Thu

Planned for the New europe trip and failed again.

Went to Eindhoven, flight to London in the evening. Arrive around 8, train Stansted-Liverpool St-Waterloo-Motspur Park.

London is expensive.

Home with the cousins. Sleep.

Fri

Walking in town. Met Nick and Clint, party with them. Something clouds. Fish&Chips

Sat

New europe tour. Bridge celebration. Markets. Smoothie. Westminster Abbey. Full English Breakfast.

Harrod's

Sun

Tate. Camden Market. Notting Hill.

Mo

Heathrow, Terminal 5. Couchsurfing with Sandro.

Tue

Slacking around Waterloo station. Reading in a park. Giving bananas to homeless people. Met Richard from Trinidad, spent some time talking. Went to Couch CS meeting. Had a good time there. Got on a strange bus to Stansted and slept in the terminal.

Wed

Fly home. Yay

Wed night> train for amsterdam. met some swedish guys in Gesundbrunne train station, also going to Sensation. Spent some time with them and got a number, did not catch up with them.\
slept on the train and arrived in A'dam in the morning.

Thu
Said bye to the swedish guys and went out, got some water and saw my first sight of amsterdam. went straight to internet cafe, tried to get in touch with Karan and Lauren. Met lauren 1 hour later, walked around for a while, met Karan at 4, went home, unpacked, talked, spent some time.

Fri
sleep, buy food, prepare for sensation. get dressed.
go to sensation.
dance for 7 hours. lots of fun ;)

back in Sat morning around 8. sleep outside on the grass. get back in. meet Karan's friends Nish and Sina. Go to Volendamm by car, eat in a cafe, boat trip to an island with a beach. swim. back home. evening go to Woerden to meet andy and Martin. Go out in woerden with them, I was so tired by this time. Woerden was great, small local festival. More house music and drum/bass.
spent a great evening with the woerden people and stayed for dinner, overnight in their house.

Sun
Go to Utrecht with the Woerden people. Spent the day, walking around. talk. sit in cafe. Met Hein. me very tired most of the day just trying to lose my hang over. back home in the evening.

Mon
see Slumdog millionaire(?) spent most of the day at home.

Tue
went for a beer with Karan in Amsterdam. got some drinks in a chinese bar. Lychee'tini.
went through the red light district for a night walk, sex shops and end up in a coffee shop. great evening ;)

Wed
Got up 'early' for the 1pm new europe tour through amsterdam. missed it. tried to catch up but failed. walked around in town, had a subway, then split up. I fell asleep in a small casino, was told to go out. went out and walked around to find the real casino. explored it. lost 6 eur gambling. want to play poker. poker room closed. get back later. orkar inte. catch up and go home.

recap last week

Monday: arrive in Berlin. Meet christoph. sleep for a few hours.

go to Alexanderplatz in the evening. Meet Ina. Skip CS meeting. go shopping.

go home

Tuesday: Walk in berlin with neweurope and ina, giovanni from CS.

visit PV and talk to some people there

Wednesday: most of the day at home. leave home at 5 for schwarze kanal with Fabio and Michael.

then back to PV and stay the night.

Thursday: Meet Ina and Hilda in Hauptbanhof. Train for Neustrelitz and then car to Läärz for the fusion.

meet some crazy germans. set up tent in camping. explore. body paint & tanzwiese most of the night.

Friday: eat food. dance. sleep. discover trance floor

Sat

Sun

Mon: go back home. eat in macdonalds. leave hilda & Dirk. back to PV. visit another squat shortly. then back and sleep

tue: plan for amsterdam, arrange stuff, just internet most of the day.

Wed:

Souvenirs from the Matrix

I was on a walk in Berlin with a friend.
Yesterday it rained and I bought an umbrella in desperation to meet another friend on time, without getting wet.

Made me think of souvenirs. The first shop I found selling umbrellas was a shop for luxury children's toys. I paid 12€ for mine, and it's really small. It has viking cartoon designs, looks like something from a Disney film, Asterix, something like that.

Today it has been sunny but since I now have an umbrella and I wouldn't want to end up doing the same thing again (walking in the rain is not an option), I brought my umbrella today, thinking "you never know..."

Why do we buy souvenirs?

In French, the verb souvenir means to remember. It can also be a noun, like it is used in English and Swedish. So a souvenir is supposed to be a memory, to make you remember something.

Why are there souvenir shops? So that someone can make money selling cheap mass-produced items of low cost, for a high price, to tourists that cannot come up with anything better?

The Matrix comes to mind.
I don't want mass-produced memories. I want to have my own. Make my own.

Needless to say, I dislike souvenir shops.

I obviously paid more than I had to, to get an umbrella.
I also got an immediate solution to my problem: rain, and I also got a good souvenir. Something I actually bought because I had use for it, and it makes for a much better memory than any crappy item I could have found in a so-called souvenir shop. The rain stopped after about 5 minutes.

Lesson learned: next time I'm travelling, I will bring a cheap and small umbrella from home.
Thanks to: Pia & Deborah for taking English classes very seriously.