Italy to Spain to Nowhere and Back

I feel like I’m living in a dream. Not a freaky weird dream – an awesomely surreal dream, a dream of my own invention.

To pick up where my last blog left off, on July 2nd my couchsurfing host/new friend Dario and I flew to Barcelona to attend the Nowhere festival, the European equivalent of Burning Man. I spent a week in the Spanish desert dressing up in crazy costumes, meeting crazy and fascinating people from all over the world, dancing, and laughing my arse off. I joined Costume Camp, which was perfect since as a nomad I don’t have any costumes with me. Some of my favorite moments include being a part of the Baywatch Flash Mob, during which we ran slow-motion through the desert and “saved” “drowning” people by pouring whiskey in their eyes and giving them boob-to-mouth resuscitation with our Pamela Anderson sized balloon breasts, and watching a group of Pirates pillage the Babycham camp while my friend Sam grabbed a 5 kilo jar of Nutella from the French camp and smeared Nutella all over the pirate’s faces.

Nowhere, somewhere near Sariñena, Spain

Costume Camp Camp, best Camp ever!

Costume Camp Camp at twilight (the mosquitos cometh)

Dapper young gentleman

Are we Nowhere yet?

The caravan home

I’d left my return from Nowhere open-ended, and ended up in a van back to Barcelona with a few of my favorite new friends – the stunningly fit and hilarious South African couple who coordinated Costume Camp, the British ginger-haired stylist who lives in her pimped-out caravan and travels around Europe, and an 11-time Burner veteran from San Francisco who we call “The Solution” because he solves every single problem you throw at him (including sand in the lens of my brand new camera).

Post Nowhere, our motley crew spent the week in a beautiful house in the mountains outside of Barcelona. I fell in love with the Spanish architecture and got my first taste of Gaudi. I was mightily tempted to just stay in Barcelona forever, and ditch my plans to come back to Italy for a yoga/meditation/service program at Ananda in Umbria…

Our home away from home in Les Planes, Spain

Composting Cocks

Nowhere Decompression

Looove it love it love it

Old stone

Eastern Influences

Gaudí!!!!!!

Ceiling mosaics

Sunset with Montserrat on the right. MUST GO!

But in the end my spiritual drive won out and I caught a plane and a train back to Italy. So now I am living a dream I never even knew I had – doing yoga and meditation and serving at the Ananda Center/spiritual community in Umbria. All the yoga classes and lectures and meditation classes are in Italian… Heaven!

I’m sitting in a little glass house where you can access wifi. It’s late and I can see lightning flashing and hear thunder rumbling – time to go to bed. More on Ananda next week…