Almost exactly three weeks ago, I arrived in Jericó, a small town south of Medellín. The journey here turned out to be less complicated than expected. After initial difficulties booking a ticket online, I decided to just go to the counter on the spot and talk to someone in person. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Somehow it’s a comforting feeling to have your ticket in your hands before you leave. Since the system didn’t accept my credit card, I decided to just go to the ticket counter a half hour before departure and buy a ticket. This decision meant relinquishing some control and living with the uncertainty of not knowing if a seat would be available. As it turned out, the ride wasn’t very popular at that early hour, and I had the bus almost to myself.

Medellín was my first stop in Colombia. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the city. Especially among digital nomads it seems to be very popular. Unfortunately, my impression was not quite as positive. A lot of things seem to have changed for the worse in recent years. Especially Corona has driven many people to the streets and especially into the hands of drugs. On the way to the city center you meet a lot of people just injecting or preparing a pipe. As the guide of a free walking tour tells us, we tourists are part of the problem. On the one hand, we bring money into the city, with which more and more people can finance their lives; on the other hand, we drive up prices so high that many can no longer afford the rents.

Medellín is like other big cities for me. It is way too noisy, too dirty and especially the traffic overwhelms me. Of course there are also nice places. For example, I can highly recommend the museums. Fernando Botero, an artist from Medellín, who is known worldwide for his disproportionate paintings and sculptures. In the city center, his figures are spread outdoors and in a museum.

The three-hour bus ride to Jericó took us higher and higher into the mountains. Past many small towns and individual houses lined up along the road. Every now and then another passenger got on at places that were not recognizable as a bus stop. At some point, someone was also there to check or collect tickets. But they too, like occasional candy and juice vendors, got off somewhere in the middle of nowhere to go their own way. Probably looking for a new ride to offer their products.

The higher we get into the mountains, the narrower the roads become. I ask a fellow driver if she can give me some of her internet so I can tell my friend Johandy Pablo that we will arrive on time at the agreed place. On time from a Colombian point of view, not from a German one. She was surprised at my request, but very happy to help me, on the condition that I show her how to do it.

It was a joyful reunion when I got off the bus and was able to receive my friend with outstretched arms. In Germany, we only ever met at parties and never had the chance to really talk. Here we immediately started to catch up. In the coming weeks, we will have more than enough opportunity to talk about our lives and support each other in our plans for the future. Again and again, we realized how similar we are.

I am amazed at how cheap Colombia is from a European perspective. At the hostel, I paid 7 euros for the night. A simple lunch consisting of rice, some salad, animal protein and beans, with a drink and soup is already available for 12,000 pesos. This is equivalent to about €2.50. You can get a cappuccino in a “fancy” café for €1.

During my first purchase in a small vegetable store on the street, I was surprised how prices are made here. I had a handful of tomatoes, a few cucumbers, avocados, carrots, potatoes, onions, and other odds and ends. In the end there was a big shopping bag full, which the good man just put together in the cart. Everything seems to have a standard price here. For only 19600 pesos (about 4 €) he let me go.

My accommodation in a finca costs 160 € for the whole month. Not the cheapest in the whole place, but with a lot of peace and quiet, if the cleaning lady does not confuse the leaf blower with the broom. Which she did every day right when I wanted to concentrate or sleep. It seems to bother everyone in the house, but no one seems to want to say anything. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. On a day when I slept poorly, it was too much for me. I had to at least tell her. I have a feeling she wasn’t even aware that it might bother anyone.

All of my roommates are here to live a nice, relaxed life away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I live with three artists and a programmer. Everything kind of fits together. I felt welcome and integrated from the first day. Everyone has their own rhythm. Some, like me, get up early to enjoy the quiet of the morning. The sun sets very early here, but also rises very early. That suits me very well. I like to live according to the rhythm of the sun. Others leave the windows closed longer and greet the day a little later. At the latest when Norma starts the leaf blower, the night is over for everyone.

We regularly meet outside on the porch to chat and drink coffee. My Frisbee disc always gets stroked and also the odd tumble down the steep slope. We laugh a lot. Almost every day there is hot chocolate for everyone. A mixture of cocoa, sugar cane and spices. Here, people hug each other when they meet. You feel like you are in a small family. When you are surrounded by so many lovely people, you don’t have to make an effort to connect outside of the finca. Here you have everything you need. Together we spent many beautiful moments in the mountains around Jericó and listening to live music in town. One evening we played music together and read poems we wrote to each other.

We like to play cards together. I taught them Dutch. It’s a game where you have to memorize cards. It reminds me of the years in Mannheim. We must have met once a week and played together. It’s nice that it’s become a bit of a habit here, too. It makes me feel a bit more at home.

In Jericó, social life takes place in the central square next to the cathedral. All kinds of restaurants and cafés gather here. Music is played, flying merchants are out and about offering all kinds of delicacies. On the corner there is the best ice cream in town, my words, not theirs. From this square the streets stretch out like little fingers in all directions. Here you can find some small store at every door. Everything seems to be still very specialized here. You rarely get everything on your shopping list in one place. Here you still feel like in a medieval small town. Everyone who wants to sell something opens his door in front and sells. There is a kind of supermarket, but it is at most half the size of an Aldi here and doesn’t have everything. For example, it doesn’t have any vegetables.

Routine

For me, there are two kinds of routines. One gives me some stability in what I want to do on a regular basis. The other makes me comfortable because I don’t experience enough new things. The first drives me to pursue my goals. The second is the foundation of the comfort zone I actually want to break out of. Somehow it’s a tug of war to be driven, to have to do something and also to let all four be straight sometimes and go with the flow. I haven’t found a good balance there yet. Somehow it seems to be a part of me to always have to be “productive” or I feel like I’m just wasting the time I have available.

In the past, I definitely tried to keep that voice quiet by smoking pot. When I felt like it was time to do nothing, I would roll a joint and turn my brain off. This works surprisingly well. Somewhere along the way, though, I realize that it’s causing me to waste even more conscious quality time, I hate that word. I don’t like it because it puts another bar on how you should and shouldn’t spend your time. The time I consider “wasted” is the time I spend on autopilot. I think this is exactly what meditation is trying to teach us. We do exactly one thing at a time, no more. I give my full attention to the person I’m talking to or what I’m doing, without thinking about the past or the future, without doing anything else in parallel. Most of the time it’s the cell phone. I experience it almost every day that I want to do something specific on the cell phone, but then I get distracted by a notification and after a short time I don’t even know what I wanted to do.

By autopilot, I mean unreflective consumption without even knowing afterwards what I was actually consuming. How many hours have I spent watching YouTube without even knowing what it was all about? That was one of the reasons why I decided many years ago not to buy a TV anymore. Unfortunately, that big screen has been replaced by many small ones that propagate even more untargeted consumption. A constant barrage of purposeful distraction. There was a time when I tried to consume more consciously. For example, I picked a video that interested me and then had some thoughts about it that I wrote down. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long.

I now limit my YouTube consumption to 20 minutes a day. Whereby I may extend up to 10 minutes if something is exciting. That doesn’t stop me from unconscious consumption. But it at least ensures that I don’t do it for uncontrollably long periods of time.Especially when I’m tired, I like to resort to aimless consumption. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help me relax. On the contrary, I am more mentally exhausted afterwards than before. I could have lain down or meditated in the same amount of time. Simply doing nothing is often not an automatic option for me. And then I get irritated and write paragraphs like this one.

I’m still in South America until at least the end of February next year. But I’ve realized that I don’t want to be on the road all the time. It is exhausting for me to constantly sit in buses and sleep in different beds. Constantly making new acquaintances, always the same small talk without really getting to know anyone, I find that exhausting.

I feel more comfortable in a routine than just living into the day. Where work used to set a certain rhythm, now I have to find something to do myself, a certain sense of purpose to guide me through the day. I look for the feeling of having accomplished something. But in the process, I also realize how driven I am by this sense of an organized daily routine. If I don’t get my workload done, it gnaws right at me. I would like to have the looseness of the Colombians. Here, agreements become suggestions rather than stipulations. Here, no one seems to mind if you’re late or don’t show up at all. Everything happens in the flow of the moment. If you go somewhere, you are sure to be stopped by one or the other friend for a chat. You quickly have a lot of friends here and thus stops along the way.

I’ve made a few things that I incorporate into my routine. Weekly, I consider whether I still enjoy the routine as it is and make small adjustments. My morning starts every day around 6:30 a.m. with a 15-minute meditation. I like to start the day consciously and experience it. Then I make myself a nice big cup of tea with a drizzle of honey. With that, I write for about an hour. My goal is to get at least a thousand words down on paper every day. Right now I’m mainly writing on a book, otherwise for the blog and for myself. If I’m not doing any other exercise on a given day, I’m either doing a flexibility routine or yoga. I alternate between the two with the goal of achieving press to handstand. I already notice how much more stable and upright I am in handstand. But when I watch a video of my yoga class, I realize there’s still a lot of room to go.

Plans, helping or hiking

My trip takes me to the north, to a small town called Minca, not far from the city of Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast. If possible, I would like to help out on a permaculture farm in the mountains there. I don’t have an answer yet. If it doesn’t work out, I would make my way to the mountains on foot. I haven’t pitched my tent in a long time and my hiking boots are already moldy.