Friendships & Self Development

Getting to know people from different parts of the world means flowing through realities while learning how to appreciate cultural differences and accepting the contrasts between personalities. Taking the details you most appreciate about them and making them yours, letting them affect and change you.

I believe that learning from people is the most colourful and beautiful way for self development. The art is knowing how to find those little differences and mismatches, learning how to handle them and choosing what to apply to your own personality to become a better person. New people and contrasts are the keys to open-mindness and understanding, the secret to learn how to efficiently communicate with people from different worlds and realities. It is the only way to actually understand the culturally bound and completely subcontious signals we at all times are sending out to the world and the effects these signals actually have on our surroundings.

My lifestyle gives me the incredible opportunity to meet and get to know amazing people from everywhere. At the same time, however, it forces me to at some point transform those friendships to an online mode and move on with my things. Because of this, I try to extract as much as possible of every interesting person I meet on the way, and staying in touch is crucial for me in order not to loose my roots.

I’m not rooted the way many people are in their own locally created society. I’m bound to my friends from everywhere around and I appreciate and care about them in the same way that one cares about that friend next door. Internet provides me with the possibility to stay in touch with all these people, keeping my networks active, being able to follow my friends’ development and still share and change and learn from each other. It’s, as I said, crucial for me to keep these friendships alive, online they provide a different dimension to the relationship, and as I keep hopping around the planet, the chance of meeting again is more likely with every day that passes.

Going home by bus from the airport at 6.30am after saying goodbye to the Venezuelan girl that I shared my flat with the last 6 months sparked my need for writing these thoughts down. You bring something with you from every person you choose to let in and this specific relationship has been more fruitful and deep than most as we both have an interest for and understanding of the human mind and the society while at the same time being culturally, emotionally and personally very different. I learnt a lot from Daneff, and I am very sure we will stay in touch and continue to share our experiences, support each other and learn from each other’s differences. Skype is King.

Gracias por todo mi guapi. <3

Time to get some sleep.

Moonchild

 

“They say I made the moon
Everything was in the dark
No memories at all
Just a tiny freezing wind in my back
As I was sitting there
Singing a song they had never heard before
Suddenly, a voice told me
“Keep on singing, little boy
And raise your arms in the big black sky
Raise your arms the highest you can
So the whole universe will glow”

My first vision was a bush growing down the river
And I couldn’t stop crying
Something was missing
I realized I was in love with a voice
I called it, again, and again
But all I heard was the echo in the light.”

M83 – Moonchild
Before the dawn heals us (2005)

You will never be forgotten.

Trains and Thoughts

I have been in Poland some days now and it has been truly exhausting and heart breaking. I won’t go into detail on the tragedy that my family has faced and I don’t know for how long I will be needed here and stay around. I am thanking my psychology studies for helping me to cope in balance and rationality and most importantly, to help those around me.

I am incredibly thankful and proud of my friends for giving me clear minded and patient support simply by listening to my talking about everything and nothing. Even when situations are horrifying, my conviction is that hysteria doesn’t help anybody, while I strongly support thorough thought, calmness and constructiveness. I am looking forward to, while being a bit anxious about, the hours of thinking, complete emptiness and opportunity to actually focus on myself that the train ride back to the airport will give me when it’s time to go.

I love going by train in Poland, hanging out the window while both landscapes and thoughts pass by is more than wonderful. So even if this time probably will be very different and difficult, it will be more necessary than ever before.

Calmness & Awareness

Some more pictures from yesterday, this time from the calm Plaza Catalunya just next to the Ramblas and the Champions League celebrations. I guess you can see the huge contrast. More of my photos from the #spanishrevolution can be found on flickr.

That’s it about yesterday’s events. Thank you all very much for the support and for spreading my blogs and photos through twitter and pressing the like on facebook button on my posts. By sharing information we get more confident, independent and aware of the situation around the world. Cheesy enough, I would like to tell people to please stop relying on the local newspaper as the only source of information.

Silk & Palm Trees

Lo que era para nosotros, lo hemos hecho, y vos lo sabéis. Creedme: lo hemos hecho para siempre. Preservad vuestra vida resguardada de mi. Y no dudéis un instante, si fuese útil para vuestra felicidad, en olvidar a esta mujer que ahora os dice, sin añoranza, adiós.”

Alessandro Baricco – Seta (1996)

Yesterday, while in the park, I finished Ernesto Sabato‘s El Túnel (1948) which proved to be a very dark but good read. Today, when heading out to my favourite spot again, I grabbed a new book from our shared livingroom bookshelf that I so much appreciate.

As I have mentioned before, a lot of people have passed by this apartment, leaving little treasures behind in various languages in our bookshelf. I’m focusing on the Spanish one’s now as I have discovered the beauty of this language and really enjoy its richness and nuances.

Today I read Alessandro Baricco‘s short but very enchanting novella Silk (1996) in a couple of hours. I adored the reading so much I got completely sunburnt. It’s been a lovely Sunday.

365 words

“If you learn one word a day, in a year you will know 365 words.”

Words of wisdom from Aziz from Pakistan that sits next to me on the bus. We have just arrived to Barcelona after an 8h trip. And as many times, a simple bus ride proved to be more fruitful than many other things I do that seem to be of higher importance.

Good morning!

Perfectionism

“No dejes q tu perfeccionismo te vuelva loca, mi niña. Te dejo a solas con la carta.”

Said and done. Sent and archived. I deserve an ice cream or something for all the applications I have written and sent these days. Or a job.

The Bin Laden Hysteria ft. Com Truise

Waking up this morning, twitter informed me about the death of Osama Bin Laden. Hours later, I am still confused about all the celebrating and people acting like as if their country had just won the world championships in football.

A bad man has been executed without a trial. The leader of Al Qaeda was without any doubt a source of great hatred, but still, this man had many followers and his death most probably isn’t the end of all terrorism – or the security checks at airports. Let’s try not being too naïve about this one.

Having said that, I have to say that I am completely in love with twitter. The world was twittering about the news of the killing long before it was officially confirmed by the US Government. A man in Abbottabad unknowingly live-tweeted the action. And now #siosamafueramexicano is trending worldwide. Such a practically direct, powerful and reliable way of getting an understanding of both general opinion and that of specific people.

For those that have had enough of the Bin Laden hysteria, here’s some Com Truise. The album can be downloaded for free from his webpage, just click the name of the album below. :)


Com Truise – Slow Peels
Cyanide Sisters (2010)

Undefined

So, I’m back in Barcelona with its hundreds of errands and things I need to do.. Somehow, however, without a proper Monday to-do list this week has felt kind of.. undefined.

Yesterday was the day when my curriculum, cover letters and various applications were in focus. It must be most time consuming task of all times when ambition tells you that perfection is the only option. But I did what I needed to do, while following the Barca – Real Madrid football game by listening to the shouting and singing of the neighbours and taking a look into what people all over the world were twittering. I’m really happy to have rediscovered twitter, it’s a very powerful tool for getting instant updates on whatever you are interested in and if you want to follow me, just ask! http://twitter.com/#!/carolinebach

Today is another undefined day, I have some errands to run and tomorrow I get another visit from Sweden. They stay until monday and then other people come, then I go for a trip again, then there are music festivals and summer and then who knows.. With all these visits, projects and moving around I never really feel like I manage to get into routines here, I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but knowing me it’s probably the easiest way to save me from the darkness of boredom. haha

The picture above was taken on my street, it’s the Pakistani shopowner’s kids playing Barca football and that’s clearly a penalty kick. Barca scored that day.

Oh, and I might not have a nice to-do list this week but I do have a post it on my desktop with 10 projects and applications I need to start working on and that should be good enough for now. So.. see you around!

Whoah.

image

Today Malmö swallowed me into its meaningless darkness for about two hours. Unable to identify the feeling I felt lost and confused in this place before I managed to drag myself up. Out of negativity and emptiness, back to beautiful rationality, sunsets and beloved reality.