Central Asia, a while ago. My friend during morning prayer, with her coffee cup on the window pane.
Painting of a Morning Prayer
Category Archives: travel
(Fall in Greece)
Thessaloniki. November. Down by the ocean the restaurants were pleasantly empty after the summer crowds had left, and you could find a table to have a cheap glass of wine and look straight out at the ocean. Mount Olympus was right there, the pale shape of it half hidden behind the clouds.
We went hiking, not up Mount Olympus, but by some random mountains a bus ride away. We could see Mount Athos across the water, which is an autonomous region where women are not allowed. And they haven’t been, for like a thousand years. The only people who live there are the monks in the monasteries on the mountain.
But we hiked on our little peninsula, next to it, past olive trees and places of prayer. We were a bit frustrated, me and my friend I was traveling with. That feeling you sometimes get when you travel — like you want to find something. Like you’re there for a purpose, but you don’t know what it could be. Hiking helped. And the bus ride there helped, a couple of hours of just listening to music and seeing the landscape pass by.
We’re already looking for tickets back. March, maybe?
The literature project
You know how to start a new project? Make a logo for it. At least that’s how my brain works. Look!!
Well, I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, we all start in the end we’re most comfortable with. I like the fancy words and ideas, and then I get into the practical stuff.
But anyway, this is something I wanted to start for a long time. Really, ever since I was in Zambia in 2015 and saw the wave of self help literature that swept across the country. I mean, nothing against self help books, but they’re not the only way to learn, and we shouldn’t think so. Truth is, most of us already know areas in our lives where we should improve and do better, and most of the times we even know how to do it. But what we lack is motivation. Conviction.
The idea is: fiction teaches in a different way.
Sometimes we think we have to be told what it is that we’re learning to learn something. But a good story teaches in a way that’s more than informational. You can read facts about a people group for ten years and still hate them, but read a story told from their perspective and suddenly it becomes difficult.
So, I think that everyone needs access to good books.
When I was in Nigeria in the beginning of 2019 I met a woman who’s starting a library. I also met a woman who works with “Internally displaced people” (refugees from other parts of Nigeria, who’s had to leave their homes due to the Boko Haram) and she would also appreciate books. So I said that I’d send a few boxes to them, and I plan to do it in the beginning of 2020.
And.. yeah, I’ve written about it here as well, but I just wanted to tell you guys, because I’m excited and a little bit nervous. But, I’ve already bought a few books!! And I’ll keep you guys posted as time goes on.
Trainride
A few days ago I took a 20 hour train ride from my hometown in Sweden, to Nürnberg, Germany.
Some trains were full, some empty. The last train was from 4.30 til 9 in the morning, from Hamburg to Nürnberg, and that did not look like the picture below. It was overbooked, so I got woken up three times by people saying I was in their seat. In the end I sat in the corridor. But all in all, everything went well. All the connections worked and I didn’t get stuck in some random german small town in the middle of the night, which was my biggest fear to be honest.
And I managed to somehow fit my fluffiest duvet in my suitcase, which was really all that mattered. And now I guess I live here in Nürnberg. Like really live, since I have my duvet with me. Sheets and towels and even my fairy lights. My room is dreamy. I’ll show you sometime.
Good night.
✽
Epilogue
I guess this is some sort of epilogue to my posts about Germany, because I just wanted to share:
1. This cool photo of me by the Swedish west coast, where we stopped while driving home.
2. And these random screenshots from my phone, because we drove home and everything was beautiful and I needed to make quick sketches of the sky so I can make actual paintings of it later.
Berlin
I feel like I’ve almost posted a trilogy about Germany, but I’ve now travelled through three cities there so I guess that makes sense.
After Nürnberg and Augsburg I went to Berlin.
Actually I met up with my dad and brother there. Walked into an airconditioned hotel lobby and saw my dad get out of the elevator to greet me, and it was weird. It’s weird when you’re not travelling with your family, and suddenly they show up in some random country. I knew they were gonna be there of course, and thank God for that since otherwise I have no idea how I would have actually gotten home, but it’s still out of place somehow, like family is isolated to specific family vacations and home.
Anyway, it was nice. We rented little electric scooters for a bit and drove through Berlin.
And we found like the most amazing cafés. Here’s the first one, a really fancy one called The Barn, with the kind of actual good coffee that I can’t really appreciate because I want it cold, with chocolate and caramel and two thirds milk. Did appreciate the view though.
But this one was my actual favourite. In the centre of Berlin, you turn around a corner and end up on this big, industrial looking side street. Some of the buildings around still have bullet holes in them. And then there’s this, little green hipster oasis, right there in the midst of it. I had some sort of “rose coffee cocktail” which honestly wasn’t that good, but I felt like it said a lot about the place. So a little bit pretentious maybe, but I still absolutely loved it. Sat there for like a couple of hours, writing letters and feeling cool. Hihgly recommend.
So that ended up being mostly about cafés. But honestly, I don’t mind and hope you don’t either.
Hugs♥️
Augsburg
So, this is what’s happening:
I went to Nürnberg to check it out and see if I might want to move there. I think I will, it was pretty nice.
Then I went to Augsburg to meet up with some friends. (And Augsburg was like really cool, just a lot of fun to be honest, and good conversations and good people. Here’s photos of that.)
Breakfast in bed
From a field, where you could put money in a box and pick flowers.
Actual Snapshots of Nürnberg
Snapshot of Nürnberg
It was raining softly. A girl with a lip piercing and two rolled up sleeping mats sticking out of her backpack stepped out from under the cover of the station and into the grey sky. A young man rolled a suitcase next to her and an elderly couple stood waiting on the other side of the road, decked out in umbrellas and plastic ponchos over their functional jackets. A bus whizzed by. Birds flew high. And for a second the rain took a breather – letting only mist cover us – as we stepped out from the overhang we had covered under. The sky was open. Grey but bright and warm with dots of birds covering it, rainwater dripping down the spires of old church towers. Slow and eternal as the traffic lights turned green.
Nigeria
Here is us bird watching.
Here is our back yard.
A picture can’t communicate how competitive this game of uno was. I won. (actually I don’t remember if I won or not, probably not.)
eirians 