Now that she's back in the atmosphere, with drops of Jupiter in her hair
Today I am looking back on almost eleven months of traveling. Eleven months, filled with eleven years worth of memories, experiences, new friendships and emotional moments.
I am looking back on what has been the most intense journey, I have ever been on so far. People often ask me: “What has been your favorite part?”, and it is so hard to find an answer. Every country has moved me in it’s own special way. Every culture has touched and changed a different part of my soul. And all the people I have met, all the friends I have made, have given me unique memories that will never be deleted off my heart.
It all started with beautiful Canada. I still remember the first day, when I was walking the streets of Halifax, after a 27 hour delayed flight and a bit of a bumpy start. I finally found myself in an unknown environment again. I was breathing in fresh air of adventure and for the first time in eleven months, since leaving Australia and South East Asia, I felt 100% alive. After an amazing 11 months in Berlin, with a wedding; a baby; friends moving in together; an actual “jobjob”, working as a graphic designer with the best team you could ask for, constantly learning and growing with the challenges of “being a grown up” and being back in the love-of-my-life-city Berlin, after three years spent away, in Cologne and overseas, I was finally doing what I love again. Traveling!
While going through my GoPro Footage, rewinding eleven months, eleven countries and countless amazing moments, I was having a little heart attack of happiness. A moment, when your heart explodes of happiness, that spreads through your whole body and fills every part and every pore with sheer joy.
There I was, going back in time, when I realized, how lucky I am. How lucky I am to have a family in Germany, that I can call my home, even when I am miles away. And how lucky I am to have friends all over the globe, that give me a home, away from home.
My mom once said “Lisa, when you are traveling, you take your whole heart with you.”
And looking back, I know, that I have left a little part of my heart in every place I went and have given a little piece of my heart to every person I’ve met.
Like no other trip, this one has changed me the most, in so many ways.
Cycling 2.800km down the Pacific Coast of the United States, on my own, with no Bicycle-trip Knowledge whatsoever, has given me so much self-confidence. It has taught me, that our bodies are true miracle-machines and that we should treat them with much more caution and awareness. I have met many people, that pay so much attention to what they put into their bodies. Being a vegan,already means that my diet is pretty healthy, but I want to change more, I want to avoid all the toxins we put into those miracle-machine-bodies, just because we are used to it. When I started my cycling adventure, my body just kept up with it - we should really treat our bodies - just like the proverb says - like a temple.
And latinamerican women have taught me, that we can also be proud of that temple. That women should stop trying to look like the fake-photoshop-reality. I have seen so many women, that were just proud of what they had. In Europe they might be considered as “chubby”, some of them “fat”, but they wore their boobs, their butts, even their muffin tops with pride. They did not worry one second, if that skirt is too short, that dress to tight or if those pants emphasize their wide hips. Ever since I can think, I had issues with my body. I hated my hips, but seeing all those women, I realized - I can run as many kilometers a day and do as many workouts, as I want, I wont change the size of my hips, because they are bones. And I am a woman, I got curves, I am not a size 0, and I never will be and that is okay! We are women, we should be proud of that!
Traveling countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua has moved me more than traveling Asia and has waken that urge to change things for the better and help. Every time the people threw trash out of the bus, while driving through amazing landscapes, I felt like I wanted to shake them and teach them about pollution. I want to go back and somehow teach about recycling and that it is our task to keep this planet alive.
And for the first time I felt uncomfortable as a backpacker. I didn’t want to hang out at the hostels, eat at tourist-catering restaurants and do fun-filled-activities. I saw young “travelers”, getting wasted all day long, jumping from beach to beach, taking selfies with their selfie-sticks, to get likes on facebook and instagram, of people they don’t care about or people they don’t even know.
To me traveling has always been about the culture, about what makes the country unique, about a country’s “personality”.
I want to build something that unites backpackers and travelers, that think the same way, that want to help and make things better. Because I cannot sit at a beautiful beach, without ignoring the garbage piles behind my back. I cannot travel a country, where children work, when they should be in school. I cannot walk through a city and ignore the suffering, that could be helped so easily. I cannot walk past mistreated animals. And I cannot waste my creativity in the advertisment-branch, when I can use it somehow to make this world a little better. Right now, I don’t know, how to make my heart and soul feel better, and how to start this whole progress, but I will find a way!
And now I am back… I flew to Germany, after a heart-wrecking farewell of my brother from another mother, his girlfriend and his cat. I surprised my friends and my family. And seeing their reactions was worth the lies and the silence I had to keep up, to keep my return secret. Being able to hug them and just be a part of their every-day-life again, just filled my heart with happiness.
But coming home from a long trip will never be easy or normal. It will always be that emotional roller coaster ride, because there is no in between.
There is A) being on a trip, and B) not being on a trip. It’s not like when you are having a cold, and you’re through the worst part, when you start feeling better and you know that you will be back to normal in one or two days.
With traveling it’s different. One day you are in that unknown environment, living out of a backpack and just one airplane later you are in familiar surroundings, surrounded by familiar people, digging through a closet full of clothes you didn’t know you had, throwing out boxes of stuff, you completely forgot about.
It’s like you just jumped back in time, to the time before your trip. Yes, a few things might have changed - people got married, pregnant, seperated; pets have died; your home town got a new supermarket… But the feeling and the vibe is the same. What has changed is yourself. And you have changed in a way, that is not visible, like the new supermarket in your town. It’s a deep change inside of you.
I feel like I have grown so much, traveling all those countries, cycling thousands of kilometers, learning another language, climbing volcanos, making new friends, seeing that this is the life I truly want, starting to accept myself the way I am, dealing with the ups and downs, like losing both of my pets within one week, getting my heart broken, seeing people and animals suffer and feeling, that I want to make this world a better place.
I carry all this inside of me and even though I am more than confused and once again swimming in emotional chaos, I am happy to be back. I love my family and friends so much, but also after only one week, I already feel the urge to leave again.
In 2,5 months I will be 28. A lot of my friends and people I went to school with are already married, pregnant with the second kid, or in the process of getting married and having kids, they’ve been in stable jobs, built houses and bought cars. And I am light-years away from that.
Once again people ask me “But now you are done with traveling, right? Now you have to settle down and do something serious!” And all I can think is “Are you serious????” I accept everybody the way they are and if they are happy with the life they are living, than that’s okay. And if they don’t understand my way of life, than that’s okay too.
Maybe that’s why gypsy-hearted people enjoy traveling so much as well, because you meet like minded people with the same desires and urges. You click instantly, because they see the world, the same way you do.
And even though I know where I am going, and I know what I want to do, and what I am going to do, coming home to a place you once belonged to, makes you feel lost between two worlds for a few days. But coming home, and having people you can call your home, is probably the most amazing and most important thing you can have in life.
Probably, I will always have two hearts in my chest. One that is longing for the familiar - my family and friends and being an ever-present part of their lives. And one that feels the deep urge to go out there, to live life to the fullest, to completely leave the comfort zone and just wander. And to have both of my hearts beating, I will always find myself in that emotional rollercoaster ride between being home and being away.
