Tali Kazimirov-Berauer

04/08/2026

How to Make the Most of August
or
My list of 22 little adventures

I’ve always been a list person. I make lists for everything.
Weekly to-do lists. Shopping lists. Book ideas. Boat projects. Knitting ideas. Things I need to do for Günther’s recovery… If there’s something to organise, chances are there’s already a list for it somewhere.

I spent most of July with my daughter. After she left, the house suddenly felt very quiet, and for a few days I caught myself missing her more than I expected.
When August arrived, I decided I didn’t want to spend the last month of summer feeling sad.

So I did what I always do.
I made another list. Not a to-do list this time, but a list of little adventures.

Here’s what’s on it:

1. Photograph one colour at the local market.
2. Photograph the city lights after dark with long exposure.
3. Photograph the fountains at Hellbrunn.
4. Have a silly photoshoot of myself.
5. Cook one new Italian dish.
6. Cook one new Alpine dish.
7. Learn to cook a Peruvian dish.
8. Spend August rediscovering Arvo Pärt.
9. Spend an afternoon reading in a café.
10. Buy myself flowers just because.
11. Turn one ordinary evening into an occasion.
12. Watch one sunrise.
13. Watch one sunset.
14. Wake up before the city does and go for an early morning walk.
15. Visit a flea market and look for little treasures.
16. Find a street I’ve never noticed before.
17. Go to the mountains.
18. Spend a day by a lake.
19. Create one new knitted or crocheted piece.
20. Write a postcard to someone I like.
21. Start a conversation with three strangers.
22. Do one thing I’ve been saying, “One day I’ll do that.”

The moment I started writing that list, August started feeling like an adventure.

What about you?
If you could add just one little adventure to your August, what would it be?

01/08/2026

If you’ve ever watched your dream slip through your fingers, you’ll understand this.

I’m Tali. For almost ten years, my husband and I sailed around the world, chasing a dream we had shared for years. We made it halfway, travelling slowly from Indonesia to Panama, and were getting ready to transit the Panama Canal and cross the Pacific when my husband became ill and we had to leave that life behind.

Now we’re selling our boat and slowly settling back into life on land. My husband is Austrian, so we’ve decided to stay in Austria. For now, we’re living in Salzburg while looking for the place we’ll eventually call home.

After so many years of constantly moving, waking up in new anchorages, discovering new countries and living among new cultures, settling into life in one city has been far more difficult than I ever expected.

It wasn’t only about leaving the boat behind. It was about letting go of the future I had imagined, and a part of myself along with it.

I could have spent years grieving the life I had to leave behind. But after months of tears, anger and cursing fate, I realised that losing a dream doesn’t have to mean losing yourself.

So I chose something else. I chose to focus on the new life I could still build, rather than the one I had left behind.

I think courage isn’t only about crossing oceans. It is also about having the strength to begin again.

Here, I share the messy and beautiful process of building a new life from scratch, one story at a time. If that resonates with you, stay awhile.

P.S. I still want to prove that the Earth is round and complete my journey around it. Some dreams are not meant to disappear. They simply have to wait a little longer.

09/07/2026

Do you have a folder called “Ideas” in your Notes app? I do. Mine is called “Book Ideas,” and it has 16 ideas in it.

I opened it the other day and thought, “What on earth have I been doing all these years?” Because having ideas for sixteen books sounds quite impressive… until you realise you haven’t actually written them.

The ideas are all over the place. One was supposed to become a book called Notes from Coffee Shops Around the World - little scenes, conversations, photographs and moments collected while travelling. At another point I wanted to write a book where every chapter was named after a single verb - I Walk, I Cry, I Leave - and together they would tell the story of a character’s inner growth.

I’ve always written ideas down. My professor at the conservatory used to say, “An unwritten thought is a lost thought,” and I’ve never forgotten it. Every time an idea came to me, I opened that note and added another title or another little seed of a story.

Some time ago I came across the beautiful idea that somewhere there is a library of all the books that were never written. Looking at my own folder, I realised I had already donated sixteen books to that imaginary library.

For years I kept telling myself exactly the same things most of us tell ourselves: I’ll start when life finally settles down, when I have a better plan or know more.

What I was really missing was the discipline to sit down and write. As Pablo Picasso once said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

The funny thing is that I don’t even want to write some of those sixteen books anymore. They belonged to an earlier version of me. I’ve changed, and so have the stories I want to tell.

And guess what? The story I’m writing now wasn’t waiting in that folder.

It’s number seventeen.

At least one of mine found its way out. I’m writing it now.

05/07/2026

I‘ve always been fascinated by people who see the world differently.
Here’s one of their stories I discovered yesterday at Wolfgangsee.

02/07/2026

Why did I start writing novels?
I’d been thinking about writing a book for years.

Many years ago, when I was still writing in Russian, I used to write a lot on Facebook. Almost every time I posted, someone would say, “You should write a book.”
Later, after I moved onto our catamaran, I started writing in English. To my surprise, people kept saying the same thing, even native English speakers.

Still, like so many of us, I kept telling myself, “One day.” When life slows down. When I have more time.

This year, something changed.

After Günther’s stroke, we had to make one of the hardest decisions of our lives. We decided to sell our boat. Before we could put her on the market, she needed months of work. There was no one else to do it, so I began getting ready for Panama.

I organised a team of caregivers for Günther, arranged support through the Red Cross, packed my bags and flew back to the boat.

For the next few months, my days slowly fell into a rhythm.

I woke up around 5:30, had a shower, made coffee, and wrote for a couple of hours before the day began. Then I had breakfast and spent the rest of the day working on our boat: cleaning, sanding, painting, varnishing, searching for spare parts, talking to contractors, and dealing with whatever needed fixing that day.

Those writing hours were the only part of the day that was truly mine. And I think they saved me.

Repairing the boat wasn’t the problem. I actually enjoyed it. I loved watching her slowly come back to life.

The difficult part was knowing what I was doing it for. I was repairing the boat to make someone else’s dream come true.

It was Günther’s dream to sell the boat and build our new life on land.
One day, our boat would become someone else’s dream come true.

Neither of those dreams was mine.

After weeks and months of living for other people’s dreams, I realised I was beginning to lose myself.

Writing was the only thing I was doing for myself.

Looking back, I don’t think I started writing because I finally had the time.
Quite the opposite.
I started writing because I had almost no time for myself.

Writing was the one thing that kept me connected to myself.

30/06/2026

I never planned to become a novelist.
For years, I told stories with photographs. Now I’m learning to tell them with words.
This is the beginning of that journey.

What unexpected dream found you? I’d love to hear your story.

11/04/2026

From buoy to buoy.

Last weekend, I did something I had been dreaming about since 2016.
I went through the Panama Canal.

Not on our catamaran. Not with Günther, the way I always imagined. Bruno, a neighbour here in Linton Bay, needed a line handler and I jumped at it.

It was one of those rare days that feel full in the best possible way. Work, laughter, conversations, that quiet focus when everyone knows what they’re doing and things just flow.

Javier, one of the line handlers, had a perfect Spanish word for it: esparcimiento.
Something between recreation, leisure, and stepping out of your usual routine.
And to me, it’s even better than dolce far niente. Not lying on a couch or sitting in a café. Instead - a shift of rhythm. A different kind of doing.

If you look at the numbers, it doesn’t sound like much. About 27 nautical miles from Linton Bay to Shelter Bay, and roughly 55 miles through the canal.

But it was never about the miles.

Since 2017, Günther and I have sailed exactly half around the world, from Indonesia to Panama. He used to joke that if his gravestone doesn’t say “he sailed around the world,” he’ll not cry.
And I always said: I will.

I want to complete my circle.

And now, with his health not allowing it anymore, I understand that my second half of the circle will look different.
As part of a crew on someone else’s boat.
Or maybe, who knows, one day with a crew of my own.

And last weekend became a small, but very real step.

Somewhere between lines, locks, and long hours, a few things came into focus.

(There’s more to this, continuing in the comments.)
👉🏽

04/02/2026