405

THIS MESSAGE IS ESPECIALLY FOR PEOPLE IN THE NEWYORKCITY AREA.

Hi! Do you see these two lovely lads? They are called Daniel and Marius and they are both German, but that doesnt keep them from wearing cool shoelaces and socks with hearts on them.
They are about to visit New York City to photograph the smallest skyscrapers. Great plan. The only problem is that they still need a place to sleep from the 19th of august till the 23rd (and possibly also middle of september).
Are you a nice person willing to host two nice boys for a night or two? Or do you know anyone who would? Please let me know.
I also added the picture of the flowers to show that I'm sure they'd be willing to thank you for your kindness with anything a poor student who spent all their money on a ticket to new york, has to offer.

(I'm just worried they're going to end up under a bridge and then get stabbed by big american dudes with cheeseburgers with knives in them..)

401

What I enjoyed the most on summerholidays with my parents as a kid, was simply driving from one place to another. Long carrides of sleeping, reading, listening to music or simply staring out the window at the passing landscape.

This summer (and most resent summers), I've been having those same kind of rides, but instead of my family's car, I've let myself get transported and lulled into sleep by trains and busses and trams. Traveling back and forth between homes. Not completely by choice though.. I tend to forget stuff all the time and then I have to get back again. But I try to not be too annoyed by myself and just enjoy that I've finished two and a half books in two days.
Plus, it is a good practice in a way. In a bit more than a week, I'll make a 9(!)-hour traindrive to the south of Germany for a holiday filled with cheese, wurst, beer, mountains, lakes, sheep, germans, biking - and hiking-adventures and peace love and happiness. (ha!) I'm super excited.


ps. I also got a tumblr. I dont know why. Because I'm a modern girl!

398

Making patterens and missing my Hamburg. The sounds and smells of the harbour, the cold salty wind prickling your face, the beers and bretzels and the foreign chatter. I try not to think of it too much, because you should try to be happy where you are, but sometimes the missing is just there all of a sudden.

392

Two nice German thingies.
Age is something that doesnt matter, unless you are a cheese.
Always remember that.

(Maybe Luis Buñuel said that once, but you can never really rely on websites with so-called "inspirational quotes". But do we really care who said it when it is truly inspirational? Or when it is something that everyone could've thought of? No! Besides, the Luis guy is dead anyways, so he doesnt give a damn if we properly credit him or not. Ha. The rights on this quote are probably long gone, so we can just all pretend I made it up! A Dutch girl who doesnt like getting old, but quite likes cheese? Seems quite logical.)

391

Colour-matches from days when I tried to get the spring in my life.

There has been a lot of rain today. Groeizaam weer is what they call it, apparently. A good day to take out your red rainboots and go for short spaziergänge through the "fields" (patches of grass) and pick flowers that you cant keep because it makes your nose itch, but that's okay.

389

It is my mum's birthday today. I think I've inherited her love for tulips.
The recently renewed Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam's most famous museum, has been so very kind to digitalize all their works in incredibly high resolution. I've been having a lot of fun, roaming through their collection and zooming in as much as I can and in this way creating new art works again. Please do yourself a favour and start exploring online (but also visit the museum of course, if you can.. I can't wait to do so myself).

one, three, five - "Tulpen aus Amsterdam", by me in my room in Hamburg, 2013
two - Anna van Oostenrijk (1601-1666), Peter Paul Rubens, 1625 - 1626. [link]
four - Stilleven met bloemen in een glazen vaas, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, 1650-1683 [link]
six - Bloemen, anoniem, 1700-1799 [link]

388

German artschool-boys: living out of the box.

387

I am officially back in Eindhoven now.

Hamburg had a downstairsneighbour to wave at.
Here in Eindhoven I look out on an empty field. This morning a little boy was suddenly standing there on his own, in the middle of the emptyness. I waved at him. He, too, was waving. Not at me, though. He waved a stick at invisible monsters. I think he slayed pretty much all of them.

386

Words and images fail to express how completely, totally happy and sad I feel right now. Both at the same time. It's like an atomic bomb is exploding in my head and heart and my entire body. Although this is of course the shittiest of comparisons I could give, but you know; it's on my mind these days with all the talk about atomic bombs. So deal with it. 

Wow. 

Hamburg, Hamburg, Hamburg.... 

Just watch this. That kind of says it all. Or maybe not, but it is a cool song either way.

Tschüßli müßli. 

385

The day of leaving Hamburg is getting closer and closer. Instead of counting weeks, I have to count days now. And although I try not to think about it too much, my head is silently checking off all the last time..'s, even though it is only a temporary goodbye. 

I am not too sad. I am enjoying my time here and appreciate all the wonders and the people who surround me here and whom I've come to love - as cliché as it may sound. But I know I will come back here someday, and now I am very much looking forward to seeing my friends back home again more often. Hamburg won't run away. One of the most charming things of this city is that she doesn't demand much of you, she just lets you be around and mostly that is already great. So I don't have to do lots of exciting, big things and instead just kind of spazier myself through these last days. 

And I really do think Hamburg and I have become good friends and, the way it goes with good friends, you don't have to see them everyday and if you must, you can just disappear for a while and then when you decide to return, they will be waiting for you with open arms as if nothing ever happened. 

381

I wish that I could write about how it was for me,
when I grew up among the mountains, wolves and redwood trees,
but I was never there, were you ever there?

I don't know why this feeling keeps on coming back to me
That I need to go into a place where I can see that things can be small,
even the trees, and the cars, and the roads and the houses and the other mountaintops
And the only thing that is big is the sky. 

(To All My Friends)

I actually dont like the mountains that much. Too high, too static, too dangerous in an uncomforting way. But I do love cities that feel like mountain landscapes: with towering buildings to make you feel small and with windows that look down on rooftops to make you feel like the queen of the world. With millions of paths and corners to discover and get lost in. And somewhere in between all of this enormousness, hidden away from everything and everyone else - a small, secret cave of warmth and comfort; surrounded by it all and yet completely isolated and on its own.

379

Oh the grey of this city is too much to bear
but I feared it even more when I saw it didn't last

Someone once told me he thought Hamburg was one of the greyest cities in the world. And maybe this year it was even greyer than usual. In 2012, Hamburg received the least sunhours in Germany and it is said that this has been the greyest winter in at least 60 years. Usually a German winter can enjoy about 150 sunhours, but this winter we had to do with a little more than 80 hours of sun.

When bad things happen to a family, people always say it will either tear them all apart, or make their bonds even stronger.
When winter falls over Eindhoven, I feel as if the arms that hold us together, start to shake and shiver and lets us all fall in pieces to the cold ground, but those same arms in Hamburg seem to just hug even tighter and tighter.
I don't want to leave Hamburg behind just when the summer is going to start, and I am not sure if I want to go through such a grey winter again next year, but I think being hugged by strong arms, even if they are the greyest arms in the world, is always better than slightly less grey arms who just let you fall.

I am seeing good friends in Eindhoven today, but I am hiding inside for a little longer, because the streets there are covered in snow. I hope spring will come and say hi to me again when I say my (temporary) final goodbyes in Hamburg in two weeks.

(the lyrics from Laura Marling, slightly changed to not get confusion of me putting thoughts in the head of the lovely boy on the second-last picture. And he is the one who gets credits for the final photo.)

378

"You don't strike me as a person who still believes in romance, living in a fantasy bubble of pink air."

Winter makes me more cynical and rational, but these past days the sun has been shining over this grey city and has settled in my heart and body again. My stomach flutters and my mind drifts. I dress myself in clothes with colours of candy.

Picnics in parks, bicyclerides in streets full of castles, cold pancakes coated with stolen sugar, dancing and cleaning in a sunsoaked room with the windows wide open, a new friend, pretending to be somebody else and blending in with the tourists of the city, watching out over the harbour, thinking of flying and sailing.

"This is the last imbiss before new york".

A white handkerchief, kissing a sailor goodbye, dreams of waiting in your underwear for clothes to be clean. Longing for summer to come through even more, feeling the wind on your bare legs, blowing up your dress.

"It's fine, I'm wearing my pretty underwear anyway."

This strange state of mind as you have just woken up, but are still half asleep. Inbetween dreams and reality.
This is how I feel these days in Hamburg.

"You remember the old Roadrunner cartoons where the coyote would ran off a cliff and keep going untill he looked down and happened to notice that he was running on nothing more than air?"

"Yeah."

"Well," he says, "I always used to wonder what would have happened if he'd never looked down. Would the air have stayed solid under his feet until he reached the other side? I think it would have, and I think we're all like that. We start heading out across this canyon, looking straight ahead at the thing that matters, but something, some fear, or security, makes us look down. And we see we're walking on air and we panic, and turn around and scramble like hell to go back to solid ground. And if we just wouldn't look down, we could make it to the other side. The place where things matter." 
(page 146 from The book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper.)

A book I read in a the first month here in Hamburg in a cafe where I could crawl in a big chair with a coffee and wait for the dark to come so I could go home again.

Trying not to think; trying very hard not to look down, but keep running and keep looking forward. I keep running running. Looking down. Falling. Climbing up again and running running. Looking down. Falling. Climbing up again. etc etc etc. It's natural.

Sometimes I just wish I could just run for a bit more than three weeks and fall a bit less high.

I guess part of growing up is learning how to run without looking down all the time. But maybe also knowing how to grab hold of the sides of the rock as you are falling down, so you dont hit the ground completely.

"Does it bounce?"

Yesterday we saw a movie. There was a building burning down and people jumped out of windows, one by one you saw them crashing into the ground. They dont bounce.

I dont want to end this on a sad note. This morning my downstairs dönershop-friend nicknamed me "the sweet neighbour."

"A Club Mate for the sweet neighbour!"

A big smile.

These are all merely observations. I am unsure if I should post them. But when you are reading this, I obviously did post it. There is a lot of thinking these days and it helps to write things down and put them out. Distance yourself from it. so you can look at it again at another time and see things in a new light maybe.

377

I have a very lovely and talented friend who goes by the name of Lukas / Lukat. He wrote and illustrated a real actual graphic novel and is very famous now because it is real good. I bought it in my favourite bookstore and finished it later that night, in the light of googletranslate, hidden under covers.
I never quite liked comics as a kid. I only read them on holidays when I had already finished all my own librarybooks and had to read the comics my brother had picked out (some sort of compromise of my mum, who tried to get him to read). But recently I have discovered the joys of graphic novels. It is like watching a movie in your hands. I read them often in the library of Amsterdam. If you know of any good ones, you should let me know.
I was a very lucky girl because my copy is signed with a cat. Maybe you are not so lucky, but you could still get the book and then you are also a bit lucky.

375

 This morning another quick visit to my new favourite museum in Hamburg. I can never get enough of some dead mice. Especially when they look so cute you want to cuddle them or when they are so stiff they look like lollypops. It may be a bit creepy and not very appropriate to say this, but they almost look kind of delicious.
Besides the mice there are many more amazing things, like the mid-jump-cat, the kiwis, the funny sassylooking thing, the fetuses in jars, the colourful butterflies, the orangutan who drowned herself 5 years a go and is now forever flirtatiously looking at the other orangutan, who is blowing kisses at the lazy jaguar, or the gigantic bluewhale jaw-bone.. I could probably go there everyweek and never ever be bored.

373

I try to draw everyday, it's meditative.
A postcard to a friend and a breakfast at the studiodesk.

372

Die Liebende [abermals] - Goethe
Warum ich wieder zum Papier mich wende?
Das mußt du, Liebster, so bestimmt nicht fragen:
Denn eigentlich hab' ich dir nichts zu sagen;
doch kommt's zuletzt in deine lieben Hände.

Weil ich nicht kommen kann, soll, was ich sende,
mein ungeteiltes Herz hinübertragen
mit Wonnen, Hoffnungen, Entzücken, Plagen:
Das alles hat nicht Anfang, hat nicht Ende.

Ich mag vom heut'gen Tag dir nichts vertrauen,
wie sich im Sinnen, Wünschen, Wähnen, Wollen
mein treues Herz zu dir hinüberwendet.

So stand ich einst vor dir, dich anzuschauen,
und sagte nichts. Was hätt' ich sagen sollen?
Mein ganzes Wesen war in sich vollendet.

This blog has become an ongoing loveletter to Hamburg.
I feel so at home here, but it still surprises me some times. This morning I got up late and walked outside. I got a coffee to go and walked through one of my favourite streets. There was a group of people getting a guided tour. And this is hard to explain but I suddenly felt so very much a part of this city and not at all like a tourist or a visitor. I've felt at home here ever since I set foot on these Hamburgian grounds, but I also felt a lot like all of this was not really mine and that I am just borrowing it all. I borrow this room, I borrow these streets, I borrow my place in the class, I borrow this language, I borrow the people I call friends here, I borrow the german habits I develop, etc... Or that most things are more of other people than of me. This all sounds very possessive but that's not quite what I mean. And I will not even try anymore to explain it because I've been sitting here for half an hour now, coming up with six million metaphors to try to explain this, but they dont work.

I just like the way things go and how I can feel more comfortable everyday and even though I have to leave again soon, it feels good to know that this city has really become much more than just a visiting place. It's also a scary thing. But commitment in any kind of way is scary.

On the photos are two beautiful, crazy minds and two beautiful views and neither of them ever fail to make me feel happy. 

371

The tulips have died by now, but tomorrow it's wednesday which means I can get new flowers again (It's always a surprise what they will have every week. On Wednesday they open and then close when they are sold out and open again on wednesday. I like this.)
Staying home, baking, cooking, writing letters, working, and going for a Spaziergang when there is no wetness coming from the sky and the cold doesn't cut through your skin too much.
This beautiful Eindhovian house always makes me feel at home even though it is not really my home.