ON THE ROAD: PROFILES
Natalié
Salzburg, Austria
I met Natalie on the train from Munich to Salzburg. She grabbed the seat facing me just as our train was starting to leave, and we got to chatting. We ended up exploring Salzburg together the next few days.
“I was born in Berlin, and have lived in several other cities while I pursued courses in psychology or worked. Most of these places have been in Germany, like Hamburg, Munich, Munster, Oberstein, Dresden, and Aachen. I also spent a year in Sun City, California as a child, and I studied in Canada. Because I’ve travelled a lot, I eventually realized that Berlin actually is my favorite place to live in. I like how multicultural it is and that you can be who you are at all times. You could walk barefoot in the winter and no one will judge you.”
“I used to travel with my family when I was younger but truly got into traveling when I was eighteen. It started exploring on weekends, when I would just pick a town or city I had never been to and visit it by couch surfing. Some of friends had used the Couchsurfing app before and recommended it to me. I thought it would be the perfect way for me to just go to random places without worrying about anyone accompanying me, as I was always going to meet people anyway. That’s actually how I planned my trip to Salzburg. I had a free weekend, so I thought, why not?”
“How do I like traveling alone? Well, I think you never really travel alone, do you? You start a trip alone, maybe, but it never stays that way. In fact, even when I want to travel alone I’m never really alone. If I sit down at a bar, I immediately meet people. However, I think if you start your travels alone, you’re not dependent on anybody else and you get to actually meet new people wherever you go. When you’re start a trip with your friends, you don’t always interact with new people so easily.”
“One day, I want to become a teacher that helps people connect psychotherapy, meditation, and yoga to find a perfect work-life balance. A few years ago, I really wanted to travel to Bali and find an internship or program there. I looked online and found this transpersonal psychology program that included meditation, yoga and vegan food. I’d never done yoga before, but once I got into it in Bali I fell in love with it. One of my yoga teachers there told me about Vipassana Mediation, where you go to any Vipassana center around the world and mediate for 10 days straight. I decided to go for it. I didn’t even know what I was signing up for.”
“I traveled to a Vipassana center in Sri Lanka. The first half-day of my arrival, everybody was still talking and turning in their devices. In the evening, a gong started ringing, and we immediately had to stop talking and stop making eye contact. For the next 10 days, you couldn’t write or read, you’d just mediate for 12 hours a day. You’d wake up at 4:00 am and meditate for two hours, then eat breakfast, meditate again for four hours, then eat lunch, and then meditate again for five hours and so on. After afternoon tea, there was an hour of video spiritual learning every evening, where we got to understand our practice more deeply. What was crazy, was that your teachers, at every moment, knew how you were feeling. The one night I couldn’t sleep, my teacher gave me advice on how to sleep better, without me saying anything to him of course. The first three days were really hard for me, but then it became a really good experience. At the end of the session you just pay for how much you think the ten days were worth. Through Vipassana, I learnt learn what it is to live only with myself. At the end of the program I didn’t even know how to talk. My phone was going crazy. It was a good thing to do. I really learnt how to focus on the “now” and not on yesterday or tomorrow.”