Monthly Archives: February 2009

Amsterdam

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Me and U went to Amsterdam between the 18th and 23rd of February. Since getting back from there I have had a lot to do, so I haven’t had too much time to post here.

It is a beautiful city with it’s canals and old buildings and there were very few cars in the city because everyone is cycling, so it made it very nice to walk in and enjoy the atmosphere. I think we probably walked like 10 to 15 miles a day, going up and down the streets and bridges going in to all kinds of shops and stores, cafés and restaurants.
Except for the Anne Frank museum, we also visited the Amsterdam historical museum which was really nice, allthough it had 24 rooms and took way to long to go through. We also visited the photographic museum which at the moment had an exhibition by Richard Avedon an american photographer famous for his portraits of famous people like Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and lots of others. His pictures was all in black and white and all neutral white backgrounds to really capture the person and usually in a more personal way than most portrait-photographers. It was almost 200 portraits and some of them really got me staring. Just beautiful pictures so full of life!

On the way home on saturday night we went down to the red light distric (at 4am), but when we got in there it felt really creepy with only a few strange people walking around and a group of young guys that had had too much to drink (which I had had too of course), so we quickly turned around again and went there sunday evening instead when there was more people there and still daylight.
 
It felt surreal to walk around with women in different shapes and sizes almost with no clothing standing behind glas doors dancing and making signs to people passing by to come in and take part of their “services”. Growing up in a country such as Sweden where buying and selling sex is illegal in every form, where there are no strip clubs and escort services and other types of sex-business is only existing underground, seeing it so publicly open feels strange. And to know that some brothels are even owned by the government (to get rid of trafficking) feels so completely opposite to what I’m used to. Sweden is open-minded when it comes to sex between two adults that do it of their own free will, but prostitution would be social suicide.
Also next to these places are coffeeshops where you legally can use drugs, that is just unheard of. Sure, in many ways, Sweden would be on the more “conservative” side when it comes to these things compared to continental Europe, but that these two countries lies in the same part of Europe is fascinating.

I can really recommend going there just for the canals and bridges and the general atmosphere. But remember to bring cash, because a lot of places don’t accept visa or mastercard, only their local pincards… :)

Posted in: Reflection, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel – Comments Off

Priority

Thursday, February 5, 2009

It was the first time last night for my small little project where I invite a bunch of people to just meet up and have a coffee together. Including me, five people had said they would come, and seven maybes, but in the end only me and U showed up.
Even though it was somewhat expected, I am a little bit disappointed. I had hoped that at least a few people would actually show up, especially those who had said they would, given that no one had to tell in advance.

It was expected, because even though a lot of people really liked the idea, in the end most people do not prioritize that which they do not have to do.
It is very easy to get stuck in all the must do’s, I have been there many times, but if you really look at all those must do’s, many of them are just there to please others, not that important in the first place or just something you do out of habit. There are, of course, many valid must do’s too, but finding out which one these really are, will make it easier to focus on them instead of wasting your energy on things you don’t need or want to do.

In todays society, there are thousands of things you can do and experience, and the new goal of life is to experience as much as possible before you die, creating an existenial stress because you are missing most of it. The internet is a bad thing in this way, because it becomes so easy to find all the things you want to do and get new ideas of things you never thought of, that the fact that you are mostly doing nothing of it creates suffering. Kind of an information overload.

I live in a city now that is the best place in Sweden if you want to do something. You can keep yourself occupied for the rest of your life. Still people complain and get stressed because they do not take advantage of this fact as much as they think they should.

There are no shoulds. I don’t have to do anything.
I like the variety in Stockholm, but for me, I just do things I want to. I don’t bother too much about fretting about the other millions of things I miss. I don’t want to suffer because of things I didn’t do.
I happen to like hanging out in a café, drinking tea and maybe meet some other people there with no other plans. That is to me one of my ”musts” that is not really a must at all, and I have thousands of other things I could spend my time on.

I have no expectation that anyone will show up. I will bring my computer and sit there writing if no one shows up, but I hope that giving this a chance, it might actually become a ”tradition” that people will like to join in on. Who knows. Maybe I will sit there on my own every week the coming year. Or, people will show up every now and then, new people every time, new ideas, talks, enjoyments and an overload of coffee. It might or might not happen. Whatever happens, I still think it is a good idea :)

Posted in: Friends, Restaurants/Cafés, Stockholm – 1 Comment