The little country of Belgium is a giant when it comes to beer brewing. Not only is it home to the largest brewing company (AB InBev), it also boasts a huge variety of styles and brewing traditions with over 1000 types of beer. For that reason it can seem a daunting task for the uninitiated visitor to figure out which beers to try when in Belgium. Of course you can always ask the bartender or a friendly native, who will gladly help you. For now this list might help to get an overview of what’s out there.

​1. Trappist beers

Some Trappists probably rank among the most well-known Belgian beers. Trappist is a protected trademark and the beers are brewed by Cistercian monks in a monastery. Only 11 Cistercian monasteries in the world brew Trappist beers, six of which are in Belgium. Although they are all labeled as Trappist, each of these beers has its own style and taste. The Belgian Trappists are Westmalle, Westvleteren, Achel, Chimay, Rochefort and Orval.

You might recognize Westvleteren because its “12” has been consistently rated as the best beer in the world. This one might be a bit tricky to find. Some people get it straight from the monastery (http://sintsixtus.be/) but most specialized beer shops should have it.

A personal favorite of mine is Orval. It is a bit of an odd one out among the Trappists. Only one type is brewed, which is an amber, dry hopped beer of 6,2%. The scent is fruity and hoppy. The taste is lightly sour due to wild Brettanomyces yeast involved in the brewing process. Some bars will serve different ages of Orval because the taste evolves as it ripens in the bottle. Young Orval has a fruity and hoppy aroma, while year-old Orval will start to develop a more complex bitter taste.
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For a stronger hit you can try Westmalle tripel (9,5%) with a strong taste and rich aroma, Chimay bleu (9%) with a smooth and malty flavor or Rochefort 10, a full-bodied, complex dark brown beer.
Just in case you are curious about the other Trappist beers there is Gregorius from Austria, Spencer from the US, Tre Fontane from Italy and Zundert and La Trappe from the Netherlands. La Trappe was actually the first Cistercian monastery and started this brewing tradition in 1685, hence the term Trappist beers.
 
 
 
2. Spontaneous fermentation

Another typical Belgian product are the beers of spontaneous fermentation. These beers are produced in the region around Brussels called Pajottenland and along the Zenne river. What makes these beers unique is that they get fermented by wild yeasts from the environment, like Brettanomyces. The first fermentation produces lambic beer, which is aged on oak barrels. Lambic is a flat beer with a sour refreshing taste. Because aged hops are used in the brewing, there is little bitterness.

A second fermentation with a blend of young and aged lambic produces Gueuze. It ferments further in the bottle resulting in strong carbonation. This gives the beer a crisp sparkly taste and is the reason why it is often called the Champagne of beers. Other complex flavours and aromas derive from the wild yeast and aging process. Fruits like sour cherries or raspberries are macerated in the lambic to produce Kriek and Framboise respectively.  

Some well-known Gueuze makers are Cantillon, Oud-Beersel, Girardin, Boon, Lindemans (try the cuvée René), Timmermans, Hanssens and 3 Fonteinen.
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Most bars in Belgium should have one or more beers of spontaneous fermentation but to have the real experience, a visit to the Pajottenland region is advised. A personal recommendation is a little bar in the Gueuze heartland called In de verzekering tegen de grote dorst. This bar also hosts a biannual international festival of spontaneous fermentation attracting many foreign beer enthousiasts. One town over you can also visit De Cam, a nice bar and small-scale Gueuze-blender where you can taste the local cuisine and drink the locally produced Gueuze, Lambic, Kriek or Framboise.
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3. Flemish red

This style of beer is remarkable for its fruity taste and red color despite any presence of fruits in the brewing process. The beer originates from the region “West-Flanders” and owes its distinct color and taste to a combination of the use of malt and the aging on oak barrels. The classic to try is Rodenbach, if possible in combination with some fresh grey shrimp at the Belgian seaside. Another Flemish red ale is Duchesse de Bourgogne.
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4. Old brown

The region of East-Flanders also has a typical style of beer. Old brown is a beer with a long aging process in stainless steel tanks. The color is more brownish than red and the taste is smooth and malty with a light sourness. Liefmans Goudenband and Brouwers Verzet Oud Bruin are great examples of this brewing style.
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5. Saison 

Going to the French speaking part of Belgium, in the region of Henegouwen, we find the origin of saison beer. This used to be a seasonal beer that was brewed in winter to provide a thirst quencher for the harvesting period. Saison beers tend to be ambery blond with complex flavours coming from hops and yeast. Saison Dupont is a standard in this genre.
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6. Speciale Belge

This type of beer is an amber ale of about 5 to 6%. Caramelized malt is used in the brewing, which gives this beer a smooth taste with a gentle hoppy aroma. Palm is the most well-known and can be ordered in any bar by showing the palm of your hand to a waiter. De Koninck is another great example of this style, usually ordered as a “bolleke Koninck”.
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7. Belgian white

​Belgian white or “witbier”, is named after the light blond, hazy look of the beer. This is caused by suspended yeast and wheat proteins in the beer. Beside hops, coriander and orange peels are used in the brewing process and give the beer its fresh characteristic flavour. This type of beer was revived by Pierre Celis who started the Hoegaarden and later the Celis brewery in Austin Texas.

 
8. Abbey beers

Aside from Trappist monks there are several other monasteries that produce beers.  Certified Belgian Abbey beers are brewed by non-Trappist monasteries or under license of a monastery. Like Trappist beers there is no single style for Abbey beers but most breweries make strong blond triple and lighter brown double beers. One of my favorites is Maredsous triple, a well-rounded 10% amber beer with fruity aromas. There are some 23 certified Belgian Abbey beers but many more brewers brew following the Abbey tradition. Some of these uncertified ones to try are Triple Karmeliet, Witkap triple and Sint-Bernardus Abt 12 (this last one is a good alternative if you can’t find Westvleteren 12).

Guest post by Robrecht. 

Today my lovely guest is Steffie Vandierendonck. We met through the Amazing Biz and Life Academy and she came all the way to Ghent to eat pancakes with me and chat about finding our purpose, doing work we love and making a difference. She recently gave me great advice about making decisions and being more intuitive, since I've been struggling with choosing a career path here in Belgium. Here's a bit of her wisdom: 

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Can you make a decision based on faith? Can you listen to your intuition and be ok?

Last year I went looking for a coaching program to invest in and always seem to have some part holding me back.

It was a money issue of course but there was also more to it. At some point I really started believing that money shouldn't stop us. We take a leap of faith, invest what we have, see two steps ahead of us an trust that the rest will come to us when we need it.

So why isn't that enough?

When I investigated what was still holding me back I came up with the answer that it was TIME. I felt I wouldn't have the time to implement all of the things I was about to learn.  And I know some coaches would call this a lame excuse or some subconscious block that is in desperate need of healing. But what if it is something else? What if it is our intuition reaching out?

I know that this feeling came from an inner knowing of already having a lot of resources at my disposal and needed to implement those first before moving on to another level.

It was knowing that I didn't have to go look outside of myself but rather turn inside and retrace steps to see what I had missed.

Don't be fooled by the heart!

These days we talk a lot about getting out of our head and deciding with our heart. But there is a catch to this we all seem to forget.

It is true that our head is the place of logic and reason. It is our reptilian brain of instinct and survival. And we go and question everything as a way to protect ourselves. Through evolution we have learned that this can take us too far and the fears are no longer rational.

However in turning to our heart we let our emotions take over. It is like jumping from one pool into another one. Yes our heart is the place of love and positive feelings. It will tell us what we want, what we long for and what we dream of. And those words describe the energy that goes with it.

What feels good isn't always in our best interest. It can be the energy of a child wanting a toy and wanting it right there and then. If you long for something you can become needy or depend on it. It will make you feel lost, even more than before, when that certain things goes. That is why we say our heart aches when we lose someone.

That's why we should stop listening just to our hearts and go even deeper to our gut feelings.

Feeling with your gut, those energy centers around your belly button and womb, that's where your true intuition is situated. It is a place of peace, being grounded and having a deep calm inner knowing. Here you will be able to make serene choices and take guided action.

In this place you will know that the path ahead of you can be tough and scary (mind) but no matter if it feels positive or negative right now (heart) it will end up being exactly what you needed to grow as a person. Here money won't be an issue anymore and time won't matter either because everything will come to you when you need it.

If it feels wrong following another program right now due to timing, this opportunity will come back to you when you need it and there will still be diamonds of insight to be found in what you already know. If you do decide to take a next step you will pick up the things you need to hear from that right there and then. The rest will sink into your subconscious waiting until you are ready for it.

So what choice should you make?

I have found the hardest choices are the ones you don't get answers to.

Sometimes no matter how far you look, how many tarot cards you read or how much you meditate on it your intuition and gut feeling won't speak to you. They will remain silent and truly leave you on your own. Those choices are the ones where it truly DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU DECIDE.

All of the options can be right for you. They will just be showing different aspects of yourself that are waiting to be cultivated. They will both take you somewhere else but you will still be you when you get there and you will still be ok. The only mistake you can make here is not choosing anything at all.

Just do something... Pick... and try it out for a month. If it doesn't end up to be for you you will still be able to change your mind and choose again.

I will admit this was a very hard lesson for me to learn.

But then I remembered what Rozlyn Warren said to me: ' I can do all of those things myself, but I choose not to.'

It is better to pick one thing and become really good at it then to keep doubting and see other people living your dreams.

If there is a price you'll have to pay than pay it both literary an figuratively speaking.

And for those things you don't end up doing there will always be someone else doing it for you. Some coach, healer or employee at your local store will reach those people for you making the world a better place for all of us.

Is there anything in the world more soothing than the sound of flowing water, or more ingrained as a representation of different histories and cultures than water fountains? Well, perhaps there is, but that still doesn't take away from the beauty and wonder of the variety of fountains found all over the world. 

Fountains can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and almost all of them are quite the sites to see. There's the comedic Mannekin Pis in Brussels, Belgium, which depicts a young boy urinating into a basin bowl and on special occasions serves as a beer fountain. Take the Swarovski Fountain in Innsbruck, Austria, which is the centerpiece of the Swarovski Kristallwelton theme park and is a large, grass-covered head with water flowing elegantly from its mouth. Or how about the Magic Fountain of Monjuic in Barcelona, Spain, which hosts an average of thousands of tourists each and every night for a show of lights, music and performance. So many fountains, so many purposes.

Want to read about more of these fountains? Check out the infographic below, with fun facts provided by Luxe, to learn more about all of the fabulous fountains around the globe that you may have never heard of but will absolutely want to travel to! 

Over 250 million others speak it as a native language, so when will you start?

Perhaps you’re considering learning another language, it might be your second or further down the line; you might already have a language in mind, or maybe you’re still undecided. Which ever scenario applies to you, it might be worth your while considering this often undervalued language, let’s look at how it’s gotten this far and why it could be a good idea to learn it in the future.

Portuguese is a close relative of Spanish, they both originate from Vulgar Latin which was used in the old times of Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire by the lowly townsfolk, while the higher class spoke classical Latin. During the Roman Empire’s collapse, the Moorish invasion of 711 took place; as a result there are now a substantial number of Portuguese words with an Arabic origin -- Such as as-sukkar becoming açúcar, sugar.

It was in the 15th and 16th centuries that the Portuguese expanded across the globe, they were a major economic powerhouse and as they spread, so did the language. Now it’s an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, East Timor, Principe, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tome, while being spoken in many more.

Today Brazil is the largest country to have Portuguese as the official language, with over 200 million residing there alone, and that brings us to one of the reasons why you should be learning the beautiful language. Brazil, in the next four years, will play host to the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics, either of these is a big deal by itself, but to have both is rather incredible. This make it one of the places to see within that time-span and long after -- with a strong and ever-growing economy, the long white beaches, Carnival and friendly welcoming Brazilians, there’s never a bad time to visit the sun-soaked South American giant.

To make matters even better, Portuguese and Spanish are the fastest growing European languages after English and display the highest potential for growth as an international language. As such, upping your level of Portuguese will prove invaluable in the long run, people will congratulate you for your hindsight and rue the day they too did not pick up the language.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, Portuguese has a lot of history and many interesting stories will come from learning a little more about it. So if you’re at all interested in taking some classes and upping your language game I encourage you to do it soon, when you get wanderlust and begin traveling you’ll wish you did it sooner, believe me. 

A snapshot of a Saturday in a quiet Korean university town with a three-year-old. Written in March 2007 by Bard Judith (www.masterbard.wordpress.com). 

Soft little, damp little kisses - not a bad way to wake up on a Saturday morning!  My daughter and I break our fast together before waking Husband up, have our various showers, get dressed, and are ready to walk out the door at quarter to nine, into a cool and cloudless spring morning.  As always, Kitkat's patient trek all the way down the hill to 'Meyong Ip-gu' (the main gates of the university, about a fifteen-minute hike for her little legs from our on-campus housing) is rewarded with a mini chocolate milk from the Family Mart there.  The lady behind the counter knows us all by now and is delighted when Kitkat  goes confidently over to the dairy case, selects her choco-uyu, and brings it up to the counter with her obegwon coin (about fifty cents) in hand, all on her own.

Our bus driver, on the other hand, doesn’t even glance at the party of conspicuous foreigners when we board our # 5000 bus at the stop just outside Meyong Ip-gu.   It is traditional that the many busses which use Meyong University’s huge parking lots as a end-of-line rest area and turn-around point don’t charge students for a lift into town (usually just to the Bus Terminal which is about five minutes away by wheel), and we instructors have been graciously included in this tradition. This kisanim (‘honourable driver’) , despite his age-crinkled brow, seems unfamiliar with the exemption, tapping the fare box with peremptory meaning and grimly-compressed mouth. Then again, as he had been tossing back a packet of Korean medicinal granules – a foul-tasting brownish concoction usually prescribed for any common cold, grippe, ague, or headache - just seconds before we boarded, the brow-crinkling and mouth-compression may have had strictly physical significance…

However, he ungraciously requires us, and the other three passengers, all students, to disembark inconveniently just before the terminal, at a busy intersection. I have in mind a number of acquisitions on this shopping trip, and I suggest a plan of action for the morning which Husband accepts nonchalantly. Our first stop is the new Paris Baguette (a bakery chain which makes, among other things, loaves of some of the more passable bread in the country – made with wheat flour and unadulterated with the sweetish corn flavour that many other Korean breads possess, a flavour that only intensifies with toasting, alas!) at the east end of town.

We pass a pet store, some of its stock on display out on the sidewalk, and Kitkat is enchanted when the rabbits sniff hopefully at her knuckles through the bars of their cage. She prefers the bright sparkle of the fish, though, having fallen in love with the children’s story “A Fish Out of Water” and been promised an ‘Oscar’ goldfish of her very own at some later date. She looks up at me impishly and paraphrases: “I’ll on’y feed him a liddle. So much an’ no more!” I grin back, in shared recognition; what a treat it is to have already, with my three-year old daughter, that mutual pleasure of a familiar book!

At the bakery we buy them out of our preferred bread, and head back towards the centre of town, wary as always of the various pedestrian hazards. There are various stumps of concrete serving as parking bollards, rough ends of wires, spikes of rebar, belaying cables, oddly-spaced poles, head-high awnings. There are puddles of invariably orangish-red vomit - stained with the all-purpose ‘gochujang’, red pepper paste/sauce - from over-indulgence in the hofs and bars and norae-bangs (singing rooms, karaoke bars) the night before. Vendors’ displays crowd the space in front of their stores. Piles of cardboard, neatly flattened and tied, sit beside the bagged trash of those same stores. Sullen small trucks, reckless motor scooters, jaunty Kias and Hyundais, bullying buses, all surge along feet away from the edge of the sidewalk.

Then there is the condition of the sidewalk itself – usually a blend of erratically buckled interlocking brick and odd strata of concrete, poured by municipality, store owner, street maintenance and helpful pothole vigilante alike without reference to code or zoning. We proceed in our usual fashion: Husband saunters along watching traffic with one eye and Kitkat with the other, the Kitkat alternately lags to investigate something of interest or darts to catch up with the preferred-parent-of-the-minute (Husband), while I hover like an anxious cat at her shoulder, one paw extended lest she suddenly dart into one of the many hazards aforementioned.

Such strolling, along with a bit of 'eye-shopping' - as Koreans creatively call window-shopping or browsing - takes us happily to an early lunch at the single representative of evil Western fast-food in town – McDonalds. Well, authentic evil Western fast-food, that is. There are an unfortunate number of ‘burger stalls’ and the local fast-food Lotterias selling horrible patties between overly-sweet buns, and equally horrible 'fries' composed of yam, sweet potato, chipped parsnip, or other less identifiable tubers. 

If I may digress for a moment, this type of ‘cuisine’ is known as “Fusion”, a word which upon encountering anywhere in this country one would be well-advised to avoid diligently. Korean food, love or hate gochujang, is delicious, balanced, and healthy, while Western food, say what you may about the ever-increasing serving sizes (and ignoring the many passing fads such as carb-counting) has the vast culinary traditions of both North America and Europe behind much of it to produce such amazingly tasty genres as Italian pasta, French desserts, Southern comfort food, Danish smorgasbord, and so on.

However, as with many cultural fusions, the mixture of East and West fast-food here in Korea  produces an unfortunate intensification of the worst, not the best, qualities of both. For example: “Donkass”, which is as vulgar-tasting as it sounds, is a piece of hammered pork pressed-pork piece covered with a thick coating of dried breadcrumbs and deep-fried into a greasy sludge, then served with a sauce composed mainly of third-grade ketchup and hardened sugar. (I learn much later that this is a borrowing of the Japanese 'Tonkatsu', against which I have no particular grudge when made with care and quality... ) ‘Salad’ at such places is usually coarsely-chopped green cabbage with shards of purple cabbage, shredded mugwort or other bitterly medicinal herb, stirred through with a dollop of no-name faux mayonnaise, while their idea of sausage cannot be adequately envisioned in a family-friendly blog …

At any rate, we are tired of rice so far this week, and actually enjoy our fat-laden treat of hamburger and fries, washing it down with guiltless water. The young mother three tables down casts admiring glances at our daughter's eyelashes and sends down a yoghurt drink - which thankfully Kitkat has already learned to recognize and appreciate. A group of middle-school girls, in maroon unifrocks, delays our exit with similar flattery, practicing their limited English between giggles. If only our college-level students were so uninhibited with the few words and phrases they know, how much actual communication could they not achieve, Husband and I wonder to each other as we hurry towards the taxi stand.

The early promise of a beautiful day has turned threatening; grayish-blue clouds glower in the west, and above us a high overcast hides the sun. We can afford to smirk, though, for we have gotten a taxi and are hieing our way to the local bastion of culture and readily-available comestibles – E-Mart!

Two large floors of shopping (one groceries, one household goods) plus two floors of parking above that – seems an odd system, but it’s quite workable, connected with multiple sets of escalators. The first set is outside the cash registers (so one can enter on any floor and depart again with the single item one has needed) while the second is internal (so that one can shop moving freely between floors, and exit once to pay for everything all together). There are lockers large and small for outside packages and bags, nice big grocery carts (and even a few ‘car-style’ carts to entertain toddlers), a packing area well-provided with boxes, twine, and yellow ‘E-Mart’ blazoned tape, a little seating area, a small food court, and even a tiny pet section. Mind you, it doesn’t have a photography studio, a music store, and a short-term daycare like the E-Mart in 'Suyong', but one can’t demand everything of such a small town as 'Yonjil'... Compared to the grungy, over-filled but understocked, hole-in-the-wall 'marts', or the much fresher but bare-bones outdoor markets that were our only options for food when we first arrived in Korea, in 1996, this is positively cosmopolitan.

At the end of almost every aisle stands a uniformed clerk with his or her samples of goods, and one could skip lunch and merely browse the offered samples (as the Kitkat proceeds to do, having left most of her hamburger untouched.) She tries bites of pulgogibarbequed beef and bacon, cereal and mandu pot-stickers, cream-filled bread and soy milk.   

Outside E-Mart, with a giant bag of bread, two hefty bags of groceries, some bottled water, a folded-up stroller, and our tired daughter, we wait in vain for a passing taxi. The road is busy, and one does not usually have to spend more than five minutes before one rushes by, but this afternoon we wait for fifteen with no luck. Finally one pulls up but as we are second in line, we are still waiting. As I sit down again with Kitkat on my lap, a glistening silver truck pulls up to the stand, the smoked windows roll down, and two familiar faces look out – 'Hana' and her mother!

Hana is Kitkat's yuchiwan (preschool) buddy, who gets on the bus with her every morning at the university gate. Her Halmoni ( Korean title - Grandmother) and Oma (Mother) run a little Korean home-style restaurant just outside the gate, where we often eat at the end of the week. Halmoni, as we are also entitled to call her affectionately, is driving her brand-new truck, and mom and child are in the front seat with her. (One learns quickly that car seats are as rare as albino tigers in this country, and seatbelts optional save for the driver...)

“Where are you going?” they ask, and when we gesture up the hill towards Meyong, in the opposite direction from their truck’s nose, they cheerfully wave us into the backseat. Groceries, stroller, water and all, we pile in and Halmoni does an insouciant U-turn in the face of oncoming traffic.

The truck’s back seats still have plastic over them, the arm rests are slick with protective tape, the scent of ‘new car’ spicy in our tired noses. We make halting conversation in our broken Korean, happy just to be off our feet. All too quickly we are up the hill, pulling into the guesthouse’s little parking lot, unloading our booty, effusing our thanks. Halmoni and her family wave us away cheerfully, Kitkat and Hana exchange kisses, and we part with smiles.

A good day out, a full pantry, a chance to observe and appreciate how different our lives are, how much the same. I think how much has changed since our first sojourn in Korea, quite apart from returning with a toddler. We've gone through prosperity, poverty, culture shock, a mortgage, a tenant, new jobs, depression, pregnancy, birth, and more. And here we are, back in the same place, back at the same job, yet five years older and wiser. We have learned gratitude, and we are grateful for its gifts.

Becoming a parent changed everything for me. Everything. It is without a doubt, the best and hardest work I've ever done, especially because I want so badly to do it well.  I’m sure most parents would agree. 

There was a time in the not-so-distant past, when I thought my job as a parent was to try to figure out how to be a perfect mum. I would stay up all night researching on the internet, reading parenting books and agonizing about what I should be doing. I don’t recommend this as a parenting strategy, by the way, instead of perfect I mostly just ended up being tired, resentful and overwhelmed. So I decided it was time to stop working so hard and to start doing the hard work.

I love the quote, “how you do one thing is how you do everything” and I’m sometimes a bit sad that I didn’t learn it earlier on in my life. Or, maybe it was there all along and I just couldn’t see it until I became a parent. Either way, when I’d finally had enough and really stopped to think about it, I realized that I was doing parenting the same way I had done school and work and everything else in my life. Yikes! I’ve had many breakdowns and breakthroughs and thankfully, trying to be better than perfect is not how I do things anymore.

Now I practice what I like to call living on purpose and parenting on purpose. This is the opposite of letting life happen to me, or just doing what everyone else does without question, like I was doing before.

When decisions need to be made or questions come up for me, I sit down, take a breath and ask myself:

     1.    What are my priorities?

     What am I trying to do/be/accomplish for myself, for my kids and in this situation?

     2.    Is this what I/we really need right now?

     Does it fit with my priorities? Will it make things easier or harder for us? Where do I see this going in the        future and is that where I want to be? Do I even need to make a decision about this?

     3.    What works for my family? For my little people?

     What are our routines? What do we love? How do my kids learn best? How can I support them/me              through confusing times and change?

These questions help me to get really clear about my thoughts, my feelings and my options. Then, I can choose how I react, how I spend my time and energy and I can say, “no, thank you” to the things and people that don’t fit with my priorities.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a perfect parent anymore and I’ve given up on perfection in other areas of my life too. Now, I think the best I can do is to pay attention, to know my kids really well and know myself really well. That is my purpose.

Changing countries is really not that much more difficult than changing houses.

Both involve a bit of planning and packing but once you’ve made up your mind to do it, like with most things, you get in the flow of it and  soon find yourself in a different world.

When I was younger I travelled quite a lot around South-East Asia and Australasia. I knew then that when I came back ‘home’ to Holland I wanted to live in the UK. Did I already know that ‘home’ would have ceased to be that? That by travelling I had taken up roots that had never properly burrowed down anyway? Did I already know that the country where I was born just wasn’t ‘my’ country anyway? Yes. Somewhere deep inside I did already know all this.

Back after my travels Holland felt more foreign than it had ever done before and although I settled back in for a while, it never felt right. So when the chance came to move to Scotland, I jumped at it. Oh, the weirdness of it all! Where do you go to get anything? I’d been to Scotland many times before, but actually living there was a different matter.

No longer on holiday and not sure where to start. But it’s funny how quickly I felt as if I’d been there forever. As I stood in the kitchen of my cottage with a cup of coffee on one of my first mornings there, overlooking the fields with a few deer munching on their breakfast greens I knew that this was where my roots where now grabbing hold. And for the next 4 years, Scotland was indeed my home.

And then. Then it wasn’t. Scotland is utterly beautiful. On a good day there is no country in the world that is more stunning and breathtaking. But there are so few good days. All the others are cold and grey and dreary and it affects everything and everyone. It just didn’t fit anymore.

And so my roots came up again and after some soul searching I found myself in beautiful Burgundy (France).

Now that was a challenge. Oh, not the moving here, (recipe: gather a truck, some friends, lots of boxes, a big barbeque and off you go), but the sheer differentness of it all.

Not only did I not speak a word of French other than merci, bonjour and au revoir, it had taken only 5 months from conception (seeing this place for the first time) to birth (actual moving date), which really wasn’t much time at all for proper preparations, to learn the language,  to realise that the French are really in a league of their own and that logic, as we know it, ceased to exist when we crossed that border.

Have I ever regretted it? Never. Not for 1 minute. I absolutely, truly, utterly love it here. I feel more at home here than I have ever done anywhere else. And those roots are growing deep this time. I’m still learning French, I’m still trying to understand French Logic, I still marvel at the differentness of it all. And I am oh so glad I jumped in and took the chance.

Will I ever move to another country? Who knows?. At the moment I can’t imagine so, but I have learned that whatever is right for us now, doesn’t mean it stays right for us. And that just because it didn’t last forever doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing.

And so it goes. It might be scary (or downright terrifying), but to be happy you have to follow your heart and take the path that it shows you. Leave the familiar behind and have the guts to follow your dreams. Remember that quote by André Gide: You can’t discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. Happy sailing!

Listening to your intuition is a muscle which gets stronger over time.  At first, intuition feels like a whisper no louder than the sound a feather would make when stroking your arm.  It’s subtle.  You may experience this as slight urges to go in a certain direction or an inner knowing that the person you just met will play an important role in your life.  That is basic intuition, and everyone is connected to it. 

What most people don’t realize is that you can strengthen your intuitive muscle with a little practice.  It can grow, and become a louder, more active part of your life.  I like to describe intuition as being the voice of your higher self.  This part of you lives beyond your own physical limitations.  It can see everything, just like god or the universe can. 

Your higher self can see into the future, the past, and it can see all of the options that are in front of you right now.  It is also familiar with your own personal likes and dislikes.  It knows what you most deeply want, what you’re naturally talented at, and what you are struggling with.  Because of this, your higher self can point you in the direction that will be most helpful for you.  It also means that what your intuition tells you may not make logical sense all of the time.

For example, say you’ve been wanting to live abroad all of your life.  Your dream is to live as a nomad, traveling all across Europe, Australia, and North America.  You’ve been making vision boards and having fantasies about sleeping on foreign beaches and making exotic friends.  All of a sudden, when you are 20 years old and have some money saved for your adventure, your intuition tells you to spend the money on a car.  This totally freaks you out!  You don’t need a car if you’re going to be traveling around the world, and if you spend all your savings, you won’t be able to go at all.  It doesn’t make sense. 

The day after you get this intuitive inkling a friend comes to you and says that he is selling his car.  He wants something different, he says.  Now things are starting to get interesting.  Yesterday your intuitive senses were signaling that you should buy a car, and now you have the perfect opportunity to follow through.  You are bold and decide to go for it. You give your friend all the money you saved for your trip and, even though you feel a little nervous, an exhilaration also runs through your body. 

About a week later, after you’ve registered and insured your new beauty, something strange happens.  You’re loading food into the back seat of your car in the parking lot of the grocery store and a man walks over to you and starts a conversation.  He tells you a story about how he used to own a car like that and that it was his wife’s favorite.  You come to find out that she almost died of a serious illness a few months ago and was recovering slowly.  He really wanted to cheer her up and asks you if you would be willing to sell the car for twice what you paid your friend. 

If you say yes, you will be making double the money that you saved, you will be making this man so proud and happy to be able to give comfort to his wife, and you will also boost the health and morale of the woman who came close to death nearly three months ago.  I think the answer is pretty clear. 

This is how intuition works.  Your higher self sees 10 steps ahead, and if you follow it’s voice, you can live harmoniously with the universe.  Your plans for happiness are taken care of by your higher aspects.  You are a gem and your intuition is the light that illuminates its many glittering facets.  Follow those nudges and they become stronger.  You’ll build trust with yourself and life will start becoming effortless.  You never know what truly amazing thing is waiting on the other side of an intuitive hunch until to follow it.