IT JUST TAKES A FLICK OF A FINGER

As soon as you wake up from the smothering routine we all seem to fall into, and start exploring things and places (whether the ones near you, or the very distant ones) you’ll set the wheels of life in motion and an avalanche of great experience will swamp you, leaving you completely breathless. Adventure is dangerous, but routine is lethal, they say.

It was in Copenhagen, that my friend and I took some photos of the city from a church tower on a sunny day. A guy standing behind us, heard us speaking Croatian and asked if we wanted him to take a picture of the two of us. Later on, we randomly met again, in the street. Turns out he was from Macedonia. Another friend of mine has family in Macedonia. Turns out he was from Kumanovo. That friend’s family is from Kumanovo. Turns out he’s my friend’s first cousin! And the two of us met randomly. Just like that. On a church tower. In Copenhagen. Without ever seeing each other before. Without even ever hearing about each other before. What are the odds?

Kuala Lumpur, a few months back: I randomly met Sonny, a Nigerian guy, on a night out. Turns out Sonny can speak some Croatian. Turns out he used to play football for a club in Zagreb. Turns out he knows his way around Zagreb better than I do. Turns out his Croatian nickname is Sonnyslav 🙂 . Turns out he’s the biggest fan of Toše Proeski I ever met, which is quite bizarre actually, considering he’s Nigerian. So there I was: in a bar, in Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, talking to a Nigerian guy, who used to score goals for a football team from my hometown! What are the odds?

Walking back home from the grocery shop in KL, I saw some people across the road smiling at me. I smiled back, not knowing who the hell they were, which country they were from or which language they spoke. I was just being polite. Later on that day, I received a message on my Facebook travel site saying: “Hey, we’re a couple of Croatians visiting KL. We saw you on the street, smiled at you and you smiled back. Wanna go for a drink?” Somehow they recognized who I was and got in touch. And just like that, out of the bloom, I took 4 Croatians that I never met before on a night out in KL. Turns out they were even friends with a guy my friend used to date. What are the odds?

Becoming great friends with a guy who saved me when I got lost and taken to a dodgy hotel in Vietnam; missing a Paris – Zagreb flight with my flatmate and travelling 36 hours to get back home; living in a very religious town and finding out my name means “fuck” in the local language; going to Sweden by accident because we took the wrong train; standing in the hot sun, in the dessert, for hours, at the Israeli-Jordanian border cause they think it’s funny to not let you cross the border just yet… a handful of very bizarre situations, a handful of adventures, a handful of great stories to tell and all of that just because I came to the conclusion that one should always explore, and that experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.

In life, just like in dominoes – one flick of a finger can knock over the first little block and automatically create an amazing chain of reactions and events. C’mon – flick that first little block. You know you want to 😉 .