Exciting World

Since my last exams for this semester are written and I have some free time, I've decided to make the best of it and check out how working from a coworking space anywhere in the world checks out in real life.

That's why I took the Flixbus from Stuttgart heading for Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, which is supposed to be one of the European hotspots for digital nomads. It took just about 30 hours for me to get there. Maybe better take the plane next time.

So what's the plan?:
Basically, there are five things for me to do:

• Study for Uni
• Fix a bug in my backup program
• Educate myself further about Neural Networks
• Learn how to use PHP properly, which is a huge task. Then, use this knowledge to kill WordPress and write all the code for this website by myself. As you can see, that's what I'm doing right now. And, as you can expect, the progress is rather slow. I still have a long way to go...
• Socialise with (other) digital nomads, find out how they make a living, try to get some advice and get inspired

As you can see, I have enough to do for a year or so. Let's see how far I get.

Now, let me give you a summary about what's happened so far:
On the bus, I met a Bulgarian who spoke German quite well since he was studying there. He told me all kinds of stuff about Bulgaria and we talked about a lot of things. Unfortunately, he did not stay in Sofia, so he couldn't show me around, but I suppose I'll go on one of the walking tours around the city center eventually, instead.

The hostel where I'm staying at, the Ivory Tower, is quite nice and close to the center. And the people staying there are quite interesting, as well. Usually, in places like this, I meet people from all around the world who are just looking to see a new place. Here, it's a little different. In my room, there's a guy from Nigeria. He is studying in Sofia. But it is not exactly by his choice, that he's in a hostel. Apparently, he'd been living in an apartment before that. But after refusing to engage in a sexual relationship with his landlady, that woman called the police on him, telling them that he had been sexually harassing her. According to him, the police had not been interested in his side of the story whatsoever, but insisted on him leaving the building on extremely short notice and without any refund of the rent he'd already paid.

He claims, that this woman, like many other people here in Sofia, was a racist, and it was due to his skincolor that he got into this situation. One would be likely to doubt that, judging from only this one experience, but another man in my room, who's from Nepal, tells stories that lead to the same conclusion.

The nepalese guy's story is even worse. He has been trying to succeed in a good number of businesses in his home country, but every single time bad luck was right after him. From a king who died, thereby preventing a festival from happening for which he wanted to sell the appropriate clothing, to mudslides rolling over water purification plants, and earthquakes destroying his organic food shop, his latest idea was to found a hostel in Bulgaria. He said that he was convinced to do that by a far relative of his. Therefore he sold a large amount of his property in Nepal, coming here with about 30 grand (US$) to build up his place. That was when his associate faked his signature to get access to all the money in his bank account and ran with it. Again, the police doesn't seem to be of too much help. So now, a father of two children has to find a new way to support his family yet again. To hear these stories definetly makes our problems at home a lot easier to bear.

Yesterday, in the evening, me, a german woman who's a photographer, the Nigerian guy, a somewhat crazy figure who's from another country each time you ask and the receptionist had a very interesting discussion on the topics of religion and politics.

Imagine two very strong believers in God and three atheists talking about religion and one somewhat communism-nostalgic person, a Bulgarian and someone who at least seems to be from somewhere in Yugoslavia talking about politics.
As we all had fairly strong opinions on each topic, I can't really say that the conversation went anywhere, but still, it was very interesting. Especially when the receptionist revealed his very brilliant mind and was able to make his points in a fashion, that showed that he had been thinking about these things for quite a while. Apparently he had even written books on the topic(s). Quite remarkable

Of course, this is only a short breakdown of the things that happened, but my fingers are getting a little sore right now and also I have to spend at least another night in the hostel, so maybe I'd better not get too far into detail about everything that has occured... ;)