Horizons Journal – Up And Away

Majestic – that’s the word that comes to mind. We stand on top of Goldeck mountain 2140 m above sea-level in Austria, looking down on the Drau Valley, the small town of Spittal and Lake Millstatt; the Alps pile up beyond.

People ski all around us, they smile in anticipation of the downhill ride. With this perspective, you cannot help to be in awe of all the grandeur nature displays so generously here. Right now, we feel like little ants on this planet.

It must have taken millions of years for the river to carve this valley on its way east, and it was only three months ago that we have arrived back in Europe after 22 years in South Africa, eager to build a new life here. The blink of an eye.

If I think about it, most of our own ride up to this place was actually downhill so far, everything is falling into place in wonderful synchronicity. We must be doing something right – we apply and observe the Law of Attraction consciously at first hand.

If you’re interested to learn more about how the Law of Attraction and Intention Manifestation works, here is Steve Pavlina’s fascinating Interview with James Ray that I found last week – excellent reading!

This is the final stretch of phase two of our mission to re-settle in Europe : wrapping up in Cape Town was virtually complete when we flew out on 20 Nov, the culmination of establishing our new stomping ground in Austria is very close now.

Everything goes according to plan : the furniture we took with us from South Africa will be delivered to our new flat in Villach tomorrow and the brandnew kitchen we ordered five weeks ago gets installed on Tuesday.

Other stuff we want to live with will then arrive in bits and pieces over the next three weeks – it’s been quite intense to put our vision together and we’re more than a bit tired, but happy about the learning curve and grateful for all the friendly and helpful people we met on the way so far.

After this we’ll enter phase three, the last one, which is to establish a new social and work environment : I work as a Management Consultant with small and medium sized enterprises in Marketing and Administration.

Recently I have received a lot of flattering comments about my eNewsletters and several enquiries whether I can help others to publish their own – they know that regular newsletters are a very effective marketing tool.

I thought about it – and found that of course I can, in many different ways. So I put pen to paper and wrote a separate page on my website about it to offer the service officially from now on.

I’ll elaborate further on that over the next few weeks, but please have an early look and see whether there is something for you, or for someone you know. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, we can put our heads together over the phone and on the Internet to make your plans become reality.

If history is anything to go by, phase three of our new life will be as successful as the first two, and just as exhilarating as the top of Goldeck mountain in winter.

More soon from : Berend

Horizons Journal – Settling In Austria

Snow! Finally, it started coming down in buckets here on Monday afternoon and never stopped until two days later. We haven’t seen any in 22 years of living in South Africa and for us it’s magic, even though it caused havoc for motorists. Ski resorts up in the mountains are relieved, too : winter has come very late this year.

As planned, we arrived in Austria just before New Years Eve in pursuit of our new home : having spent a month in Germany and Christmas with family and friends, we drove south to Bavaria and then through the Alps to Carinthia in Austria in the most miserable conditions imaginable.

If you are used to the N1 in the Karoo and traffic in the southern suburbs of Cape Town, driving rain and near-freezing temperatures are treacherous on the road. Little did we know that a full-blown blizzard was waiting for us three weeks later, when we had to drive the 30 km from Spittal to Villach and back. We made it, but that’s another story.

We are in Spittal an der Drau at the moment, our base to look for a new home in Carinthia – a quaint little town as picturesque as you can imagine Austria, with medieval facades and cobble-stoned squares inviting you to wander and wonder about cultures and people.

Carinthia is the southernmost area in German-speaking Europe you will find. It is on the southern side of the Alps and there, amongst beautiful lakes like Lake Millstatt and Lake Wörth, only a few minutes by car from the Italian border, is Villach – that’s where we’ll be living.

We’ve found a very nice, brandnew flat to rent from where we can walk to Villach’s historical inner city in 15 minutes along the Drau river – you can find a lot more about Villach on Wikipedia in German or Villach on Wikipedia in English. With almost 60.000 inhabitants it is not too big, offers everything we need and distances are very manageable.

It wasn’t easy to choose where exactly we want to live, but we had a list of criteria and they match Villach. One of them was infrastructure, climate another one : when hurricane winds caused widespread damage and flooding in Europe north of the Alps last week, we never saw any of it, except on TV.

We are now tackling part two of our mission to live in Europe again : organise a new household to move in to by 1 March. It takes a surprising amount of running around to find out what, where and how – we thought we would know, but a lot of things have changed in 22 years, and Austria is not quite the same as Germany, after all.

A popular saying here states that ‘Austria is the better Germany’, and in many respects it seems to be true, at least for us : life is well structured, but less frenetic than in Germany. People are generally cheerful, we see a lot of smiling faces – many shops off the mainstream close for a very civilized lunch-break from 12:30 to 14:30 which reminds us of the ‘Siesta’ in Mediterranean countries.

After two months on he road, living out of suitcases gets a bit tiring and we are looking forward to having a familiar habitat again. On the other hand, there is so much new waiting to be discovered by us…

In the meantime, best to enjoy one day at a time – the snowball-fight was fun today!

More soon from : Berend

Horizons Journal – Remembering Our Roots

“Half a meter of Bratwurst for 3 Euro!” The signboard at the foodstall on this German Christmas market refuses to be ignored. The delicious smells of food, Glühwein and sweets mix with seasonal music : sausages are a part of German culture – and I love them, too.

After 22 years in South Africa, we’ve been back home in Europe for almost a month now – for good, not just visiting. Christmas markets are everywhere, and we’ve seen quite a few already. If there was one thing we could never get used to, it was Christmas in summer in the southern hemisphere. It’s just not the same.

Everyone keeps telling us that it’s mild for this time of the year, but they are all lying : it’s cold! And dark – if the sun shows up at all, it is very low on the horizon. Days are short, but that’s when the Glühwein kicks in.

OK, there’s no snow yet; that makes it easier to practice driving on the other side of the road again. Traffic is crowded, roads are narrow and the highways have no speed limit. Germans are busy, they don’t waste time – until they look for parking space.

We had forgotten how pleasant it is to live in a really efficient society : things work here. Plenty of rules and regulations, but bureaucracy is nowhere near as bad as we remember it – we had compulsory registration, new ID docs and drivers licences out of the way in no time. If you stick to the rules they work for, not against you.

For us, keeping an open mind is important at the moment – we have new eyes and still see Germany from an outside perspective, consciously approach situations and people in a friendly and unbiased way.

And the Law of Attraction never fails to produce the desired results : we found the car we wanted at the first dealer we approached, for example; other things we need fall into our laps without effort.

Not without cost, mind you : Europe is expensive if you compare it to living in South Africa, but you get what you pay for – the choices of products and services are absolutely overwhelming! Everything is available in many different varieties, so it takes time to sort the wheat from the chaff and find what you want at a discount.

Everybody is chasing that ‘Schnäppchen’ – finding the lowest price is a national pastime, especially at this time of the year. Most towns have turned their main shopping districts into pedestrian zones and the crowds shuffle all over the place, interrupted only by foodstalls, beautifully decorated Christmas trees and travelling musicians.

It is Christmas in Germany, we recognize the spirit – and it feels good. We remember our roots – reconnecting with friends and family is a joyful experience, we treasure the kinship that has survived the separation of life on different continents for such a long time.

People, not things define what you call ‘home’ but the culture we grow up in provides the common background that remains a special bond for life. As much as we love the people and the country, we have known for a long time that we would never be South African.

Is it the language? Our mother tongue is an important part of our culture, but I write and even dream in English these days – hearing the latest German idioms is a lot of fun but takes some adjusting on our part.

We’ll find out soon enough : before this year ends we’ll be in Austria where they speak a very different dialect to our northern German accent. We have our eyes on settling there for the next chapter in our lives and hope that we can ring in the new year with a lot of snow.

Until then, may I sincerely wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2007 – may it bring all you expect and dream of for your life :

Berend

Horizons Journal – Going Back to the Future

Finally, the Sahara. We’ve been roughed up a bit over the steaming jungles of the equator, but now the towering clouds have disappeared and 10 kilometers below us, a giant sandbox slowly passes by.

I can’t help but think how enormously big this continent of Africa is. We had taken off at the southern tip of it in Cape Town early in the morning for a non-stop flight that would take us to Germany almost 12 hours later.

All our friends think that it takes a lot of courage to uproot our lives of almost 23 years in South Africa and return to Europe. Maybe that’s true, but we are so absolutely sure that this is what we want to do : go back to our own culture.

We’re excited, looking forward to the future, not scared – just creating the environment we want for ourselves. Leaving our comfort zone, yes. We are happy to have that freedom, it’s no big deal really, we’ve done it before; but real courage is something else, and we found a lot of it in Africa.

I’ll never forget our first Christmas office party in Johannesburg, back in 1984 : just the five of us with spouses, but one of us was black – Peter, our driver. We struggled to find a restaurant that would serve black people in those Apartheid years and it took a lot of persistence to succeed; not a nice memory.

We considered leaving the country only once, in 1987 when sanctions had isolated South Africa really badly and we had no hope that the situation would improve. But the job in Australia didn’t work out and we made some other changes instead.

That’s all different now, of course. The dramatic years of transition to democracy were interesting, to say the least – in hindsight I realize how easily things could have ended tragically. A lot of friends had bought one-way tickets just in case when the first democratic elections were held in 1994, on my birthday : 27 April.

Today, we are on a one-way ticket. Still desert sand down there, the picture-book-dunes-variety we always see on the Discovery Channel now. Then, abruptly, the incredibly blue Mediterranean at the coast of Algeria in the late afternoon sun. Some white clouds, Europe is almost in sight.

We look at each other and smile : this is an exciting adventure for me and my wife and we can’t wait to land in about two hours. The Cote d’Azure in the south of France now, then the snow-capped mountains of the Alps. This is familiar; we have been homesick – more than we realize, judging by all the joy we feel.

We’re so lucky : we stayed with good friends in Cape Town until they took us to the airport, and good friends will pick us up in Germany – everyone we know offered unconditional hospitality and helped with all they’ve got when we sold our house and dismantled most of our infrastructure in South Africa; this means a lot to us, and we are very grateful. Thanks to all of you!

Big Hallos at the airport when we arrive – genuine friendship cannot hide. But it’s cold when we haul our luggage to the cars, and dark : a reminder that we’ve travelled from summer straight into winter. No problem, a good Schnaps will warm us up again later.

That’s all I wanted when I was younger : live in a world where it was warm and sunny, experience different cultures on an incredibly interesting planet. South Africa was good for us, this vibrant rainbow nation has so much to offer; we’ll be back to visit, stay in touch a lot, but we’ll live in Europe now.

I’ll be back with more soon : Berend

Horizons Journal – Taking Charge of Our Lives : Leaving South Africa

We are moving. No kidding. After almost 23 years of being expatriates in South Africa, particularly enjoying the last 10 here at the beautiful Cape of Good Hope, my wife and I are relocating to Europe. We are homesick – if you have ever been away from home for any extended period of time, I am sure you know what that feels like.

True to our belief that we can create any type of life we want, we are taking charge and doing it. We’ll miss a lot of people and things in this country, but when one door closes, another opens and we know that there are even better things waiting for us.

How often have we looked out over False Bay from our house in Simon’s Town in the morning ? With a cup of tea in our hands, we marvel at the sunrise over the Hottentot Holland Mountains 40 kilometers across the sea to the east almost every day.

I never started counting. It wasn’t important because we were enjoying the moment, and we knew there would be many mornings like this.

Sometimes in season, there are whales or dolphins to watch, but most of the time it is just the magnificent sunrise at the southern tip of Africa. And some birds chirping in our Fynbos garden, unless the guinea-fowl kick up a racket.

Apart from that – peace and quiet. The comfortable stillness that only nature provides. The content impression that this is how everything is meant to be.

These lines are from the introduction to my eBook ‘Moving Horizons’ and they still ring very true. But we have now dissolved our household, given most of our furniture to friends who need them more than we do, sold the cars, parted with our two cats yesterday – and are ready to move.

On Monday everything will be packed and we’re taking a flight the following Monday. We’ll be back regularly, for holidays and I have work here, but we are moving our base back to Europe – modern technology enables me to work from anywhere in the world, as long as I have a telephone and an Internet connection.

BLUE CRANE and COMPASS will carry on as usual, of course – but for the next few weeks I expect to spend less time with the laptop so I might not be able to write as many articles as usual.

What I WILL do, though is keep an online HORIZONS JOURNAL with shorter messages here at the COMPASS blog to trail my next leap in personal growth in Europe – if you want to be kept informed, please subscribe to the COMPASS RSS feed here or get it delivered by eMail.

I found an excellent article on taking charge of your life this week, by the way : ‘What It Means to Wake Up and Take Charge of Your Life’ by Matt Inglot. Really very interesting, here is a short clip :

‘I was exposed there to a strange freedom that was offered nowhere else. I read some extremely positive literature from people that seemed … happy. This was a world that my programming books had never exposed me to. Never before had I seriously read about ideas like goals, personal development, financial planning, and the idea that becoming truly successfully was something other than luck or born talent.’

What else is new? Steve Pavlina’s forum on personal growth is up and running! It is very exciting and growing rapidly, with anything you can imagine being discussed – I am contributing actively (e.g. please see the thread for South Africa) and if there is one thing you don’t want to miss, it is this forum. Do yourself a favour and register there, it works well and is hugely informative.

OK, here I go – you’ll hear from me soon if you put your eMail address in the box, don’t forget – best do it now.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend