajevo, Bosnia (10), Poland (10), and nanowrimo (10).
My NaNoWriMo project was Birds, and I also wrote small bits of Quest for Brothers and Offcast.
Travel
I stopped in a total of 24 countries; I visited 9 countries for more than a couple of weeks, 7 of which I had never been to before, and passed through (with a stop of 12 hours to 10 days) 15 others (6 new). I achieved my goal of not flying at all, and have way better travel stories as a result.
I spent 31 nights sleeping in transit (on buses, ferries, trains, etc). Apart from that, I spent 77 nights in short-term rental accommodation, 71 nights in AirBnbs, 69 nights in hostel dorms, 56 nights at friends' places, 24 nights with family, 23 nights at Vipassana meditation centres, 8 nights in hotels, 5 nights shared AirBnbs covered by work, and 1 night camping.
In total I spent 2 months, 26 days, 6 hours, 56 minutes, and 21 seconds in transit (this includes walking between places). To travel long distance or internationally, I took 52 bus journeys, 18 long distance trains, 9 ferries, and made 8 journeys in a car (either hitchhiking or a ride with a friend). I also bought tickets for local bus, tram or metro 44 times, took 10 taxis, and had 3 rides on a cable car.
When I wasn't on the move, I spent:
Work
I worked remotely one day a week for W3C through January, in-person 3 days a week for OCCRP from until February then remotely for OCCRP from February until May flexibly between 10 and 40 hours per week. I joined Open Data Services Co-operative at the end of May, and work 3 days per week with a fully remote team, with a couple of trips back to the UK for in-person meetings. Towards the end of December, I picked up an extra one day a week of spec-writing contracting work with Digital Bazaar.
Code
This is my Github commit log:
Github counted 790 'contributions'. This includes commits over 27 repositories, 10 of which I created (in 2018).
This is significantly less than last year. Which I think means I successfully did less work, which was one of my goals.
Here is the list of repos (expands inline). I'm too lazy to link them. Some of these are private.
Stuff
I purchased or otherwise acquired something on 928 occasions, spending a total of approximately €11,080.72 for the whole year. I used 13 different currencies (EUR, RSD, BAM, PLN, GBP, CZK, UAH, GEL, TRY, BGN, HRK, USD, HUF). This is an average expenditure of €30.36 per day, €213.09 per week, or €923.39 per month. My rough budget for everything has been €1000, so I call this a success.
This includes donations to charities/organisations/people, gifts, and buying other peoples' food or bus fare. This does not include ATM fees, bank fees and loss through currency conversion. It would be too depressing to try to add this up.
Naturally the things I acquired the most often were food (435 times), restaurant (345), transit (147), groceries (143), takeaway (98), and leisure (75).
On accommodation, I spent €4,175.61 in total, averaging €11.44 per night, and €347.97 per month. I spent €1,891.64 on transit (buses, trains, etc).
I spent €763.49 on groceries, buying them 143 times. I bought food that was ready to eat on 435 occasions, spending €3,012.56; 79.3% of the time this was in restaurants and 22.5% to take away.
On 43 occasions I got something for free. The most expensive thing I bought was 20 nights shelter in Tallinn (AirBnB) (€597) and the cheapest thing (which wasn't free) was Old Oyster card refunds (x3) (€-27.49). I spent on average €11.94 per time. 97.4% of my acquire posts have photos attached. You can see them all at /stuff
January: travel practice
I woke up on the 1st of January 2018 in Malta, with a resolution not to fly at all this year. I made my way back to Sarajevo by two ferries and four buses, over three days, via Catania and Napoli (Italy) and Zagreb (Croatia). Did some touristing in Bosnia, this month, in the environs of Sarajevo (Goat's Bridge, Bobsled track), and to Visocko pyramids and Mostar. Watched a lot of Star Trek the Original Series, which was a slog. ActivityPub finally made it to W3C Recommendation, and so did WebSub.
19 January posts. Weeks in review:
February: re-finding my nomad
My last Sarajevo adventure was to Vrelo Bosna. I convinced nice people at OCCRP to let me go remote, and said farewell. I made plans to head south to Montenegro, then promptly changed them and went to my Mum's for two weeks. There was a wee bird and a Grandma who needed a bit of looking after, and I got to catch up with old friends and deflate a little. And let my Mum cut my dreads off, and then shaved my head. I saw Bown, Laurel and Jamie in London and Pete and Alan in Lincoln.
I took a bus to Prague (Czech Republic) via a day in Amsterdam, and spent the final few days of the month freezing my ass off there.
24 February posts. Weeks in review:
March: slow down
The month started with a long weekend in Ljubljana (Slovenia), visting Elizabeth and her family.
Then I headed to Budapest (Hungary) for the rest of the month. Naomi came to visit, and we went to thermal baths.
23 March posts. Weeks in review:
April: new experiences, and academia flashbacks
From Budapest I got a ride to the mountains near Mariazelle, Austria. I served on a 10 day Vipassana retreat, working in the kitchen to prepare food for 175 people every day, which was some of the most fun I've ever had. I got a ride back to Vienna, then took a bus to Bratislava (Slovak Republic), where I spent a week. I had a comically tiny flat, and immediately fell in love with the city.
My sister turned up for the weekend, and then together we went back to Vienna. She had a conference, and I bummed in her university-sponsored AirBnb for a week. I dyed my buzzcut purple, blue and green.
After that, I headed to Brno by bus, and met my roommate Petra from the earlier Vipassna retreat. I stayed for a week with her and her family in South Moravia, in the Czech countryside. We meditated and did yoga and went on walks in nature and that was lovely. We spent a night at her friend's in Prague, and then I caught a bus to Lyon (France).
I stayed there for TheWebConf, chaired the Developers' Track, and helped out with the Researcher Centric Scholarly Comms workshop. It was nice to not be seeking something from the conference, no need to further my academic career or make certain contacts. I could just hang out with cool people, and complain about the food.
I bussed from Lyon to Munich (Germany) and spent a day there before continuing to Krakow (Poland).
Then Open Data Services offered me a job, though I wouldn't start til June. I thought I might take a month off, but worked another month for OCCRP anyway.
43 April posts. Weeks in review:
May: beaches and history and solitude
I spent a couple of days in Krakow, before taking a train to Gdynia in the north. Here I settled in a shared flat for a month. There was a heatwave, and I got to spend my downtime hiking astonishing white sandy beaches, dunes, and wild pine forests. I walked the Hel Peninsula. I also learnt more about the history of Eastern Europe from museums in Gdansk and Gdynia than I ever learnt at school.
I met Adam at a CouchSurfing meetup and he drove me far enough that we could walk along the beach to the Kaliningrad (Russia) border with Poland, we got caught in a rainstorm, and then I introduced him to the marvels of vegan pizza.
I bussed back to London (via Amsterdam where I saw the Soton crew at WebSci) for my induction into ODS and some training.
42 May posts. Weeks in review:
June: home again home again
I spent a couple of weeks in the UK, met ODS colleagues in London and saw family and Tigo and Laurel, TomSka, Polly, Chloe, Doc, Oli. I went to Edinburgh to catch up with friends as well.
I went back to Sarajevo via Vienna and Prague for a couple of weeks. Handed off some work, swapped my work laptop back for my personal one, and of course saw friends and enjoyed Sarajevo in the summertime. I spent the last night on the sofa in Prana Yoga Studio, then rode with Aida (my yoga teacher) and others to Croatia.
29 June posts. Weeks in review:
July: off-route
The first week of July was a yoga retreat with Aida on the beautiful island of Iz, just off the coast of Zadar. It was hot, the sea was clear, and the hotel was all vegetarian and there was no wifi in the rooms. I took most of the week off work and relaxed, and talked about yoga and veganism and Yugoslavia with Juliana and Amila (and Sofia).
I stayed another night in Zadar, before bussing to Sofia (Bulgaria). There I spent a few days in a hostel, and met Franzi.
I bussed directly from Sofia to Istanbul (Turkey), bought another ticket and waited a few hours, then went all the way through Turkey to the Georgian border. Unexpectedly the bus didn't actually cross the border, but dumped the few remaining passengers at Sarp, the most chaotic border crossing I've ever seen. It was hot, there were hundreds of people, many carrying giant carpets, and actual fights broke out in the 'lines'. After passport control the Georgian side was airconditioned, and more civilised. I don't know where all the people dispersed to. I caught a marshrutka to Batumi, a city on the Black Sea, and spent some days there in a hostel. It's a very strange place, but in a nice way.
Then I bussed to Tbilisi. I was advised to take the train, but left it too late and there were no tickets left. I stayed in Tbilisi with Jason and Elspeth for a little over a week, and attended the Open Governence Partnership conference. I met some of my ODS colleagues I hadn't met yet IRL, as well as some folks from OCCRP, and it was pretty fun. I met Eric, Jason's vegan friend, and Georgian food blew my mind. We went to the Rachuli mountains for a long weekend after the conference.
I took a train back to Batumi, spent a few days deflating in a nice apartment on the seafront, and absorbing more Batumi weirdness. My ferry out was postponed a day, and then delayed another day after boarding. Eventually it left, and I spent two days traversing the Black Sea to Ukraine on a hand-me-down Lithuanian vessel crewed only by people who spoke Russian, with all the customs forms and other documents in Turkish. It was a bit weird.
I arrived in Odesa (Ukraine), which was hot and as weird as Batumi but in different ways. I stayed in an awful hostel, and took the train out across the country to Lviv.
56 July posts. Weeks in review:
August: back on plan
I spent a few days in Lviv in a lovely hostel, in the company of some of the amazing and generous people (Sasha and Roman) who work at Quinta Group with government procurement data.
My explore-the-Baltics-in-the-summer plan was a little delayed, but eventually I made it to Estonia. Almost a week in Tartu to begin with, and then on to Tallinn for the rest of the month. I started out by almost immediately getting locked in the City Library. I had an AirBnb to myself, and spent my time wandering beaches and woods and wildlife conservation areas and touristy things. I met Vandesh at a vegan picnic in the park which I found through CouchSurfing.
I got a cool sideshave haircut, and bleached my hair blonde, aiming for white but not quite getting it. I also applied for Estonian e-residency.
I took the ferry to Helsinki in time for the MyData conference.
45 August posts. Weeks in review:
September: Lithuania is underrated
I didn't attend the MyData conference, but bengo let me crash in his AirBnb and I went to the social events. We went back to Tallinn, which I had planned to leave immediately but struggled a bit and stayed an extra night. I managed to drag myself away eventually, and stopped in Parnu, Estonia's seaside town.
I spent a week crawling my way around the Baltic coast, aiming for Klaipeda (Lithuania). I took a bus from Parnu to Riga, then Riga to Kolka (Latvia). One night on the beach of the Cape in a barrel-house in one of the most beautiful places ever. I hitched a ride from my barrel-house-neighbours, Tomas and Eva (from Warsaw), around the coast to Ventspils, then on to Liepaja, where I stayed in a hostel for a couple of nights.
I took a bus to Klaipeda, and spent a week there. I cycled the Curonian Spit, but could only manage one way. It was beautiful.
Then I spent two weeks in Kaunas, in a super friendly small hostel. I met Paul, who worked there, and they started referring to me as the "long term resident". Kaunas is a highly underrated small city, with oodles of river and nice places to walk, as well as a cute old town. The Pope also came by while I was there.
I went to Vilnius for a week, by train. Stayed in a hostel over a giant club, and had either attend or sleep through a rave or two. Cafe worked and touristed and treora showed up for a few days. Spent a day in Trakai too.
59 September posts. Weeks in review:
October: writing, stability, then a detour
After a month of hostels and buses, it was time to slow it down again. I spent the whole month in Riga (Latvia), with a studio apartment AirBnb to myself once more. On the first weekend, Claire (who I met in Malaysia, in Wholey Wonder) came to visit. I lied, I didn't spend the whole month. At the last minute I decided in the third week to head back to the UK for the ODS OGM in Nottingham, and had just enough time to squeeze in a visit to my family before heading back to Riga. Some touristing, and mushrooms!
I did NaNoWriMo, a month early, managing over 43k words of a story I love despite the travel and work and guests. I picked up my Estonian e-residency from the embassy in Riga.
The weather started to deteriorate.
24 October posts. Weeks in review:
November: I LOVE POLAND
I went back to Poland, where the weather was much better. I spent a week comprehensively falling in love with Warsaw, and then went out into the countryside to sit a 10 day Vipassana retreat. I had made no onward plans, and got a ride to Wroclaw, which I spent a week comprehensively falling in love with as well. There are lots of islands, rivers, bridges, but the weather was getting colder still.
There's a direct bus to Bratislava (Slovak Republic), so that's where I went next. I met up with Helmut, who I met on the Vipassana retreat in Austria, for an afternoon and evening. I still loved Bratislava, but it kind of pales in comparison to Poland.
I went to Vienna, then on to Sarajevo (Bosnia i Herzegovina). Logically this is not a sensible thing to do in the winter, but if you zoom the map out really far it's sort of in the right direction. And of course I saw Elizabeth and Almedina and jen and Edin and Rysiek and Czesiek and Aida and whomever happened to walk into the Data Team office at OCCRP while I was hanging out there. And unexpectedly I bumped into Juliana (are you paying attention? I met her at the yoga retreat in Croatia in July).
22 November posts. Weeks in review:
December: to the sea, better late than never
Then it got smoggy. Really smoggy. I carved my way through the air to East Sarajevo bus station, and left for Belgrade (Serbia).
I spent a few days in Belgrade, because I hadn't been there in quite a few years. I'll never love Belgrade, but it's alright. Bus ticket negotiation was tricky by email and the web, but in person I was helped very well, and went directly to Thessaloniki (Greece). It was a relief to reach the sea, and the threat of freezing temperatures was finally abated.
After a week of cafe working and very gentle touristing, I went to Kavala for a day, then caught a ferry to Mytilene, Lesbos. I took the bus across the island to Petra, when it eventually left, and settled in to a studio flat right on the sea front. The town is very small, and quiet in the off season; most cafes and restaurants are closed down. My host, Eleni and her family are extraordinarily generous, and I'm really being looked after. Lesbos is an island rich in variety of flora and fauna with beaches and mountains of all kinds to explore. Local olives are great, and Greeks are generally a hospitable, if loud, bunch.
Got one day a week of Web standards related contracting work. Should be fun, but 3 days a week suits me well so not sure if will live to regret an extra one, we'll see.
I got a great haircut, and dyed my hair dusty grey-purple.
39 December posts. Weeks in review:
Reflection on 2018
A pretty successful year, I think. My tl;dr goals were "write more, travel more, work less." I achieved all of those, right up until this month where I picked up some extra work, but still not enough to make me full time.
I aimed to sit another Vipassana retreat, and I managed to serve one and sit one.
I focussed a lot on conscious eating, reduced the amount I eat, and waste I produce from takeaway food.
Some specific things I didn't do were:
Some things I did that I didn't expect were:
I've become a lot better at understanding my own needs and rhythms. I have a good idea of when I need solitude, or when it is going to be bad for me, and what I should do to feel better if that happens. For most of the year I roughly alternated between staying in hostel dorms, with friends or family, and getting a flat to myself. I mostly got it right, but there were times when being with people too much or being alone too much got to me.
I continue to meet people who are astonished that I travel alone, and this reminds me just how important it is to me. Of course it's nice to spend time with friends and friendly strangers, even long stretches, but ultimately I still need my day-to-day to be completely untethered from anyone else. I appreciate never having to compromise, being able to make decisions and change my mind and never having to explain myself or convince someone else. I know how to plan a day for me, the kinds of places I'm willing to stay, how fast I walk, how long I spend in museums, how much effort I'm willing to put in to find a vegan restaurant with a wrong address on happycow; throwing someone else into the mix makes that impossible. Even someone I think I know well, or someone with whom I have a lot in common. Call me selfish, but never having to check in to see how someone else is doing is absolute bliss.
I discovered, or perhaps for the first time managed to vocalise, the feeling of arriving in a brand new place I know nothing about. I felt it a lot this year, and very distinctly on some specific occasions. It's easy to get swept up in the rhythm of travel. No trip feels special when your whole life is making trips. Things become a haze of movement, bus schedules, logistics, finding food, taking photos, pretty landscapes, walking tours. But I take it as slow as I can, and stop to appreciate the rush of being somewhere for the first time. Especially somewhere I know nobody, and nobody knows me. And every time I do, nothing compares.
Sort of related is enjoying making do with what's available in a new place. My diet changes every month based on what local food I can buy, and how I prepare meals and coffee changes because of the kitchen facilities I can access. I've stayed in places with only microwaves, only stovetops, only grills, or no kitchen at all, and figured out how to make meals. I learnt at least half a dozen different ways to make coffee, and that a great many different household objects can be re-purposed as a rolling pin.
Having a low-pressure job and working 3 days a week is enormously good for my mental health. Writing code is often frustrating, and often boring, but I don't miss academia or deadlines at all. Having a schedule that ensures I have time to hike, to read fiction, to hack on my own stuff, to write, and most importantly to just be with nobody expecting any outputs or results, is amazing. I really appreciate having a flexible job, where I can switch days or hours around if I need to for travel reasons, or if my head just wasn't in the right place to be productive on a work day, I can make it up another time.
It's been well over a year now, but I still feel the lightness of being free from you-should-be-writing guilt. Of course, there is always more to do. But I don't feel bad about not doing it. I could be a hundred times more 'productive' if I wanted to. But I don't want to. And that's okay.
I also value being part of an amazing remote team now. Checking in by video call has become a habit; one I thought would be too social for me before I started, but I have acclimatised. Text-based communication is still my preferred, but seeing the faces of my colleagues every workday morning is.. just nice.
I thought a lot this year about how to provide safety and comfort for people who need it. My Vipassana kitchen experience cemented in me that I want to one day open a pay-as-you-want hearty healthy vegan kitchen, and my social media timelines full of people who are having a hard time and just need a place to go has had me thinking about how a pay-as-you-want hostel/shelter might work. One thing I miss while I'm travelling is not being able to offer people a place to stay. It's a way off, and I have no idea yet where that would be, but it's on my mind. Meanwhile, what I can do is donate money to organisations who can provide these kinds of things, or to individuals who ask for help on the internet (or sometimes in person, on the street).
In the medium term, I would definitely not mind transitioning away from tech.
2019
I plan to continue to travel in the same way through 2019. How much time I spend in EU countries may depend on Brexit and like wow, really who knows how that's going to go. It may have no effect on my travelling at all, or I may suddenly be hit by a need for visas or uncertainty at borders. Really no idea. Not flying is now baked in to my psyche, so I don't expect that to change.
But hopefully I will spend at least two weeks in the following countries:
It could also be nice to spend longer in Croatia and Slovak Republic, if the opportunity arises.
I should exercise more. No, I will exercise more. I still hike a lot, but I only did yoga this year in the presence of Aida (and she knew it) and I stopped running (except with my sister, in Vienna, and once in Tallinn). So there's that new year's resolution cliche.
I refresh my aim to sit at least one Vipassana course.
And did I mention? Write more. I will strive again to draft Quest for Brothers, finish Milo's World and Of the Moon, and now I have Birds to finish as well. I wrote half of it in one month, surely I can write the second half in another month.
🗁Added 5 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
Rains and storms and wind and rainbows and more rain, and always always the ocean crashing.
Week in review: 31 Dec - 6 Jan
🗁Added 43 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
A mini roadtrip with Eleni and Dmitris to see the northern part of Lesvos. We drove along the coast from Petra, through a stunning landscape of crashing waves on one side and dramatic sheer rocks on the other. We found wild hot springs, and could see snow on the mountains in the distance. It got significantly colder and windier as we arrived to Skala Sykaminias. This is a cute tiny village that is mostly empty in the winter, but it's clear how easily you'd fall in love with the place in the summer. There's a small white church on a rock, the Church of the Virgin Mermaid.
We drove back through the mountains for a different view, and stopped in Molyvos for coffee. Molyvos, too, is an unbelievably small town. Nobody is allowed to change their houses from the traditional look, so they're all stone and old looking, clustered along narrow winding streets all packed onto the side of the hill with the castle on top.
🗁Added 19 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
Eleni and Dmitris took me to Sigri, to visit the museum of the petrified forest. It was a rainy windy day, so we didn't walk around the area, but the museum is worth going to. The trees are 20 million years old! They were turned to stone by falling ash from a nearby volcano, and eventually buried over the centuries. I thought of The Broken Earth. The different kinds of trees produce different colours and patterns. Some of them are really vibrant reds and pinks. There are many 'in the wild' but they are gradually being uncovered and brought to the museum, or covered in clay to protect them, as the weather will destroy them. I wonder if nature should take its course.. and question the point of holding onto these ancient things that would disappear otherwise.. But also seeing 20 million year old trees is cool.
On the way we stopped at a monastery on a hill, with great views obscured by clouds, but still enough to see the sea.
🗁Added 20 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
It was a blizzardy day, and the power went out. I was in the middle of working so I went to Tsalikis cafe on the hill, around the bay from Petra. I got pretty rained on, but was lucky to miss the worst of the wind storms that were coming in and out on the 45 minute walk. The views should be amazing, but sometimes while I was inside all of the glass windows were just white. The clouds parted in time for a great sunset though.
It's a funny feeling, watching all of my possessions, which have been gradually spreading out over the course of a month, taking over surfaces and drawers and cupboards, being draped over the backs of chairs, falling under the bed... condense right back down into my backpack again.
I like that I don't have to take up too much space.
🗁Added 61 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
With a heavy heart, I packed up and departed Petra. Eleni and Dmitris drove me to Mytilini, about an hour from Petra, then spent some time showing me around. We saw inside an old hammam, and some churches. The main street felt bustling compared to Petra's quiet streets and my peaceful solo hikes over the month. We ran some errands, got some supplies and had a final lunch together.
After they left I went to the port to get my ferry ticket, and was told it was late, but nobody knew by how much. I checked into my hostel, which is just a house, and run by and funds towards one of the organisations that helps refugees on the island. Then I went for a wander around to the water and the castle, and finally for dinner at Nan, a restaurant which also helps (and employs) refugees.
🗁Added 23 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
I woke up at 6 to head to the port, and got slightly chased by an aggressive small dog who I found out the night before had recently bitten one of my hostel dorm roommates. So that was terrifying.
The ferry was only an hour and a half late in the end, and a friendly young couple helped me understand this, and what was going on when it announced the location of boarding had changed (just shunted a short walk around the port).
Then I spent 12 hours eating only figs and biscotti (thanks Eleni and Dmitris), sleeping, reading, and looking out of the window. I didn't have any other food because the last ferry I'd been on (this exact route, but a different part of it) had some vegan bean dishes on the restaurant menu, so I thought I'd 'indulge' in overpriced mediocre ferry food. Apparently that changed in a month though, and now there was nothing for me to eat. I tried to take a photo of every port we stopped in, which was a lot of them, and mostly the photos are through the grimy window. The weather was pretty good, I went outside in the sun a couple of times.
I developed a pretty bad headache and was feeling a bit sick by the end. Very glad to arrive.
My host picked me up from the port in Ermoupoli, Syros, and welcomed me with a mini tour, a thousand details about my apartment, and spanakopita :D (spinach pie). This place is across the bay from the city, and the views are amazing.
Week in review: 7 - 13 Jan
🗁Added 107 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
My first day on Syros was gloriously sunny and warm. I went for a walk around Ermoupolis, starting at the town square, then around the port and through the medieval Ano Syros up the hill to the Catholic Church of St George, then to the next hill which is topped with the Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Nicholas. I walked the long way around through hilly fields and sparse residences of Alithini.
Having neglected to bring any food or drink out with me, when I got back to the city I collapsed in a random cafe on the corner of the main square. This turned out to be all veggie, with several vegan pastries and foccacia, an extensive smoothie menu and a lovely atmosphere. I recouped with a juice and potato pita, then went to get groceries before heading home.
I would like to spend some time in a big transparent bubble, ideally heated and decked out with a beanbag and cosy blankets (and wifi obviously, or at least my kindle) and just sit in the middle of a raging rainstorm.
An important thing I accomplished today was interpreting the Greek TV menu to connect it to the wifi and log into netflix \o/
Often these things are so unintuitive it takes hours when the thing is in English, so I thought that was pretty good.
"Stop egoizing."
In reply to: https://mobile.twitter.com/RubenVerborgh/status/1085988814705836033
rhiaro.co.uk is the canonical source, everything there is mirrored to mastodon and twitter. Occasional posts are only mirrored to mastodon, and not twitter.
(and you can fetch it all from my site as ActivityStreams 2.0 RDF with conneg of course ;)
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What is this, new Captain every episode..?
Enjoyed the red herring.
Jett Reno is awesome can she stay?!
Week in review: 14 - 20 Jan
🗁Added 47 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
Some sun, some unseasonal rain, wandering around the neighbourhood, visits to Corner Cafe, new catfriend.
I can't believe I'm only now* discovering Ursula K Le Guin.
One of my best friends in high school was always trying to get me to read The Wizard of Earthsea, but I never did. I think I borrowed it, but never finished it. Well, better I take that advice 15 years late that never.
I wonder if I'd be a different person now if I had, though.
* Update: figured it out. After high school I went straight into 8 years of university during which I read almost nothing that wasn't pertaining to my studies. Damn you, education. Making up for lost time now.
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Greece is having some weather right now. Last night lightning fried the router, and it got replaced this morning just in time for the next storm.
And now I can enjoy it virtually and IRL thanks to lightning maps, introduced by @idlemoor.
Studio apartments are soooo good for the lazy. I love when I can reach the kitchen from bed.
🗁Added 5 photos to album Homemade food.
Rice cooked with red cabbage makes it purple :D
Bean chilli. Chips and chips and chips.
I had a pretty good day.
🗁Added 8 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
Lightning storms and lazy days and Zizi destroys the sofa when she comes in and stares at me through the window from the rain when I don't let her in I'm not strong enough for this her liddle face.
Week in review: 21 - 27 Jan
🗁Added 103 photos to album Greece, Jan 2019.
I hiked from Ermoupoli to Kini, then Delphini and Varvaroussa. Read about it here.
Hiking from Ermoupoli to Kini (Syros)
Syros is small enough to hike across its width and back in a day, with time to hang around in the middle, if you start early. I didn't go there and back yesterday though, instead spending some extra time to explore the western side of the island more. Here's the GPS trace on Runkeeper.
I started from Lazarate, and headed around the back of Ermoupoli, up the hills until it was mostly fields, with a few scattered houses. Great views over Ermoupoli, Ano Syros, and the bay the whole way. I reached the village of Episkopio and left the main road to pick up the hiking trail. At the start of the trail I met a tiny cerberus.. or.. three medium sized barking dogs who were neither tied up nor behind a fence. Unequipped for battling mythological monsters that day, I backed up, retreated all the way to the turn-off to Alithini, and continued along the main road instead. This was a bit longer, basically going around the other side of the hill to the hiking trail (the east side rather than west), and probably less nice terrain but also goes a bit higher and provides continuing specatcular views of Ermoupoli and the sea, and at the peak in a small spot you can see the sea in both directions at once.
Then the descent began, with a view of Kini and its bay the whole way. There are some spectacular rock formations, and lots of quartz and glittering stones in the ground. I managed to get off the main road for the final descent to the village, after spotting some stairs and a small sign to the right.
It took 2 hours to walk from Ermoupoli to Kini, with the diversion. I wandered around Kini, which was quiet but not deserted. Feels more like a summer-town though. The beach is nice, and there's a pier with steps straight into the sea for swimming. I couldn't find the bus stop, so asked someone who told me it's by the mermaid fountain. There's no sign there, and she didn't know the schedule. But I had plenty of time before the probable last bus, and it wasn't too far to walk back if I missed it anyway.
The trail to Delphini, just around the coast to the north, takes about 30 minutes and is not for the faint of heart. To find the start, follow the beach around to the north, along the road a bit and up the last stone steps you can see, past a small house. From there it's just a narrow dirt path through the gorse that creeps veeery close to a sheer drop to the sea and jagged rocks below in some places. It was really beautiful of course, with deep green-blue sea.
Delphini seemed empty. There's a beach bar (closed), and a few houses which are probably summer rentals. Delphini beach was described to me as 'wild', but I read somewhere that the next beach over, Varvaroussa, is truely untouched, so I continued on.
The trail to Varvaroussa starts just up the hill from the beach bar (there's a lower down trail that doesn't go all the way). This was high up the side of the cliff too, but a more gentle slope down so you wouldn't get thrown directly into the ocean if a big gust of wind came, but roll through the gorse a bit.. That is until you get past the big sticky-out bit, and around to the next bay, with Varvaroussa in view. Then it's a challenging rocky scramble, over a trail that would be impossible to see without the helpful presence of red dots painted on rocks at intervals. The red dots could also be a practical joke to lure gullible hikers to their doom. I made it though, in about 35 minutes, so I assume they were done with good intentions.
Varvaroussa is not attached to the rest of the world by road; the only way there from any direction is scrambling over the hills, so it really is wild. Looking back at the direction I'd come, there was no clear route in or out. There were a couple of old abandoned-looking stone houses in the hillside, and the rambling stone walls you see everywhere, but nothing else. I sat alone, cut off from the world; ate my lunch, went for a swim. The sun was warm, but it was also windy despite the sheltered feeling of the bay so the sea wasn't especially calm and pretty bloody cold. I didn't swim long.
I packed up and returned the way I'd come, because there's pretty much no other option. The first few minutes was a direct, almost vertical climb, guided by red dots, that felt much steeper going up than it had coming down. From Delphini I took the road back to Kini, for a change of scene. I asked after the bus schedule in cafe Aepiko, and they looked it up online for me; the next and last bus to Ermoupoli was at 17.20, about 2 hours time. I stayed for a coffee and split pea hummus.
At the bus stop, I made some catfriends and watched the sun set. Kini is famous (apparently) for its stunning beach sunsets, but in the winter the angle is a bit off and it dips behind a hill instead of into the ocean.
At 1725 there was still no bus and I was starting to feel the cold. And my legs hurt. I no longer fancied walking the return journey. Then the waiter from the cafe drove past, and stopped. He was heading back to Ano Syros, and offered me a ride. Sometimes I really wonder when my continuous good fortune while traveling will run out. (We passed the bus after 5 minutes though.)
I had to haul myself back up the hill to Lazarate though, and when I got home my knees and hips were insisting I'd walked 20 miles, not 11. Maybe it was the steep climbs, or maybe because I haven't hiked for 2 weeks, or maybe I'm just getting old.