Another 4 hours of work and pain and it’s almost finished – my second tattoo. Done by Robekkah at Tatau Obscur who was incredibly excited to get the chance to “tattoo the universe”. My very own universe and a reminder, how small we are and what stupid things we worry about. I absolutely love it.
Exactly one year ago we moved into our new flat. When the photo above was taken, we had just moved in, a 4th floor Altbau apartment in Neukölln with oxblood floors and high ceilings. We spent two days painting the whole apartment, putting in a floor in the hall and getting all the necessary kitchen equipment together. We didn’t have a lot of furniture but we held loud and messy house parties. I hadn’t lived with people before at that point, when I moved out in a hurry at the age of 17 I felt like living on my own, I needed my own space, be responsible for myself and prove to myself that I can do it. Until I needed a change, as always.
I seriously can’t believe it’s been a whole year.
I’m at home making healthy burgers and silly animations.
Not finished yet, of course there’s gonna be something inside the frame. But I’m in love with it already – and it looks ten million times better in real life anyway. Done by the amazingly talented Robekkah at Tatau Obscur.
Today I finally got to see the first sketch of my new tattoo. I went through the whole city to finally have a look at it, walked through the rain and spent way too long on touristy double decker buses. But it was worth it. My new tattoo is big, it’s colourful and I’m pretty excited since my first appointment is on Monday already and even though I waited at least two months for it all feels a bit surreal, still. As I mentioned before, it’s not really a big deal for me and I love big changes but I guess getting tattoed will forever be a little adventure. I won’t reveal any details until it’s done, only that it will be on the outside of my forearm and, I guess, pretty visible. I can’t wait.
In other news, I’m going to see Primal Scream this weekend at Berlin Festival, after missing out on pretty much the entire festival summer because I just couldn’t be bothered. But I can’t even remember the last time I went to a proper gig, let alone saw a good band. I hope this isn’t me getting old. But I’m gonna give it a go again this weekend, at least I will have something to do.
Right now I’m spending a lot of time thinking about where to go next. I’ve been living in Berlin for about a year and a half now, which is the longest I have ever spent in one place since moving out for the first time. I’m not saying I don’t like this place anymore – Berlin is vibrant, exciting and ridiculously cheap and I have everything here – but I get bored pretty easily and it drives me crazy being stuck in one place for too long. The problem with Berlin or well, even Germany, is that I know it. Not in a way that I’ve been everywhere and seen everything, more in a general kind of way. I know what life is about, I know the culture – clearly, since I grew up with it – I know how to get by and how to act in pretty much every social situation. I know how things work and I know how to get what I want. And it bores me.
For a long time I kept postponing my travel and moving plans for some time in the future. I wanted to get better first, feel good, live the life I wanted and then do everything else, move, start all over again. But I seem to have given up on waiting for that mysterious time to come, I need to keep going somehow. Living in Berlin for so “long” has spoiled me, I can have a fairly good life here without too much effort but that’s also what bores me so much about it. I am fascinated by the big cities where having no money is actually a challenge. I want to lower my living standards which is something most people don’t understand since it’s just too natural to always want more more more but it’s absolutely essential to me. I want less, on a material level at least.
I want the bare minimum, I just want to survive, just survive and get rid of everything else. I don’t want my life to be clogged up with nonsense. No fucking world trip, no backpacking, no holidays. I want to live. Realising that a new location won’t change a thing about me made me stay but why wouldn’t it just as well let me go? After all, the logical consequence is, it really doesn’t matter where I am.
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I‘m ill and I have been for about two days so I’m staying in my bed which I only leave for the bathroom and food. I’m watching silly TV shows and YouTube clips, playing that zombie game on Google+ and googling random things, like photos of Christina Applegate as Kelly Bundy or “Why do human beings grow armpit hair?”. While I usually love staying inside and in my bed, it becomes really annoying if I have to. I’m lazy but not that lazy, I’m bored to death and I need something to do.
So today I will work some more on my room and carry over the big wardrobe from the other room into mine and paint it white. Yes! I will hopefully be able to fit all my stuff in it which means I can get rid of all other pieces of furniture (except for my bed, obviously, and the shopping trolley which doesn’t really count as furniture anyway, does it?). I’m pretty minimalistic about my room, I don’t like stuff and recently I’ve developed a slight aversion to furniture. So everything needs to go. And this is today’s soundtrack:
I‘ve been thinking a lot about why I never manage to really dedicate myself to this blog, even though I really love it and have so many ideas for it. I can spend hours reading my favourite blogs, or re-reading them, almost like a book, and of course the ones that I’m most fascinated by are the honest ones, the ones that are about daily life – as trivial as it may be – and the ones that overshare because I’m just as voyeuristic as everyone else. Oversharing has become such a big part of our digital world and I sometimes do wish I could be as brutally honest about my life, share everything that happens to me, all my thoughts, without worrying about the slightest thing, running the risk of being called weird or dramatic, who cares. Done to the right extend it would be some of the best therapy you could ever imagine. But let’s face it, I’m a big fucking hypocrite and I don’t kiss and tell. It’s just not meant to be.
So far I’ve been vain enough to just post about the more or less exciting things. I find it interesting to receive messages like “Wow, you have such a fun and exciting life!” when in reality, I don’t. And I don’t write about it either, there’s no sex, there’s no drugs, just the occasional silly joke about night life. And well, of course I leave out the I-hate-people-so-I’m-sitting-at-home-alone-eating-pasta or I-haven’t-washed-my-hair-in-six-days-and-can’t-be-bothered-leaving-the-house posts. But fuck vanity, seriously, at the moment I just want things to be real.
Right now my thoughts are somewhere between making big plans for the rest of my life and eventually retiring because I feel as if I’d betray myself by going out and “having fun” just yet and I hate myself for it. It’s that feeling I’ve been carrying around with me since forever, seeing my current life as a state of preparation for something I don’t know yet, a very morbid optimism which I thought was quite charming at first but eventually turned out to keep me from doing anything. And slowly but surely I realise that this is probably my subconscious mind tricking my into justifying my terrible, lazy, unhealthy and antisocial behaviour to myself: I’m just preparing. I’m gonna be a better person. Someday.
London in July. From looking at the photos it might seem like a massive food orgy but it wasn’t, really. I had a pretty fun and relaxing time, from a nice day-trip to Cambridge to nights out in the park, Apparat live, Amy Winehouse memorial drinks at The Hawley Arms after the news broke, a music performance in a squattet church right in the city centre, a car park in the South with the best view over the city and cans and cans of cider.
I’m not really in the mood for writing a lot but here’s another roll of film. I have another one from London which I’m gonna get developed soon and I might write a small round-up as well. But anway, here’s some more Berlin, Bread & Butter, Transgenialer CSD, the magazine’s 9th birthday party and more.
My friend Paul made this amazing video about his time in Berlin. I’m gonna miss him! That’s always been the sad part of this city, people are coming over all the time from all over the world but of course they’re all leaving again at some point. Anyway, check out his views of Berlin!
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This is probably the most random mixtape I ever put together but it’s one of my favourites so far. Inspired by long nights, escaping the summer, rainy days and lots of random thoughts. I’m having the whole month of July off which gives me time for some thinking, getting important things done, reading, tidying up the place & just sleeping. I’m exhausted and I have no idea why, I feel like packing my bags again and running away – not travelling in a discovering-new-places kinda way, just going away for a while. Luckily I’m off to London on Wednesday to escape the big city for an even bigger one.
Some more photos from days in and nights out, scanned in a hurry within five minutes. I have to admit this is the first time I’m finally more or less taking part in that whole Fashion Week circus or well, hang out and go to a few parties. I’m still no fashion person but I like big happenings and free drinks so oh well, let’s see how that goes!
So what have I been up to? Let’s see. Apart from the usual everyday life and work in the print media world (I do admit it must sound boring to hear about work all the time but it’s a part of my life, not at all in a bad way) and the usual night life which you just can’t escape, I once again decided my life needs more than this. I’m not ungrateful, I’m just young, with a short attention span, always lazy, always bored, always looking for something bigger, better, brighter.
And, as always, I cleared out my room. I get my biggest pleasure from throwing things away, it’s that little moment when you realise that you actually don’t need them and that you can let go, followed by a big relief when they finally drown in the bin bag. I got rid of half of my life that way and it was a lot less dramatic than it sounds. I remember a teacher of mine once saying the biggest regret of her life was throwing away all of her old diaries when she started a new chapter of her life and it made me wonder whether I’ll ever regret not really keeping or collecting anything. I own one box of personal memorabilia which mainly consist of festival passes, flyers I designed and signed gig tickets from 2005 – but I guess the true reason I still have them is that I can’t really be bothered looking through them because I know it will give me a weird feeling. For whatever reason.
I’m too lazy to write a diary. People say it helps them deal with stuff but I can’t be bothered. I have this, a blog, it’s one hundred percent public and that’s the thrill. Sometimes I love going through old entries, looking at the photos, the title song quote, the song, and remembering what that time felt like (which is something that only works for me, sorry about that, since I never report my days in all detail). It’s funny how things change. Last summer I had more energy and I was out and about a lot, haunted by the feeling I’m going to miss out on something if I go home. Rather pass out on the floor in someones house than go home. Rather stay up forever than go home. Which was fine. I wish I had kept some more of that but reality has caught up with me it seems and it’s not like I feel a lot wiser today but I do know that fun comes and goes and some time on my own and a good night’s sleep can be worth a lot more. Now it’s summer again and it feels like it’s all repeating, just differently.
Yesterday we went on a beer bike. You know, these driving bars, usually occupied by a bunch or drunk foreign tourists, listening to really bad Schlager, singing, shouting, bawling and well, drinking beer. We only did it for work (of course!) but trust me, it’s fun and something you usually won’t get to do in your boring twenty-something Berlin hipster life. People and the usual crowd of Mitte tourists will stare, wave, take out their cameras and take pictures, secretly thinking How low can you go? and even more secretly wishing they were on the bike with you having a blast.
Photos by Erica
Some older photos off my disposable camera that I forgot in a club a while ago from our trip to Teufelsberg, the beautiful sunset over Berlin, pre-parties in flats, Mia’s leaving barbeque and more days out in the park.
