Fabzgy´s Life

It s over. One year atthe University of Costa Rica is over.
I ve learned plenty of things during my stay here. I ve been studying the History of Central America, from Pre-colombian times until now. I ve got familiar with the Ethnology of Central America. I ve studied the Histroy of Africa, Arts and Politics of the 60s and french.
I ve started to dance, juggle, play the guitare and surf.
I ve made tons of new friends. I ve got familiar with the spanish language. I ve made my family come over and visit me in thos paradise.

I ve lived the first time in my live in a shared flat. I ve had the opportunity to cook for myself. I ve got to know people from all continents here in Costa Rica. Had a great time with the Local Couchsurfers.

I ve participated in the process of creating and managing BeWelcome. Started to write articles on the german and spanish Indymedia. I ve been in the local radio, published an article in a local newspaper.

Over all - had the time of my life - again!

Whats the plan now? Good question.
I ve got 3,5 months of absolute freedom. The rough plan is to spend one month in Panama with Devine. Then I m going to attend the Latin American Congress of Anthropology in the end of July and on the firt of August I ve got a flight to Cuba.
In September and beginning of October I m going to travel arround Mexico and Guatemala, maybe Belize. and on the 9. October I m flying from Cancun to Madrid. From there I m going to make my way back to Germany…

So … lets take off and enjoy the freedom!

I m seriously concerned about my future travel to Cuba.
After my first two visits I ve felt that Cuba is the most secure country in Latin America (that I ve visited so far).
This night everything changed. I went, like almost all wednesday to the free movie theater provided by the Videoteca del Sur.
The Movie today: Historia de un hombre: Phillip Agee |1|

Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (July 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008) was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, Uruguay, and Mexico. After resigning from the Agency in 1968, he became a leading opponent of CIA practices. He died in Cuba in January 2008.

Source: Wikipedia

This guy tells you in half an hour why you should be afraid to go to Cuba. There are several organisations who are training terrorists in Florida (USA) in terrorist activities against Cuba. Proudly supported by the CIA. In history these guys have blown up hotels, airplanes and corner shops in Cuba. Some of them were arrested in Venezuela and Panama for terrorist activities. Since the cuban recolution 3500 Cubans died in consequences of these terrorist activities. 2000 cubans are disabled for livetime.
So I m seriously concerned about these people. I m going to Cuba to relax, dance, play music and dive into a social experiment.

I really hope the USA will successfully win there self-declared War on Terror.

I m just a bit confused about this “War on Terror” because Wikipedia tells me that:

The War on Terrorism (also known as the War on Terror) is the common term for the various military, political and legal actions initiated by the United States government, stated to be a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

On the other hand the list of “acts of state terrorism, as well as funding, training, and harboring individuals and groups who engage in terrorism” the USA have been involved in the past ist quite long if you can trust this article on Wikipedia.

Who is fighting against whom here? Why don t we all let others do what they and the people in their country think is the best for them?

Justin, is a guy I ve met in Costa Rica on his bycicle trip from the U.S. to Tierra del Fuego.
About a month ago he got back to the U.S. and today he wrote a very interesting post about getting back from a trip.
You can read the entire entry here.

I m refering to Justin here because I don t think that I could express any better the feelings I m facing when I m comming back.
I ve had very similar feeling slike Justin when I came back from my first Backpacking trip in Southamerica in 2005. From there on I tried to integrate my feelings into my life. I try to avoid television. I take my time to read the Newspaper in the morning. I do not try to be on every single event because I m not afraid anymore that I could miss something. I m taking the time to use my bycicle or public transportation to move around. I m trying to listen to myself, ask myself what I really want. What really makes me happy or satisfied with my life.
I try to get rid of most of the plannings and bondages. I try not to be seriouse and responsible all the time. If I don t feel like having senseless conversations about nothing I don t participate. I rather back out of this group of people who desperately try to kill time while playing card games or talk about tv shows and play guitar, juggle, read a book, work for BeVolunteer/BeWelcome, etc.
Everytime I move somewhere new I see a new chance to change my life. When I first got out of college and worked on my civilian service in Freiburg I became vegetarian and stopped drinking alcohol for 8 months. I had crazy experences with meditation, yoga, fasting, etc. Afterwards the South America trip - a 100 % change of lifestyle. Then I began to study in Freiburg - University, an entire new world. Lot s of new people with lots of interesting stories ideas. During the vacation I moved a lot. Bike trips in France and Italy, trips to Portugal and Spain, escaping the winter in Venezuela and Colombia, etc.
Then finally I ve made it here: Costa Rica. It is a kind of new compromise for me again. New people, new University, new language, new culture, new impressions almost a hundred guests from Couchsurfing, Hospitality Club and BeWelcome. A two months trip in central america. From July on again 3,5 months of travelling.

There is a lot to think about when I m hitting Europe again. I m going to be different again. Hopefully I will find the strength to understand the changes I ve experienced and life the changes in the new life (re-) starting in Freiburg.

It was raining a lot since I ve got back from Panama. I would say that the hurricane is responsable for that but who knows and who cares? We can t change the wheater anyway.

What we can do is go somewhere where the wheather is better. Ive had two guests during the last week who shared my depression because of the rain so Friday morning we decided to get out of that. We took a bus to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the caribbean coat of Costa Rica because the “ticos” say that the wheater is always oposite in San Jose and in the caribbean. We figured out that they are right!

We had three days of perfect sunshine. We played a bunch of music (I ve played at the Jamsession in Et´s restaurant) and hung around on the beautifull beaches. When we hitchhiked back from Punta Uva with some guys from Heredia (close to San Jose) and we met them again at the Salsa Concert in the night. Since they were planing to get back home on Sunday as well they gave us a right straight back to San Jose which saved us 8 US $ (yes the prizes for the buses rise as well in Costa Rica).

Back in San Jose (and back in the rain) I ve stared to work on the Online Preparation of the General Assembly of BeVolunteer which will be held next Weekend.

I m trying to get some work done fpr University in order to not get to wasted with work in the end of the month.

Now you can use www.fabzgy.org to access this Blog.

I ve canceled the jugendclub-mallau.de and hcvelo.org domain and switched to another provider for money reasons.

Thanks for the big amount of congratualtions for my birthday and in the same way sorry for the late replies.

I ve went to Panama from the 15th until the 24th of may to celebrate a calm birthday. This vacation was kind of a birthday present for myself. I ve went to Boquete and hiked up the Volcan Baru. So when I woke up on my birthday I ve been at an altitude of 3474 m and I saw the caribben sea and the pacific ocean from the highest point of Panama. Back in Boquete I cooked for some people in the hostel I satyed and we drunk the bottle of french wine my mum brought me over on her visit. After the lunch we took of to the hotsprings and relaxed there until 10 pm. Back in the Hostel we had a little jam session and played cards until midnight when I went (totlly exhausted) to bed.

The day after I took of to the Burica half island close to the border of Costa Rica and hung around there for some days. I was dreaming a lot about my future after the University. I did not conclude to one real destination but the ideas do get more concrete (I should actually write them down). I can say so far that I won t work all the time in Germany, maybe not even in Europe and that I can t imagine a work I could enjoy for all my life. Temporary projects which should ot end when I retire from the project but continue living without my active participation.

For example Information center
I imagine a king of mix between cultural center, cinema, cafe, hostal and conference center
Free (Online) Newspaper, Free Wireless, Free Access to Wikitravel and Wikipedia, alternative film festivals, open stage jam sessions, seminars, cafe, vegetarian resaurant, hostal, ….

A lot of dreams but nothing very concrete so far … a huge open question is still the place where to realize all this dreams … Europe is easier but more expensive and not that interesting …. Latin America is a hassle with paper work, etc …. who knows ….

Today I realized the long standing idea of giving away some of the lemons.

The situation is that we ve got three lemon trees in our garden and we are unable to eat/drink or use in another way that many lemons.
So 90 % of the lemon were basicly rotting away in our garden and since a few days in our compost. THat does not make sence to me. On the market people are selling lemons and other people could use them instead of letting them rotten away in our backyard. So today I picked up some of a plastic bag and filled them up with around 20 lemons. Then I wrote a little sign saying “Limón gratis!” and hung them up in front of our house.

After half an hour my fltamte informed me that the entire bag is gone. UUfff - that wasn t really like I planed it. I thought that someone would pick some out of the bag and leave some for the next one. Well that might have been to idealistic.

I don t know what you are doing with 20 lemons at one time but well - maybe someone does ceviche with it or lemonade or whatever - thats not my buisness.

Okay since the first bag was gone I filled up another one but this time I ve not even been able to hang them up. I went out with the bag and a neighbour family was about to leave with their car. They stoped and asked if they could have lemons. I asked them if they want th entire bag and they said: “yes - how much is it?” - No no we don t sell them. We just give them away for free but may I ask you a question? What you are going to do with this quantity of lemons?
Answer: “Don t worry son - we eat a lot of lemons” - Okay so hav fun …

The third bag I watched from my window. After 3 mintutes our security guy, who is taking care of the entire street came by with his bike. Strolling around infront of our house and after 5 minutes of doubtfull thinking (”It s for free - thats suspiciouse”) he took the entire bag and went away.

I vfe just hung up the fourth bag - lets see whats gonna happen to this one

So I gave away ~ 70 lemons today and I hope that someone is gonna be happy with it.

BTW: Today I received my confirmation for my flight to CUBA!

- It s a country in Latin America (what a surprise!)

- I ve been there before. (I know that doesn t help a lot either)

- They do speak a really weird spanish over there (hhmmm… that might help some experienced Latin America travellers)

- It s not the easiest country to travel with hospitality exchange! (That will give most of the HC/CS/BW ler the last hit.)

- They dance really, really good over there! (That does limit it a lot actually)

- They ve got very very good ron over there! (Ooohhh - now you got it?)

Well - I m leaving it here… make up your own mind. In a few days I m gonna make myself clear.

Just a quck note:

A few days ago I applied for my first Online Course offered by Youth Action for Change and more specific by Kjell Kühne.
The topic of the course is “Sustainable Development“. While filling out the application form for the online course I ve steped on a question which really made me think.

8. Do you always throw your garbage in the wastebin?

Yes - where else. That was more or less my first thought. Then it came to my mind that we (a 7 persons household) could actually create a compost in our garden in order to reuse the organic waste.

Thought - done! A day after I ve sent outthe application form I ve constructed our compost and filled it up with lemons (we ve got to much lemons in our garden) and grass resently cut by our garden helper… Since then most of our organic garbage does not go to the plastic bag but in the little left corner of our garden to provide home for fruit flies, worms and other little animals …

It all started with some of my german friends who studied with me here in Costa Rica. I traveled with Ole and Alex for a while in January / February this year and by then Alex gave me already a book he had read while traveling. It was a book talking about the travels of a Chinese nobel centuries ago. It was nice but not on of my favourites. A couple of months later a day before Ole catched his flight back to Germany he gave me some books. One of it was the “Glass Bead Game” of Hermann Hesse and another one the “Narcissus and Goldmund”.

Both somehow fit very very good in my present life. I ve mentioned them on the list of my favourite books in BeWelcome.
They describe very very good my torn between the life I want to live and the easier way to live.
I m living right now in a international house with people who are mostly a bit younger then me. Not much - just few months/years. Somehow I feel that partying and having chats about nonsense is not what I want to have in my life. It does not reflect my desires.

What do I wan t in my life? Maybe I should put more energy in this question. I know that I would like tospend less time infront of this very computer! I m breaking this wish this morning again since I m already two hours in front of this fuckin machine. Well I can t do much about it ritght now. It s 89 am in the morning an we have a guest sleping on the sofa in our kitchen. This circumstances don t let me play guitare as I would like to. It would allow me to finish the “Glass Bead Game”but I feel I ve got still some stuff to ctach up with on the web. But is that true? Does it really matter if I m up-to date with the news reaching me through Spiegel,, Indymedia, BeWelcome, Opencouchsurfing, etc.?
It would keep on rolling even without me reading these “News”. It is kind of important to me but on the other hand it is quite irrelevant on my ideal lifestyle.

If I follow the thoughts I had this weekend (we were hiking and camping in the mountains) I should turn of this machine right now and have breakfast while reading “Glass Bead Game”.

Thats what I m gonna do right now! Bye Bye!!!

EDIT: The full text of Siddharta is acutally available at the Gutenberg Project in English and in German.