Copenhagen ➳ Hamburg ➳ Berlin ➳ Prague ➳ Vienna ➳ Budapest ➳ Zagreb ➳ Ljubljana ➳ Venice ➳
Copenhagen ➳ Hamburg ➳ Berlin ➳ Prague ➳ Vienna ➳ Budapest ➳ Zagreb ➳ Ljubljana ➳ Venice ➳
From Sept-Oct 2025…
I found myself unemployed, 30 years old, and hungering for a long trip to think and write and meet people and stare out train windows and to literally be unable to understand anyone around me.
And boy golly did I not understand a single word of what anyone around me was saying! (most of the time)
The only phrases I memorized were “Hello!” “Thank you!” and “Goodbye!” and as soon as I crossed the border into a new country, the 15mb of ram my brain had allocated for learning new languages was excited to delete what it was barely holding onto and learn the next iterations of those same 3 phrases.
With gratitude, here are the photos I took on this journey, along with some clippings from my travel journal.
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Copenhagen
“In Copenhagen, bikes are left unchained, mostly. I asked someone if they get stolen a lot and they said ‘sometimes. I stole one once when I was drunk.’
I followed up with ‘is it like in Japan, see an umbrella take an umbrella, leave an umbrella?’
They laughed and said ‘no it's not supposed to be like that.”
09.26.2025
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Hamburg/Berlin
“Last night, I woke up to my elbow slamming into the extremely loud, incredibly thin piece of sheet metal used to give your head some privacy from the gaze of your hostel-mates while you sleep in your bunk. Literally the loudest sound you could ever imagine. My sleeping neighbor's dreams probably drifted to a nightmare about being locked in a dumpster.”
09.27.2025
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Prague
“On the train from Berlin to Prague, I was shocked at how beautiful the Czech countryside is. Every 10 or so minutes, our train would pass through some beautiful little mountainous hamlet.
Through villiages that seemed centuries old. Houses, tucked neatly into little spots of beauty. Nestled along a river, Folded into the side of a hill, posted at the top of a mini mountain. Houses mostly triangular. Some vertical and rectangular.
I had the impulse to take out my keyboard and my tablet and start writing about how awe-inspiring and beautiful life is and can be. How overcome with gratitude I am to be on a train, smoothly gliding through villages that emanate the warmth of community and living. However, every second not spent looking out of the window felt like a retreat into a non-space of not being present.
I decided not to.”
10.04.2025
(several days after my stay in prague)
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Vienna
I didn’t write a journal entry during my one day in Vienna. My day in Vienna ended up being my sleep day. I believe I woke up at 11am.
What sticks out most to me was my experience getting coffee before entering a museum. I was sat at the bar because every table was taken. The barista was absolutely fucking slammed with orders. Royally engulfed in the thorny weeds of being the only server during peak hours at a restaurant.
She had her hair up in a messy bun that was on the razors edge of falling apart. Strings of her hair swooshed back and forth in the blur of her turning back and forth from the customers to the espresso machine.
Co-workers tried helping, but you could tell it was making things worse. They’d innocently bring her the wrong glasses she was running low on, like a dog would bring it’s owner a dead possum instead of the stick she threw.
Watching her was like watching an underpaid and overworked Mozart fucking shred gnar at the piano. 120 bpm at the very least.
I tipped her well because I am a very good person, and told her “you’re fucking killing it!” She laughed. Hope she made bank that day.
10.??.2025
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Budapest
“The man sitting next to me at the hostel commented on my keyboard/e-reader set up. He said it was cool, in between taking bites of his tomato.
He's eating a tomato like a gory wet apple. He has a french accent. I was expecting an italian one. har har har har har. I mean it.”
09.26.2025
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Zagreb
“I'm laid in my hostel-pod. My all-white rectangular sleeping pod with a blue curtain. I kind of feel like I'm in an IKEA book shelf, and I'm feeling emotional! An emotional book that can burp.”
10.09.2025
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Slovenia
“At a restaurant, I'm sitting at an outdoor table. I’m eating a particularly cheesy quiche. There are 9-12 tiny little sparrows flying and hopping and peeping all around me. There was a married couple next to me at their table. As soon as the husband got up to use the bathroom, the birds all jumped onto his plate and picked at his quiche. Like a birdbath, but with more eggs and cheese than water.
The wife smiled, rolled her eyes and shook her head. It's so nice to see someone react with love and understanding to what some people would classify as a vermin attack. I hope the birds enjoyed their milk, and their diarrhea isn’t that bad later today, unlike mine will be.
I do this thing with cheese and milk where I know that it will hurt me and severely complicate my day tomorrow, and I eat it anyway. Then, when I tell someone, I change the story to something along the lines of "i didn't realize there was cheese!" or "I thought it would be easily removable!" or "I thought it would be on the side!" because it's easier to say that then to say "I did it seemingly on purpose!"
10.13.2025
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Venice
I didn’t write a journal entry in Venice.
I didn’t want the trip to end.
09.26.2025
