Living in close contact with the elements has meant a lot to me since I was a teenager. I was drawn early on to primitive peoples who still live in connection with the earth. Even before I held my high school diploma in my hand, I was on a plane to Jamaica to circumnavigate this island on foot. From there I went to Australia to finally get the feeling of having arrived in Asia and to find a deep fulfillment in cooking on the fire, sharing my straw hut with small (at best) four-legged friends and a life without electricity. Most of all I was fascinated by the life of the Buddhist monks and nuns. In Burma -now Mynamar- one offered me to stay in her cave to practice and study Buddhism…almost, almost, I stayed.

When I arrived in Germany from Sri Lanka at the age of 27 with a baby in my belly and a Buddha statue on my back, my possessions consisted of five banana boxes filled with things that I was supposed to give away in the following weeks. Admittedly, today I sometimes find it a pity about the diaries …

Now – 17 years later- I left our house behind with a large part of my family for this one-year bus trip. Had accumulated so incredibly many things that we had hoarded in recent years. Although we already have a circulation system in our house, which means that when something new comes in (which is mostly fortunately already second, third or fourth hand) something old is sorted out and brought to the fundus. And I know that most other German families have a lot more stuff. Why on earth do we accumulate so many things? And not just objects. Also, my life is usually full of appointments, dates, conversations, to-dos, and lots of back and forth. And full of thoughts.