Everything in it's right place...

So this post has been inspired by a friend of mine and trainer Niels, who also blogs (in German) and wrote this specific piece - about the magical places. Niels is in New York at the moment and I've learned a thing or two about MMA from him, don't know if he remembers me much, but that is beside the point. I might feature a couple of blogging friends here, now come to think of it.

I believe that we all, be it on travels, in your car on the way somewhere, hiking or biking you will sometimes (given you have a soul) encounter a strange feeling. The feeling is not anger at the honking taxi driver that just overtook you to turn right, just after that (that was yesterday). No, the feeling is something more substantial. It's the feeling of being there and just there, an indescribable feeling that I am trying to put in words. It's magical, it's magical in the sense of a Disney Zoetrope, that I saw in the Hong Kong Disneyland, but let's see that in action in California instead, because I can't be bothered to find the video I took. You see: magic happens and it doesn't wait until you find a video. I'm getting side tracked here. Sometimes you just know when you are home, sometimes you have a gut feeling about a place and then more good than bad things happen.

There is a couple of places that went through me like a Kundalini experience. On my very first day in Shanghai in the late summer of 2009 I was having a cold beer and walked two blocks from the hotel I was staying for the first two weeks, I ended up on Nanjing road (close to the East Nanjing Road station if you are familiar with Shanghai) and wow, it overcame me, I was pumped with energy and just felt that this is the right time and place. It then became home for a year, a year of studying at Tongji University and working at the Expo 2010, 10 years prior I saw a show at the 2000 Expo in Hannover Germany and and jokingly said, I will be at the one in China in 2010 and who would have thunk? I was found myself there and then. Everything in it's right place.

Another place that felt just like in the old Hong Kong movies and was magical from stepping foot on the ground was... drumroll... Hong Kong. Just the right mixture of modern and tradition, old and new, order and chaos. More about those two places in the last blog post here.

It doesn't have to be a city, it doesn't even have to be physical place. I'm not going to judge you if you meditate and meet you spirit animal in your head, that is just as good. And if you don't mediate or never tried it, then sit down for 5 minutes tonight and give it a try!

Again, sometimes it is a city, sometimes it is that place that you sit down on a bench when you have a beautiful view over your little mountain village and talk to your best friend and sometimes it is home and for the lack of better words:

Heimat ist kein Ort. Heimat ist ein Gefühl

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApraCgT10IE]

Home is not a place, home is a feeling. You know it when you feel it and there can be countless such places. Find them!