Copenhagen [part II]

Yayoi Kusama's Gleaming Lights of the Souls at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Travelling alone requires patience and optimism. It creates comfort in silence and isolated courage. It teaches you contentedness and shows you you're capable of more than you thought. It offers a glimpse of a new kind of joy - a singular sort that's refreshing to experience at least once. I'll remember my time in Copenhagen exhausted and sunburned but totally full of the kind of excitement I get by wandering around somewhere totally new. 

Assistens Cemetery

It also confirmed for me that I'll probably have this itch to travel for the rest of my life. Now that I've had a glimpse at a few new places, I've realized how much more of this incredible world there is to see. Crossing my fingers that I'll figure out a way to make this kind of exploration a part of my life forever.

Middle of the road dining and live music on Sunday in Nørrebro

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Flea market finds

Copenhagen [part I]

Back in February, when I was utterly friendless and always cold, I booked a May trip to Copenhagen because flights were cheap and I wanted to get one last trip in before tourist season geared up. I had no expectations of the city other than my groggy morning spent in their incredible airport, which looks more like a gorgeous mall (is that an oxymoron?) than anything else.

As my trip got closer, I began to get nervous because it was my first time traveling alone. Copenhagen ended up being my favorite trip so far - maybe because the weather was perfection and the city is totally up my alley but mostly, I think, because it was an ideal solo trip. 

Before I left, I told some friends that I was afraid I wouldn't even talk to anyone for the entire weekend - a completely ridiculous fear and a dead giveaway of how much I love the sound of my own voice. In reality, I ended up meeting tons of people at my hostel and around the city and cancelled plans just so I could have time alone, wandering wherever I wanted. Copenhagen is small and colorful and full of beautiful things (and people... Scandinavians are perfect looking.) It's also very expensive, so I didn't do much more than walk and look and drink sidewalk beers with other broke travelers. The perfect weekend.   

Bikes and Crayola colors everywhere

Scaffolding turned into a public affirmation

One of our favorite discoveries was Christiania, a separate township within Copenhagen where a few hundred hippies live their lives under a government that tolerates soft drugs and free love and good times in general. Heaven - I could have stayed there all day.

Bonnaroo vibes

Into it

Paper flowers - don't they look real?

Can you see why I'm obsessed? 

Barcelona [part II]

On Sunday, we took day trip to Montserrat, a multi-peaked mountain and monastery an hour train ride outside Barcelona.

Our day got off to somewhat of a rough start (i.e. waiting on the wrong platform for the train to take us out of the city and completely failing to realize we'd missed the train until forever after it left.) We remedied the situation by picking up a few bottles of wine and drinking them, European style, on the steps of a museum (I know y'all are ready for me to get over myself.)

We finally boarded our train and rode out of the city, where we were greeted with lush landscapes, a rushing river and tall, bald mountains.

We opted to take a cable car up the mountain and hiked as far as our lungs could take us.

Montserrat translates literally to serrated mountain - the peaks look like a massive knife up in the clouds. The range is peaceful and gorgeous and ethereal, a fairy tale over the bustling city below. I found out later that some of the most outstanding peaks have charismatic names like La Panxa del Bisbe, L'Elefant and El Moro. Personified nature always make me smile - I guess it appeals perfectly to the parallel sides of me that love words and the outdoors. In other words, I am the world's biggest nerd. 

If you can't tell by the way we dressed, we came TOTALLY unprepared to hike up a mountain, but decided we'd be idiots to not take advantage of the views. Needless to say, our hike was...unique, but 100 percent worth the climb.

Barcelona [part I]

Barcelona was a total dream - in part because the trip was comprised of, byfar, the sunniest days I'd spent in Europe at that point, and in part because I got to spend it with Maggie, another Nashville girl. We happened to be on the same flight out of Tennessee and discovered across the aisle of our plane that we were both going to be in Europe at the same time. Maggie is a total badass and is waaaaay cooler than I'll ever be. Way to go, Mags.

I was only in Barca for two days, but we fit a lot in during that time - a football game, a day trip to Montserrat and lots of walking around the city. The perfect weekend to officially welcome spring to this part of the world.

stoked about this airport view

beautiful winding streets

gaudí's casa batlló

las turistas

park güell

park güell

park güell

park güell

the incredible boqueria

barcelona-mallorca (barcelona obviously won)

(I am a gung-ho Vine-er)

gorgeous sagrada familia

hostess/mostest

Tomorrow, a journey through our (long) day at Montserrat. 

we're going to be friends

My new favorite blogger, Liv Hambrett, an Australian who's been living in Germany for years, wrote today about the number one thing that's been plaguing me since I've been here - which will be a whopping three months next week - making friends. Making real, easy-to-call, see-you-in-ten-minutes friends in a country where you don't speak the language, don't know a soul, and don't have a work group helping you meet people you have something in common with, is the most difficult thing I've ever done and the only thing I was really worried about before I hopped on the plane. Here, a particularly resonant quote from her piece:

"I find myself, once more, in the generally nervous, uncomfortable position of having to make friends. Of having to enter, with either stealth or flat out asking for mercy, pre-existing social clusters. And it’s not easy. In fact, making friends is hard work, particularly at an age at which you have friends, you have brilliant, smart, funny, like-minded friends that form part of a group you have spent a lifetime cultivating. Particularly at an age when asking ‘can I play too’ doesn’t come as naturally, for various reasons, as it does when you’re six. Particularly when you can’t help but feel, wearily, been there done that, that you have friends, they’re just not here."

I wrote about my frustration and pseudo-loneliness a little last month, but the Easter Holidays, which mean four days off of work here in Germany and four days of Homeland marathons and finishing three books I've been working on, have inspired me to kick it into gear on the friend front. This week, I'm sucking up my pride and officially seeking out other outlets to hopefully find at least a couple people to hang with on a more regular basis. 

Also, one of my biggest irrational fears is that I'm always on the verge of annoying the shit out of people when in reality (so I'm told) I'm not, so I'm attempting one more round of attempting to enter pre-existing social groups...which is probably my worst nightmare. Good vibes appreciated.

In the meantime, I'm missing these "brilliant, smart, funny, like-minded friends" that just don't happen to be here in Berlin with me: