Ninyn

Is it worth it?

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Is it worth it to rarely be able to see or talk to my friends?

There are things like Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp, but everyone knows that this has nothing on the true reality of sitting down and having a heartfelt conversation. To just let the words flow and let time pass by. To sit somewhere together and enjoy the moment you're sharing.

A 2D picture of someones face with a 1 second delay in your conversations doesn't make up for it. Not in the long run. It works for a little while, but you start missing the little things. Hearing someone giggle under their breath. Or the way someone can give you a half-look which says more than any words in the world could.

Is it worth it to no longer be able to have weekly dinners with my father? To laugh about lifes' small silly things, to try new recipes and cook together. To share our love for music, putting on a vinyl record while we share our thoughts over music.

Is it worth it to only hear my grandma's voice over the phone? My grandma who has been there so often for me. Now I'm not there for her because I decided to go and chase off after some sort of selfish goal?

Is it worth it to have a boyfriend who I can only see once every two months?

People mock long-distance relationships or think negatively of it. To be fair, I don't think they're wrong. It's always good to stay hopeful, to at least try. We've been doing long distance now for 8 months. We've been long distance longer than we've actually been together. The first 2 months were hard, but I grew into it in a way. Now after 8 months, I feel a weird fear. I'm getting better with being alone, I've learned to not miss as hard anymore. But it scares me.

I'm starting to get annoyed with having to 'plan time' to be together. I just want to be. I want to be with him. I want to be with my friends. I want to be with my family. I want to be able to do these things without having to schedule months ahead and checking if I can get time off or if all our our schedules fit together. I just want to be.

Is my goal to be a game designer so much more important than being able to spend time with the people I love?

Then again, what else would I do? Go back home?

My head is full!

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Stinkende Dozen: Part 4

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Monday, February 13:

I realised that last entry I forgot to mention a very crucial moment of our story, in particular the moment of arriving at Avesta. Simply said, it needs to be in here. So we're gonna skip back a day. My apologies!

Sunday, February 12:

We arrived in Avesta at around ten in the evening. By then we were both pretty hazy since we'd been driving for at least 4 hours at this point. We stopped in front of a farm, what would be our place to stay for the night. Already it felt magical and out of the ordinary.

Lars-Erik greeted us, the first meeting was already a sign of good things to happen! We were guided to our 'hippie-hut', a little cabin right next to the frozen river. From the outside, it might've been passed along for any ordinary hut.

We entered the hut and instantly fell in love. There were little faerie lights along the bed, there were little statues and keepsakes from places where Lars-Erik and his wife had travelled, the doors had gorgeous patterned blankets in front of them to keep out the cold. We were guided into the neighbouring room, which was even better. It had a fireplace, an old fashioned brick oven, a cute little stove which you had to sit next to be able to properly use it. It had everything you needed to forget all the things around you in this life.

After we moved our luggage from the car into the room, we realised we weren't quite ready to go to bed just yet. The stove was used to heat up yet another filling meal of ravioli and canned beans. We made ourselves a cup of tea, looked around the room, and realised how weird it must've looked from the outside to see two youngsters like us acting like two old grannies.

The next part will most certainly prove that we are in fact, not old grannies and definitely from this generation.

Building a fire - how did you do that again?

We were cold. There was a fireplace. There was wood. We were also very tired and not in our clearest mindsets anymore at this point.

Deciding I was more in the mood to watch, I sat myself down on the sofa with the GoPro and recorded everything. It took us 8 minutes to figure out how to build a fire. WE WOULD NEVER SURVIVE IN THE WILD!

First off, we built a little tipi shape of the wood. We used around 4 or 5 matches to get the wood to catch fire but of course nothing happened. We even at one point put a candle underneath the wood, hoping it would catch fire. After 8 minutes, a light shone in our heads that told us: 'USE PAPER, FOR GODS SAKE!'. And so, our fire started.

Monday, February 13:

Back to Monday! Or, onwards to Monday?

We decided to set our alarms early so we could enjoy the sunrise, which was absolutely gorgeous. The way the sun reflected on the frozen river is something I'll always remember.

There was lots to be done today, so we got dressed, had breakfast in our lovely hut while watching the river outside, and I had to endure more of Anthea's farts (at some point I learned how to counterattack, no worries).

We were allowed into the farm house to use the restroom and freshen up and such, but I was quickly distracted by the presence of two furry felines. Having to miss my own two cats meant these two would suit as a good substitute! It was just so incredibly nice to sit down on the floor, having staring contests, petting battles, and well, cat cuddles. There's not a lot in life that's better than cat cuddles.

There was a lot to explore on the farm, but first we decided to go and check out the frozen river! I've ice skated before in the Netherlands, but it's not comparable to what I've experienced here in Sweden.

The river was massive, and every so often there would be this odd (and slightly alarming?) sound from underneath the ice. As if there were air bubbles moving underneath it. On the bank of the river there were two kicksleds (sparkstötting?) that we could use. I think we had so much fun sledding over the ice that I kind of forgot to take pictures, so here's a picture before I actually went on the ice. (There are GoPro videos though, so stay tuned!)

Later on in the day, we met with Lars-Erik and he informed us that his friend, Mats, was about to get more wood from the forest and if we wanted we could tag a long with him! It was such an awesome experience, we rode along on the wagon, cuddled his horse, and shared stories. I think Anthea now has a new horse that she's in love with. ;)

Afterwards, Lars-Erik invited us over to his tree house. I mean, how cool is this? We climbed up and were simply stunned. Lars-Erik had been designing and building this himself, and built the house in such a way that it would damage the trees as little as possible. The trees grew through the ceiling and windows. It was a lovely sight.

He told us about his wife, about his farm, about the reasons why and how he runs his farm the way he does. Later, we went for a walk over the farm where we were introduced to all the animals. By now, it was time for Lars-Erik to continue with his work, and for us to move on to our next destination.

I'm very thankful for this day.

And for no good reason at all, have a nice song!

Liefs, x.

Stinkende Dozen: Part 3

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Sunday, February 12:

We woke up in Motala, and decided it was time for breakfast. Breakfast in our case was dry crackers with peanut butter (which really isn't so bad!) - what happened next though was an absolute blessing.

We were offered some chocolate pudding.

Only now that I'm writing this I realise it was only three days of eating crackers and scooping spoons of cold ravioli. But man, that chocolate pudding was AMAZING. Never in my life have I said yes so fast to the offer of chocolate pudding. Or to any food really.

Afterwards we started gathering our stuff and packed for the upcoming trip. Via AirBnB we managed to find this amazing place often referred to as the 'Hippie Hut'. We instantly fell in love with the place and the owners, and decided for one night we wouldn't care about the budget we had set ourselves.

On our way to Avesta we stopped by a few different places that looked interesting, one being Vadstena Castle. It had an incredibly interesting sign next to it which had us giggling quite a bit. We deemed it worthy to be taken a photo of.

The place was enormous. Seeing buildings like this always makes my imagination run wild. Thinking of the people that lived here, what people did on a daily basis. How the world has changed in such an -equally long and short time span.

Here's a tiny Anthea to illustrate how huge the castle really was.

After that we spent some time walking over the frozen lake. The cool thing about this lake was that the waves of the water were actually frozen in place. It gave a lovely effect!

At one point we found the Alvastra Monastery. Another place that just sends my imagination on a wild trip. At one point I couldn't see Anthea anymore and saw her up on a wall. I decided to follow...

When it comes to climbing, I'm kind of a coward. I'm terrified of heights. After some pushing and encouraging though, I'll do it. But I won't really enjoy it. (Unless it's a bungee jump in Scotland, but that mostly has to do with the fact of it being in Scotland)

So Anthea, thank you. HONESTLY! We climbed up on one of the walls of the cloister ruins and my body just completely paralyzed. I couldn't move. But Anthea helped me get back off the wall, and it made me feel much calmer. Of course she did have to sneak a photo in there which perfectly portrays the contrast between 'I might look like I'm enjoying this, but I'm actually dying on the inside.'

I felt like I was up way higher than I actually was. The nasty thing about fear of heights is that it feels like everything is coming towards you. As if you're already falling while you're actually just completely fine, just higher up than you'd normally be.

Since the Alvastra Ruins were directly next to Vättern we decided to stop there as well and spend -some time by the water. I don't really have words for it, it was just beautiful...

Next up is Avesta, which is probably one of the best days I've ever had in my life!

Stinkende Dozen: Part 2

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Saturday, February 11:

The hostel gave us a great night of sleep after those 45 minutes of cold horror in the back of the car. We listened to some reggae, ate some crackers with CALVÉ PINDAKAAS(!!!!), planned our route for the coming day, and intended to find a shop that sells SD cards in Stockholm. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

First thing that greeted us in the morning was a beautiful piece of yellow paper, stuck under our windscreen wiper, and we felt our moods drop. Ah well, worries for later we decided.

Time to find a hardware shop! Store number one, didn't have any, pointed us to the next store which should be 2 blocks from here. Store number two, nowhere to be found. Store number three found with navigation, closed. Our polite apologies from the previous day turned into cursing and swearing (good laughs were had afterwards though!)

After repeatedly driving in circles, accidentally driving into the wrong way of a tunnel being greeted by a bus and followed by another driver who didn't know any better, causing a roadblock, and basically being tired of Stockholm, we agreed to do things differently. We drove around 20 kilometers to find a Mediamarkt OUTSIDE of Stockholm, where after three hours we FINALLY found an SD card so we could actually use our GoPro camera.

It was now time to get to our next destination!

So, hey, Anthea. What is this place actually called that we're going to? Matola? Matala? Malota? Oh wait.. It was Motala... or was it? At one point we just decided to settle for Hakuna Malota because well, it refers to one of the best cheer-up songs out there and it has a great Dutch pun. Apparently Motala is also very popular with the Dutchies for some kind of big cycle event, which we learned thanks to our wonderful AirBNB hosts that night!

During our drive towards Motala, our eyes spotted three Dutch cars. Three very rally-looking Dutch cars. We wanted to somehow, show that we were Dutch as well! In a rush, I grabbed my ING bank card in the shade of oh-so-Dutch-Orange and smacked it against the window as we passed them. After driving in the same direction for a while, we all stopped off at a gas station, had a cup of coffee and a chat and we learned about the 'Carbage Run'. (That same night I learned that my brothers old BMW is now also a Carbage Run rally car!)

On our way to Motala we decided to stop by at Stendörren, which according to the navigation was really close to the Baltic Sea. However, due to our planning we coudn't actually get to the water because it was a 45 minute hike from the parking lot. Instead we decided to settle for 15 minutes of climbing trees, jumping rocks and taking some cheesy photos of ourselves before getting back in the car to be in Motala on time.

In Motala, we had a lovely stay with Christian and Ivan. They were so generous, kind, funny and social! We talked about the city, about culture differences, about music. I had one of my favourite beers (Becks, word up!). After that it was time to relax and get ready for the next day.

To be continued...

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Ninyn

Is it worth it?

My head is full!

Stinkende Dozen: Part 4

Monday, February 13:

Sunday, February 12:

Building a fire - how did you do that again?

Monday, February 13:

Stinkende Dozen: Part 3

Sunday, February 12:

Stinkende Dozen: Part 2

Saturday, February 11:

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