Wiggling on the Anchor Chain

The swallows are congregating in joyful swarms, chasing tiny, flying insects, swirling through tight flight curves, chirping happily while my informed memory reveals them as getting ready for their seasonal migration. This transcontinental journey will lead them across the bleak peaks of the European Alps towards their southerly winter grounds in Northern Africa. Our own hold in the steadfast Swiss comfort zone is also starting to crumble. Nomadic instincts have once more taken over and are busy trying to organize the break-down of our tent-bound existence. Furniture is returning to respectful and rightful owners, an amazing slew of senselessly acquired stuff needs proper recycling and suitcases with various destinations line the now empty walls of our apartment. This 3 ½ room flat has given us ample shelter over the last almost almost twelve months. A serious clean-up operation lies ahead with its complementary muscle fitness program. By the end of the month we will hand over the keys to this boxy but cozy sanctuary from the eternal envy of the pubic eye.

Once again a shot from my office window.

What was meant to be a short but furious stint of six months duration turned out to be a long drawn out affair of close to seventeen. It was more than we could ever have hoped for when about a year and a half ago we decided to put our entire monetary possession on the line by converting them into two tickets to monetary paradise, because of these seventeen months I have been working full time for a good ninety percent.

The splendid mountaintops of the Alps, as seen from the Titlis.

I have learned that I am able to be a productive member of society if given the chance. My task here was an extremely interesting and challenging one, rewarding and taxing at the same time, and I believe I completed it to acceptable standards, which is a very refreshing thing for somebody who keeps beating himself up constantly and thoroughly for just about every little mishap committed since birth, while desperately trying to be useful to the world.

Late summer storm paints majestically…

We will now have the opportunity to dedicate our time and our selves to whatever crosses our fancy, a freedom important when on the way to restructure the wayward mayhem of modern corporate economics, which keeps mankind in a lethal stranglehold of applied stupidity. I sincerely hope we will be able to do something a little better than all those cruising folks who sail around the world without seeing a thing. I guess a bright cheesy smiley would bring this silly statement to an appropriate closure…

Lofty view of the Upper Engadin Valley

Dreams can once again be directed towards the future. After our expanded return journey aboard Aluna with short excursions to the Wharrams on the Southwestern tip of still mighty England, a intensive space travel to the Kido Planet, and joyful confections of family matters in Bogotá, Colombia, we will fly to Auckland in mid December with a stopover in Santiago, Chile. Once back amongst the Kiwis a short bus trip should bring us back home aboard our floating sanctuary. We’ve heard from friends who have been keeping a keen eye on Aluna, that she has started to scream for some TLC, so over the austral summer she will want to be returned to her due ship shape. Soon thereafter a not so easy decision is awaiting us. By May 2016 her nomadic instincts will bubble up through her structure and we will have to decide on a route to continue our non-linear circumnavigation, which roughly leads us towards SE Asia. This decision is wiggling in my mind like a flag in the wind, changing daily from pointing towards a Southern route up through the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, the path through the middle touching upon the Philippines and Borneo, or the Northern trek with visits to Micronesia, the Marianas and then heading towards the Empire of the Rising Sun.

Late season crop is growing in the foreground

The fight for dominance amongst these different ideas will eventually fade away and settle. We have found it best to let these kinds of future bound decision grow naturally out of what we encounter along our winding ways. If feels great and it is undoubtedly a massive privilege to be able to have these life altering options laid out open before us like spaces with a thousand instantaneous possibilities where it is impossible to foretell the precise ways destiny will choose and where the gods will create their never-ending plots of earth-shattering thunder and lightning.

Fogs of fall are falling.

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Gearing up for leaving the USA

Unfortunately for those of you who look to the adventurous world of cruising and sailing as a means to escape the boredom and mind boggling complexities of normal terrestrial live, I have to burden you for just a bit with exactly that, the latter I mean, this thing we so easily call the “system”, this phenomenon we are so hardly ever willing to have a cold and hard look at, this culprit of everything holding me back from realizing my real potential, this eternal shadow that is always over there, never here, always them, never me, and above all so intrinsically tied to a can’t do nothing about it attitude. But I’m getting off track here. The fact is that our preparations for going cruising decided to take on a life on its own, leading us quite far astray from where we thought things should go. So over the next couple of days we will provide you with brief insights into this weird looking afterglow that decided to emanate from the wake of our extended stay within the comforts of that corner of the world, which so lovingly calls itself the First.

It looks like before being allowed to go and explore exotic people and places we needed to have a thorough and honestly quite painful look at possibly the least exotic country on the face of the earth. This anthropological research project designed to study the presence of any truly human qualities within the United States of America, or the lack thereof, should we find ourselves searching for them in vain, was done definitely against our will. We would have very much preferred to leave this place that was generous enough to let us live and learn inside it’s ever tightening borders for the last 14 years, with nothing but sweet memories.

The United States of America have certainly driven the principle of trading freedom for comfort to a level rarely seen before in human history. And I suspect that whenever we use the term exotic we do imply a certain degree of discomfort in form of more or less painful differences with us reasonable beings, acknowledging that our so jealously guarded civilization is really quite limited when it comes to the actual celebration of life. We therefore suffer great thirst for excitement, this profound and boundless excitement we sense in those other or, for lack of a better word, primitive folks.