From the archives – summer lights

From the archives – Munich fountain

Nyancat cake :)

A pain to make because the layers have been baked with a top heat oven, one layer over the other – but oh, the glorious result! The colours haven’t been tampered with, it’s an accurate impression of their intensity.

Autumn Impression

Mistakes not to make while travelling

These are some mistakes I made while travelling and when I’m not taking care I tend to repeat them.
Here’s when to be careful and how to fix the situation if I screwed up.

Forgetting stuff
Some things are prone to being left behind when moving around. When handling these, take extra care to put them back and take them with you:

• towel
  After showering one usually puts these someplace to dry. If the place is not in an obvious place, it’s very easy to forget. Lots of forgotten towels in hostels stress this point
• showering products
  If they are left in the shower while drying off, there’s a big chance the next person will enjoy free shower gel.
• media like usb sticks
  This is a point when using other people’s computers or internet cafes. Always be careful to take all your items with you!

Of course there might be more items like this. I tend to have a quite loose connection to some of my stuff, so some just leaves occasionally. Also see the bag point below!

Sweden’s winter

no photos please

Nowadays that everything is discovered and connected, we don’t even need to leave our houses to see the world. TV, internet, books.. they all show photos of every conceivable place, in the first two cases sometimes including sounds. We can join other people’s discoveries from our couches.

If we intend to step out of the door ourselves, however,  it quickly becomes a  mission to visit all the things we have seen on TV and, in a way, know already -  a complementary experience of “the real thing”.

However, in my eyes this lessens the spirit of discovery and adventure of travel. Having too much specific visual information about any given place before actually going makes travelling a litte less exciting and memorable. Of course, it’s still the real thing as opposed to a photo, but still, you’ve seen it before. The best experiences and discoveries on my travels, however, were the unexpected ones, the places I had no idea existed – therefore, before leaving, I will not look at more than the inevitable amount of pictures.

On traditional clothing and the West

In our more multicultural cities we see a lot of different people from many cultures today, be they tourists, immigrants or students. Sometimes they wear unusual clothing.
Just recently, I saw a bunch of Arabs with white tunics and the red-white headscarfs, some African women in their colourful attire, Indian women with beautiful saris and their men with equally foreign clothes. Muslimic headscarfs and cloaks are not even unusual any more.

Travelling, you meet even more people in their traditional clothes, and not just for special occasions. And most of the time, it looks fantastic! Dark skin goes extremely well with bright colours, lighter brown with the intricate design of saris – the whole thing simply fits together very nicely.
If a white, western person wears these styles, however, it usually looks quite odd, like they dressed up. The most natural thing sighted so far are the Scottish and their way of wearing kilts.

Some Berlin and Street Art

A short trip to Berlin I went on recently showed me again the great vibe of this city. It’s a very artsy lively space with very interesting people and locations and oh so much to do. Go there if you can!

It also  is one of the few German places with decent hostels I found so far. Maybe I’m just totally spoiled by New Zealand’s hostels..

This is the place where the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic) stood. This was an important political and cultural building back from the German Democratic Republic. It had to be taken down because it was build with asbestos (and it was quite ugly). I have some old pictures somewhere, just have to digg them up..

And this is the same place from another angle. I love the grassy heart and wonder how this has been accomplished. More street art – or city art, rather, I guess..

General Minimal Packing List

Everyone travels differently, and thus this list may not be exactly what you need, but maybe it can give you some inspiration.

These are the things I would pack if I could only take very minimal baggage with me. They have proven useful for quite a few journeys now.