Schlagwort-Archive: rock climbing

Greece

Digital Nomad Stop #2: Kalymnos

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Kalymnos, rock climbing paradise… Before 2021, I had never heard of this little Greek island – even though I have visited both of its famous neighbours, Kos and Rhodes. But as I researched where to go and as we are still in the middle of a pandemic… choices were a bit limited and Kalymnos soon seemed like the obvious choice!

I started my trip with a flight from Vienna airport, which – in season – has direct flights to Kos. From there I took a ferry to Kalymnos, arriving around sunset time.

The best time to arrive, especially if you were staying in an apartment in Masouri with a view of Telendos, like I did! I never quite got used to how beautiful my daily sunset view was.

Off to a great start… or so I thought. While I loved the apartment and immediately met lots of people to climb with, I also lost my first and at that time only client on my first proper day as a digital nomad. Oops! They felt sorry about having to let me go… but just didn’t have any work for me anymore. I soon got lucky again though, found two new clients and just enjoyed the first two weeks without work, climbing loads. It was hard to go back to working a couple of hours a week once I had work again! But in the end, it worked out really well: I spent most week day mornings climbing, finishing around 14.00 and then putting in a couple of hours of work and I also chose some work days, where I would only focus on my clients and get as much done as possible. The weekends were free of course and ideal for longer climbing sessions or trips to crags that were further away!

Some of my highlights on Kalymnos were:

  • Climbing a multi-pitch route and rappelling down into Grande Grotta afterwards, which meant rappelling 70m in the air! Super cool, and quite an interesting first rappel for me!
  • Visiting Telendos, climbing at Lambda and Irox and having dinner in the harbour afterwards. Unfortunately I never made it back to Telendos afterwards to climb at Eros – so that’s one for the tick list once I return to Kalymnos!
  • Trying deep water solo. It was more of a fun day out than lots of climbing for me, but we had an awesome group. It was a cool thing to try, but as I don’t really like jumping into water from high up, I was a bit too scared to try hard on the routes.
  • Sending three 6cs, one of them being a tufa route, which were so much harder for me than wall climbing! Unfortunately, I got scared for no reason on the 6c+ route which I was trying to send on one of my last days and time ran out to get back there and try again. One more for my „Kalymnos 2.0 tick list“.
  • …and of course, meeting so many amazing people and having a total of 37 wonderful climbing days, climbing 176 different routes! (Yes, I counted them and sorry not sorry I love stats.) I couldn’t have chosen any better place to start my nomad life!

Click on the pic below to get to my Flickr album of Kalymnos for more pics!

General

Digital Nomad Life, or: an end has a start

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Over the past couple of months, my life has been facing a lot of changes and I suddenly found myself in a situation of not having a job, not having a reason to stay in the Netherlands anymore (which I never was a big fan of anyways) and not having anywhere else to go either. What to do?

Sometimes, when you have all the freedom to choose, it is hard to actually make a choice. So I let circumstances and coincidences choose for me. I suddenly got contacted for two different freelance opportunities – and while one of them didn’t end up working out, the other one did. I had played with the thought of becoming a freelancer a couple of times in the past, but never quite had the guts to go for it.

It was a now or never kind of situation. And I went for it! But not before deciding on something else. I had loved the freedom of working from home and working partly remotely in my last job and during corona. I did not want to give up on that – and actually, I wanted more! I had also picked up a new hobby (rock climbing) which I wanted to dedicate more time to. And after a rather lousy summer, I was definitely not up for a grey, cold autumn.

One thing led to another and I don’t actually recall when and how I took the decision. But I did. I was going to become a digital nomad, try living in different cool climbing destinations around the world and… enjoy life! (And maybe find out what I want, where I want to live etc. blah blah. But mainly enjoy life.)

Due to corona and time zones, I wanted to make things easy to start with. My first destination was going to be Austria, to move my stuff from Amsterdam to my parents‘ house and spend some time with them. Then on to Kalymnos, Greece. A rock climbers‘ paradise, or so I heard. Let’s see, my flight is tomorrow…

For the upcoming months, I have lots of ideas, but no plans. Due to corona and due to the unpredictability of freelance work, I want to take things as they come. Over the last year, I have learned to appreciate change and to live more in the moment. Too many of my plans and dreams did not come true, and I am not ready to handle more disappointments. Yes, Ms. To-Do-List has decided not to plan anymore.

So… on to an adventurous, spontaneous new part of my life with lots of great climbs and sunny weather!

England, Spain

Travel in Times of Corona: UK and Spain

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In June, it was time to try and go travelling again! Despite all rules and regulations, we decided to drive to the UK to visit friends and family. We had to spend 5 days in quarantine upon arrival – a time period that got extended when the mail service lost my day 5 test-to-release… In the end I ended up paying for a really expensive additional test to get myself released. Overall, I did 4 corona tests in/for the UK and spent 8 days in quarantine despite the fact that I’m fully vaccinated. So annoying!

Once released, I took a train to Reading to meet up with my friend Andi who I hadn’t seen in 7 long years! It was really good to connect again and spend some relaxed days together.

One day, we went into Reading and checked out the few sights that the city has to offer. Some old ruins and buildings and an interesting museum. If you’re in the UK for tourism, Reading is definitely not the place to stop by… but if you find yourself there for one or the other reason (like myself), then it’s a nice town to see!

Another day, we went on a day trip to Oxford which is an easy 1h train ride from Reading. I expected a pretty old city, but what I didn’t expect is to find such an overwhelming amount of beautiful buildings and streets to wander through! One day was almost not enough, we actually ended up rushing a bit…

It felt a bit like a town straight out of a Harry Potter movie and I definitely could have spent a couple more hours there. Unfortunately, some sights were still closed due to corona regulations, so we mainly walked aroud and looked at old historic buildings from the outside.

After a couple of days of freedom in the UK, it was time to hop on a plane to Alicante, Spain, where I had booked a one-week rock climbing course. Fortunately, Spain accepted my vaccination certificate and I didn’t have to quarantine or do any extra tests this time! I spent a week in a beautiful villa in the hills North of Alicante, with beautiful views…

I very much enjoyed the quiet atmosphere and relaxing evenings up there. I also had to get a lot of administrative things done to prepare my next chapter in life (more about that soon), so the evenings and the rest day were never boring and actually filled with work. Annoyingly, I also had to find a way to get tested before returning to the Netherlands, which was not that easy given my remote location and that I was only going to be in Alicante on the weekend where a lot of things would be closed. I did eventually find a solution with a quick test immediately before my flight Monday noon, but it felt a bit risky and I was definitely nervous until I got my (negative) results!

Enough about corona bullsh*t rules. The climbing itself was really good! I had booked a performance coaching course combined with an introduction to trad climbing. So part of the week was focussed on improving my climbing technique while 2 days were spent on trad. While it was fun to learn something new (trad), I wonder if I went into it a bit too quickly, given that I had only started climbing not too long ago. In hindsight, I should have probably just taken a full week performance coaching course as my climbing skills definitely improved, but I felt like I definitely could have used 2 more days of coaching.

However, by the end of the week, I definitely felt like I had improved my technique and learned a lot. I didn’t have enough time to improve my max. send grade, but I did validate my improvement a couple of weeks later in Berdorf when I sent my first 6c (+).

After the course, I had 1.5 days to see Alicante which kind of turned into one full day, as I ended up being too hungover the next day to do anything else but show up at the airport for my quick test and flight. But Alicante is small anyways! You can actually easily see everything in one day. I started the day a little later than intended with a walk through the old historic quarter ‚El Barrio‘. Cute little streets, flower pots and lots of steps! Really pretty and some nice views over the city as well!

The views only improved when I walked up higher to Santa Bárbara fortress which thrones above the town. It was quite a sweaty hike up in the summer heat, but the fortress was nice to see and the views were beautiful in all directions!

After a late morning coffee and snack, I then explored the harbour area with a pretty promenade and great views with the fortress sitting in the background.

Despite the high temperatures, I gave Playa Postiguet a miss, as I was by myself and didn’t have anyone to watch my valuables. I walked around town a bit more, past some old buildings and parks – but realised soon that there was not that much more to see and that I had ticked off the most beautiful parts of the city already!

In the evening, I met up with some people in the hostel and went to watch the football world cup finals. Loads of fun, especially as everyone migrated to the beach afterwards and the whole thing turned into a beach party! So good to have some fun again after all the lockdowns and rules. Next morning, I headed to the airport and was pretty happy to get negative test results so that I could get onto my plane back to Amsterdam.