One night of deciding

I sit on the couch, drinking wine and watching Into the Wild. The epic “free-yourself-from society” movie is supposed to make me psyched about being free to travel again. I have been fired from my job five hours earlier. (The flexible Swiss employment system enables companies to hire and fire people according to changing business needs. I find it better than the stiff over-protected labor markets in the rest of the Europe, but that is yet another topic.)

Half a year ago I had moved to Zurich. Since I left Finland in 2015, it had been my goal to eventually settle down in Switzerland. I had spent only a couple of days there, but I was convinced I would love the mountain outdoors, posh lifestyle and central location of that small peculiar country. During my working years in the Netherlands I had systematically networked with Swiss organizations, and I kept sending out applications to them. After conducting two remote interviews from India, I finally landed a job in my dream country. I arrived there on a dark, cold March evening, and I still remember seeing the Zurich Flughafen sign through the airport windows and congratulating myself for making it there.

The Swiss dream - hiking at the mountains

My first months in Zurich were pretty miserable. The weather sucked, I was lonely, climbing was too hard and everything was expensive. But most of all, I could not get used to the cage life: going to work, over-planning free time and just being tied down to responsibilities. After being free to go where ever I wanted to and spending my time as I wished, I felt trapped. To prevent myself from running away before giving the real life a fair chance, I made an inner promise to stay in Switzerland for two years.

I started to speak German as much as possible, go climbing with acquaintances, buy small household appliances, cycle to work and live just a normal everyday life. Even though I never liked my job and I did not find regular climbing partners, not even mention real friends, I got used to living in Zurich. Sometimes I dreamt about my travelling times – about the constant flow of new experiences and open possibilities – but still somehow I knew I was doing the right thing by staying. I was not fully committed to building a life in Switzerland, though. I avoided purchasing anything I could not easily get rid of and I budgeted my money usage to prepare for non-working times.

My lovely home

My flatmate comes home and in a slightly drunken dramatic way I talk to him about the paradox of living between two worlds: the travelling one and the real one. (What travellers call “a real life” means having a home and a stable job in one location.) I tell him that travelling is like a drug. I know that in the end I do not want to end up growing old dirtbagging in climbing camps without lasting relationships, but yet still the urge to go travelling just for a bit longer is too strong. Having suddenly lost my job is like a screaming opportunity to be free again. My flatmate tells me I have to make a decision to either stay or travel; one cannot be happy while constantly hovering between the two worlds and their pros and cons.

This time the lyrics of Into the Wild do not have the same effect in me as they did four years ago when I first left for travels (post: The plan is no plans ) I feel like I have had enough of freedom and now I am ready to live in the society. However I will not blindly let the society to define desirable actions for me, as is normally expected of its members. Instead I will use its structures to support me in getting what I like about it, whilst keeping what I can from the flexible, exploring travel lifestyle.

The following day I buy a flight to Greece. I go there to spend some weeks to just climb, meet up with friends and enjoy the beach life. But I will return to Switzerland. I like the city of Zurich. I want to find a new job I enjoy, learn (Swiss) German and make close friends. I know it takes time and effort to build a life somewhere new, and I am willing to live through the initial struggle to get there. It feels good to know what I want next: Create myself a stable life I enjoy living without having to dream about being somewhere else.

Home sweet home, in Berdorf

(I should have written this post a year ago but other topics got priority. Better late than never, right?)

When I lived in the Netherlands I never felt quite at home. Life there was smooth but something was missing. I did not feel like it was MY country. I knew my stay was just temporary and I would eventually move on.

However, from my very first visit on, I felt like I belonged to Berdorf. Always when I pitched my tent at Martbusch Campground, late on a Friday night after a 6 hour long drive, I had arrived home. The whole Dutch (and Belgian and North German) climbing community would fill the magic forests of Berforf to climb on the beautiful sandstone walls.

Popular on weekends

The compact crag area consists of some 160 routes. Almost every route, ranging from 4c to 8c, deserves a star rating. There is something for everyone's liking: long sustained routes or short bouldery climbs, fingery crimps and smooth slopers or big jugs, overhang or slab. The rock quality is exceptionally solid with good grip, although at spots a bit sandy.

We eagerly started Berforf seasons as early as possible, on crispy April days when we could barely feel our fingers, and kept going till September when days were already getting short. Unpredictable weather makes planning sometimes quite difficult, as rain forecasts in the area are rarely accurate. It is never too hot to climb there, though. And it is always worth checking the rock situation, as strangely it can be wet at the campsite but dry at the crag.

My love for Berdorf is not only in the great climbing, though. When one arrives down into the valley, midst the featured walls and lush forests, it is hard not to imagine fairies and elfs peaking around the corners. During the two years of spending every possible weekend in Berforf, I got to know each wall and path like my own.

The best route - Yellow Submarine

Spending evenings at the tents - cooking, drinking, sharing stories, laughing - was the place and time where I could be myself. Being outdoors with like-minded people was what I wanted. As long as it did not rain both days, on Sunday afternoons I left home happily, already thinking about what I would climb next time.

India, the country of contrasts

When I thought about India I imagined colorful culture, delicious food and beautiful landscapes - and also dirtiness, poverty and scams. I entered the country with mixed feelings and found close to what I had expected, both at earthly and spiritual levels.

Hampi was breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful. It was the perfect place to calm down with very few activities; somehow I filled my days with just meditating, bathing and eating. I had planned to boulder a lot and get stronger, but I could not get motivated to try any of the problems. At first I was anxious about not following through my plans and doing nothing productive. Then I accepted the presence and for the first time in my life felt at peace without performing anything. I took the time to thoroughly process some issues, most importantly my tendency to worry about the future. I felt the difference between constantly circling thoughts over opposing life choices and equably trusting that even though I do not know what I will end up doing, it will be alright.

Camping in a cave

I want to wake up every morning with curiosity about how the day will unfold - without stressing, over-planning or expecting anything. I want to live through each day being in the present, whilst accepting experiences and emotions as they come without fighting them. Meditation helps me in staying centered within myself. I can observe my flying thoughts and moods, and understand that it is up to me either to get tangled with them or let them go. Sometimes I can recognize my disruptive thought patterns before I get swallowed into them and replace them with healthier ones. Through meditation I experience how different emotions feel like physically. I am learning to consciously focus my attention on sound, movement, feeling or anything else; taking the power of experiencing to myself rather than passively letting thoughts and emotions overtake my mind.

Badami was restless and quite unpleasant. It served its purpose to put into practice treating random occurrences with equaminity. I tried to laugh at aggressive monkeys attacking my food, embrace extra falling distance caused by stolen bolts and observe how food poisoning turned around my stomach. Greatly thanks to my travel friends I got into this light, almost careless mood to just humorously note all weirdness around me. As on occasions I was falling into the darkness of my endless worrying about future, I got pulled back into reality by the never ending incidents. Also, I had to painfully experience how having pre-defined expectations about what I want to happen can prevent me from enjoying what actually happens. Not receiving the kind of affection I desire often blocks me from appreciating the good in what I actually get.

The famous Badami big

Due to various reasons I cut my stay in India short. Now that some time has passed, I can understand more clearly the motives, causalities and intentions behind my own actions and those of others, that led into certain outcomes. As much as it is a cliche, India was an eye opening experience to me.  

Climbing - what a great excuse to visit random places!

One of the reasons I love climbing is that it takes me to places I otherwise would not go to. They are not Lonely Planet recommended sights but often random rural spots that happen to have climbable rock. One of them is Cantabaco in the Philippines. It is a village – or actually rather a strip of road with population – in the middle of the jungly Cebu Island.

Me and my climbing partner arrived in Cantabaco a week before Christmas. We settled into this run-down “resort” called Spring Park that had already seen its days of glory. It has four more or less functional swimming pools (apparently instead of repairing existing pools they had decided to just build new ones), a big hall (that I used as my yoga centre) and bungalows of varying comfort levels. On our first evening we showed up at the main building to order dinner, just to find out it was not served that day. Since there are no restaurants in the village we ended up buying street BBQ sticks, fluffy sugary buns and bananas, that became our diet for the next days. At 11pm we started hearing Christmas carols from the neighboring church, and it became fully activated at 4am with ringing bells and loud singing. We learned that the nightly church parties would go on until Christmas Day.

Local kids eagerly showed us the way to the climbing crag; across a bamboo bridge, through a farm home and up steep stairs we went to reach a beautiful white limestone wall. Luckily it was possible to climb there even in pouring rain. Even though rainy season was supposed to end by mid-December, we got hit by rainfall almost every day. Climbing the naturally polished rock in high humidity definitely added difficulty to the routes, that offer differing styles from powerful overhangs to more technical pockets and cracks. In total there are around 50 routes there, optimally suited for a mid-7s climber. Unfortunately the prime time at the main wall is just a couple of hours before sunset, unless it is overcast or one enjoys masocistic sweating in sunshine.

After spending Christmas at the beach we returned to Cantabaco prepared: we had hired a motorbike to get to nearby towns for fruit & veggie markets, night eating stalls and supermarkets. We had also advised our later arriving friends to bring along camping cookers. We used them to make our own morning porridge, until eventually we befriended with the Spring Park staff well enough to freely use the resort kitchen. Occasionally also the cook showed up to prepare food for us, which we enjoyed in loud karaoke noise. (The resort's karaoke machine is a top local entertainment, and most singers compensate their lack of skill with volume.)

Despite being a small village, Cantabaco is anything but quiet. Add to the church and karaoke singing almost daily happening fiestas, screaming animals and tooting traffic. Also gunshots were often heard while climbing. Bernard, whose wife owns the crag land, is a retired army official and enthusiastic shooter, who even invited us to join him one day. Anyhow the main Cantabaco entertainment is cock fighting, that takes place every Tuesday and Saturday. One afternoon we attended a fight in the stadium packed with excited villagers. It was interesting to follow first rooster matching, then bet setting (that seemed to cause most enthusiasm amongst the crowd) and finally fighting itself. The actual fights were shorter and less bloody than I had expected, and killed chickens get eaten afterwards, so I was not that disgusted after all.

Even though I reached a big climbing high in Cantabaco – sending my first 7b after persistent projecting – above all I will remember the experience of staying in that authentic Filipino village. I keep thanking climbing for giving me the excuse to visit these fascinating random places around the world.