Travelling together

In the past I have tried out a lot of different travel styles (except for all inclusive vacations, not really my thing) and travelled with many people. I travelled alone in my car, took planes, buses, trains and ferries. I have slept in hotels, hostels, motels, on people's couches, in my car, went camping and even spent nights at bus stations. I went on some trips with people I had only met a short while before and took journeys with some of my closest friends and my family. You should think that by now I should have decided which is the best way to travel for me :)

But it's not like that. With every new destination and every new person things are different. I change while travelling and learn something about myself. Travelling with only one other person is maybe the most enlightening experience among the possible constellations, more enlightening to me than it was travelling alone and certainly quite different from travelling with two or more people.

Being on the road can be stressful. There is a co-dependent relationship between two people who have decided to stick together for the time being. None of you can easily do "their own thing", take all their time, be always comfortable. So you need to do a lot of planning, calculate for down-time and food and accomodation to everybody's liking. I have heard stories of many a travelling group that has broken up over some sort of fight or other. If you wanna test a relationship, go on a long trip with your partner. By the end, you will know what the two of you can withstand and you will not only know your partner better, but also yourself. And you will be better for it.

On a related note I send you greetings from Portimão (Algarve) in Southern Portugal. I might tell the many adventures I have lived through with my travel companion on another day. Life is good and time is passing quickly :) For your benefit I have added a picture of probably the most perfect travelling couple I have met so far, two charming Chinese people I saw at the Mosteiro dos Gerónimos in Belém (Lisbon).

Back on the road

I am packing again. In the next three weeks there should be enough stories to tell from my roadtrip through Spain. I am travelling with a friend, visiting new and well-known places. People are always different though, so I am looking forward to a very interesting time. It's spring and temperatures are rising, so there will be oranges and cafés con leche and possibly some beaches to enjoy around Spain and Portugal. This is what I am expecting:

I Love People: 5,000 Miles, 930 People, 162 Seconds from Benjamin Jenks on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend!

Occupying banking

If someone had told me half a year ago that I would be working for a bank fulltime and loving it, I would have been completely incredulous. For all my principles of keeping an open mind and trying not to judge, banking was among the things I could hardly imagine myself doing. To have money as the content of my work, to worry about interest rates, capital, credit lines, wasn't a very romantic or fulfilling picture.

And it wasn't very likely either. Mind you that in my education I haven't put great emphasis on the kind of skills commonly associated with banks. Sure, I know a little bit about industrial accounting, have completed a two-year round in a big company as an apprentice, but first and foremost I have spent the last years of my life as a social science student at university doing scholarly things like reading, traveling, hearing lectures, and learning a bunch of languages. Also, sociologists around here have a reputation of being somewhat to the left of the political spectrum, while the future bankers - your clichée economics majors - are generally deemed a lot more conservative.

So if life were a straight line I would probably be protesting with the occupy movement now or writing about what is wrong with our financial and political system today (I still might, just wait *g*). Instead I am sitting at a desk 40 hours a week working for a financial institute associated with one of the biggest banks in Germany. And I'm happy with it!

A huge part of my fun at work is owed to my position in the company. I am a trainee in the business development department and thus the topics I am concerned with have a lot to do with societal, economic and technological trends. Yes, the angle is financial, and the products I constantly learn more about are deposits, exchange tradeable funds, and credit cards, but I enjoy the complexities of this new and unknown field. I am surrounded by intelligent and fun people who enjoy what they are doing. They do not comply with any of the stereotypes that the news proliferate, when they report about the debt crisis and wall street execs. Those people exist somewhere, I am sure, but my definition of banking and bankers has become a lot more concrete in the last three months and I have gained respect for the people making a living with it.

Of course understanding the financial industry is not the same as saying it is all good. There are a lot of things that need improvement. More transparency is probably the biggest change I would wish for and possibly also the one the financial industry is most afraid of, because money is earned every time customers do not fully understand a product. A lot of the revenue is justified however, because banks are in the risk management business and taking a risk off people's hands should be rewarded. But in the long run, we might all be better off, if kick-backs from selling expensive and complex products were replaced by annual fees for bank advisory services. My knowledge of the matter is still thin of course and tomorrow another piece of the puzzle might come to me that changes my outlook. But that's part of the beauty of a new job, so much to learn!

2012 will bring many new things to my life and I will keep shifting activities for a while to come. One of them is blogging and it remains something I truly enjoy. I modestly hope to contribute something to your life as well as my own. I hope you are all doing well and have started 2012 with good energy. Take this smile and have a great week :)

A New Year

I can't find better words than Neil Gaiman today. He says what I wish for everybody. I for one expect great things in this new stretch on the calendar and it feels like there is a lot to be discovered. The best from last year I will take with me, the rest I will leave there. Please enjoy your start into 2012 and share your joy and positive anticipation of what is to come with your loved ones!

Life after work

Wow, life has flown by for the past months. I was so busy that I hardly got time to reflect on all the changes my new job has brought with it. Life before was about family, studies, travel and friends far away. Now that I live in a big city and work full-time it's about work, housekeeping, shopping, and friends in my city.

Of course I miss some things from my old life. I have seen much less of my family, which sometimes makes me sad, because I got so used to having them around me regularly. All the happier I was when my granddad turned 90. Happy birthday again, Rudi! I miss my brother, who has been traveling for months all around the world and will be spending Christmas away from Germany this year. I don't miss my studies too much, but I have noticed that with the end of constant language practice some of my vocabulary is lost (mostly my Spanish, although some Portuguese is kept fresh thanks to doing capoeira). The time to travel will be very limited from now on, but I have already started to dream about where I might go and where to spend my precious free days next year. All that skill at travel planning I have amassed over the last years shouldn't go to waste, right?! Spain is high on the list and who knows, maybe I will be joined by another traveller from the other end of the world.

Mostly though I really have a lot of fun with my new lifestyle. For one, having money gives a nice feeling of freedom although I expected it to make even more of a difference than it does so far. A more noticeable change is that I now live in the same city as many of my oldest and dearest friends. We spend some hours every week to get together and do sports and eat. A week ago we were baking cookies for christmas at different homes on three days in a row. "Weihnachtsplätzchen backen" is a fine German tradition :) And with my new flat being 4 times as big as my old tiny room in Augsburg also comes the opportunity to invite more people to my home. I have already tried it on a few occasions and am quickly getting used to being a host. At the end of the year I will have people over to play videogames and just hang out at my place. I am happy to start a new year here and get an opportunity to build my new life with the people and activities I want in it. Before January I will take some quiet time and imagine what I want to achieve in 2012. Some things I might share here, others I will keep to myself. But you can expect another blog post soon, where I will tell you about my first experiences of what it is like to be a banker after being a sociology student for so long :) Take care and have a nice week!