Falk von Freigeist

Nearly half a year has passed, since I arrived on the Vlierhof and postponed my journey to Italy (and further).
I stopped writing because I wanted this to be a travel blog. Although there was some travelling in between then and now, it was never to the extent that I would consider it “travelling” as when I started my journey.

By now I am connected more and more to the Vlierhof – to the people and the place itself. I even registered in Cleves (so I am even officially living on Vlierhof now). I grew to be in a quite responsible position, not only in terms of work, but also in terms of the organisational development and in terms of – yes, family.

I have a new home now.

I don’t want or need to go in detail on what I do on the Vlierhof and who lives there with me, that would definitely burst this post. But let me say this much: I am still responsible for bed & breakfast and marketing, but lately I have been picking up a lot of IT work, keeping the digital infrastructure organised. At the same time I contributed a lot towards the development of the community, bringing it forward and organising the internal structure better.

More importantly, I met a wonderful Mexican woman, who came to volunteer on the Vlierhof. We connected with each other quite quickly and realised, that we carried the same love in us. We became a couple.
All in all, we lived together on Vlierhof for about two months, then she needed to leave the Schengen area and went to volunteer in Israel. (For those who don’t know: the Schengen area is the area in which members of most European countries can travel freely, without border controls. Apparently this agreement also included, that American citizens could only stay at most 3 months in this area, before having to leave the Schengen area for 3 months again.)
Quickly I realised that I could not wait 3 months until I would see her again. I decided to go travelling again.

And that is how I ended up writing again, as this is the first journey that feels like “travelling” again, as in the beginning.

Right now, I am sitting at the airport in Eindhoven, waiting for my flight to Tel Aviv, from where I am going to the Golan Heights, joining my beloved for two months, volunteering in a hostel!

That’s it for now, they just announced my gate, so I will board the plane soon.

Loving greetings to everybody who is still reading my blog

Falk von Freigeist

I have been at the Vlierhof now for three weeks and it feels like home to me. It’s not the paradise on earth, even (or especially?) in a community like this it feels like a boiling pot of emotions sometimes and energies are running really freely here.

I had many thoughts going around in my head the last day and yesterday it felt like I don’t need to think about it anymore. Actually, the title is pretty much the summary of my thoughts: Should I stay or should I go? And the day before yesterday I decided to stay, after two days of walking to Nijmegen and back here. It felt really great, being back on the road, even if only for those days. I could feel the freedom I felt when staying at Jo’s place again. I finished a poem that weekend that expresses my emotions and thoughts about the last weeks a little, I will publish it somewhere here.

After I made the decision I had to wait until yesterday to make a proposal to the group for staying here. I couldn’t sleep almost the whole night before the proposal, my head kept spinning around the thoughts I had on my decision. Is it good for me? Will I still feel home here after some time? I had to concentrate to come back to a state of calmness and trust in me and the world around me. So the day of the proposal was kinda hard.

And… I am allowed to stay here for another 3 months! I am very happy!
So if anybody wants to visit me here, see how I am doing, feel free to give me a call, message or whatever, I’d be happy to see some familiar faces from before my journey.

With happiness and good feelings
Falk

P.S.: This post is actually a week old, but because there were problems with the internet here and I thought, it was published already, it took so long to publish it. Mea culpa!

Hey folks!

I write to you from the community “De Vlierhof”, in the very west of north-rhine westphalia, at the dutch border.

It’s been a while since my last post, so I will try to give you a good summary, but bear with me if I write a lot.

I last wrote from Billerbeck, still near to Muenster, and after that I went towards Winterswijk.
One of the best moments of my journey until now was near the dutch border, close to the town of Gescher:
Just as I was approaching Gescher, a girl rode past me on a bike. She wore a security helmet, so I couldn’t look at her at first, but then – suprisingly – she came back. She asked if I was on a journey. Yes. And directly after that – to my second surprise – she asked, if I already had a place to stay. No. Then she told me, she did what I was doing and could relate to my situation and if I wanted to come and stay at the farm she was staying at. I was really amazed for a moment, but I stuttered a bit and answered “Yes, that would be cool!” It ended with me staying even for the next day and having a really great time. Jo, if you read this, thanks again!!
I had some more days and encounters while I was walking through Gelderland (a province in the middle eastern part of the Netherlands), every experience unique and very good.
A week before, I crossed over to Germany again to go a more direct way to the south. I got to Emmerich, a small city at the border, trying to find some place to access the internet to find a place to stay in Kleve (another small city, 8km away), but when I could use the computer of a youth cafe there, I got no answer from anyone I wrote to on the couchsurfing site. So I found my way to the place of a social worker from the cafe and his partner. In the evening, while we were talking in the garden, he told me about a community nearby, that lived together on some kind of ecological farm.
The next day, I went there and since then I am working there, eating with them, getting to know them, I even got a bed in the men’s dormitory. I feel in touch with nature, get rest for my body and learn so much about me, the world and practical things as well. I am very happy to be here right now, in this moment.

The next time I write to you, I probably will still be here, so prepare for less of a road story, but more of a experience report.
I may even be able to get a video cam in the future, so maybe at some point I’ll add photos and videos as well.

Have a nice time!
Falk

I am sitting in the garden shed of a nice family from Billerbeck, that lets me stay a night in their garden, in my tent and they even let me use their tablet (oft course only for this evening;). I have three hiking days and one work day behindert me. Two time about 20 km and one time 10. There hasn’t happened a lot those days, but something inside of me changed; I have become calmer, enjoy things more and easier and I am more in balance. I didn’t expect this to happen so soon. 😀

I had to write the route for tomorrow down neatly, otherwise I would have had to do detours. I am walking to Gescher. I noticed, that 20 km are not that hard for me as I had suspected, so that’s my distance for tomorrow.

I want to highlight my last host, the Pannkokenhus Teitekerl. I’ve been bid welcome without problems, could raise my tent on a small patch of grass and was surprised the next morning with the rest from the breakfast and the opportunity to shower. I legt happily with gold wishes and a few maps of the region.

Now this short update has fledged into a full-grown post… Well, who knows, when the next opportunity to write will arise.

Cheers

Falk