Daniels Creative Fun

Hello ladies and gentleman, readers and watchers, artists, travellers, friends and family!

It has been a year since I moved to Berlin! I hope you are into me because this post is going to be long :).

Have you forgotten who I am altogether? Why not read up the memories I have from 2011 first?

I am sorry for you, I am still not the best at photographing my life, but I try really hard to illustrate this post nonetheless. After all the monthly stories there will be a summary of interesting events and fact!
Take a cup of hot chocolate and enjoy the read :)

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Hello and good morning readers! I hope you will all have a wonderful day!

Daniel, WHY are you writing a blog post at 7 o clock Sunday morning?
Don’t you love sleeping?

Well, ehm, actually I woke up this morning at 4 am..  But I do love sleeping!
Let me explain…

This picture was taken of me two and a half year ago. Back then I required 8 hours of sleep per day but likely I would only get 7,5 hours. I enjoyed going to bed late (I was not often tired around midnight) and I did not enjoy waking up in the morning.
As a result of ignoring the alarm day after day I ended up not waking up by it any more which improved my mood but not that of my teachers and employers…

Right now I am living quite the opposite! Since early August this year I am requiring only 5,5 hours of sleep, but sometimes I enjoy 9!  I go to bed early and wake up smiling at 4 in the morning every day. Even the weekends.

How does this work for someone who loves sleep?

It all started a year ago. Continue reading »

Now, at the end of the summer I calculated my hitch hiking score: 15000 km in total!

This summer this was: Berlin > Utrecht (NL), Berlin > Chalon sur Saune (FR) & Berlin > Lublin (PL). I had some difficulties getting into France and out of the Netherlands, but for the rest my rides were quick and smooth! Still the best way of transportation :)

Learn hitch hiking the easy way

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I have been saying I wanted to go snowboarding in Poland this winter for half a year now.
A week ago this dream came true!

Why snowboarding? I learned this skill last year and thought it was an awesome adrenaline kick!

Why Poland? Somebody mentioned that winter sports vacations can be cheap if you go to Poland and I had never visited this country before.

Why last week? After asking about everybody I knew or met for 5 months my Israeli circus college Hemda was the first to immediately say “Yes let’s go!”.

Of course being volunteers we were on a budget, so hitch hiking and couch surfing were the obvious choices!

We left around 9 at a gas station in Berlin. Getting to the Polish border went quite easy Continue reading »

Living in Berlin

So far it has been wonderful to live in Berlin! I don’t have internet in my house so I have been spending my time on training circus skills, working, making music; things that I really enjoy.

I live in a two room apartment that is part of a church, since Wednesday I live there together with my roommate Teija from Finland. The ceiling is high (which is of course great for juggling) and the rooms are big. Too bad this place is just temporary.

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Happy new year!

While 2012 has just started my mind is still full of memories of 2011.
I would like to share the many good ones with you!

January

I was still working full time at the mail sorting centre ”VanStraatenPost” when I broke up with Sanne. She flew to Abu Dhabi and I would hitch hike to Berlin for the tropical paradise invasion. Not much of an invasion though as nobody showed up so I moved on.

The month of my first hitch hiking and CouchSurfing experience! The girl who hosted me on her couch was an experienced hitch hiker and her tips helped me a lot in the first days!

Februari

I continued hitch hiking trough France, Spain and had some interesting experiences on the way. I visited my lovely grandparents in Benicassim at the Spanish eastern coast, near Valencia. Just a week after I had been in Berlin I arrived in the donkey paradise. Here I would volunteer to dig trenches for the new water pipe, working shirtless during the sunny afternoon hours. It was the warmest winter I had ever had!

This month I started actively playing the ukulele, I had my first and only experience with cannabis (worth it, but I’d rather try along friends next time ;) ) and I learned a lot about donkeys and Spain.

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A week ago my bike got stolen…

I have been living in Utrecht (Bike City) all my life and I had never lost a bike before so it was about time I guess..

Luckily this is not the end of the world, but an open door to new experiences! Since last week I have been trying “Bicycle Hitchhiking”. Evertime I walk (and I walk a lot because I hate going by bus) I will stick out my right thumb, hoping for a friendly biker!

Once I was on a road where bicycles and peasants have a shared lane and I was absolutely sure I had a good chance. As I expected, within 5 minutes I got a ride on the back of a bike from a 32 year old man named ‘Koen’. He was able to drive me almost all the way to my home! Continue reading »

CouchSurfing is a network where travelers can look for a place to sleep at other peoples homes for free.

Participate, it is loads of fun!
Couchsurfing.org

After having surfed a lot of couches it was time to start hosting people.
I have been playing with that idea for a while, but I did not really feel comfortable in the beginning.

At first my room is small, and we would have to sleep and stay in the same room. There is nothing to do here so I was afraid it might be boring for the surfer.

At second, when you surf a couch you get to choose where and when, while if you host you can only say yes or no to people that will ask you. It seemed like hosting was a bit unfair on that point!

But of course, with a proper description about my tiny room I put my availability status on ‘yes’, and soon got a couch request from Miguel from Portugal.

Miguel is a 26 year old traveler who likes playing guitar and taking pictures. He would arrive and leave just on my free days so that would be perfect! I picked him up at the central station on wednesday and brought him to a friends house for dinner. Continue reading »

I hate bus drives.
Regional ones can be okay but city buses… Urgh!

They smell
They stop and accelerate all the time
The passengers never smile

In a train people sit down and relax, but in a bus everybody just sits there and waits until they reach their destination. You never get a chance to strike up a conversation with anyone!
Sometimes there are people standing in front of the bus talking to the driver, while there are signs telling them not to.
Today I talked to a bus driver.

I stepped in carrying a closet and was asked what it was. I said that I was moving, and sat down on a seat close to the driver.

The driver hummed a bit, singing about why people always have to use their cellphones all the time. This was the first time I ever heard a bus driver sing, so I chuckled. Did he notice it?
“Why is there no one reading the bible for me?” He asked is front window.
“Did you bring one with you? I could read you from my meditation guide instead. I hope you don’t mind it is in English!”
I pulled the guide out of my backpack, jumped up to a shelve made for luggage and started reading, realizing this would become the craziest bus ride of my life. Continue reading »