Recently + Christmas.

It has happened a lot and yet nothing it feels like.

I was in Vienna for three days getting all in the Christmas spirit in that beautiful city. Hanging out with couchsurfers, as here in Berlin, and just having a great time.
I took a ten hours car ride there with a couple in a tiny car. I mostly slept and read the whole way.
Back I took the night train to Berlin and left the city with memories and more Christmas spirit then in a long time.

Coming back was great also. Laughing with the gang and feeling like home with Sinead and Smooth. I started to move out of the apartment where I spent the last months of my Berlin stay. New clean freak roomie and I aren't really getting along and I just had the apartment until the end of the month anyway. I have moved my stuff a staircase down, to Sinead's room. Smooth and Sinead already went back to Sweden to celebrate Christmas so I'm spending my nights alone in Sinead's bed. Feels weird in so many ways. We're usually many in this bed hanging out.

Packing up all my thing to take to Sweden is done to celebrate Christmas home in Sweden, leaving on a 12 hour train ride tomorrow. Went to the Turkish market today to get some snack for the road (or should I write rail) today. Got back with a lot of fruit and bread. I will also bring some soup that I made the other day. It's the soup that I hope will stop me from this cold I feel in my throat. A lot of chili fruit and c-vitamin in it and also vegan so I think it will bring me vegan power (or at least hope it will).

The past days I've been to a 50 year birthday party for some friends that turned 20+30. I had a blast hanging out with people that I don't hang out with so much and just mingling around among a lot of great persons. Time flew away that night.
I've also been hanging out with new friends or friends I haven't hang out with that much. Drinking beer and relaxing on a Sunday with Pablo and ending up with pizza and Moby Dick talk (I've just started reading Moby Dick) among other things.
Monday I spent in a living room (the place is literary called living room in German (Wohnzimmer)) being sarcastic all night. My new friend Mark is never serious about anything so I just laughed a lot and let him tell stupid stories or speak Danish(he's american) to me and see if I understood. We wondered the streets of Berlin and finally ended up at a Swedish market and had some Swedische Glühwein (mulled wine, also called glögg in Swedish). It was a strange night in so many way that I can't even start to explain it. Guess you had to be there.
Today I was thinking about going to my last couchsurfing meeting of the year but got lazy and cooked instead and watched the Christmas Edition of Ice Age (I recommend it!)

I've been spending time reading. My Kindle is perfect for traveling and I got 3GB books for it from my friend William the other day and that just so many books so I don't even know how to start but I'm excited to read all (even if it will take me years and years. 3GB books are about 3000 books.) "A Christmas Carroll" by Charles Dickens, poems by Emily Dickinson, "Moby Dick" and all the books I've stated make me so happy. I think 12 hours on a train will fly away as long as I have my Kindle.

It feels good to go back to Sweden and cook Christmas food with dad and hang out with all the friends in Stockholm. But Berlin, I will be back for New Year (or Sylvester as they say here) That's for sure.

Future.

The future is almost here. Or I feel like it, because I'm really bad at being in the now.

Why do I feel this way then?

I have gotten new roomies that I don't really know how it will go to live with. One at least seems very different from me and Rosa, so we'll see how that goes.

I also have nowhere to live after December 31. I think I would be able to stay another month in this apartment, but with all the changes here I don't know if I want to. Also I would like to find something with less rent.

One thing that I have decided is that I will go home to Sweden the 21th of December to celebrate Christmas. I booked a cheap train ticket so I have a 12 hour train ride to look forward to (I really like going by train. Best way to get anywhere.)

All the other decisions that makes my head spin and I rather plan unreal things then really ones that I really need to plan.

Tomorrow, the very near future I will go to Vienna to spend some time. I have had some couchsurfers from Vienna and I'm going to stay with one of them. One old college from the palace in Stockholm where I worked before that also just to Vienna before that I'm going to meet up with.

And an Austrian that I meet here in Berlin.

My plan is to get some Christmas spirit, drink a lot of coffee in one or many of the very many coffee shops that I've heard about and just see the city. It's going to be my first time in Austria.

Looking forward to holiday from the holiday. I don't need it but I want it.

Time flies.

This blog has had a little slow period. Not that things don't happen. Plenty has happened.

My family visited. Mom, dad and brother Tim. And Elsa's(a.k.a Smooth) parents where here also. So there been a lot of hanging out with them. Going to birthday partys, playing pool, buying cheap food at the Turkish marked, singing on the streets, going to couchsurfing meetings, laughing a lot and hanging out with the gang. The markets are back so we spent Sunday at Mauerpark as always. We sit a lot at our favorite coffee place/hang out beer place.

I read a lot. Almost finished "Jane Eyre" and I got a Kindle as a birthday present from my parents, and I'm totally hooked on it. Best gift ever for a book reader I would say. Now I carry around about 30 books (which is few for the Kindle) all the time and some audio books. I love it and my friend find me more gone in books then ever before.

The gang.

Lately we have been forming a gang, a group of people that I hang out with almost all the time. We're five. Me, Sinead, Smooth, Kurt and Frieder. So basically it's two new people that has joined the group. Kurt, the american traveler and Frieder, the german paramedic with dreads. We've seen each other every day. Laughing, hanging out, drinking beers, watching films, having after partys and falling asleep in piles together.

Smooth, me and Frieder fallen asleep in Sineads bed.

So it's been a good time in Berlin. Just to little time to sit down and write here. I going to try to be better at it. Until next time.