My traveling continues on! I've been so lucky this year to be able to go to so many new and exciting places. I'm even planning a trip (finally) to Stockholm at the moment. People can stop looking at me funny when I admit I've never been to the only city they can name in Sweden.
Berlin and Dresden were both amazing cities and I'd gladly go back. Berlin in particular has
so much going on. I was there for six days and I could have stayed double, triple that and still have been missing out. Berlin is also the only place I've ever stayed where the
other people at the hostel seemed to be staying an appropriate amount of time. It might also have been the nature of the hostel I stayed at, a hippie commune of sorts.
Typically, I'd see my roommates change every single night in a constant churn of new tourists, hopping into Prague, Budapest, London for two nights, max, and partying deep into the night and sleeping all day. People in Berlin came to party but they also stayed long enough to see some freakin' stuff too.
I started the trip in Dresden because that seemed to make the most sense. A flight to Berlin is 50 minutes (you are so jealous!) but the damn train was 4 hours. I messed up - I should have taken the bus. Alas, you live and you learn.
The first day it rained and rained. I was supposed to go hiking (spoilers: I made it, see above) but had to flip things around. I read Rick Steves and saw the things.
You know Dresden from
Slaughterhouse Five (by the outstanding Kurt Vonnegut) and you probably know it was fire-bombed to the ground. But they built it back up like lots of other people have done and now you can wander around lots of reconstructed pretty bits.
Interesting note for ceramicists, this super-detailed and beautiful wall is made of tile, so it survived the fire-bombing, while everything else burned up. Yay for ceramics...?
I couldn't tell if this was a piece of art or just a regular fire escape.
It's important to be able to get your ciggies without delay. (To be fair, this machine was dead, but I saw lots of others around town that weren't attached to abandoned buildings.)
In case you need to squint, it says Edward-Snowden-Platz.
The next day, I hopped on a train to the Saxon Switzerland National Park to do some "hiking" (read: moderate walking in the woods + views). From the train:
This little fucking village on the Elbe was adorable and I had to take a ferry across the river. It was so calm and peaceful and beautiful.
And then it was straight uphill for about a half hour to the top of the "mountain" and this baller bridge that was constructed specifically for tourists to hike to.
So nice I even asked a German lady to take my photo and she got it
in focus! It's a German miracle.
So what happened is I was very pleased with the views and the frosty beer I had at the snack bar up top (oh yeah, isn't it great when you get to the top of a "mountain" and realize you could have taken a bus?), but I wanted more walking and couldn't jive taking a train trip and everything just to do an hour of there-and-back sightseeing. So I took a random trail and just kept going when it went downhill. And then it went downhill more and more and more and all the way down the damn mountain. Luckily, I popped out 15 minutes and an extremely pleasant river stroll back to where I started. Thanks, tiny adorable German town!
Later that day, I hopped a
bus back to Berlin and arrived safe and sound at my hostel, where no one was giving two shits about the Germany game. So I watched it myself and went to bed early, because that's my way. The next day, another walking tour, another rainy day.
I put myself on a grueling rainy six-hour walking tour of Berlin, but it was a good introduction to the city. We also went inside this super weird old dance hall with legit behind-the-Wall atmosphere. And this banging ratty old couch.
We saw "Museum Island" where all the old museums and the Cathedral are. And there's the famous TV Tower at Alexanderplatz in the background. This was a very impressive statue and that's why I've included this crappy snapshot of it.
Checkpoint Charlie, which at this point is 100% tourist bullshit. There used to be a checkpoint here where people could move between East and West Berlin. By the way, I learned all about that and it was mad fascinating and you should learn about it too, if you are in Berlin or have a chance. I've learned so much about the War and the Communist era since coming to Sweden - it's fascinating!
The almost unfortunately visually-appealing Monument to the Murdered Jews of the Holocaust. So many idiots were doing disrespectful and just absurd things at this holocaust memorial: taking goofy selfies, posing like fashion models.
I stumbled across this really cool little area in Friedrichshain called RAW. It's got mad graffiti everywhere.
No idea what these ads are about but they were all over town with different characters.
The East Side Gallery (in the rain, again).
Creepy but totally banal German word (it means "the") floating over the city (and a big stretch of the Wall near the Topography of Terror).
It's so weird to see where the Wall used to be. It just cuts through regular-looking neighborhoods and you can just imagine folks having to look at each other across the "death strip" - one side in capitalism and the other in communism. Now little bits of the wall just hang out in neighborhoods, like this one in front of an apartment building.
The flea market on Sundays at Kreuzberg is so damn cool. There were buskers everywhere and people drinking (totally legal in Germany to drink whatever you want wherever you want). I bought a big beer and watched a drum troupe and wandered around looking at all the crap. It was a super-chill vibe.
One of the coolest things I did was tour the Reichstag's dome. It is really damn tall and the audio guide points out all kinds of interesting things on the horizon, plus some German history and a little explanation of how their government works.
The dome actually gathers sunlight through a complex mirror system and bounces it down into the main chamber so they have to spend less on lighting. Cool, right?
The best I can do for you of the Brandenburg Gate, which was beset on all sides by Euro Cup paraphernalia (they broadcast on a huge screen behind the Gate. I tried to go but no backpacks allowed, womp womp.)
Even better, though, you could sightsee from this bed. (wtf?)
One of the coolest things I did while in Berlin was a
Street Art Tour. I did a similarly named thing in Krakow but this was actual graffiti stuff - explanations of what the different marks mean, how respect works between street artists, etc. We got to see some "bombs" from 20 years ago. And then we got to make a little piece to take home, which was fun. Highly recommend! My guide was from Brooklyn, which brought out some crazy California West-side pride from me.
Chester, the badass tour guide: "Where are you from, Amber?"
Amber: "Cali."
Amber: "Oh jeez, I just said
Cali to you."
This is from the German History Museum. I don't know who this guy is or anything, I just thought he looked awesome.
And finally, soccer outside at RAW. I thought I would be watching this game in a quiet courtyard but I discovered the whole area was jam-packed with revelers. Germany crushed Northern Ireland but they weren't even that good at it, so it wasn't a great game to watch. Still, it's always fun to see such things around people who give a damn.
And that's it! I thought Berlin was my last trip before the bootcamp but now it looks like I'm headed to Stockholm and - who are we kidding - I'll probably fit in a trip to somewhere closer in the free week I have before the bootcamp starts. That is also my way.
Those three glorious weeks we had in June... that was pretty much summer. It's been ok here, off and on - a day here and there where it's really pleasant out. But mostly it's been raining a lot and not all that warm. We've got our collected fingers crossed that we'll get some more good weather here in August (when we visited last year it was really warm) but for me, summer is over starting tomorrow anyway.
Yes, I start this bootcamp that will hopefully be a move into a new career tomorrow. I'm excited and a little nervous, but mostly ready to get to work. I like working and I love learning things. And I like the idea of being a coder. Starting tomorrow it's code all day every day until I know the ropes, so my days of lounging by the sea have come to an end for this year. But with summers like this, it doesn't seem like that big a sacrifice.
Obviously these images come from the Pride Parade back in June. Clearly I'm just a spectator but Gothenburg's Pride seems much more subdued than DCs. There are also way more boobs and less dick about. We saw lots of women just full-on naked in the street (some of them painted). I felt mad creepy taking pictures of them, so I didn't. But the festival itself came with all kinds of great activities, including free pap smears with bonus candies!
Actually, we found ourselves at the stage at one point and they were doing choreographed dancing and we were having *so much fun* until we realized we were inadvertently participating in an exercise class. Whoops!
Jobb = job. This is the employment agency marching. Honestly, the parade was pretty lame - it was a lot of government agencies and companies with a bunch of employees just walking down the street with rainbow things happening. I was like "where are the QUEENS?" But maybe if you have a more equal and accepting society, your parade gets really tame. It's not a bad trade-off.
All over town, these women (and a few men) sit outside the grocery stores and ask for money. They don't really do much except sit there and say "hej" to everyone that walks in or out. It's very non-aggressive. Mostly they just seem really bored. I enjoyed seeing this lady dancing and having a good time - sometimes we forget that people who have to beg on the street are *people* and they like doing fun things like dancing just like the rest of us.
I talked about this a bit on Instagram too, but one difference between Sweden and the states is that everyone is more ok with bodies here. Naked bodies on the street, pregnant ladies with their bellies way out, communal saunas and there's no such thing as a "nude" beach because it's ok to get naked at any beach. Swedes are just more comfortable in their own skin and ok with seeing other peoples' skin.
And then it was Midsommar! Lacking some kind of traditional, organized, countryside Midsommar affair, we hit up the official city celebration at a park downtown. They had make-your-own flower crowns, a giant "maypole", traditional dancers and lots of people looking cheerful and having fun. We had amazing weather that day.
The first climax of Midsommar is dancing around the pole. There's a ton of songs with choreographed dancing. Everyone forms concentric rings around the pole, then you dance left and right and do hand motions and kick a bit. It's great fun!
The second climax is going home, eating a ton, and getting shitfaced. George and I cooked a metric asston of food for a bunch of assorted friends and colleagues. I got properly wasted but it seems no one else did (or so I was told). As I understood (understand) it, Midsommar is the one time you're mandated to get properly drunk, so I did. I had a really great time, anyway.
Finally made it to Röda Sten before we moved. They had a really cool exhibit about climate change and things. This is giant plastic sheet suspended from the ceiling by a million pieces of yarn.
George did a lot of traveling in August, so one Saturday I made it out to Marstrand for a sailing competition. I honestly didn't understand the sailing at all - they moved back and forth and it honestly seemed like they were going kind of slow and the "track" was really small. But in the end someone won and people seemed excited. It was completely, ridiculously, windy so I didn't stick around near the sailing bit that much.
I ate crazy-delicious seafood soup in this little place.
Gothenburg has an event going on this year called "Green World." They've set up a bunch of different art installations dealing with nature. There are a bunch of "pocket parks" on the main strip downtown, a huge bamboo installation near the state theater and a number of really cool arty things in the botanical gardens. There's all kinds of crap like this in town - Gbg has a lot going on.
And then, we went to Stockholm! We had *the best* weather in Stockholm (it was 10 degrees colder in Gbg the whole time we were there). We saw tons of stuff and also managed to spend a couple hours every day just chilling drinking beers and such on patios.
City Hall:
Patio #1 was on a rooftop and it was sooooooo nice. We spent an hour or so just listening to music and completely chilling out.
Moderna Museet: meh. I've seen too many freakin' "world class" museums at this point to get excited about something with no big names or things I recognize. (Other takeaways from visiting a thousand modern museums: Picasso was damn *prolific*. Literally every modern art museum I've been in has a bunch of his stuff.)
Some kind of band concert in the Old Town's main square.
Museum Island.
Ok, Stockholm was kinda great - lots of stuff to do, pleasant to look at, lots of good patios to drink on. But the *best* part was Bunny Park. For some reason the park we walked through between our hotel and downtown had a whole family of bunnies living in it. Urban bunnies! They were out almost every time we went through, day or night, and they weren't very scared of people. They were damn adorable.
It's basically impossible to take a good picture of the Vasa, but here's a crap one. This was worth the $14 entry fee or whatever. They pulled an *entire* ship out of the harbor and built a museum for it. Crazy!
A sign maker who took his job too literally?
We did a whole bunch of stuff in Stockholm but mostly it was just a pleasant time, walking around and eating. George hates outdoor museums, apparently. He did not dig Skansen, but I liked it.
One of the coolest things we did in Stockholm was a tour of the metro art. We managed to completely screw up the meeting place the first day but they had another tour that fit right in with our train time. We got to see really neat art grottos and the like. Highly recommend and it's free!
I just haven't been taking that many "regular" photos, though I always have my camera on me. I guess I'm letting that slide for a while. So I don't have very many day-in-the-life stuff to show. Sorry! Here's some other things that happened:
Yes, my friends, the "euphoric Swedish summer" has arrived in Gothenburg and it is indeed euphoric. Temperatures hanging around 25*C/75*F, lots of sun, 4am to 11pm daylight. We suffer through the long, dark winter but when Spring arrives, it really arrives. I was so worried it would just never be warm, but this year it seems we are going to have some nice weather. There are plenty of cold-weather photos in this update because we start in April.
The biggest news in my life is I have decided to "pivot" my career and enter front-end development. In August I'll start a three-month coding bootcamp where I will learn lots of things I have dabbled in and lots of things I have never heard of. The idea being when I am done with that in late October, I'll be able to get a job making websites or web apps or other nifty things. I've been building websites since I was a kid, and I think it's time to take that interest to the big leagues.
The main draw is twofold: creative work that is in high demand and a career that is flexible and location-independent. We're going to be moving quite a bit over at least the next few years, so it will be good to have something that I could possibly do remotely for a firm. Eventually I'll be hoping to run my own show again.
I'm really excited about moving into this next phase of my life and almost as relieved to have chosen something to do with myself. Searching for jobs when you're like "uh... I like learning stuff?" is a tricky prospect indeed.
Speaking of learning, I have been hard hard hard at work on Swedish. In my 
Other than that big career / education decision, things are much the same as the last update. We have our little schedule we go about - George to work and me to school, a couple of evening commitments / outings during the week. I cook during the week and he cooks on the weekend. It's all very domestic and regulated, but in another country so it's still exciting and draining. For the past four years or so neither of us had to stick to any kind of schedule, so this life of alarm clocks and bedtimes and "weekends" is something we're still getting used to.
In May, we took a little trip out to the country to get away from the city for a minute and experience a Swedish "stuga" (summer "house" with few amenities). It was really cold and it actually snowed the next day, but it was also very beautiful.
We also experienced the Chalmers University "Cortege", a big sarcastic parade with really impressive floats that the students apparently have time for in addition to their studies. When I was in school, I studied and partied and didn't do too much of anything else. Good on them.
The world's saddest Snoopy.
I've also spent my fair share of time at the Botaniska Trädgården and the arboretum that sits behind it. It's really nice to have beautiful, verdant spaces a tram ride away.
A few weeks ago was the Gothenburg Half-Marathon ("Varvet"), the largest race of its type in the world. Something like 60,000 people ran it. The city was kind of amazing that day - everyone so supportive and festive and happy. The weather hadn't quite warmed up yet, but it was getting there.
The next day was the Geek Pride Parade, a relatively huge gathering of nerds. I remember a similar thing was organized in DC during AwesomeCon and they didn't get nearly the turnout this 400k-strong city did. Very impressed with the nerd community in this town.
Our social life in Gothenburg is surprisingly robust. We hang with friends-of-friends and George's colleagues and people from my Swedish class (we spent three hours together every day, so we've obviously grown tight). We also go to Expat Happy Hours every couple of weeks and I hit the language chat cafes twice a week. I'm also a member of the International Women's Club of Gothenburg and the American Women's Club of Gothenburg, most of whose members are pensioners, but the most fascinating people who have lived all over the world. I also attended the International Women's Bridge Club! It was the first time I'd ever played bridge without David and it went just fine.
Finally, some photos from Vrångö. As I mentioned, the weather has been totally beautiful and we went out to the archipelago yesterday to take advantage. I got a proper sunburn (my first of the year, despite being in the sun tons lately) and we drank beers and walked around.
So, what else?