roadtrips are practically an art form, but like all travel, they must be done with the right people. for us, this means easygoing friends who share our interest in food, nice landscapes and all kinds of kitschy or cute things. so when our hosts (lovers of all things kitsch and tasty like us) suggested we do a roadtrip around skåne, our answer was a very enthusiastic YES! :D

in the morning, we rented a wreck and drove around the countryside of central skåne, dodging the heavy rain in search of a famous moose park… which was unfortunately closed. all we saw were 3 sad mooses…

to make up for that small setback, we decided to stop on one of the biggest second hand stores of the region, where we checked out the dishes and christmas decorations…

the weather had cleared up by then, so we did a first quick stop by the baltic sea, to check out the beach and the war bunkers that still exist there:

we also stopped at a burial site that we saw on the way. the stones in this region are all very round, due to erosion.

by then it was time for fika, the traditional swedish coffee break, so we stopped at a little quaint town by the sea. after having crossed the dozens of fields of apple farms, we couldn’t resist a piece of apple pie!

then we turned south, driving along the coast. there are many signs of bronze age in this part of sweden, and we got to see a few marks of the early populations on the polished coastal stones. boats and axes are featured prominently.

a bit further southt, we made a detour to see ale’s stones, sweden’s own stonehenge: a set of massive stones set in an ellipse on a cliff by the sea. nobody seems to know very well why they’re there, but they’re quite impressive nonetheless – and the cows seemed to love them as scratching posts!

we couldn’t resist the calling of the sea, so naturally we descended the cliff and picked rocks at the beach.

with the sea air opening our appetite, we had to make a pit stop for refuel. we drove by a place in skurup that has awesome fast food: meatballs with lingon jam, red danish sausage, fish and chips, and an amazing wrap with sausage, cucumber and mashed potatoes. skurup is famous for being the starting place for the wonderful adventures of nils (the boy that traveled sweden on a goose), and they have a great slogan “when in europe, don’t miss skurup”. it’s a really small place, but i guess it’s worth it for the food and the sweets! :P

on the way home, we passed fields upon fields of sugar beets… i had never seen one up close, so we made a quick stop on a recently harvested field to snatch a leftover beet, which we cleaned and chopped when we got home. it didn’t taste like much except… sweet! :)

all in all, a very successful roadtrip!

in my head, netherlands has always been the holy grail of sweet temptations, the anti-diet country: they had vla! oliebollen! stroopwaffles! chocolate letters! hagelslag! speculaas!

but here in sweden… just, wow. i feel like we’ve entered a whole new saccharine dimension. we’re in a constant sugar high, giddy from all the treats and the excitement of discovering a new country. sweden is refreshing, clean, organised… and sweet, like you wouldn’t believe it!

case in point: nöt-crème.
these little things were invented by a family who started a company to produce one health product based on honey, herbs and all that good stuff… but that didn’t go very well with the customers.
so they thought “hey, how about we do something that resembles cake filling instead?”
they grabbed some hazelnuts and did just that, and suddenly they had kids queuing to buy the stuff and eat it straight from the package!

how cool is that? :D

clean streets and soaked socks, this is how i’ll remember our day in copenhagen. :)

on the list of things we love about berlin, public transportation is featured prominently. i have a monthly pass for the first time in my life, and though it’s just a small piece of paper (not even a card!), the freedom it gives us is breathtaking. we can go anywhere in the city, anytime (well, after 10am anyway), by bus, tram, metro or rails. no need to worry about gas prices, insurance or where to park.

at 53 euros/month, the cost comes at around 1.76 euros/day, which is nothing for a big city, and especially given the mileage we put on it. the public transportation system here is as efficient as you would expect (despite some incidents now and then.)

the possibilities make me ridiculously happy. i’ve never felt better about our choice of leaving the car behind :)

“When arriving in a city, we see streets in perspective.
Sequences of buildings with no meaning. Everything is unknown, virgin.
Later we’ll have lived in this city.
We’ll have walked in its streets.
We’ll have been to the end of the perspectives.
We’ll have seen all the buildings.
We’ll have lived stories with people.
When we’ll have lived in this city, we’ll have taken this street a thousand times. After a moment, everything belongs to you because you’ve lived there.

It was to happen but I didn’t know it yet.

Ljubljana.
This thing that sounds weird was added to the long list of old weird names that we have somewhere in our brain. Ljubljana, Trnovo, Ziherlova, slightly slipped next to Shanghai, Groningen, Braga, Ermesinde and Porto.

It becomes normal and familiar.”

on the eve of moving, i always come back to adapt this quote from the movie l’auberge espagnole. these streets we’ve walked a thousand times are ours too.

and now, off to berlin we go! :)

my brother has recently spent a few days with us here in ljubljana :) it was a trip of firsts for him: first time in a foreign country, first flight, first time eating mexican nachos, ćevapčići or krofs… and first carnival in venice!

being the right time of the year and so close by, we couldn’t pass the opportunity of taking him there. so we left ljubljana, bright and early on a 2am train and then… we walked and walked and walked, just taking it all in. venice is incredibly crowded but i think it is also a really happy place. the carnival feels a lot more solemn than we’re used to (which is refreshing), but it retains quite a bit of its colourful aura. we had a great day, enjoyed the sun and took a ton of photos of little things we liked.







best costume in our book went to a guy dressed like ezio in assassin’s creed II. joão had spent half the morning commenting at how familiar everything in venice looked from the game, and how realistic it was, and “i climbed this and that building in the game!”, blablabla and then out of nowhere we see this guy and whoa! talk about a perfect moment! :)

(a collection of scattered thoughts scribbled in loose notes on our flight back from istanbul last week)

i have the turkish airlines jingle stuck in my head for the duration of the flights, courtesy of watching too much cnn. the extent of our preparations for this trip can be resumed to:
- preparing & rehearsing a keynote
- making sure we had plenty of business cards (last minute order from moo.com, arrived in 4 days!)
- make hotel reservations and couchsurfing requests
- downloading the istanbul iphone app (no time to dwell into guidebooks, all we needed was a quick intro to the tourist traps & a map).

so without many preparations, it’s only when the plane hovers the city just before landing that you start to realise how massive it is. it goes on forever, in plaid patterns of houses woven in hills between the masses of water. reminds us a bit of lisbon with its hills… on a closer look though, as the tram makes it way to the city center, we start to realise that this city has a lot more things in common with the east than the west. even the language sounds like japanese.

istanbul is home to a population of many millions, and you can tell from the worn feeling it has and the myriad of people crowding the streets, moving fast from a place to the next. we made use of every possible means of transportation: metro, tram, bus, funicular, ferry, taxi, even mini-bus (a van that stops where you want it to, within a certain route). all crowded and busy and fast. the traffic is chaotic, by many levels worse than we’ve experienced in china. in istanbul the streets are narrow, hilly and tortuous, contouring labyrinths in the middle of houses where the cars frequently get blocked and backtrack, fast forwarding themselves in imaginary lanes. while in china you felt the weight of the government’s micromanaging, the laws on the tip of everyone’s tongue, in here it’s the complete opposite. you feel a sort of barely controlled anarchy, in a set of sub-rules that are not clearly stated, or understood. i feel at loss, and yet intrigued to discover this code of conduct that eludes me.

for a country in which over 90% of the population is muslim, we don’t see as many women wearing scarfs as i would expect. we’re told this is because istanbul is a modern city, and the veil is not mandatory by the islam law – only the more strict use it. there’s plenty of mosques with tilled walls and and in certain hours you hear the calls for prayer. they give istanbul a magical aura, in sharp contrast with the mundane bustle of the city.

little things: the weather is mostly sunny the whole time, in sharp contrast with the cold that we in slovenia. we discover there are no postboxes for mail – which is deposited directly on the post offices. the simits (bagels?) we get from the street vendors taste great. so does the baklava. it feels like nobody speaks english (not that it deters us). the streets have unpronounceable names that are hard to find even in google maps or our gps (twice stopped on the airport for inspection). and all the toilet bowls have the embedded water jet to wash your behind – wet wipes won’t catch on here.

i take a few pictures here and there, mainly to appease my father. i feel like a japanese tourist every time i pull my camera out in a overcrowded city like this one. so i don’t. the holga is the only camera i take out regularly. while we wander without direction, we find a shop selling every kind of ilford film, and i stock on them.

we get lost in the labyrinthic paths of the bazaars, but the salesmen here are friendlier, less desperate to make a sale, and a lot less nagging. they serve us sweet apple tea (which we later find out it’s not typical from turkey, but something that the tourists like). to anyone who has ever taken a stroll down huai hai lu, this is peanuts. we buy scarfs and some ties and shirts on the neighbouring streets – we’re here on business after all. and the business part of this visit goes well. we wake up early, put our suits, ties and pretty shoes, do our hair and makeup, stock the pockets with business cards. our presentation goes smoothly, we get plenty of encouraging words, name cards and new ideas (oh! and goodies of the postal variety). mission accomplished.

we travel to the anatolian side through the bridge and are greeted by a yellow sign “welcome to asia”. but regardless the lack of foreign glyphs, the whole istanbul feels like asia, and not just the other side of the bosphorus.

turkey frightens and fascinates me in equal parts. it forces us to stand outside of our element, which is why i think we’ll go back, for a longer period of time. i was not really cut out for this “x days in” kind of travel. besides, with our dark hair and eyes, i think we could be pretty much camouflaged and blend in – at least until we open our mouths, but hey, that’s more we were ever able to achieve in shanghai!

the turks greet friends like the portuguese, with a kiss in each cheek… but then they add 2 cozy hugs, one on each side, for good measure. :) it feels really warm and… right. see you soon, istanbul!