Travel-History

Alright, I'll admit it: I love traveling. While I hate airports and find flying itself boring as all hell - I do love to travel. The whole boarding process gets my anxiety to an all-time high, but I'll get over it eventually.

Places I've been to

Prior to 2013:
- Misc places around Germany, mainly Bavaria to visit Family.

2013, 2014, 2015, 2016:
- United Kingdom: The Greater London Area (including the coast...)
Always hung out there for up to 2 weeks at a time. Sometimes multiple times that year. Programming, hacking on things, that sorta stuff.

2015 - 2016:
- Malta. Lived and worked there for 10 weeks as part of Eurasmus+
- Slovakia. Spent quite a bit of time there (close to 2 months) getting to know the people, food, culture. Was visiting a friend at the time.

2017:
- Canada: Manitoba. Lived there for 4.5 months as a way to get my first commercial game, The Wastes done. It did not get done there in time but it helped me focus immensely. We did ship the game on time though.

2017, 2018, 2019:
- United States of America: Oregon
I spend a few months yearly visiting friends and loved ones.

2021 Update

Since December 2021 I’m living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America. I haven’t been able to travel since, but that should hopefully resume shortly.

How travel saved my life

A change of environment does wonders to the mind. If you’re ever in a bad place, do try to get out of your current environment. It helps a lot and it has saved my life and many other peoples lives that I know.

In 2013 I had my first real job out of school. I was working as a painter. I needed something to do until sign ups for the college I wanted to go to was available.

I had tried to apply at lots of different places, but I didn’t get into many of them even for an interview. That always was a blow to me. I was super depressed for a while before and didn’t graduate with the best of grades.

For work, I used to wake up around 5 in the morning, so I could get ready and be out the door just in time to arrive at 7 at the construction site. I’d work til 4 in the afternoon and then get home until after 5 - fully exhausted. Barely enough energy for anything. I had to quit contributing to some projects, but I still kept my committment to at least one project at the time.

The work was miserable… the first week I didn’t even get a mask to protect me from all the stuff I was sanding because my boss who happened to be my uncle was too cheap. I got sick right away and had to catch up on work during weekends. I was absolutely getting crushed by my uncle every day and he made me do all the not-fun things :)

The grossest thing he made me do one time was take apart the bathroom that hadn’t been renovated in decades. There was stained wallpaper in this tiny bathroom… and I got to take that and the toilet apart all by myself. I’ll never forget the smell. There’s so much stuff inbetween the walls and the plumbing that likes to remember all sorts of nasty stuff.

So every day was a surprise as to what un-fun things I can do and I’d get treated like crap. My breaks consisted mostly of getting the crew coffee from the nearby bakery.

At home I lacked energy to do anything meaningful and my parents didn’t want to hear anything about what’s going on at work, because nobody likes dealing with stress within the family.

At the same time, it felt like my online relationships with friends was falling apart. I didn’t know what to do with my life, and I was unsure if I was ever going to get into anything, anywhere. Everything just felt really hopeless for a while, since so much in my life was deteriorating.

One morning, I sat at my bed and just imagined what it’d be like to do this exact thing until I was in my 40s. I just shook my head and felt sadness and frustration. “I just gotta get out of this, I gotta find a way to break out of all this.” - I thought to myself.

So with my first paycheck that I intended to save, I did the reasonable thing: Take a weekend off and fly over to my then partner in crime Mark who lived in the UK. It was just a few days, but I’ll never forget it. I arrived and I left my thoughts and worries at the door. We were gonna see stuff! I was gonna explore and learn more things about life over in the UK and just be myself. No family around to pester me and all that.

One of the places we visited was Eastbourne. It had a pier at the time with an Arcade on it. Arcades weren’t really much of a thing in Germany, believe it or not. It kinda has to do with gambling laws and preventing young people from getting addicted to such things. So that was the first time I experienced an arcade as well.

I was standing on the pier and looked into the distance. It was the first time I saw the ocean with my own eyes! It was the first time I was so far away from family and everyone else I knew back home. It felt like I was free. I was able to do that thing then and there. Not too long prior, I was depressed and had really dark thoughts in my mind.

Then suddenly it was all so very different. I realized that if anything was to go wrong, I’d find a happy place somewhere else. That day I was up until 3 AM for the first time in ages playing games together.

Then I returned to Berlin and I just had a very different attitude. I fought back when getting pushed around by my uncle and as a result I was let go from working at his company 2 weeks later. We fought a lot and in the end he even sent legal letters to my home to justify the firing. He had to really grasp at straws for those. One involved me not laying out cardboard on the floor properly. It was just absolutely insane reading those.