413

Never under-estimate the tiniest of things.
I'd like to have a coat with a hundred pockets, all filled with little treasures. I'd roam the streets all day and sell my treasures to hurried strangers. This song is fitting: click.

409

A picture of working outside and a picture of working inside. By now the flowers have completely lost all life and colour and so has the field outside. The sky is grey. It's getting colder and I'm getting grumpy. Hiding with blankets, tea, books and temporary records. China can regulate the weather. What if we just make 12 zones in this world and there is a different climate in every zone every month. Then we let the people who want to have all the climates, live on the upper part of the world in whatever zone they want and then we can make the underside of the world into a nomadic place where everyone will move to another zone every month, so that they can keep in their favourite climate. Kind of like how some people celebrate newyears a lot of times because they fly from time-zone to time-zone.
I would avoid the grey climate and maybe visit it once every other year for a small week of depression after too much nice weather.

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.

390

The blog is a bit silent, and I am not taking so much pictures anymore. But life is good and exciting. Healthy living and enjoying the sun, good books, good food, good people, good chairs. I still get sad, but it ain't like before. (Jonathan, what's happening?)

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

366

This weekend, there was a tiny Dutch adventure full of love, and although there was some sadness in my heart while the train drove me back to Hamburg (leaving friends behind again is never so much fun), the beautiful harbour-view made it all good again.

Meeres Stille, Goethe
Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser,
ohne Regung ruht das Meer,
und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer
glatte Flächen ringsumher.
Keine Luft von keiner Seite!
Todesstille fürchterlich!
In der ungeheuren Weite
reget keine Welle sich.

365

Erinnerung von Goethe

Willst du immer weiter schweifen?

Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah. 

Lerne nur das Glück ergreifen,

denn das Glück ist immer da.     

Some wise words from our glowing friend Goethe. It is said that Germans like to set things on fire. I must say it does not surprise me much. I like having fires as well in these cold days. Fake fires on the monitor and always some candles. The only problem is that I have encountered many bugsuicides these days. The ladybugs play around my desk for a night and then let themselves fall in the candle. They always seem to do it right after I started caring for them..

Today is Blue Monday, which is said to be the most depressing day of the year. I hope you dont really feel depressed and I'm trying not to burn too many candles today incase the ladybugs feel particulary suicidal today.
What is kind of funny is that it is blue monday and as I've been kindly told, this blogpost is some kind of birthdaypost because it is number 365 (yeah the only connection here is the word blue so it is not really funny, but still).

Now in other news. WE HAVE A WINNER! For the give-away. First of all thank you all so much for the kind words and interest. Because I was so happy about this, I decided to pick two other winners who will receive some kind of postcard - minipackage as well (like a secondprize of sorts).

So I made a video which you can see here so you see I did it honestly and listen to Bob Dylan.

The winner is.....
Phara! (who(s blog) I really like!)

And the other two are Saara and Molly!
I will email you all for adresses and stuff and then you can expect some magic in your mailboxes soon.

For the others; I am always happy to have new penpal-packagefriends, so...........

This was a lot of talking. Probably you only read this last sentence or nothing at all, so it was kind of like talking to myself. In any other condition one would say I am crazy, but the internet makes weird things always seem normal. 

361

so glad to be back home. Monkeys in the bathroomwindow and ladybug-friends on my desk.

359

Oh Christmasholidays. You know. Staying in bed forever, making cards and books, drinking coffee, eating cookies, dreaming of other places, watching documentaries, listening to top2000.. And of course; seeing friends and family for more coffee and food!
How are you holidays? 

355

Cozy flatdays, but I miss my cuddlecave. When will it be proper summer again?

353

Bruce Neumann, coloured pencil drawings & birthday-outfit made by my mum!

352

The sweetest birthday-morning (photo taken by flatmate Paul), stalking on Goethe and the Autumn windowview. From the inside looking out because the sun may shine, but the temperature is mostly too low for this cat. 

349

Being (at) home in Hamburg. Neatly organized breakfast, amateur haircuts, importing Dutch traditions for German boys. And wooden floors! (one of my favourite things in this house. perfect for bedroomdancing)

Maybe some Hamburgian would like to adopt me as their cat so I can stay in this city forever. Please?