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. 

LIKE, - EVERYTHING! - WE DID IN SEOUL (In Pictures)

Tomorrow, it has been 8 weeks. If not 8 weeks was a long time in itself, I am also approching a milestone: In the next couple of days, I'm breaking the record for the

Longest Time I've Been Away From Home.

Maybe that's what's haunting me, subconscious thoughts about if things will be different, harder, now, when home is further away time-wise?
I've had trouble sleeping since Shanghai, been up some nights crying and tossing and turning. The other night I simply laid on the floor because I was sick and tired of pacing back and forth in the bed. I actually fell asleep there.

I miss home. I miss wine with friends on Andra Lång and morning coffee, Swedish brewed, in dad's apartment in Majorna. I miss not having to 'make-the-best-of-every-day', because I see it like this: sleeping late and doing nothing is something I can do at home, so I better see as much as possible while here. I have a habit of wanting to return everywhere just to collect the sights I missed, but this time I want to be done. I don't know when or if I'll have a new shot at going to Asia anytime soon, and it's just plain stupid not to suck in every moment.

There we were again. Making the best of the time. And of course you should. But when not sleeping and not having time enough to write, I simply don't feel as motivated at exploring as I want to feel.

Still, we have pushed. We have done stuff here I Korea, believe you me. I even present a LIST of things we've yet done here.

HOW MUCH CAN BARCELONA 4 DAYS REALLY COST?

As you know by now, we are no so keen on living on our very lowest financial limits. We do love to live cheap but get the most out of it, aka traveling Suitcasepacking style,
and I'm proud to say we kind of have an excellent example of that from our recent Barcelona trip.

- DO TAKE NOTICE! - 

This budget is accounted without flight prices. 

The reason for this is that we have readers not only from our home town, so that information would make this budget useless for a many of those who will read this. 

THE ULTIMATE QUICK-GUIDE TO SOUTH EAST ASIA FIRST-TRIPPERS

- PLEASE NOTE! POST STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION! -

Mona called Felicia one day.
"Hey, I looked at your blog for some inspiration on South East Asia in general now when I'm going to Singapore, but... I kind of just want a post with the most essential tips. Do you guys have anything like that that I just havn't found yet?"

Sadly, we were forced to respond with a no, we don't have that on our webpage. Yet. But it was a really inspirational idea and we sat down immediately to sketch on a post.

The thing was, there is sooo much to know before going, there could be a whole book about it. And there is. Countless of them. Therefor we decided to boil it down and personalize it up a bit from the ordinary backpacker's guidebook - after all, we are not your ordinary backpacker. 

Even though we are being typically-Swedish-modest, this (awesome) GUIDE still INCLUDES

- Personal fails and how to avoid them

- How to trick both cookies and swindlers

- How to not be The Dumb Tourist

- 

Here we go. 

15 THINGS WE LEARNED IN THE TRAVELING YEAR OF 2016

When we decided not to start university right away, we knew we still had a lot of knowledge coming our way. In the three years that has passed since school, we've learned more about ourselves and the world we live in that we could have in any geography lesson or therapy session.

We made a few discoveries and even more mistakes, and when we sat down to summarize this year, it was quite clear which bigger, and smaller, things that impacted most on us.

And now we want to share this with you, good people that we are, so you don't need to do quite as many mistakes as we did this year, but also to give you a shortcut on amazing things that you can learn about your own abilities while traveling.

Read and be aghast. Or amazed. And leave a comment in the section below.

HOW TO SURVIVE A LONGER TRIP WITH SOMEONE

Before Asia 2.0, we had some trips on our record. We'd been in London when we both had a lot of money saved and not a lot of things they should cover. We'd been to Prague for six days just taking every day as it comes. We'd been to Bali and been so happy we were reunited that the rest of the world wasn't really important.

But for all of those trips, we were away for maximum two weeks. How were we supposed to tackle the trials that comes with being together 24-7, for 60 days? How were we going to not drive each other crazy or start fights over differences in opinions?

Communication, we figured. We have to talk this through.
So we did. And did again. And did some more. And we came up with a couple of questions that everyone that's going on a longer journey with someone should ask each other.

These little 'relationship-exercises' are better performed in the company of a bottle of wine, as all exercises ever are. 

HOW YOU LIVE IN THAILAND FOR 40 BUCKS A DAY

Today, we left the quite pitoresque town of Krabi and headed for the slightly bigger, Asian New York that is Kuala Lumpur. That means that our 26 days in Thailand are over for this time, and to be frank, we were eager to leave the country.

Thailand brought us so much unnecessary pain. We lost almost two weeks to food poisoning, which really destroyed our moods and our plans.

But. We did have some great time in Thailand as well. Our days in Bangkok was great, the week in Chiang Mai even better. We almost can't wait for the day when we return to the city of great daytrips. We also took an overnight train which was quite the adventure in itself, being the first time and all.

We ate good food and we stayed at good hotels. We tried to manage our selves to some sights when we felt energized enough. We traveled in slow pace and enjoyed being abroad, inhaling a different culture.

BUT HOW MUCH DID THIS PARTY COST US? 

CLIMBING BUA THONG

WHAT: 

A three floor waterfall where you can climb all the way through it due to the un-slippery limestones (thereof the name). 

TALES OF ASIA: Day 2 & 3

Let's recap the last couple of days in Bangkok's overwhelming heat.

And also, is it humanly possible to be this tired and not having fallen asleep standing yet?
The jetlag, or whatever it might be by this time, is making us old, making us go to bed at 8 o'clock or take an afternoon nap inbetween rounds on town.

HOW TO GET TOURIST VISA FOR CHINA

Pin this!

Or: How we felt better about ourselves by earsdropping 


We had headaches for weeks, knowing we would need to provide all the information about our every move in China. We have not yet booked our hotel in Vietnam, we don't know where we are going after Chiang Mai in Thailand, but for only entering China we have to present every night's stay, every airplane number.

WHAT WE DID WRONG IN HONG KONG

(Excuse the rhyme?)

Jonathan still reminds me how wide open my mouth was that night we drove from the airport to our hotel in Hong Kong. The silhuette made of blinking lights, the high buildings that seem to never stop, the silent lake to frame it all... I don't think I've ever seen such amazing sight.

7 REASONS WE ♥ PRAGUE

This summer, around my 21st birthday, we went to visit the nowadays-almost-mythological capital of the Czech Republic, a country no one could barely place in the right continent a few years ago. Nowadays, everyone wants a piece of Prague. So that's what we did. We took a weeklong bite of Prague and this is