Croatia

From the 11th of August we sailed for 8 days around Croatia on a boat of about 30 people.
We arrived in Split 2 days before we set sail, and the second we stepped off the plane into the sunshine and 30+ degree heat we knew we were in heaven. We finally had access to fresh food and inhaled fresh fruit all day and ate prawn and zucchini pasta at Villa Spiza for dinner where they use whatever is fresh on the market meaning that they don't have a concrete menu and just whip up something amazing with whatever they have. This is paradise.

1. Landing in Split.

2. 3. From the main boulevard in front of the old city.

4. Bačvice beach.

5. 6. Split at night in Diocletian's Palace.

On our second day in Split we woke up and walked straight to Bačvice beach. That was the 10th of August. I had not been by the coast since around the 20th of June, let alone gone for a swim in the sea. Lying in the blazing sun, swimming in crystal turquoise blue waters and feeling the cool sea breeze on my skin made me realise how much I'd missed it, I don't think I could live away from the coast for an extended period of time. It's just. too. good.

Paris has got some competition

If you know me, you know that Paris is my favourite city in the world (other than Sydney). However, after spending a few days in Berlin I can safely say that Paris has definitely got some competition.

The thing that does it for me is how at ease Chelsea and I felt while we were there. You can really be yourself, there's no pressure from society to act or be a certain way. While talking to a French bartender in Kreuzberg, he noted that in Paris everyone needs to act a certain way, drink wine a certain way, talk a certain way and even though I don't want to admit it, it's true.

At some point during our stay I went to say that Berlin felt like Sydney, but stopped myself because it's not like Sydney, I just felt so comfortable it was like I was home.

The Fernesehturm; that TV tower.

Kunsthaus Tacheles

Tacheles is an artists compound. From 2008 when the last lease expired it's slowly been deteriorating, there was a semi-failed eviction early last year and the courtyard was cut off shortly after. It's a beautiful concept, the buillding is magnificent and it would be such a shame if the organisation diminished altogether.

1. Larry Clark at C/O Berlin
2. Flowers in Luzia

The food we ate in Berlin was the most incredible, healthiest, cheapest food I have ever come across. Pure bliss. Every night we went to Kreuzberg to eat for under 5 euros
Night 2: Falafel sandwich at Maroush
Night 3: Pho and an incredible noodle salad at Green Rice
Night 4: Durum döner at Tekbir Döner
Night 5: Köfte baguette at Gel Gör Inegöl Köfteci


There's a large turkish population in Kreuzberg hence all this food.
Also, note: I will never be able to eat a kebab at home again. Kebabs in Berlin were legitimate sources of nutrition that were wrapped in bread alike the pancakes you eat with peking duck stuffed with REAL meat and fresh veggies and yoghurt sauce and made our eyes roll into the backs of our heads with each bite.

1. Fistik Sarma Baklava. Can't begin to describe the heavenly sugary pistachio goodness.
2. Künefe. Shredded pastry filled with cheesy goodness smothered in cream and pistachios and drizzled with sugar syrup.

Verdict: May have to learn German just so I can live in Berlin for a while.

Skeletons in the closet?

Throughout the 20th century, Germany went through a shitstorm. It was torn inside out by a short man with a little moustache and then it became a playground for the major political powers of the world.

Surprisingly, if you don't go look for all the memorials and landmarks and museums in Berlin, you can't see what the city has been through. It was ravaged to the extent that the entire city was more or less rebuilt from the ground up. Not that its history is hidden. When you explore it, the stuff you find exercises an oppressing force upon you that makes you sad about everything people had to go through and angry at those that inflicted it upon them.

Nevertheless, you can see people, especially the youth, celebrating it as a 'reborn' society, hence the dominant 'hipster' population. However, don't get me wrong, hipster isn't like a hipster in Sydney, or Melbourne where people intentionally attempt to project themselves in a certain way. Berliners are just the way they are. When you step on the U- or S-Bahn, over 80% of the people in your carriage will have stretchers and/or plugs and/or numerous tattoos and/or multiple piercings and/or undercuts and/or hair dyed outrageous colours. It's nothing out of the ordinary. And I love it.

Eastside Gallery

Topographie des Terrors - Remaining part of the Berlin Wall

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The Jewish graveyard in the Große Hamburger Straße

This cemetery was dug up and bombed numerous times during WWII. Only a few tombstones remain (miraculously). It is estimated that there are over 10,000 Jewish people buried beneath the sea of vines.

Fredrichshain, Berlin

After a 7 hour train trip, we ventured out on our first night in Berlin because it was a Saturday and we weren't missing a Saturday night out in Berlin for anything. 

In Sydney, everyone is out by 10:30pm. In Europe, you're loopy if you're in a club before 2am, and the party really gets started at 4. So we sat around for 3 hours drinking with no friends before heading out with absolutely no clue where we were going. We ended up in an abandoned lot after following the crowd and, as it turned out, in each decrepit warehouse, there was a bar or a club, pumping out a differerent genre of music.

1. I don't even know.

2. Watching the sun rise with Raw Tempel Club on the left and Emma Pea on the right.

One of the best nights ever.

Bike riding in Vondelpark

Amsterdam

Warning: explicit content unsuitable for children under the age of 18 and parents is contained in this post. Continue at your own risk.

Amsterdam is the city of indulgence. But at the same time it is only that way to foreigners, to the Dutch, these 'indulgences' are what they are and exist as a part of their culture. The four nights I was there I saw no brawls and no drugged up prostitutes (they definitely didn't seem that way). And I thought about a typical night at the cross; one fight is a minimum, and all the stories about going into strip clubs and seeing the opposite of the beautiful confident women behind the windows I saw in Amsterdam. It's crazy how drugs and sex can become commonplace when the law decides they are.

1. Canal.
2. Condomerie.
3. Street near Leidsplein.
4. Bike riding in Vondelpark.
5. Tangerine Dream 15eur/g.
6. Blue°; a cafe made of glass overlooking Amsterdam.
7. 8. Museumplein, standard.
9. 10. 11. Vondelpark; where we spent most of our stay, as in a couple of hours per day.
12. 16. Party for Our Love; celebrating Gay Pride.
13. Swan.
14. 15. Bulldog Coffeeshop; leaving our mark.
16. Morning of the Gay Pride Canal Parade, the morning we left (of course) - note everyone dressed in pink.

A Quick Lesson about Marijuana
Smoke Sativa if you want to have control of your limbs,
or go for Indica if you want to be couch-locked.

Amsterdam passed in a haze. I felt like nothing was real from the second or third day until we left for Berlin and even then the feeling didn't wear off completely until after a day or two in Berlin.

Another highlight included eating a bacon, egg and avocado sandwich on our first day at Rogh's Deli. And NO I was not under the influence of anything. Just missing good food.