A SMALL LECTURE IN BERLIN CULTURE feat Adrian Kreipe

In one blurry Hoi An night, Claudia and I happened upon this German guy, who was first only known as German guy. Little did we know by that time in the pre-gaming bar with all of the drinks that we should later encounter German guy several times before leaving Hoi An, and in one of these glorious rendez-vous frozen in time, German guy told me about Karneval der Kulturen.

Very good night, I think...

Frankly do not remember many details. 

Photos by @claudianguyenthe

By then, I had learned how to pronounce his name the german way [Adrian = aht-ree-ann] and since we were good enough friends to invite him over to our homestay's porch, I thought we were good enough friends to set up a meeting in Berlin two months later.

Genderswaping done right

Photo by @claudianguyenthe

We also had a very nice photoshoot. A

drian turned out to be a perfect prop slash pouty model

My original plan was to go see my aunt anyway so would he chicken out or suddenly realize I was a weirdo, I would still be fine exploring Berlin on my own.
On the afternoon on the day of the festival I jumped of S-bahn at Fredrichstrasse and found a familiar face waiting for me. Two things happended literally immediately: we started talking, and we started drinking.
"As long as you are not actually on the tram, you can drink everywhere." Adrian said when he saw me sceptical face. "Welcome to Berlin!"

This is just one of many things I got to encounter with the following days...
Scroll on down to see the whole list of

BERLIN CULTURE 
QUIRKS AND PERKS

! WARNING TO SENSITIVE READERS !

(MEANING: MUM): 

I will seem like I drank a lot this trip, 

(...which I kind of did...)

but I am an adult and I was in Berlin, 

so I had to embrace the culture. 

WHEN LIFE IS COTTON CANDY COLORED

We sing too loud from the public showers, too loud and completely out of tone.
We run around in our underwear, make childish sexual jokes and throw chips at each other.
We are ten and have our own treetop house, we are fourteen and sleeping in bunkbeds in the summercamp. We are Swedish camp, devided two and two in the daytime, we make time fly like kites in the sky.

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE INSTAGRAM PICTURE

Instagram pictures are just pure moments of perfectness, fortunate captures in the exact right moment, non?

Well.

BOOBIE-GRABBING & ZEN-LIVING

Tonight, I woke up with a shock. Across my chest an arm had landed all of a sudden and I felt a tiny, sleeping body come closer to me. I pushed Jennifer away again, silently laughing about this being her second attempt to second-base me in her sleep, and soon went back to dreaming.

Next time I woke up it was quarter past eight and my girls were eager to get to the breakfast restaurant.
"Big day today!" Jennifer shouted from the bathroom. "Wakey wakey! Doi Suthep before noon, remember?"
I did, even though my body had no intention of co-operating today.
I had been up until 2.30 that night, chatting with the friends back at home. The time difference really sucked at times. When it was pitch black night for me, Claudia and Simon were off celebrating our weekly tradition of The Sunday Pizza, and I missed them like crazy. They were the biggest part of the routines I do actually miss, the everyday fikas and the long, long, long, neverending, talks.

But outside sun was shining Thai-style; a warm, glowy light that made all of my Instagram pictures look temperature-enhanced, and breakfast was waiting for no one after 10 am.

We filled our plates with fruit and gorged up on coffee and french toast and hurried vacay-style, meaning: not so much.

UNAWATUNA - A CAPSULE OF FROZEN TIME // LAST DAYS IN SRI LANKA

DAY 9-16 

UNAWATUNA

The 31th of January, we got fed up by the German lady and the dead corals and violent waves of Hikkaduwa and packed our suitcases for another beach town called Unawatuna, after being tipped of that there was supposed to be a beach reachable only through a walk in the jungle, that was supposed to have calm waters and very little people. Jennifer was longing for snorkling and I was just longing to get away from the hotel owner and her cheap internet, so we jumped on a train and 40 minutes later, we were there.

PICTURESQUE GALLE FORT

 Along the south west coast of Sri Lanka,
there is a small town called Galle 

with an UNESCO-certified fort.

We spent a day there, traveling back to Europe for a lovely couple of hours. 

~ HERE'S OUR STORY ~ 
~ IN PICTURES ~

WE ♥ COPENHAGEN - An Inspo Essay

The beautiful thing with having a steady full time job in Sweden is that on public holidays, you get to be paid for doing whatever you want, since you are free for those days without it having to affect your paycheck. This might be old news to some, but for us youngsters, at our first few years in the grown up world, this is nothing short of magic.

Good thing number two with living in Gothenburg, Sweden is, even though the winters are pretty much monkey poop and the people are shyer than any other culture's most introvert people, that there are great possibilities to flee the country for a day without breaking the bank.

A few click and we had booked our trip to

COPENHAGEN, 
DENMARK 

a day for photographing, increasing our HRC-pin collection 

and losing Felicia's Christiania virginity - entering the grounds, we mean! 

....? 

The day in pictures, are you ready? 

INSTAXPIRATION EXTRAVAGANZA

Our little baby is now about 2 months old and it's crazy how much we've already grown fond of it. We might have spent... 800? (Or is it more?) SEK already on feeding and a couple of bucks for accessories. 

But it has been worth it. The feeling when the picture slowly appears on the piece of shiny paper is nothing short of magic. 

One of the few white walls at our place had to act gallery for the best snapshots of Barcelona. 

ALL OUR BEST PICTURES FROM BARCELONA

To make it easier for y'all, we now give you the opportunity to either just scroll down, look at the pretty pictures and be done with inspiration-gathering (after you left a comment, off course!) 

OR 

you can scroll down, be inspired and explore more of Barcelona on Suitcasepacking by clicking the teal links. 

Greeeat right? 

As ush, click click click to make the pictures bigger!

DAYTRIP: MONTSERRAT... & tapas & wine

Up on a mountain, long ago, a priest found a carving of a virgin mary. The priest wanted to take this holy piece home to his chapel to increase his power and wealth, but as farther he came from the place where the virgin was found, the heavier the statue became. Eventually, the statue became so heavy he could not carry it one bit further, so the priest realized that God had told him that the statue's rightful home was where he found it. The priest carried it back and instead started to build his church around it.

"And that is the story about Montserrat." our guide Francesco told us as we drove on the winding roads in the shadow of the mountain's ridge, on our way up to the legendary castillo. The mountain itself was impressive enough, towering like the back of a dragon.

"Monserrat mountain was Gaudí's biggest source of inspiration." Francesco continued and my heart purred in the chest. Gaudí had already become the biggest source of inspiration in my imaginary future carrier as a painter, so to see the place that made him create such beautiful pieces was going to be breathtaking.

Also, we were going to get wine. Which might not at all have something to do with the level of pepp we were feeling when the bus finally stopped in the scenic area.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

JULIA & JONAS PRESENTS: TAIPEI IN PICTURES pt 1

This is a part of our series 

TRAVEL CORRESPONDENCES, 

where our friends provide us with pictures from their fantastic trips abroad to help us spread inspiration.

This digital postcard comes from JULIA & JONAS, Felicia's sister and her boyfriend Jonas, from when they were in Taiwan this autumn.  

After enjoying the many quirky cafées and bustling city of Seoul, Julia and Jonas had a more serious agenda to take care of; 19 years ago, Jonas got adopted from Taiwan, and this was the pilgrimage back to see if he could get in contact with his biological parents. 

Did they succed in finding his birth parents? 

THE FAULT IN OUR TRAVELING GENERATION

We live in a fantastic world in a fantastic time. Boarders are open, a lot of people have the economy and social media opens up to new views we had no idea about.

In our whole life, we have know we were bound to leave at some point. We saw these possible futures with stars in our eyes, only thinking about the sights we were one day to see. I remember being 9 years old and saying that I will one day move out of here, to learn languages and meet new cultures.

THE STORY ABOUT THE SUMMER PALACE IN BEIJING

Once upon a time in China, 

two Swedes were on a tourist trail,

searching for the not-at-all-hidden treasures 

and ended up in the Summer Palace in 

BEIJING

What waited them was not lurging mystery 

or etheral fog tucking the grounds in 

with acients stories, 

no, 

because the two Swedes had been out for quite a long time now

and were frankly quite tired of old buildings 

so they did what they do best

and strolled and strolled and strolled 

and took staged photos and ignored the signs in broken English 

and ate one or two really disgusting hotdogs

(seriously China, what do you put in those?!?)

and the day was not perfect 

or forever memorable, 

but quite nice and comfortable 

and visually pleasant 

and that is certainly good enough

SOMEWHERE IN STOCKHOLM

"I'm from a place where we never, openly show our emotions

We drown our sorrows in bottomless bottles and leave them to float in the ocean

I'm from a place where we never, separate people from people

Some generalize, but in general I still believe that we are treated as equals"

"Somewhere in Stockholm"
by Avicii

BEST PICTURES FROM OUR TRIP TO NORTH AMERICA

A fantastic month, with all its ups and downs, has come and gone, leaving us with nothing but our memories. 

...And of course a harddrive overloaded with pictures. 

For those of you who doesn't have energy to read all the text, here's the story of our trip, told in photos.

ON THE SPANISH BANKS

DAY 22

SPANISH BANKS

Vancouver seems to be neverending with beaches, just as the time we spend on them. I got my first real sunburn for the trip today. It'll be perfect for the crayfish party season in Sweden that is very much in full swing when we return.

It is the last whole day in Vancouver and although both me and Julia misses our boys like crazy, it feels sad to leave the rest of the family. They are a bunch of globetrotting, funloving, (extremely) goodlooking people that I spend way too little time with because of the globetrotting, but I still love them for it.
They're constant traveling just too stay in touch with each other - we have relatives on dad's side in Germany, UK, Sweden and Candada, with inlaws adding Israel, Pakistan, Denmark and Russia to the list.
It's suddenly clear why I feel this aching hole in my chest whenever I'm not on the road...

NUDIE BEACH & WEDDING-TIME

DAY 19
Today was the day of Museum of Anthropology and, most importantly,

THE DAY OF THE WEDDING

and it was magical and amazing and tearfilled and everything you want a wedding to be. 

The start of the day didn't quite match the end of it though...

KITSILANO BEACH

DAY 18

KITSILANO BEACH

The weather gods has been our friends ever since we left Sweden. I've started to forget what rain looks and feel like. Here in Vancouver, skies are always blue and water is always blue and everything but our feelings are blue. Okay mine have been a little blue. I still miss Jonathan. But today, not even his nest of blond hair and his cute smile could make me wish I was anywhere but here. 

AFTERNOON IN VICTORIA

DAY FIVE 

MASTERING STROLLING IN VICTORIA

The sky was clear, more azure than cornflower blue. The temperature was hot, but not unpleasantly. North America, especially South Canada, has been under a massive heat wave the last couple of days, but whereever we've been, the perfect middle temperatures seems to have followed. 

FENGHUANG - AN ANCIENT EXPERIENCE?

In the middle of Hunan Province in the middle of China, there is a whole town that is UNESCO-marked for being the same all these years, I think it is over 400 or so. When planning the trip at home, this seemed like a wonderful little adventure out of our usual comfort zones with beautiful scenery and the authentic chinese feeling we feared we weren't going to experience in Beijing and bigger cities.