Wunderlust!

I sit perched on my pink beach chair, laptop sat on our “floor table” looking over the Black Sea in front of me. The sand black and magnetic. It’s not a place to get lost with only a compass.

This time 8 weeks ago we were loading the van on Good Friday and getting ready to head off. In that time we’ve come to understand that a lot of what is beautiful is not just the scenery in front of one, but the people all around.

Passing through this place or that we encounter two types of people. Locals and fellow travellers.

Sitting in my office nine or ten weeks ago, much of the conversation was centred around plans, timelines and goals. This perspective is created by the constraint of time, time that’s been segmented and boxed into rhythmic parts of our lives that guarantees order and structure.

Today plans, timelines and goals are no longer important. Human interaction and openness of mind are the oxygen that fuel my soul and I see this is a result of these interactions.

Leaving Juliet behind at the campsite in the morning, boldly announcing as I left, that I would go and find some fish for supper. It was a big, bold and tall thing to say, as we haven’t encountered any fresh fish in a good few weeks, especially when we’ve been off-piste. Foolishly optimistic, I cycled through the beautiful green trees, the sun shining above and the air a wonderful temperature. In the distance up the road I spotted a cyclist. Initially thinking it was someone local, putting a spurt on and drawing closer, it became clear that the cyclist was touring. As I drew beside I started off with “hello” and a French accent came back, so I switched to French for a bit.

Somewhere early on in a traveller conversation, the topic of where are you going to comes up. In Matteo’s case he’s cycling to Vietnam. That’s a long way from Paris. We touch on what he’s doing for the next few days and I share the road knowledge that I have. We then move onto the fact that he’s a 50% worker, which means he gets 6 months off every year from teaching. Wow! We talk about the perspective of time and this brings me back to goals, timelines and plans. Two months in, what’s important is where we are sleeping tonight, where the market is and where we will stop for a break. If there’s a problem encountered on the road, we have time to work around it and any situation is no longer a disaster, it’s an opportunity to do something else while you resolve the problem.

We are now free of the burden of time and planning. As we sit here on the beautiful black sea beach waiting for a DHL parcel to arrive with some much needed suspension bushes for the van, we are relaxed. The parts will arrive some time. We may have more work to do to solve any customs issues that arise. We will work through those optimistically and if we can’t solve those issues we will work out a different route.

I left Matteo, at the nearby train station, as he wanted to find out about trains to Tbilisi as he has to fly to Azerbajan because the land border is still closed. Peddling away I was wondering about all we’d discussed. Half a mile up the road, to my amazement there were three or four stalls selling fresh black sea fish. For little more than £1.50 supper was sorted.