It's been a while, again, and I spent some of this time wondering, whether I should be allowed to write a blog at all, if I am not (physically) traveling. Then I decided that it is my blog and I can write whatever I want whenever I want. After all, life is a journey and you don't always have to move around the globe to grow as an individual (although it helps). And then I tried to find the time to do so. The time is now, apparently.

I have settled down. Well, no, no worries, I do not mean this as a life decision, just an intermittent state which can always be changed at short notice. I have done several things in the last months that I haven't done in quite a while, however, the biggest surprise for me was how easy it was to get used to life outside the rainforest and how quickly the rainforest was almost forgotten. More than anything else, I assume, this shows how little our present-day world has in common with the life lead by the people there. It's even difficult to believe they all exist on the same planet.

How my life has changed, though! First, I got a job. I was running low on money and decided it wouldn't hurt to fill up stocks for my next adventure. Also, unfortunately I couldn't find a suitable alternative to renting a room in a shared apartment which means a regular income is basically a necessity. I first got a job in a bakery thinking that getting up early shouldn't be a problem for an ornithologist and when you sell food at least you don't have to sell useless stuff. I soon learned how wrong I was. First I had to learn that getting up before 5 am might be a perfectly fine thing to do if you are living somewhere in a natural area where the sun and the moon are the main light sources. If, however, you are in the middle of a city and have trainings until late at night on most days then getting up before 5 is not nice in the long run. Also, I soon found out that even in a bakery we produce so much garbage that it hurt my eyes to look at it. But the worst of all was not the paper napkins that piled in the garbage cans. The worst were the big boxes full of food that was thrown out every single night. We could take home as much as we wanted, basically, so long as we only used it for ourselves. Occasionally it was also okay to take food to some homeless shelter or the like (although I never understood what this depended on). But it was just ridiculous to look at all the perfectly fine food that a minute before closing time was sold at rather high prices just to be literally thrown in the garbage a minute later.

Having lived in Latin American countries I have long learned that "price", although there are people who study years to determine the right price for something, is actually something quite arbitrary. I think I have written about this before but when you sell something in the street (which is rather common in Latin America) then you do not ask 9.6 pesos or 12.2. It will always cost 10 pesos, or 5, or whichever is the closest suitable price. So forget the market, it's all just made up, really! How else could you sell a cinnamon roll (Nussschnecke for German speakers, or something the like) for 2 Euro one moment and give it to someone for free in the next, in order to save it from the garbage can. During the three months I worked in the bakery I always had the feeling that nobody really cared about what was being sold or not. Which, I must add, was a nice feeling. This is quite a positive thing, in my opinion, to not have to write down every single bread roll baked and sold or emptied into the trash. It is also obvious to me, that they can't just go around and give food away for free to everybody. But would it not make more sense to just cut the prices say in half and sell everything at a decent price, so that even poor people can eat and then maybe be a little bit more careful to not have to throw away so much each day? It would make so much more sense to me but clearly it is not how business works. Mind you, consumers don't work like that either, because an particularly bad days when we had a lot of left-overs, I was close to screaming at customers for checking if we had what they wanted and leaving without buying anything because even though we had so much stuff just the very thing they wanted wasn't there. I wanted to tell them to just buy something else, even give them something else for free just so they would understand that their attitude is what really messes up our planet so much. All that overproduction is apparently needed because the customers demand it but who pays the price in the end?

Be that as it may, and there is a lot more that one could think about on this issue, including the question whether food should be traded on a market like other things at all, I quit. I got a new job. I am now working as a receptionist in a hotel. And literally this is where I am writing this now. I am not saying I don't do any work here, but it is generally far less busy, which is perfect so long as I have a desk and my computer and can do my own work here. Which I can, so actually it is a great job so far. It sure has its downsides that I will probably get to know soon enough but for now I am happy here. Probably the most important thing about it is that I get to practice all my foreign languages. And if you don't want to forget them but know you won't travel for a while this is really the best thing you can do, I think. Mind you, there is language tandems too, which are great but here I actually get paid for talking in a different language which is pretty cool.

I am not saying that there is no waste here or that everything is really amazing but from the very first day I had a very good feeling about my boss. I assume it is generally better to work in a family-run business than in a huge enterprise where you never even get to see the person who makes money from the work you do. Here it is different and I know that my boss and her husband work a lot for the hotel as well and I feel much more appreciated in every way. I guess, the further away (physically and financially) employees are from their employers the less motivation you have to work. I mean, honestly, why would I want to do a good job if I never even met the person who becomes rich from the work I do? And I don't even want to know how rich the owners of the bakery chain are that I used to work for.

Anyway, why am I doing all of this? I am not 100% sure but I did sign up for an undergraduate psychology degree here at the University of Innsbruck (where I originally studied) and I really enjoy it. I am learning a lot of interesting things and that already makes most of those capitalist constraints worth it. Almost. The other reasons I had to come back here, I am sure, will occur to me again once it gets warmer. Currently it is too cold to pretend that I think it was the right decision to be here but the advantage thereof is that I don't feel so bad about spending all my time indoors reading psychology books.

Well, that said, clearly I can't tell you if it was the right decision to come back, however I do quite enjoy meeting old friends again and having them around me to be able to meet them more than just once every year. Maybe in due time I will also make up my mind about what I want to do with my future because my ideas are enough for at least three lives but I assume I should get my priorities right the first time and not invest too much effort in the hope of getting reborn. So it certainly is a good experience to be back here where, in a way, it all started and start again from here. I am excited to see what will come from this.

For now I am back to understanding the importance of this season, or rather, why this day is the most exciting day of the year: from now on the days will get longer and hopefully soon warmer. I am very reluctant to say anything good about Austria but compared to the places I stayed at in the last few years the Christmas season is quite acceptable here. There are barely any brightly blinking light chains or plastic Christmas trees around and people, although more active in shopping than during the rest of the year, seem to keep their sanity quite well (or maybe I am just staying away from all the crazy people, who knows).

I wish you a peaceful time and if you are on the northern hemisphere strength until the spring arrives! Make sure with all the crazy people around you you don't forget that these days should be about giving valuable things to your dear ones, whereby the most valuable things can't be bought with money.

PS: I am not allowed to post anything without a picture, however my camera is still in a rainforest-induced coma (I didn't feel like trying to wake it up yet), so here's a rather random picture of me doing what I like to do… (photo credits to Hot Shots Innsbruck)