London, On the Knowledge

The return to Chicago has been way busier than I'd anticipated (entirely to the good! but extremely busy) and so this is a bit late, but: London! It's all very "hat on a hat" at this point, but I'm still feeling grateful-within-my-gratitude for the time - and the quality of that time - that I got to spend there this August.  After the jump: videos, photos, ramblings, all the gumbo you've come to expect...

My last full day in London: reading Emily's copy of High Fidelity on the South Bank before diving into the Tate Modern, an ocean of happiness unfolding before me. THIS WAS NOT A TERRIBLE TIME, GANG.

I'd initially only planned to spend about four days in the city, which is about par for the course given its expense, but when Emily offered up her place for about an extra ten days and an ocean of guidance about her pocket of non-touristy London, I tossed my plans and jumped. Between a haven of a home and some real treats around and about, this was a grand stay - a nice local-routines gearshift from my initial burst of tourist goofiness. That's all thanks to Emily, who was both patient with my nonsense ("Let's go to Fortnum and Mason! Oh, to be able to afford the uh... lifesized leather pigs? OK this is a shop for insane people") and generous in showing me all the best tucked-away cafes, running paths, and so on.

Even on a cloudy day, the Lea Valley canal (from the Regent's Canal) is a superb and glorious spot to roam

The best of these, as you'll see in the video above, was the Dalston Curve Garden, an amazing and free community space full of plants, families, kids, couples, dogs, and hipsters, sitting and chatting, drinking coffee or beer, or taking in a concert. As with so many places like this, it's under threat thanks to high-rise condo development (late-stage oligarchic capitalism! Is there anything it can't ruin?) but for now it's a special enclave, and an essential part of a neighborhood that feels populated by ordinary folk in a city that's increasingly the realm of the monied classes.

I think this is actually technically Hackney, not Dalston (I will learn these things better someday) but the street art in this neck of the world was extremely solid, I THINK.

But you know: the grand stuff is grand too! I loved the chance to meander around Savile Row and Jermyn Street, checking out incredibly well-made and beautifully-designed garments that I'll only ever be able to afford secondhand, as well as top-flight butchers and stationery shops who do what they do out of love and passionate commitment. The apex of this line of exploration came in my trip to Northampton - from whence, my dad reminded me, my great-ancestors came to found Northampton Massachusetts - to visit a handful of the best shoemaking factories in the world, and to geek out at their factory shops.

Here's the thing, most grand 19th century European department stores still have great architecture but the second you step inside you might as well be in an H&M in Indianapolis. Fortnum and Mason is insane and ridiculous but hokey smokes it is one of those places where you know it has a history and a tradition to it...

And leather pigs and rhinos, this was not poetic license, that's just how things go sometimes, I don't understand it either goodnight.

But really, this leg of the trip was a time to downshift a bit, to soak in the perfect oasis of Emily's backyard garden, to get work done at the British Library, and to find the routines that would keep me pretty well balanced as I headed into a huge pivot into my return to Chicago. It treated me well, and now I find that I miss it - one of a handful of spots for which I'm homesick even as I find myself back in the home I love best. London: I'll be back, and that right soon.

My happy place, built by a gal who knows how to make with the humane empathy, joy-of-living, and design-of-space.

Up To Date: Homecoming

I'm writing this from an airport hotel just outside Brussels, on a layover between Bristol (sweet Stuart and lovely Kate!) and Chicago (an ocean of friends and family that I've missed ferociously!) After a hilariously bumpy yesterday (delayed flight, wildcat baggage workers' strike that has one of my bags waylaid with thousands of others in a Brussels Airport purgatory, a situation about which I'm weirdly feeling zen) I've got just one last push between me and home.

I've got some stray posts yet to come - a bit on London, an overdue "useful tips for Berlin" post that nobody needs, and maybe a couple odd thinklets here and there - but I wanted to mark the last leg of this journey in real time. After the jump: yeah!

A ship of birds, wrought of iron, on a li'l rocky outcrop-beach in Split, Croatia. Flying and seas and whatnot! IT'S LIKE AN EVOCATIVE IMAGE EXCEPT IT'S NOT THAT EVOCATIVE I'LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME

It's been a very different summer than last in a lot of ways. Beyond the big ones, obviously - I'm not grappling with the unmooring change of divorce, I'm not frantically trying to salvage my academic career, I wasn't seeing most of these places for the first time. And probably most of the ways that it's been different have grown out of those big changes - ripples from ripples from ripples - but it's been interesting nonetheless.

In the past month, I hilariously found myself picking up English-made pyjamas and slippers new (albeit steeply discounted) on the road, eventually figuring out and articulating: this is all a sublimation of what I really want, which is to be home. See also: some time in Berlin spent making to-do lists for my return to Chicago, or home-furnishing-and-design research as I start thinking about filling out my living space as I get back to the city I love best. Much as I've loved being over here, and much as I've put most of my focus towards either working or taking in my surroundings, that pull of home is strong.

Cinque Terre kicking-around actually feels like it must have been a year or two ago, this summer both flew by and feels like it has been an age and a half.

Why this summer and not last? A few obvious reasons I guess: while I grew to love Jamaica Plain (so much, and with so much love and gratitude for my Boston friends) this past year, I obviously had mixed feelings at best about returning to Boston. Last summer was more (necessary, friend-assisted) heart-and-life-rebuilding indulgence, this summer more work-focused and solitary. And, you know, after a school year that was full of weddings, conferences, trips to visit friends in New York and Chicago and points beyond, I haven't fed the homebody part of myself in almost two years. (Berlin, at four weeks, was my longest stay anywhere without travel since... at least April 2015.) I am ready for a good long stay, to feel my roots, to dig in and reclaim my sense of home.

And to some extent it's just that narrative sixth-sense. It's time for a chapter shift, after the (mercifully) graceful epilogue of my last year in Boston. And while I don't know what this next chapter will look like in every aspect, I'm ready to be in the moment and not looking forward in anticipation.

Reading a borrowed copy of High Fidelity on the South Bank, feeling both very much "world is my oyster" and "I am a walking cliche," which is basically the razor's edge on which I live my extremely cool and normal life!!!

So, once I hit "publish" and close my laptop, I start moving with a glorious velocity back to Chicago, to my tribe, to a robust and energizing creative scene of generous collaborators and loving thinkers. I move towards the family and friends who (with many others scattered across the globe) held me up during the scariest time of this sea change. And, with more than a twinge of sadness, I move away from my European friends, the merry and thoughtful and heroic few whose hearts have so comprehensively captured mine. I'll always have a few brain cells parked across the globe, but for now... it's time to go home.

Jumping trains in Brussels

Boy, if you think this blog is underbaked and underinformed in general, wait until you get a load of this post, which is just a quicko reflection on approximately... six hours in Brussels, I think? After the jump: using a train transfer to snoop around a city!

The Grand Place, Brussels. Do you think a lot of tourists make jokes about how it's not so grand? Those tourists are chumps, it's grand as HECK is how it is. But only I guess if you like pointy buildings and stuff. Anyway, how are you

I'd booked my Bruges-to-London trip early enough that the Eurostar turned out to be cheaper than even discount flights, and since I love few things more than taking a train instead of flying, I was all over this. What's nice about taking the Eurostar from Brussels instead of Paris is that you can select the "Any Belgian Station" ticket option, which basically means for a few Euro more than your Brussels-London trip, you get to connect to or from Brussels to any other Belgian city within 24 hours of your international trip. This meant that getting an early start out of Bruges on my travel day left me a full afternoon to poke around (cloudy, muggy) Brussels. It was fun! And about as much as I had the energy for, as eager and impatient as I was to see people in the UK who make me wildly happy!

Do Belgians have a sense of humor? Judging by this building-sized mural of Tintin it is hard to say. This was one of the major questions I hoped to investigate during my brief stay.

Really, with this little time in Brussels you can cover a lot of ground but you're not going to "do" much. I snagged lunch at a recommended bar near the Grand Place (tucked away in an awesome quarter full of used record shops and bookstores) and wandered the central footpaths for a bit before cutting up to the Belgian Comic Strip Center, a museum and library dedicated to comics like Tintin, Asterix, and numerous other Belgian-and-otherwise dailies. Grabbing a midafternoon waffle (get a liege waffle and don't put anything on it beyond the standard powdered sugar, truuuuust me, it's caramelly and yeasty and crunchy and pillowy and delicious), I scooted back to the train station and hopped my two-or-three-hour bullet to London. Magic!

While I didn't see my favorite statue in Belgium (the manhole tripping one, look it up) this "is it raining" fountain was pretty swell! Aw guys I think you do have a sense of humor potentially.

All told, three days in Belgium is hilariously brief to think I've learned anything, so let's not pretend I have. But I seen a piece, and I'd linger if given the chance, and well I guess you'd say I'm... I'm grateful?

Even the street art was great and hilarious! Get that garbage, you old school hunting type folk!

Up next: London! While I've already touched on Glasgow in this space (so good, such friends, many happiness) I was really happy to have it bracketed by London itself. I've always given the city somewhat short shrift timewise due to expense, but with about a week and a half total, and with the guidance of a truly excellent gal to show me what's what, I got a much better and more indulgent slice this time. So uhhh stay tuned for that I guess?

MAKING FRIENDS ON THE ROAD IS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS TO TRAVEL LET'S ALL GO HANG OUT IN THE BRUSSELS MIDI STATION TO FIND SOME COOL AND UNUSUAL PEOPLEHORSES

I was saying Bruges-urns

If Ghent was a breath of fresh air, Bruges was… a breath of air! Not like bad air, just.. air! After the jump, some daggum loveliness and some thoughts on the joint.

If you want to save time reading this post, this photo should do it: pretty gorgeous, a little overcast, a little overrun (more so than this implies actually). But lovely, and probably worth visiting not in July or August maybe.

Going from one to the other, it was interesting to spot the differing tourist crowds in Ghent and Bruges. Ghent seemed, at least on my visit, to be populated by couples, small groups or solo travelers, largely from Germany or even other parts of Belgium. In Bruges, it was much more of the big-bus crowd: Americans, Japanese, and French tour groups all led by guides carrying those wire-pennant flags and yammering through headsets. It’s a weird fit for a totally idyllic and lovely town, and that disconnect made it complicated to navigate for a li’l bit. It didn’t help that I’d been getting back into the habit of walking my legs off, and some very potent exhaustion had started to set in.

It was also hecka overcast through about half the day, though this fairly early-morning shot of the main square COULD have been replaced by a hugely sunny one by the afternoon if I weren't such an ornery crowd-avoidin' crank! Shucks.

But then! After a morning spent largely in the central spots, and a much-needed nap once I could get into my hotel (‘T Keizershof – super recommended, a bit dowdy but couldn’t be more reasonably priced for the city or more perfectly located), I set out for some of the outlying spots. And that’s when it started to gel. Long walks along the canals at the core’s edge gave way to a trek up to a park with a few sheep and very curious cats ambling about; another detour took me to a row of windmills on a set of hills to the city’s east. And while that all ended with an early night, catching up on fatigued sleep after a couple of ales, the next morning gave me a chance to amble around before the day trippers arrived, sans camera, to roam the park paths and generally take in what the city must have felt like some twenty or thirty years ago, before it became what it is today.

Tucked away little enclaves! It's pretty clear to me that if you found these spots and/or visited in shoulder season (April/May or Sept/Oct) you'd probably have a real romantic time in Bruges! Maybe even more so if you came with your sweetie. (Apologies to the sweetie-less among my readers, please be assured this space will continue to have many thoughts for the sweetie-free among us. Who else is starting to hate this very common phrasing as much as this blog's author??)

So: the common refrain. Going offseason would make a difference. Where you are makes a difference. What time you venture forth makes a difference. I know there are tons of people who aren’t bothered at all to be in a large crowd treading a well-worn path and getting the same experiences as everyone else, but for me, it’s encouraging to see that even in a spot as well-worn as Bruges, there are nooks that feel special and unique waiting to be discovered.

ALSO: If you wake up early and go for a stroll before the bus-and-train day trippers arrive around 10, you will have some gorgeous prettiness awaiting you! Just try it, you have nothing to lose but your well-restedness.

Oh, and: yeah, get you some frites with mayo (and if there’s a local topping throw that in there too), and a liege waffle. They are not lying to you about these things, they are worth seeking out.

Not a frite, not a waffle. But FUN FACT: Bruges has windmills! And supposedly better ones if you do a bike trip that I was too exhausted to do! You can even bike past the better windmill on your way to the Netherlands! There are lots of interesting facts about things you can do in Belgium if you aren't too exhausted by life to be written about in this space.

The treat of Ghent

After a month of Berlin – lovely, green, but very much a big city marked by modernity and postwar architecture (Soviet and otherwise) – Ghent was a breath of fresh air. Cobblestone streets, that distinctive and perfect Flemish flat-front peak of architecture, and a great sense of local life… this was grand. After the jump: Belgian maaaaaagic.

GET OVER TO GHENT, THE POWER OF STATUARY COMPELS YOU

Ghent, and also Bruges and Brussels, SPOILERS for future posts if you can call video of things you probably already have seen a "spoiler" anyway hi how's everybody doing out there in Internet World today

Ghent strikes a nice balance between Bruges (spoiler alert: kind of Disneylandish in the summer) and an urban environment like Brussels or Berlin. Its downtown core is packed with less straight-up souvenir and tourist shops than local design and clothing stores, the kind of thing you see at the center of most affluent small cities. Walking the streets, you’ll hear Flemish/Dutch as often as you hear German (the most predominant tourist language on my visit), and there’s an amiable openness that prevails moreso than in a “let’s get you sorted and on with our lives” tourist hub.
I’ll limit the rest of this post to a few photos to get a sense of the space, but to run down the rest of my miscellaneous thoughts: it’s a tremendously walkable city, with a great variation of neighborhood energy through the 15-minute-or-so walk it takes to cross its core. As you’ll see in the video above, they’ve got a great graffiti-packed alley where most of the street art settles, and the rest of the town is impressively clean in a country that sees a ton of tourists guzzling sweet high-alcohol beers. The people are friendly and chatty, even when the local population dwindles in the late July/August holiday period.

AND CANALS? DID I MENTION THE CANALS? THE CANALS ARE ALSO VERY NICE, IN RE GHENT I RECOMMEND "THE CANALS"

On beer, something that seems to be true across Belgium: you tend not to save a ton of money buying bottles in the shops! Depending on how upscale the shop and how rare the bottle, you’re typically looking at a savings of €1-2 per bottle, with a €2.50 bottle in a shop costing €4 or so in a bar. (A good test, I’m told: if you’re in a bar and their pilsner costs more than €2.30, you’re in a ripoff joint.) What this means is that your choice of where to drink is driven by selection and atmosphere. Just looking for a simple beer in idyllic surroundings? Grab a Trappist ale in a convenience store and settle along the banks of a canal; your night couldn’t get more perfect. Looking to dive into beers you can’t find at home, limited runs, or varietals you’ve never encountered before? There are tons of shops with great bottle selection, none of them overly packed (in Ghent, at least). Pick your spot based on who has servers that know their styles and let them guide you on your way.

This is a nice place to drink a beer. Other nice places to drink a beer: just about anywhere alongside the canals of Ghent, which are a feature I believe I have described previously with some enthusiasm in this space.

In any event: fluffy clouds and blue skies, relaxing aimless wandering, space to mentally unwind and soak in colors, textures, sights, sounds, and aromas: Ghent was a fantastic unplug, and a great spot to catch my breath before pressing on to Bruges. Which: stay tuned for that nonsense!

Brilliant morning clouds over some of the loveliest architecture on offer. If these quick-travel interludes are about researching spots I'd like to linger in the future, Ghent made a real strong case for itself.

PLUS A CASTLE HI THERE WAS A CASTLE IT WAS NEAR A CANAL, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM LIFE

Donate, and fight

Horrible news coming out of Charlottesville today, infuriating to watch from a distance. Nothing of value I can add except to ask anybody who reads this thing on the regular to help fight back in an ugly time. Most of you already do in some ways, I'm sure. But today, consider clicking through the donation links on the right sidebar of the page - especially the NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center. Both of them are fighting in the trenches against the racist hate and violence that unspooled today.

Also, for those of you who share my white privilege: let's do a better job of speaking back in unambiguous terms when we encounter racist behavior and speech. None of the "on many sides" crap that our nightmarish president trotted out to avoid alienating his white supremacist supporters today; none of the deeply-embedded midwestern attempt to avoid conflict through deflecting with a simple "Well, I don't think THAT'S fair, but [vague platitudes in an attempt to find common ground]." Racism (like sexism and homophobia) is malignant and deserves to be called out bluntly and directly. I haven't been good or consistent on this count, and I hope to do better.

Be good to each other. Fight for the people who are at a disadvantage. Love hard, and defend with ardor.

Berlin: The Plenty and the Good

After the jump: Berlin remains a great city, and I am glad I got to stay in it, hooray for Berlin!

Silhouette in the sky on a long walk to my flat from Museuminsel. Art being everywhere? That is a neat thing about Berlin!

As I said in my last post, the good times in Berlin were far greater than the frustrations, and even as I ground my teeth and kicked like a frustrated man-child (…ladies!) I kept telling friends “But the city is still great, it’s my own stuff that’s the problem.” What did I love? Let’s do a rundown!

1. All those glorious routines. Berlin’s long history, the pattern of rebuilding after WWII, and the occupation of East Berlin left the city without any real “center,” albeit there are some Platzen that are more hub-like than others. But the great outgrowth of this history is the kiez system. Essentially a sub-neighborhood, the kiez may be as small as a couple of blocks, but basically it comprises an area where everything you need is right there: grocery, bakery, a few miscellaneous shops, a park (more on that later), cafes, bars. It both allows for superb local routines and a sense of community that develops quickly. The ladies at the corner bakery got to know me early on, enough to know that when I showed up I was going to order a different kind of bread and a new sweet pastry every time… along with a spritzkuche, cos I’m not an idiot.

Not my kiez, but this li'l mini-truck made me extremely happy even before I found out that a pupper was lurking behind it and wanted to say hello before I could go on my way! Aw pups.

2. Green space! Something I didn’t realize until I moved to Jamaica Plain (though I noticed it somewhat last summer) is how much access to day-to-day green space matters to me, trees in particular. And Berlin is gloriously strewn with shady trees, lining its streets as well as its many parks. My host told me it is in fact the greenest city in Europe, enough so that every resident has the equivalent of his (spacious) studio apartment in green space.

Lots of park photos to choose from, between the airfield-turned-park to bunkers and radio towers now become green spaces, but I'll go with this shot from my neighborhood park, just a hop away from its fairy tale fountain, and one of many sites with summer dance classes going. Cities! Green spaces! Magic! Buttons!

3. Culture! As with last year, I arrived at the tail end of the theatre season, and so really only got out to see the Deutschestheater’s Ubu. But unlike last year, I decided to try on the museums for size, thanks to the Staatlichesmuseen Jahreskart, an annual membership to over a dozen state museums around the city. As a student, at €25, this is a great deal, not just in terms of price-per-museum, but in changing your relationship to the museums in question. It was fantastic, halfway through a visit to the Hamburger Bahnhof (the modern art museum, with a great collection of Warhols, Rauschenbergs and Lichtensteins) that I was worn out, and could just loop back another afternoon when I felt fresher. Since it’s the rare museum that can get you through their whole collection without total exhaustion (shout out to Louisiana!) this is a godsend.

Rauschenberg is one of those artists who appeals to me on a pre-literate level, and probably I'll never fully disconnect his work from the context in which I first encountered it. But it was fantastic to encounter his work here (Pompidou in Paris also has some great pieces) with a surprisingly relaxed-for-Germany policy around photography.

 4. A PAL. My last full day in the city, my host Brian got back from his summer directing gig, and we spent an afternoon snacking and wandering around the city. Brian’s a tour guide when he’s not directing, and getting an evening sneaking behind the scenes and checking out spots I would never have found on my own was magical… but the real treat was getting to chat at length with a pal about just about everything under the sun. The big takeaway from this summer has been what a social creature I am, something I don’t always remember to tend to, but this day was far and away the best of the month.

Abandoned dance hall from the 1920s now made into a spectacularly atmospheric candle-lit restaurant? This is not bad! If anything it's good!

It wasn’t the wall-to-wall excitement of last summer’s trip – the dissertation focus, persistent rain and logistical headaches ensured that – but I am still grateful for the time. And as Brian suggested during our ambling, a postdoc could give me another chance to dig my teeth in. I’d take a flier on that, cap.

Flash Forward: Scotlandia

A bit more still to come on Berlin, and a quick swoop through Belgium before we catch up to my present-day United Kingdom environs... But in the interim, I cobbled together a li'l video (as I do) and some pic-a-tures from this weekend, a tremendously soul-feeding time out with some of the best and loveliest folk I got. After the jump: Glasgow! Or more precisely, Craigengillan, Loch Ken, and Dalmellington.

NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO HAVE A BAD TIME WHEN THEY ARE NEAR A HORSE. Also, pretend the horse in this picture is Sarah's boyfriend Mark, who was in the midst of cycling 60 miles down to join us for waterskiing. What's life anyways.

Believe it or not, I did a terrible job remembering to turn the camera on this weekend, apart from the obvious "MUST CAPTURE AND PRESERVE PLAYING WITH HORSES AND THE SKIING UPON THE WATER" moments. Not in that pile of snippets: a glorious and expansive high tea at our friend Ros's cottage, a grand and friendly birthday party in a Glasgow pub, numerous delicious vegetarian meals (including some of the best Indian food of m'life), and hours upon hours of conversation with these marvelous folk. Friends: I highly recommend them!

Normal style pals making normal style faces on a boat, as is our CUSTOM

Anyhow, it was a stellar set of days. With lots of time in my friends Sarah and Mark's flat, around Glasgow, and hiking a nearby estate (well, hiking or running I guess), the highlight was visiting our friend Ros down south of the city for some horse riding and waterskiing. I joined in the former, but opted out of the latter due to Extremely Gross Sickness (I remain grateful to people who put up with me when I'm all sniffly and blerghy).

Sarah and Ros, the first two skiers of the day. They were champs.

Friends for over 15 years, getting closer and closer to half my life. Flatmates once upon a time and witnesses to major life chapter shift after major life chapter shift, it's always amazing to catch up with the people who know you well. ON A BOAT.

This is Emily. Emily had never water skied before, and not only got up on her boards, but crossed the wake and back in both directions, which led our instructor to grow very suspicious of her claim to have never skied before. His mistrustful nature couldn't dampen her enthusiasm, though, as she's seen here beaming right before she chowed down on some celebratory flip-flops.

Skyline on the return to Glasgow proper. A weekend well run. A heart full. A sense of gratitude for the humans that are put into your life at the right time. A beard full of pigeons.

Berlin: Bummed Out

Thanks to the odd scheduling of these, the general business of life/dissertating, and my ever-roaming focus, I’m writing about Berlin after I’ve left it, scrawling these thoughts from a café in Bruxelles-Midi as I wait for the Eurostar to London. That’s not a bad place to start talking about what I want to cover in this post, which is: the bummer-towne aspects of my month in Berlin. After the jump: when life on the road gets rumply!

Street art! The sub-theme to this post is: even when you're having a rough time, Berlin is GOOD.

Part of why I love slow travel, as I never seem to shut up about, is that it helps me strike a balance on the road: exploring new environments and exploring different cultures while also setting up routines and getting a sense of familiarity and home base to my life. I’m not alone in this; read almost any travel writer’s rundown of their routines and you’ll find the nods to this need for touchstones on long trips. For some it’s a certain alarm clock, for others it’s a family photo or tchotchke they set up in every hotel room/apartment rental, and for some it’s behavioral. For me it’s usually the latter: as soon as I’m checked in somewhere, I like to find the nearest markets for groceries, the local café or pub where it looks worth becoming a regular, orienting around the nearest public transit, and so on.

This is pretty nice even for short trips, but at about a weeklong trip it’s very ideal, long enough that you start to develop a nod-and-smile (at the least, depending on local norms of friendliness) relationship with the bakers/grocers/baristas, and at least in your immediate location you develop that instinctive muscle memory that helps you feel centered. Well, me, at least.

In Berlin, where I rented a friend’s apartment for July, this totally happened! There’s a great street market on Saturdays down the block from the place, right next to a stellar little bakery. (Their spritzkuchen, what we’d call French crullers, were dangerously perfect.) The M4 and M10 trams were perfectly triangulated to get me around all the corners of the city I wanted to frequent. But that sense of settling in just… didn’t take, for a while. While that corner turned, there are a few reasons why I think it took longer than usual.

#FRIEND! A li'l corner near the Deutschestheater. One of the downsides of the month? Working meant not as much time to just roam the streets looking at all the excellent work out and about.

First and foremost, in renting a pal’s apartment, I slipped into that most dangerous of mindsets: Why Isn’t This Working For Me? My phone’s screen had cracked on the way into town, and the process of getting a replacement lined up was… drawn-out. Deliveries were complicated for no apparent reason (one shipper, shipping to their own retail store for pickup, marked a package as “address not found”). When I finally got the phone, it was four separate visits to electronics shops and wireless carriers before I found out that a law had gone into effect three days before my arrval in Berlin under which you couldn’t activate a SIM card without a residency permit. Meanwhile, on the train into Berlin I’d ordered a couple of items to deliver to Brian’s place, which as of now, almost a month later, are still bouncing around the delivery networks. It rained… a lot, probably between a third and half of my time in the city. The stay marked the halfway point in my summer’s longest stretch between seeing friends in person. Throw in a few frustrating errands ending in “you need different paperwork,” and the whole thing made for a slow start to the month, and worse, that slow-motion awful feeling of “I’m being a stupid tourist and I don’t know how to stop being one.”

Bizarrely, the moment this all changed was when a clerk at Telekom told me of the governmental policy that meant I wouldn’t have a working phone for the month. My initial frustration faded fast, as I somehow now had permission to let that project go – I wasn’t gonna have a phone, so I didn’t need to keep trying to fix my phone. Likewise, my shipping service woes faded as I remembered that Brian could send these things on to my hosts later in the UK (assuming they don’t spend another month in package-shipment purgatory). These tiny things finally registered as the tiny things they were, and not the existential “Why can’t I use my arms the way normal people do” style frustration.

FUN FACT/gloomy image: in Austria (and, based on this corner, perhaps Germany?) funeral plots are leased, not bought, and if the family doesn't pay the once-a-decade bill, you lose that spot. Which is a preamble to saying: on a ramble I stumbled into this corner of a graveyard, a sort of headstone graveyard. Layers on layers, that's pretty much Berlin.

And this I guess is the takeaway: trying to control your circumstances is always a mug’s game. And while long-term travel is a glorious way to get under the skin of a culture (if only slightly!) and wrench yourself out of the dull chore of checklist tourism, it’s also prone to let you forget that you’re a guest in a strange world, however similar it may be to your own. So, moving forward, hoping to do more of what I did toward the end of my stay here: to do what I can to address the day’s frustrations, and then set them aside whatever the outcome, knowing that both they and I will be around to try again tomorrow.

To which end: up next, the good and fun times in Berlin, as they were more plentiful than you might assume after reading this womp-womp update. Honk honk, as the fellow says.