Why did we decide to go on this trip? There are many reasons, more than I'll be able to remember. In fact, I'm quite certain I can't recall most of the reasons, maybe even forgetting the most important ones. One reason must be the fact that during the past few years' Life Audits we have constantly scored horribly low in the Adventure category, more or less averaging 1 or 2 since we came back from Australia in 2020, just before the pandemic really started. Another reason was simply the need for an event in time that could mark a transition from one thing to another thing, whatever that thing is. One thing ended up being the termination of my employment and potentially the end of my "career". When we left I had just quit my job as a Data Lead at IKEA and set myself up for a whole bunch of I-have-no-clue. What happened was that we just booked the trip, one step at a time, in order for us not to have the choice of not going. Interrail passes were bought, trains were booked, and some AirBnBs and hotels were booked. The day of departure was quickly approaching so we prepared travel gear for ourselves and, of course, for our galgo Hilma who would be coming along. And then all of a sudden the day arrived. In the evening we left Malmö and fell asleep after having passed Copenhagen. I was fighting a bad cold but such details can be left to more bitter times.
The first stop was Berlin. Our AirBnB was situated in Kreuzberg, on Muskauer Strasse. Berlin is (or at the very least seems to be) an ideal city for us, with the tiny exception of the German language. Kreuzberg was filled with cosy restaurants, outdoor seating, excellent coffee bars, markets, people of different cultures and ethnicity, a vibe reeking of anarchist leanings, a broken down wall, punk, and laissez-faire. There were people playing in the streets, both children and adults, people sleeping on the grass. As has been the case the past two times we've been to Berlin the time was too short. There are, however, some places I want to write down so I don't forget that I've been there or that I'd like to go there in the future.
Places like Chen Che feel few and far between in the world. It's a Vietnamese restaurant hidden in a lush inner yard a short walk north of Alexanderplatz. They serve food and tea. When we were there this time the food was delicious, nourishing, and fairly priced, and the pepper mint, ginger, and honey tea (made with fresh pepper mint leaves from their garden) was heavenly, especially for the sinus infection I was battling. Their yard is a bamboo grove with tables and seats and when we ate we could hear a large group of children, maybe from a daycare nearby, playing on the other side of the fence. Somewhere else two people were practising the alto saxophone together. Oh, and it goes without saying that they allow dogs both inside and outside, something that seems to be the case in most of the places we visited. Good, healthy food, simple ingredients, refreshing tea, and a peaceful place to just sit.
Zero Stress Pizza in Kreuzberg, according to the Argentinian waitress who helped us, make the best pizza in Berlin. This actually wasn't too hard to believe, they might make the best pizza in Germany. Vegan options were of course available.
Berlin feels, as I've said, very punk. It feels like a hipster who has grown up a bit, at least the places we visited. Talking about hipster, I'm not sure if I ever felt like more of a hipster than when I walked out of the second hand bookstore Curious Fox in Kreuzberg holding an old weathered version of The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus in my hand.
Markthalle Neun and, just next to it, Café 9 was also a highlight. The market had all kinds of food and all kinds of people and the café, like cafés should, had more than one espresso loaded up. Sitting in front of the café while watching people walk by and into the market was a highlight of our stay in Berlin. A woman even recognised Hilma as a galgo and went up to her and said hello. One evening we walked to Brammibal's donuts and while walking there we passed people enjoying the evening sunshine while having a Fritz Cola (or something else), jazz musicians playing on a bridge, and just... Very spiritually colourful people. Is this a palette we lack in our lives? Well, even if it is, the colours of the donuts made up for it momentarily, holy crap.
More places I'd like to check out next time we're in Berlin (which I'll get to in a second) are: Tempelhofer Feld which is an old airport field transformed into an enormous park that contains not one but four dog enclosures, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg in general, East Side Gallery, more of the anarchist and punk places, the underground Berlin music world.
Berlin feels like a city best experienced by actually living there and taking part in its flow and pulse. This might be something that isn't too far away for us. There is a high probability that Suzanne will have the opportunity to spend some of her PhD doing an exchange in Berlin which means me and Hilma will come along and hopefully live there for around six months. If this becomes a reality it will most likely be in the spring of next year, 2024. Fingers crossed.
Cum dignitate otium. I am currently unemployed and undergoing a transition, a transformation of sorts. What this will lead to I don't yet know and the unknowing is the vital point. My hair is growing longer but it still wants to maintain its previous shape. Let it grow, let things be unknown and slowly, silently, evolving towards something not yet clear, not yet understandable. Just allow it, whatever it is, to unfold. As KV keeps saying, "you're OK".
Oh, and if you're starting to get angry and annoyed with the whole process, just buy a worn down Telecaster copy and start a noise punk band. If you want to complain, do it loudly and harshly.
Ah, the city of heat and curry wursts. At least it was the one day we spent there. Munich wasn't something we were looking forward to, it was more just a step on the way to the Alps that allowed us some rest between Berlin and the mountains. Munich surprised us though. Curry wurst is probably a bit of an acquired taste or, perhaps, a taste preferred by hungover people, but having one by the Isar with an old ivy-clad church ringing its bells behind us was lovely. People were swimming in the river, going against the current and thereby staying in the same spot while vigorously trying to get somewhere. Stopping for just a few seconds made them drift off along the current.
We stayed in the very centre of Munich and as most city centres it had its issues. Trying to get Hilma to pee in the botanical gardens, and suddenly realising the only woman we could see among hundreds of strange-looking men was sitting on a bench and talking to herself, made us quickly leave the park. Seeing plenty of beautiful old buildings and little plazas with fountains and water installations, as well as cooling off at Man vs. Machine Café with an iced oat latte served by a long-haired tattooed bloke, made Munich an unexpected pleasant surprise. We'll probably skip the curry wurst when and if we go there again though.
Coming home to Sweden has been very strange. More reflections on this will follow but I'll write some now while certain conversations are fresh. Now, Lund in general and Klostergården in particular have given me a sense of having a home more than any other place. Deep friendships, access to nature, places for Hilma to run, lovely neighbours, Love Coffee, proximity to Malmö and Copenhagen, great bike paths, many adventures nearby, proximity to the ocean, longer summers than most of Sweden, international population due to the university, old buildings and beautiful architecture, cultural events, and more. But coming home from our almost month-long journey has given me and Suzanne (and, it seems, others, such as Magda, too) a sense of Sweden being very... dampening. Or washed out. Many interactions zap energy and give nothing back. No one seems to want anything, strive for anything, have passion for anything. Things seem so grey, not just because of the weather. Sweden lacks everyday interactions in most ways but the ones that occur seem... lacking in some quality. Life force? Joy? Love? We're unsure but coming back has rapidly taken us into conversations about the negative sides of Sweden and that we might, to our own surprise, be starting to look outside of Sweden for something. A home? A second home? A writing retreat? A place we own together with others? A place to spend half the year, filling the tank with whatever it is Sweden seems to take out of it? Magda expressed that she doesn't like who she is in Sweden but she does like who she is in Barcelona. Do I like who I was during the trip? I definitely felt different and I do believe that I returned to Sweden a different person, maybe a person who needs a type of energy or interaction that is difficult to come by here? Maybe there is a fire burning inside because of the fuel from this trip and returning will be like covering this fire with a damp blanket? One response is to simply wonder if it isn't possible and even advisable to take responsibility and be the "doer" who changes ones direct environment to provide the fuel for this fire. This is most likely a proper response no matter the circumstances. But another response is to wonder if it's a good idea to try to keep a fire alive in a place where it mightn't, no matter how hard you try, thrive and burn brightly. Wasn't my conclusion long ago that both could be right? Sometimes one needs to inhale: maybe silence, space, inspiration, reading, studying, looking, watching, listening, talking, collecting, living simply, in simplicity, living lightly, dropping out, meditating, contemplating, enjoying, laughing. At other times one needs to exhale, use all of the above as matter for ones creations and manifestations in the world: creating, writing, building, sharing, forcing, advising, helping, doing, contributing, teaching, designing, discussing, being pragmatic and productive, being worldly, keeping up with the state of things, being a part of something, embracing complexity and chaos, manifesting ones ideals, loving, caring, tackling problems. It isn't one or the other but the balance is delicate and most likely impossible to properly get an understanding for. Long term this needs to kept in mind in one's life.
We boarded the train in Munich and the landscape gradually but rapidly changed as we entered the Alps and Austria. There is something very special about mountains. They block your horizon and make your world smaller while also making your field of view filled with an unmatched grandiosity whose faces change with the passing of every minute, showing new wonders each time you direct your gaze upward. Climate-wise it wasn't what we expected though since the temperature was around 32 degrees when we stepped of the train in central Innsbruck. Innsbruck is a bit like the bottom of a kettle, my father later wrote to us. Fortunately the bottom of the kettle that is Innsbruck has a crack and in this crack the cold blue-grey-green water of the Inn rapidly flows through the city. We picked a picnic spot by the river and the temperature felt like it dropped by 10 degrees just from being so close to the water. Rivers always evoke in me a desire to meditate so I did.
Our AirBnB had a balcony with a northward facing view of the mountains and before I was wiped out by food poisoning we put the muzzle on Hilma and headed up the furnicular to Nordkette during the warmest day in Innsbruck. Up there the air was fresh and the climate just right. Hilma was chased by a sheep and she hunted for flies while we enjoyed the view both southward to Innsbruck far below as well as northward to jagged mountains and unforgiving rock. A very humbling and raw beauty.
After having survived some Gerogerigegege-inspired food poisoning we took the train - supposedly one of the most scenic routes in Europe - from Innsbruck to Italy, specifically Verona. This might've been the best train trip during the entire journey and having our own compartment with just one other person made for a calm and beautiful trip. Hilma slept on her mattress and we enjoyed the views over mountains and valleys while listening to music, solving sudoku, and drawing. In Verona we booked a high-speed train to Milano and arrived in, once again, a surprisingly beautiful city. Despite living in the city centre we were welcomed by the lever espresso machines and, consequently, the delicious espressos of Caffè Napoli as well as plenty of cosy streets with friendly people. This was the start of our increasing love for Italy and Italians. With my interest in bicycles and espresso machines this might not be a surprise to anyone but it was to us.
As mentioned we had coffee standing up at the bar at one of the Caffè Napoli espresso bars and we had dinner from a vegan buffet place that had pretty good food. It was nice to eat tempeh and seitan. Our stay in Milano would be similar to our stay in Munich, just one night in order to have shorter train trips. In other words, we left the next morning but felt that we wanted to return in the future for a longer stay.
The perfect village for a writer's retreat. Not that I pretend to be a writer but maybe one day... In the Cuneo region of northwestern Italy, nestled between vineyards and fruit trees lies a little village called Dogliani. In Dogliani there is a hill and at the top of that hill there stands a few old churches. Around these churches stand old apartment buildings, many covered in twisting wisteria and crawling vines, roses stretching out their branches over the paths and alleyways, well-fed cats basking in the sun, the smell of a pan pizza baking, swifts sailing high above the tiled roofs of every shade of terracotta, the sound of a television broadcasting the Tour de France, nuns serenely watering a garden, locals enjoying a glass of local wine while sitting in the shade enjoying the view over the vineyards on the other side of the valley. Here is a place to simply exist. There are a few ways to get down to the village centre on foot but the preferable one is an overgrown grass and gravel path that twists and turns winding down the Dogliani Castello hill, past a kitten and its mother, past all of the wall lizards peeking out of cracks and crevices, massive carpenter bees threateningly flying past with only flowers in their minds. As you get down into the centre of Dogliani you pass shops, osterias, restaurants, bars, and you'll probably see a racing bike or two parked outside of an espresso bar as the two cyclists head in for a quick caffè and a brioche before jumping back onto their bikes and continuing their tour in the sweltering heat, heading who knows where, they probably don't really care themselves as long as the pedals keep rotating and the landscapes keep passing them by. In Dogliani you spend more time than seems reasonable picking which tomatoes to bring home for your pasta pomodoro, you hold conversations in a shaky barely functioning Italian and it somehow just works, the meaning getting across even when the words don't. The population in Dogliani is small but it is a place full of life, life that expresses itself very differently than most places we've visited. The life forces encountered feels at once ancient and fresh, crumbling yet dignified.
We did many things in Dogliani yet also very few things. Getting there was difficult since it was Suzanne's turn to get food poisoning. We lived in a two story building owned by an Austrian lady and a Finnish man, there was even a sauna. We named our neighbour cat Donatella and fed her a few times. She became a friend and I wonder if she wonders where we came from and where we went. We drank coffee, both local bitter Italian as-it-should-be espresso as well as home-brewed coffee with our Aeropress. We cooked and ate. Aglio e olio, pasta pomodoro, scrambled eggs and local zucchini, locally baked bread, olives, pan pizza from La Lanterna, peach ice cream, traditional Nevelatte ice cream, tortellini. We talked, flaneured, I went for a run/walk, we spoke with people in English, French, and Italian, we gave an old lady with a dog a poo bag, we were called elegant, Hilma was given some prosciutto at La Lanterna, everyone seemed to love her, we wrote, we read (I read The House on the Hill by Cesare Pavese), we lived very simply, we walked around the Dogliani Castello Pro Loco festival where the quiet hill suddenly turned into one big party but without any tourists (except us), we sat on the bench outside of the house, we were bitten by a million mosquitoes and maybe even got bed bugs, I listened to Italian post-rock, we rested a lot, and simply existed.
We expected travelling from tiny Dogliani to Nice on the riviera to be an ordeal but it wasn't too bad. The taxi driver Paolo picked us up on top of the hill in Dogliani and while yapping on about Zlatan and tennis he drove us to his hometown Ceva which has a train station. In Ceva we boarded a fully packed train towards Ventimiglia. We spoke with an Italian English teacher and Hilma told a big bull dog named Napoleone to fuck off, sorry 'bout that Napo... During the last part of the journey to Ventimiglia we actually got to sit down for a bit.
Ventimiglia or rather the riviera feels a bit like a second home. It is the one place we've been to the most in Europe and it simply feels very familiar to us. From Ventimiglia it's quite easy to get to Nice with the regional train that goes along the coast past Monaco and several tiny hidden beaches that we're never sure how to actually get to. It is a beautiful part of the world, having steep mountains on one side and the surrealistically blue Mediterranean on the other.
Nice is nice and was, during our stay, very hot. Feels like we got up to quite a lot in Nice. Plenty of swimming in the ocean, even Hilma cooled off in the Mediterranean, despite the big pebbles covering the beaches. Nice is a busy town but there are quiet spots if one knows where to look. During our stay we lived close to the Promenade des Anglais and due to the new metro/tram line that goes west from the city centre this area had changed a lot since we were there six years ago. Among shops and restaurants we were lucky to have a brilliant boulangerie a few metres down the road that baked pretty pain-au-chocs, bubbly baguettes, and crumbly croissants among other things. One day we took the local train back to Italy, to Ventimiglia, and went to the market and bought some (expensive but worth-it) mango and avocado. Ripe mango and big green avocados seem to have gone extinct on the Swedish fruit market, perhaps rightfully so, so it's always a treat to buy some when we're down south. We also bought some focaccia and pizza which we brought with us to the beach in Carnolès during the afternoon. Another day I took a walk from western Nice to old town which is just east of the city centre and had a coffee at The Service Course Café which was a café and bicycle shop all in one. While sitting there several pairs of beefed up quads came pedalling by with their racing bikes and bibs and went in and drank water and ordered a coffee before either continuing their biking or heading home after their tour. My interest for bikes but more specifically biking has dramatically increased during this trip and the clear association between biking and coffee became even clearer when sitting at this café enjoying a Peruvian lightly roasted espresso. I must let this seed germinate and grow.
Our last night turned into our most iconic Nice-night. Every year in the beginning of July Nice fills with jazz from the Nice Jazz Festival, and after we had dinner at a vegan Italian restaurant together with Suzanne, KV, and Hilma, we went to Place Massena and heard a few songs by the legendary Herbie Hancock. Even more memorable was probably the friendly couple who came up and wanted to say hello to Hilma and the guy kissed his hand and placed it gently on Hilma's head. Such a cute gesture. As Suzanne was almost falling asleep to the strange Hancockian fusion and we realised we had an early train in the morning we decided to take the tram home with Hancock's gig still having much to go.
Our expectations for Paris were quite low and mainly consisted of polluted air, the constant aroma of urine, and unfriendly Parisians, and, despite getting all of those expectations fulfilled we ended up absolutely loving our stay in Paris. We stayed in the 18th, basically in Montmartre, and an area I, from my childhood, remembered as shady and dangerous turned out to be lovely.
At the local café called Two Doors Café we met a restaurant-owner-just-turned-mother from Melbourne who adored Hilma and told us about growing up with a greyhound called Saddles, we met another mother, strangely also from Melbourne, who enthusiastically told us that her daughter's shoes, which Suzanne complimented, were orthopaedic shoes in order for the kid to still feel the ground, and we met a Parisian food blogger and her Frenchie Pocho who guided us to Barkers & Brothers. Barkers & Brothers is one of those places that puts a thorn in my scepticism towards big cities simply because it could only exist in a big city. It is a café for dogs that sells puppyccinos and other dog treats as well as beautiful dog accessories. Hilma was a bit hesitant about her ice cream, possibly because of a huge Akita chilling nearby and other dogs almost fighting to get a taste of her ice cream. It was still highly enjoyable and we left with a stylish looking poo bag holder and walked back to our place while we felt the first drizzle of rain since leaving Sweden.
The rain made a museum visit a very good idea. KV, my own personal Buddhist priest, something he loves being called, invited me to come along to Guimet. Guimet has a huge collection of Asian art and I especially appreciated seeing different culture's Buddhist artworks. Though, it did make you wonder how much of the museum's contents were just remnants of colonisation too cumbersome to transport back to their origins.
Me, Suzanne, and Hilma love just chilling in a coffee shop while reading, writing, talking, or just staring into nothingness. KV claims that we turn into a proper unit when together. There was a lot of that unit just drinking coffee and hangin' out. But there are two more special events from our time in Paris that I want to talk about.
The first event was the final sprint in the Tour de France. We took the metro to the southern shore of the Seine and walked over the bridge to Jardins des Tuileries and joined the crowds waiting for the cyclists to pass by eight times before passing the finish line at the Arc de Triomphe. Cars and motor bike swooshed by before the few cyclists battling for first place who were then followed by the peloton and lastly the support cars all carrying probably over a hundred thousand euros worth of bikes on their roofs. Everybody was cheering and the atmosphere was electric. We loved it and even Hilma seemed excited judging from her crazy (leashed) sprints she took with me in the gardens after the eighth lap. We then had ice cream sitting in the metallic chairs overlooking the pond in Tuileries, the spot that for me and Suzanne is memorable from the ending of a Taiwanese film.
The second event is probably the twenty minutes of my life where I've been photographed the most. We had a painter named Bernard do a quick painting of Hilma at the top of Montmartre, at Place du Tertre. It was such a fun moment and we'll make sure to frame the painting as soon as we find a suitable frame for it.
Oh, and a quick unrelated note for myself... Bake sourdough bread! It is amazing in every way and it makes life better no matter what. P1 on the corner, just meters from our AirBnB, showed that a life full of pain is a good life.
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities but in the expert's there are few. Such goes the Shunryu Suzuki quote for his Soto Zen book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The relevance of this quote? Well, when travelling you're a constant beginner, a newcomer. Not only do you see everything with fresh eyes, everything you see is also fresh and new to you. Possibilities that never occur to you, opportunities you never encounter, circumstances you never consider. That we return from such a journey being slightly different people than when we left is not strange. What is strange, however, is how easily we forget and let go of the insights that such a journey can induce. We come home and whether we want to or not we lose the beginner's mind and mindset, and our world narrows. Earlier possibilities, desires, and ideas drift away into the ether, hiding away behind locked gates whose keys appear only when inspiration grows. The clarity of what to do that came to you when staring out of the train window at the passing scenery suddenly becomes complicated, complex, clouded over with ifs, whys and hows. Things that seemed and probably would be easy suddenly seem difficult or maybe stop seeming altogether, are forgotten and even the forgetting gets lost. What appeared as the new you or possibly the real you quickly gets painted over with something, you're not sure of what or by who, but it seems to happen no matter how much you fight against it. But you're still left with the meta-insight, an insight you've had many times before but that keeps getting stronger, an insight that always waits for you to somehow act upon it. The insight that life and the world can be and is so much more than you realise.
A short point for myself to remember. Suzanne has sometimes called my newly adopted style of dressing "dandy"... Ugh. I'm definitely not aiming for dandy but I think I've realised what style I am aiming for. My wardrobe should be what Morfar would select for a capsule wardrobe if he was a minimalist. You could call it a 60's retro minimalist capsule wardrobe. Oh, and I think I quite like wearing hats.
From Paris we took the train to Bruxelles and then Amsterdam. We had an entire house booked, not in Amsterdam but in the nearby town of Muiden about 30 minutes east of Amsterdam by train and bus. Don't ask me to pronounce Muiden because I almost feel offended on behalf of the u and i in that word.
Amsterdam shares the spirit of punk and anarchy with cities like Berlin but maybe takes it to another level. I'll never forget the feeling of walking into Grey Area and getting help from a long-haired American dude to buy some brownies. No Scandi-inspired interiors with big windows, plenty of light, and birch wood counters. No, the entire front of the coffee shop is covered in stickers and so is the inside. Stepping inside you're hit with the smell of joints and sweet cannabis and it's dark, dimly lit. The few tables that are there are filled with people smoking, playing four-in-a-row. The coffee shop is what an espresso bar doesn't dare to be. Dim and dark it is, but the atmosphere is friendly, more friendly than most specialty cafés, the people working there happy to help out no matter what your level of experience is. It stands in stark contrast to the hooded gangs selling who-knows-what varietal of cannabis in Christiania in Copenhagen. Coming to Grey Area is like getting help to find the right coffee for you, not partaking in a criminal activity. I guess I am turning punk for real... Legalise all drugs? Yeah, probably. Fuck state control. "Fuck melody, fuck compose, art is over". REDACTED.
An interesting thing about Amsterdam is how well and how beautifully they've managed to modernise the architectural style and build new houses between the old ones that don't stick out like sore thumbs or, as in most of Europe and Sweden, sore bricks of LEGO.
I don't have a job and as soon as people hear that I try to justify it, claiming I'm starting my own company, I am worth something, etc. Some unfiltered stuff coming. Most knowledge-work is worth less than doing nothing and your job doesn't make you anyone, if anything your job turns most people into nobodies quicker than you can say Quidditch. You're not your job but your job quickly becomes you unless you're careful and most jobs aren't shit, they're actually just shit. If you're really proud of what you do and you do it well, that's great, but most people aren't and won't be. I am extremely proud of the life I have created irrespective of my work, and to be honest I'm even more proud now that I've left the notion of work, a job, and a career behind me. I will not accept and stand behind a reality someone else tries to create for me when the cracks of that reality have started to so clearly widen. In order to truly contribute you most likely need to find a way outside of careers and jobs. Life is a poem and my poem is currently in its Zen beat bum era, I guess. "If we were all tramps and vagabonds we would never have invented anything past the bike - we would all be riding bikes". Doesn't sound so bad does it? Most necessary jobs are only necessary to uphold a modern civilisation and a modern economy I'm not certain I'm that interested in upholding. Now, I'm not aiming for complete collapse but I am aiming to sow seeds of renaissance, transition, and transformation. Making time to find, tend, and spread those seeds is the first crucial step. If the majority disapproves I am doing the right thing.
We visited plenty of cafés in Amsterdam, as well as some coffee shops. The cafés were Toki, Five Ways, Hummingbird, Sango, Screaming Beans, and the coffee shops, from what I can remember, was Grey Area twice and Sativa once. Five Ways was probably the favourite café and Grey Area definitely the favourite coffee shop. From Five Ways we left with a "tropical washed" Colombian coffee and from Grey Area we left with some brownies. Each brownie contained 10mg of THC and the first test was me and Suz taking a quarter of a brownie while KV had a half. KV got a bit more chill, I didn't feel much, and Suzanne felt a lot. REDACTED. Exciting. Also feels a bit like stepping out of my preconceived notions of who I am or, rather, who I've been and thought I've been for all of my life. To change one thing you must change everything.
REDACTED. We said fare-well to KV who was flying back to Cork, and then, after having a morning coffee at Sango, we stepped on the train towards Hamburg.
The last four or five days of the trip I forgot or subconsciously neglected taking my SSRI-medication. I've taken 100mg of sertraline for many years now, probably since 2018. Luckily, from what I've read it seems sertraline has a pretty short withdrawal time of around three weeks. As of writing it has been about a week and a half or something like that. Now, I am still on enalapril for my blood pressure and a multi-vitamin just to be safe. I might switch the multi-vitamin to just a B12 when it runs out. For some reason I feel an increased aversion towards medication. It probably isn't the full truth but a part of me feels like the point of antidepressants isn't to make you live a better life but, rather, to make you a functioning cog of modern society. And we once again stumble upon the feeling of not necessarily wanting to be a functioning cog of modern society. Although, now that I think and write this, I wonder if the term modern society is entirely pointless and if it is simply an attempt to use a diffuse abstract net to capture certain parts of humanity I'm unhappy with. I seem to adore coffee, trains, architecture, music, culture, art, design, and other things that definitely fall within the area of modern society and which I would like to partake in. Oh well, best not to stray too far outside of the subject of travel. If I can function without medication that seems preferable and, in some way, more honest towards my own mind, emotions, and spirit.
Our stay in Hamburg was very short, only one night at a hotel and then we left around lunchtime the next day. Hamburg is, not surprisingly, similar to Berlin in many ways. Different, but similar.
The morning before heading home we took the Hamburg metro to St Pauli and had a coffee at Goldenblack whose Aussie barista shared my experience of some Aussies wanting their soy lattes so hot you almost served them espresso-marinated tofu. We sat outside the café while a dark cloud showered the road and pavement in front of us for a few minutes before continuing its journey, probably towards Sweden. We took a walk to the Flohmarkt and just strolled around before taking the metro back to the hotel, checked out, and went to Hamburg's enormous station hall. Not wholly unexpected the infrastructure problems appeared as soon as we reached Denmark and Sweden. Better not get into it, but the trip was long and it was late when Magda picked us up at Lund Central and drove us home. Hilma had a quick and confused pee on "her" lawn and then fell asleep. We proceeded with operation bed bug removal and then went to sleep as well. The journey was over, we were home, in Sweden, in Lund, in Klostergården, in our own apartment, in our own bed.
In Amsterdam I had my fortune told by KV through a celtic cross of the Tarot. Plenty of interesting things popped up but most interesting of all was the "outcome" card which showed the Queen of Pentacles reversed. Looking up its potential meaning, I found this:
When the Queen of Pentacles is upright, you are focused on nurturing and providing for others; when reversed, you are turning that caring energy to yourself. You are creating financial independence, perhaps working for yourself, starting your own business or supporting your lifestyle with your income.
The Queen of Pentacles reversed also suggests that you are nurturing yourself on a personal level. You may be preparing nutritious meals, going on retreat alone, and generally paying more attention to yourself and your needs. You are tending to yourself, knowing that to care for others, you need to first care for yourself. Trust that work and family can survive without you for a short period of time while you focus on you.
Care for myself, become self-employed, create financial independence, prioritise my health, go on a retreat, in order to care for others I must first care for myself.
It has now been a week since we came back home. Suzanne is back working, we're both slowly getting back to powerlifting and weightlifting, I've started tearing down my broken touring bike in order to build a gravel bike, I've tried to create structure through Obsidian, Todoist, budgeting, and scheduling, I've tried looking towards future plans, REDACTED, I've bought some second hand clothes, Suzanne has asked for a new work computer, I've kept the apartment fairly clean and ordered, we've tried to take care of our plants, both inside and on the balcony, I've rearranged the bookshelf and gotten the record player installed, I've felt anxious about living in Sweden, we've spent time with Magda & co, Akram & co, and swum in the ocean in Lomma (there is something about standing among the waves when they look like iron-filled ink during overcast weather), I've had phone calls with KV, I've taken walks with Hilma, Hilma's been reunited with her doggy friends, I've listened to music, I've cooked bolognese four times, I've reflected, I've meditated, we met Julia at an Italian pizzeria as a birthday celebration and talked for many hours, I've brewed V60s and espressos, and felt that most Swedes are a lot like NPCs.
This little document ends very anti-climactically but, in a way, it couldn't end in any other way because its end is written during a time of anti-climax. The applause of the theatre have dispersed and escaped the concert hall, the audience have left, the actors have removed their makeup, only the cleaner remains. What next? What now?
