On track

I'm back or at least it feels like that.., but I don't know if I really have been gone.. Confused! So am I! The last few weeks, ever since I came back from Belgium, have been a roller coaster ride involving applying for social assistance, seeking jobs, finally figuring out what I want to do, what I want to study when cycling doesn't take up all my time and energy. I have realized this season that no matter how passionate I am about my cycling, I simply can't make it a living. Now I am back on the "right" side of the system - the side of the pay checks, and it feels God damn good. 

It's strange how many things for the moment just snaps into place. I still miss a lot of pieces for my "never-ending" puzzle, but at least now I can sense the how it could end up looking like! I have caught myself daydreaming about what my future may contain! 

First focus is to build a staircase so I can crawl up from the financial hole, which my Belgium 6 month stay has left me in, but the 2 of April I'm back into employment.  

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An educational Friday.

After some quiet days which haven’t really been action packed. Because of my current situation with unemployment have I applied for social benefits? I have started on an approximately 3 weeks "educational program" as a "activation" because I'm under 30 then I have to do this program, which is completely waste of time and resources if you ask me! I can write page after page about this subject. The truth is that the system is set-up on a really non-functional way, and it seems like the no one is getting something out of it!

For me this is a necessary stop because I don’t have a job, but I’m searching and waiting for answers from the ones I already have talked with. For me this is a necessary evil as for many others in my “group”. Most of us have an idea on what they want to do, and we are just waiting for an answer from the university or military. It’s very frustrating and hate been treated like a child and being talked down to, as I don’t understand anything.

As I mentioned in my last post I’m starting but slowly to figure out what I want with my life, and this has involved a new application for a new study. Yep I’m planning and hoping for 4 more years on school benches, unbelievable but true. But before the dream can come true I’ll have to pass two tests, the first one starting in just a few weeks, and then I hopefully can start on the study photojournalism in Århus to either September or February. If not then I’m going to keep pursuing it until I get in.

Today I spent a lot of hours working on taking portrait which is something I have never done before! I had a very educational and fun Friday with my good friend, where I learnt quite a lot, my head is full of impressions and my new passion just reached new heights. Here are some of the highlights from the day. I still got a lot to learn and I have only just begun to photograph.

I want to say thank you to Tony for being so patient to day. All the pictures used in this post are from my educational Friday!  

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Yesterday

The Belgium cross bubble has burst! After returning back to DK, my days has been really quite, and honestly I haven’t done that much. Ever since my concert in CPH and a weekend trip to Malmö my head has been so quite, which for a time has been very much appreciated.

I’m slowly starting to adapt to my life in Denmark. These couple of days I have been dealing with all the paperwork which comes when you are unemployed, and still need something to live for. This has been very frustrating, and I have only dealt with it, less than I week, and it already starting to get to me. It’s not the fact that I don’t have job, it the hole thought about that my cross dream about returning to Belgium for one more season, might going to end before it started! But it’s going to work out, just feeling a bit burn out for the moment, think it has to do with that I for the first time in my life had to apply for “social assistance”. No matter what, I really didn’t like it, and it made me feel unimportant and uncomfortable.  

I’m starting but slowly to figure out what I want with my life, don’t have a master plan, but the basic lines are starting to pop up in my head, and giving me kind of a direction off where I want to go, and what I need to do in order to get there. Which is nice, it gives me a certain piece in mind, now that everything ells around me more or less is floating.

In order to keep focus I’m working on my Bucket List – you know just to keep me focused so that I’m not falling back into old habits and pattern.

As a complete contrast to my day yesterday, I witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen – I felt like sharing it with you guys. 

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Not just a place to stay

On my last weekend down here, a good friend of mine gave me a "photo-assignment". The task was to capture/describe my home in Belgium through the camera lens. So I did, and it was quite harder then I thought. 

I have in the past touched the subject home, and what it is that makes a home a home, and once again I was forced to think about what is the ingredients for a home. What is it that I for a long time has considered my home to be a rented room in a house in Blauberg, in the middle of Flandern for home. A house with absolutely none of my personal items except for my beloved Pink Panther (teddy ;-) - never to old for that). It's always with me, it's my most precious "object" that I own. Silly I know...! 

How can I describe with pictures my home in Blauberg? How can I feel at home sitting in a sofa in a country where I don't speak the language, where most of all my connections to the surrounding world goes through facebook, twitter or skype. How do I describe all this with pictures in stead of words! Yeah see the challenge of the assignment... It's still an on-going process!

And then it hit me; the final ingredients that made the big change - the crucial point where it felt like home wasn't all the stuff I was surrounded by! It was all the cool, crazy, funny, friendly people which I during my last 5 months has shared this house with. They made it feel like a true home, and not just a place to stay... 

So this is my Belgium home assignment in pictures and a little bit in text. It's still an on-going a task, and I will think about some more and better describing pictures, but for now this is what I got. 

It wasn't the fact that I could mess all that I wanted without being told differently :-)

 

Oh yeah - the favourite spot - before the sofa was angled so that I had a perfect view for the TV 

(no comments please - I know...) 

My precious :-) 

The once who made it feel like home part 1. 

The once who made it feel like home part 2. 

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A day out and home in silence

Once again Monday was the day for exploring what Belgium has to offer, after a bite of start nerves, I pulled my self together, packed a bag for a day out, and hit the road, this time direction south-west, more essentially Ieper and to the local historical "trace" from the first world war. 

I never really know how to describe what I have seen at these war sights. I always ends up searching for the right words to describe it, because the truth is you don't "see" the war monuments, massive cemeteries or museums like you do with other "tourist sights". And on the other hand you don't really experience them either.

In a way you are being a witness to what have happen, and hopefully never going to happen again. I find history quite interesting and important, that's what you get when growing up with a father, who always had to take the more historical way/angle around sights or trips. For instance it took me many years before I drove the direct way to Italy, avoiding all the small roads, avoiding the "cherries road" which more or less follows the  old frontier to East Germany. It took me a while before I realised how much I missed stopping on a mountain top just in order to see an flooded town, where the only things still visible was the church spire. How much I missed taking the different paths, stopping in small village in order to exploring the heart, visiting the the historical heritage. 

My mum and dad taught me, that travelling / exploring is not about getting as fast as possible to your "end destination". The minute you have packed, and stepping out of your front door your journey has begone, and for that I'm eternally thankful. Happiness is not an object you are aiming at, it's the journey it self.

As I have said before, sometimes pictures says more then words, so here is my day out in Ieper. 

I came home in silence, after a thoughtful and reflective and at times frighting / quite day out, in the trails of the first world war.  

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Back to my metropolitan

Well that was it – or almost it. My Belgium adventure is lacking towards the end, whether I like it or not! Soon I’m off to clean/prepare my beautiful bikes, do the last laundry and pack my cycling gear for the last time, and head north again. North – back to Denmark; back to my metropolitan and mother language, back to the friends and beloved ones, which I left behind in September for pursuing my cyclo cross dream. I’m saying goodbye to one home/one life and hello to a different home and life, but it’s all right. I’m ready now. I know in my heart when one adventure ends, a new one will raise and sweep me off my feet.

Where does all this leave me?

I went down here in September to have a blast! To do it the reel and in my head the proper way! Maybe I was crazy, I know. When I unpack the car in September and said goodbye to everybody back home, I hadn’t planned anything, I just did as I always do, followed my heart and gut feeling, and what an adventure it has been. With fear of repeating me, what a life changing experience, this 6months turned out to be, and THANK YOU to all you great people which I have met on my path!

I still have 2 more weeks down here, or more preciously 12 days! 12 days left to make the most of every minute. I have to be honest; training doesn’t really have the same priority any more, I’m walking around trying to capture everything, making one more last visit to the all places, I have begun to love. These last days down here ask kick started my tourist gene.

Last Monday I went to Antwerp, I literally walked around the city for 7 hours, taking over 75 pictures. I was an on-going/never stop/ need to take more pictures mood, and I loved every step on the way. The city was great, but even though it was a bright clear blue sky it was freezing cold, and I had to wear my two best friends in order to stay warm = my Long Johns and wool undershirt.

Will I come back to Belgium?

Hell yeah! I’m not ready to grow up and start facing an adult life, its way too complicated…! The only thing that can keep me away from one more trip to Belgium next winter is my biggest supporter = my bank account or bank lady! I need to find a job when I get back to DK – so I’m searching like everybody ells, I need to start making money, so that I can start saving up money – that’s have simple it is! I know that next year it’s gonna be different, and properly not as overwhelming as the season has been, but I’m ready are you?

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Part time Canadian or...!

Just saw it has been almost 14 days since I lasted posted something on my blog. Is not that I haven’t had anything to do, on the contrary these last few weeks have been real action packed especially since the house has been full with 5 Canadian guys, 2 juniors & 2 U23 which have turned the house completely upside down. I really had a blast with those guys! This cross season I have only shared house/hotels etc. with Canadians so that I sometimes feel like a part-time Canadian ;-). It has been a fun rollercoaster ride which ended this morning when the last one flew home. The house is now SO quiet and completely different from the last 3 weeks. It’s gonna take me awhile to get use to be just me again, at least I now know that I’m pretty good at adapt to new circumstances and changes. Still I would prefer company then being all alone in the house. It is now more fun eating with others, sharing stories the cycling, normal life, or crazy video in YouTube, then doing it all on your own. 

The Worlds was an awesome, crazy, scary and truly amazing experience/race. I’m just a bite annoyed that a stomach flu should get in the way for a good result, I had a good start and was in the top 20, but halfway through the race I completely ran out of power, so ended as nr. 29. Not really satisfied, but everything considered it’s all right. You will have to be at 110% in order to perform well at the course in Koksijde.  The crowd, the atmosphere everything was 10 times bigger, crazier and greater then I could ever imagine. Here two days later I’m still complete out of words for how BIG the worlds in Koksijde were. It’s indescribable standing in 6^th row; trying to get a peek of the elite men meanwhile you are standing on your toes in order to be able to see the big flat screens. The last I have heard is that there were almost 70.000 people spectators! So you do the math! It was bigger than BIG, and I was there!  

Now I have one more month down here. The master plan is to do the following 5-6 races ending with the one in Oostmalle, then the 20^th I’m packing the car (hopefully it will start) during worlds I have 2 car breakdowns, because of a dead battery. So I’m a bite scared of driving in my car down here, I never know if or when the battery is going to die next time! It’s a ticking bomb or just another good adventure and story to tell when I get back home

In some way I don’t want to go back to DK, back to everyday life. I need to find a job -> start making some money again, in order to save up more money for going down here again and again and..! For the moment I don’t know how, or if I can find one, to be honest is very scary and frustrating. My biggest fear is to come back, and then I don’t have anything to do! I’m filled up with sitting in the couch. Now I'm just gonna enjoy the last weeks of racing down here, and then handling everything ells when I get back to DK!

For more pictures from worlds and my Belgium adventure see my Facebook profile! 

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