Today, I departed Nice and started my solo trip to Scandinavia with no concrete plan and a hungry stomach.

My first stop was Stockholm, Sweden.

As soon as I landed, I realized they don’t use the Euro (it’s okay, I have my credit card), and I couldn’t understand a single thing in Swedish. Thanks to the amazing Swedish education system, though, everyone could understand everything that I was saying. Some people even had better English than me.

I boarded the Arlanda Express, which takes you from the airport to downtown in around twenty minutes — incredibly cheap and efficient. I fell in love immediately with high taxes and amazing public transport. Throughout the entire duration of the train ride, I read The Secret History by Donna Tart (which I later found out was based on a member of my friend’s family). It was very good: her descriptive writing pulls you into the semi-fictional dark academia world.

Anyway, the train stopped in Stockholm, and I citywalked to my hotel. It was a twenty-minute stroll, and once I left the immediate proximity of the station, I probably seemed a little eccentric to the Stockholm-ers as I was pulling my little suitcase and carrying my heavy bag over the gentle hills of metropolitan Sweden — but I did not care.

I arrived at my hotel and checked in with relative ease. The design was incredibly Scandinavian, and I had a very good time. Around this time, I realized I should probably go out and enjoy Stockholm, so I went on a walk.

The walk commenced at this famous garden thing near my hotel, called the Kungstradgarden. While I was going through the garden, some random guy approached me and said something in Swedish or some other language, but I couldn’t understand him, so I said “Huh” in a rather loud and belligerent way. I walked away confused.

As I was strolling by the ocean, feeling the summer breeze, I see the famous Gamla Stan (Old Town), with the palace and many Korean tourist aunties (love them). The palace looked grandiose. I walked in and saw a ticket booth. This shy Swedish guy was sitting there. Some other people asked if they required tickets, the guy said yes, but the others just walked in. I asked if they required tickets, and the guy said yes, and I didn’t want to walk in so I said, “Oh! Okay,” and left. We were very confused. I walked around the cute buildings in Gamla Stan and bought some postcards.

IKEA. I suddenly wanted to go to Ikea (similar to a when in Rome moment). I immediately Googled the closest Ikea. Seeing it was a five-minute walk from my hotel, I immediately started my journey there. On the walk, a Swedish couple was making Biden and Trump jokes, which kind of put a smile on my face. Anyway, I got to Ikea and was a bit lost. It was big, and there were a lot of people. I was rather intimidated, but I survived.

After Ikea, I did the stupid thing of deciding that I wanted to sit in Starbucks for a little bit. I didn’t want a big drink though, so I decided, why not ask for milk? Unfortunately, Swedish people don’t order steamed milk at Starbucks, so the barista had a rather confused look on her face. However, with my “charm,” I got milk. It tasted regular, but I got to sit and respond to some emails without declaring bankruptcy via frappuccino. After I exited Starbucks, I saw a giant American flag. It was a Brandy Melville. I soon discovered through a friend that Brandy Melville was Italian, which put some more confusion on my face.

It was around 5:30 or 6 pm, so I decided to slowly stroll back to my hotel and get ready for my dinner reservation at 7.

This is the first part of my travel journal, more coming soon!

Guys I find it so poetic that when you do yoga and spin, the spin part is you riding on a bike indoors and that's literally the opposite of the purpose of the bikes idk

She is a street artist.

103 is her home, but she spends more time at work.

She considers art her job.

She rents a small windowless room in Brooklyn.

She creates and sells her art there,

She daydreams about painting the best murals there.

She is at the bottom of the artist food chain.

She has no art degree — school was too expensive.

She has no connections — no fancy collectives to follow.

She has no concept of time - over two minutes, and the cops arrive.

All she has is her art.

All she needs is her art.

She thinks she is a real street artist. No tarnish —

Real paint.

“You stole sh*t from my mother’s house, this relationship is over,” he called his friend.

He is a young man living in apartment 102 who discovered two hours ago that his mother’s house was broken into by his friend. Her jewelry went missing, as well as 1000 dollars tucked away in her safe. The 1000 dollars were kept in case of medical emergencies.

“I don’t wanna hear you talk abt it.”

“I WAS HIGH.”

“Next time you approach my family, I’m calling the cops.”

“* ”

Hw hung up the phone.

He buried his head into his hands, not knowing why his friend, now ex-friend, would steal from his mother. His friend had a proper job and always dressed decently. The cigarettes he smoked were even the nice white people type of stuff.

“Why is this happening to me?” he thought to himself.

Adulthood hasn’t been treating him well; he wishes he could return to living at his mama’s house.

He started to dial 9-1-7 5-4-2-6… Then, he stopped, turned away, and slammed his phone onto the stupid sidewalk.

Apartment 101

In the apartment lives a middle-aged woman who loves to write. She has been a tenant at the building for as long as she and I can remember.

Sitting at her dining table, tightly squeezed into her small and cluttered kitchen, she described to me the benefits of keeping a neatly organized diary.

When she was a child, she used to have an old notebook with torn pages that she would often scribble in with her fluctuating but occasionally decent handwriting. She wrote about school, love, family, and dreams.

Ever since she grew up and traveled to college, she has lost her diary.

I think she’s still sad even until this day. Frankly, she put so much time and effort into that small book. She doesn’t deserve the pain associated with lost memory.

Today, an incredibly brilliant young man asked me what childhood is.

I couldn’t provide an adequate answer on the spot, but after some thought, I think childhood refers to the ages before realizing that life has so much more to offer than love. There’s pain in life, there’s suffering.

There are people who are barely able to put food on the tables and pay rent.
There are people working from sunrise to sunset, earning so little money that it is almost illegal.

I have just now realized,

Documenting childhood is so important because living with pain is inherently miserable, and childhood provides a bandaid to the wound, some sugar in that bitter and awful-tasting coffee called real life.

This realization may have come too late,

Or maybe not – we’ll see