Corona Times - Introduction

Being sea rescued by helicopter from the Norwegian Skagerak, surviving the South American jungle for nine days on one kilogram of rice, getting Malaria back home and thinking it’s the flu, having a motor cycle accident in Greece, getting stuck in Spain without money on your birthday, sleeping in the baggage compartment of a Turkish train, seeing Spiderman climb New York's World Trade Centre, exploring the Algerian Sahara with a Touareg, literally drinking Scotch on the rocks at the end of the world, being a sailor on the Dutch waters and meeting your wife, emigrating to Berlin with one suitcase, going jogging in Abu Dhabi, missing the big Asian Tsunami by an inch… That’s me, all of it and more! Before I turned into airline manager and family father, I Iived a different life and tasted the world. Working short-time due to Corona allows me to finally share some of my travel adventures.

I was born in Tanzania in August 1972, just after the biggest solar storm ever. I grew up in a small town called Hilversum in the Netherlands where I liked to draw and play baseball until the age of fourteen when I started going out. At eighteen I left home to study tourism and travel and enjoyed living on my own so much that I forget all about studying at first. What I liked best was my traineeship in Costa Rica where I lived with a family in San Jose and travelled Central America. After studying, I worked as a sailor on the Dutch waters where I met my German wife and directly wandered off to Berlin with a big suitcase. I loved the free spirit of Berlin. Not finding a regular job, I sold plants and Christmas trees in a gardening centre. Later I climbed glaciers and mountains, rafted wild rivers, survived the jungle and rode horses as travel guide in Belgium, France, Norway, Costa Rica, Surinam and Thailand. I worked for travel agencies and tour operators and later cared for elderly people and alcoholics while briefly studying Russian.

In 2003 I decided it was time to settle down and keep a job longer than one year and started working for the German airline airberlin where I stayed until its recent bankruptcy in 2017. Nine years ago me and my family moved to the Netherlands. My wife runs her own yoga studio in Arnhem which is obviously closed now due to Corona. We have two sons aged 15 and 11, both born in Berlin, so while living in the Netherlands, nobody in our family was born here, not even our street dog Pancho who comes from Spain. Working for an airline during Corona - I now work for Eurowings / Lufthansa - obliges me to take some extra time off. I am a stubborn optimist. I now have the opportunity to fulfil a long time whish: write the Story of my Life. Suiting these crazy Corona Times and influenced by agile working that I learned in my current job, I have no fixed plan from A to Z and just start writing my travel adventures and try to improve on the way.

My stories are all based on reality or at least how I perceived that reality – that alone could be a nice starting point for an article or a philosophical discussion with a glass of wine in the garden on a hot summer’s night. For privacy reasons I changed names whenever appropriate. I want to write about experiences I have had during past journeys, former jobs in tourism and travel and my favourite spots in the world including places where I once lived. I illustrate my articles with movies, photos, drawings and paintings that I, or other people, made on my way, like the one up here that I painted on the Costa Rican Pacific. 

I have chosen to write in English. My parents help me improve my texts and fill in some of the gaps (thanks dad, thanks mom!). None of us are native speakers, so please bear with me if you notice any mistakes in my English. As a starting writer I am grateful for any (constructive) feedback and suggestions which can be posted in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German or Dutch, at least if you want me to understand it. Would love to speak Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Japanese and other languages but didn’t make it so far.

Don’t worry if you have loads of time (like I do) but urgently need to save money (like I do). Reading my stories is completely free of charge. If you enjoy reading them, please like, comment or even share my content, ideally on LinkedIn. That’s all I ask for. If you want to read on just pick one of my articles. As a wise Taoist once said, a thousand mile journey starts with one step, so here we go…

P.S. With reactions from Aruba, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cura?ao, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Malta, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Panama, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Surinam, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, UAE, UK and USA, English seems to be the right language for my stories. Miss your country? Like, comment or share one of my articles and I will add it.

? Bjorn Gianotten 2020