An incoherent country side rant

Oh, hey, guess where i am!?
If you guessed Denmark, you're maybe not a genius, but you're definitely right.
We arrived in our native land, our first time here in 2013, on Tuesday, cause Allan had a date with the Boss.
Yes, we went all the way to Copenhagen so Allan could go to a Bruce Springsteen concert. What?
We had to stay at a hotel, because, well, we don't live there anymore, and airbnb is not down with the doggies.

It was pretty strange, arriving in our old neighborhood, practically across the street from our old home, and checking into a hotel.
We didn't stay long, cause we needed to go to the old shop, again with the strange, to hang out with David before the concert.
We ate with him, his wife, and Young and Rasmus, at Laundromat, and it was almost like we hadn't really been away, and at the same time like we'd been away for way longer than we have.

The walk to the shop from Vesterbro, and the walk back, was probably the strangest for me.
I felt a familiarity that could so easily be confused with longing, and walking along the lakes, just like any other relatively nice spring day coming home from work, i really managed to weird myself out.
It's not homesickness, though, it's just very strange being back, but not living here.
I wish i could explain it better, but you know, having all the feelings can be overwhelming.
It's not bad, i know that cause i don't feel any anxiety, but yeah, weird for sure.

I stayed at the hotel while the others were at the show, and the next morning we went to Sort Kaffe & Vinyl to drink a ton of coffee (and chai) and hang out with some friends.
It was pretty much a perfect Copenhagen afternoon, the kind where you move with the sun, and that sun luckily leads you straight to ice cream.

After a few hours on Vesterbro, we walked to Frederiksberg to see my oldest friend's brand new baby.
We hung out at her new, and awesome, apartment, while we ate grapes and she told us about her new life, and we told her about ours.
Not all people are so caught up in their babies that they can't be interested in other people's lives, and that's a rare and wonderful thing these days.

We hurried back to Vesterbro to pick up our luggage (just a couple of backpacks and a dog carrier for the plane) and pay a much too quick visit to our favorite sushi restaurant.
Can you believe we haven't had sushi in Berlin yet? We're such total snobs.
Anyway, we had to catch a train to the country, so we didn't have time to eat, but being the awesome dude that he is, the chef made us a huge sushi bento box for the train ride, free of charge.
Yes, these are the people i miss!

We've been in the country since Wednesday and it has been relaxing and amazing.
The weather is maybe not (definitely not) as warm as in Berlin, but it's sunny and nice, and we've been eating ice cream and taking walks, and seen a bunch of cool nature shit.
I couldn't ask for more.

I don't know if the next trip will be any easier.
Not that this is hard, i'm just easily freaked out i guess, and maybe i expected it to be different?
What do i know, i've never been abroad for this long before, and i've never been able to call anwhere but Copenhagen "home" until now.

Here are some iPhone pictures, some from here and some from home. New home!

From our apartment

New balcony chairs

Lucifer and Ayaka

I found my dream bike, hopefully i'll be able to pick it up soon

Stupid human tricks

Lucifer did not appreciate getting up early, and he sure as hell didn't wanna go to the airport

Signs...

Me and my new little buddy Theo

Dad and me, stealing water plants for my parents' new lake (!), and playing with frogs too, obviously

Insta-collage time!

(1. Fancy hotel 2. Remember when this was my blog and instagram EVERY DAY? 3. Coffee, sweet coffee 4. Post flight face)

(1. Mille and Theo 2. Sushi goodness, way too fancy for the train to Næstved! 3. Zorba has gotten so big 4. Getting all nostalgic and shit)

(1. Bisserup ice cream, always huge 2. FROGS! 3. Just a lovely view, always 4. Sleepy dog)

(1. Heron egg! 2. Furry cow! 3. Not-so-lucky deer foot! 4. Woods!)

Those last ones are from a walk in the woods today, just me, mom and Lucifer.
Pretty much my favorite thing about Bisserup.
Except maybe for the ice cream.

We go home on Sunday, back to Germany land and our beloved Bunker.

Packing

Sorry for the blog silence, i haven't gone into another blog-hibernation or anything, but i have spent my entire weekend cleaning the house.
Or, not exactly, there were coffee breaks and ice cream hangouts and friend visits, but damn, we did spend a lot of time fixing up the place.

I spent the whole day on Friday just cleaning the guest floor and fixing up the yard, where strangers have the unfortunate habit of smoking and breaking bottles while we're out.
Saturday we had plans, but then we continued with the cleaning and fixing up on Sunday, after our usual half-day-coffee-lunch-marathon-with-the-gang, of course.
It was a tough one, and we were completely beat once we finished around midnight or something, but we got it done.

Our motivation was, besides the fact that it was just that time again, visitors from Japan, and the new amp and vintage speakers we finally bought for our vinyl corner of the living room.
New toys really do make you want to pretty up the place, you know?
And so does having visitors whose fabulous house you've already stayed at!

Shige, Chisato and Ayaka, who i am sure my long time blog readers already know pretty well, arrived Monday night and left yesterday, so it was a brief but fun visit, and we spent most of it eating or antiquing, which is pretty much our favorite things in the world.
And Lucifer is close to being hairless today, after two days of intense hugging by a nine year old, who i suspect will very soon get a dog of her own!
Hi did enjoy the attention, i'm sure, and he always behaves so well when we have guests.

I'll be posting some pictures from the last few days as soon as my film is finished, but until then, i'll continue to post whatever hasn't been posted yet.
These ones are from our last days in Copenhagen before moving.
Packing and riding my bike around the neighborhood.
Going back next week, and staying at a hotel in the area we lived in for about six years, is gonna be so, so strange.
Almost as strange as a bunch of our friends and acquaintances, the Japanese included, being in Copenhagen right now without us.

Today it's raining, something i used to hate, but have come to appreciate after buying about a million trees and flowers for the yard.
Watering them requires me crawling in through a basement window to fill up three huge watering cans that i shouldn't even be carrying considering my arms and stuff, and carrying them out again, multiplied by about ten.
So yay rain!

The not so great one

A few more from the hospital, using a film i kinda guessed was no good, but it was all i had at the time.
I really don't like toy camera films, or films with "interesting effects" anymore.
I just like... pretty.
Too bad, cause that open roof with moss and grass growing on it, it was one of my absolute favorite places on the trip.
Probably one of the most dangerous too, because, well, check the no-floor picture... not taken from below. Good thing i'm not very heavy.

There are a few from around the house and Schöneberg as well, just because.
And of course, Lucifer.
Because it's been a while.

I have to do some work upstairs today, but i am still unsure of the pigeon situation (Allan works up there everyday, but i'm afraid to ask), so i'll be wearing headphones the whole time.
Better safe than crying all day!

Nemesis

Man, i sure have missed blogging.
Almost as much as i've missed taking pictures with a real camera.
I'd forgotten how therapeutic this is for me.

Hey, have i mentioned lately how much i love living in Berlin?
I love living in Berlin.
Our life here is awesome, and there are such great people in it.
Yesterday i hung out with a (new) friend for about nine hours, just walking around, drinking coffee, and eating food. We even went to a bar, with Lucifer of course!
That never happened in Denmark. Nobody ever has time to just hang out in Copenhagen, unless of course you send them a written request two weeks in advance, or agree to meet before the devil puts his shoes on (sorry, that one works better in Danish... it means early, ok?)
It's not that  people don't work hard here, or that they aren't busy. I don't know what it is exactly, but i love it.
And i love that our friends and family from Denmark don't mind coming down here to visit once in a while.
I guess it's also pretty great for them to always have a place to stay in Berlin!

I'm finding it a little hard to follow my last post, cause i love those pictures so much, so here's something completely different. Old pictures! Mostly of people!

These are from the London Tattoo Convention last September.
I actually got the film developed rather quickly after coming home, but they gave it to me on paper instead of a CD, and when i asked them to scan my negatives, they couldn't.
And then the whole travel nightmare continued and i never had the time, until last week.

I love and hate going to that convention. It's so great to see friends from all over the world, usually friends we only get to see that one time a year, but at the same time, it's so fucking stressful working there, and i'm obviously not great with large gatherings and social situations in general (hello agoraphobia!) but at least that part has gotten a lot easier since i discovered an anxiety medication.

This was one of the better conventions, even though i got so sick that i completely lost my voice.
Allan did a lot of rose hand tattoos, we hung out with good friends, and i didn't panic much.
We even went to dinner at a real restaurant one night, and that's pretty unusual.
I can't say i'm excited about the next convention, cause i never really am, but i dread it less and less each year.
Who knows, if we ever stay at a different hotel, i may end up liking it?

 

Dream world

As you probably know, cause i've probably told you, we haven't had much time to explore our new surroundings since moving here. It's a big house, and there's only the two of us, so yeah, we've been spending most of our time at the house, in Schöneberg. Not that i mind.

It's actually never a problem until we have clients or visitors ask us what to see and do here, and i basically have to go "uuuuuhhhhmmmmm" for a really long time until they stop asking.

Lucky for me, my friend Helle, who dropped by for a quick visit last week, had done her homework.

Helle had found this blog about abandoned places in and around Berlin, and decided on one we should visit. We'd actually planned on going when she was here back in February, but it was cold and we didn't really want to be outdoors much, and now i am so glad we waited.

Now, i've been obsessed with reading about abandoned places for many years (this one is my ultimate dream), but i never thought i'd find one this magical in my own backyard.
Then again, i never expected my backyard to be Germany.

The place was an abandoned hospital and the area turned out to be huge.
The buildings were all locked, but just like i've always dreamed of doing, we snuck in through half broken basement windows and wandered through a playground of total decay.
Peeling wallpaper, furniture left behind, broken windows, birch trees growing on roofs, all these magical surroundings and beautiful buildings left to rot on their own.
You'd think the place was sad or even scary, some people have suggested that it's haunted, but for some reason i wasn't the least bit scared. I was probably too excited, and the weather was just too nice.
There were a few moments, when i was wandering off on my own up some stairs or into a dark basement, where i thought to myself: "you should be freaking the fuck out... this is the part of any horror movie where you start screaming at the TV that they're all idiots for going off on their own somewhere so obviously full of ghosts and pure evil!", and i'm sure that same thought occurred to Helle and Allan, but i guess we're just really brave?
I'm only half kidding, you know.
I felt brave, and it felt good.
I felt like a kid climbing the tallest tree in the woods, or running away from home, if only for an afternoon.

One really great things about seeing this place, you know, besides the obvious awesomeness and being able to take pictures of it?
Knowing that the earth will be ok without us.
It'll be better without us, and it'll take very little time to heal itself once we're out of the picture.
Birch trees growing on roofs.
It's half sad, half reassuring, right?

Here are some of my favorite pictures from that day, unedited as always.
I have another few ones coming up from another film, but they didn't turn out as good as these ones, so i hope you like these!

Fuck... i can't wait to do this again.

Thanks for the nice comments yesterday.

I freaked out and cried a lot, and it seemed to help a little.

I'm still really sad, but it's out of my hands now, and i just hope whoever is still up there goes with as little pain as possible.

I've been overfeeding the fire escape birds to try to win back some of my good animal karma, and we also donated our bottle recycling money to an animal shelter (i know that sounds random, but it's an option you get when you take your empty bottles to get recycled... pretty cool!)

I still don't go up there, except to get stuff i need and bring it down here, and even then, i wear headphones blasting loud music.

What a shitty situation.