Belgium

What better way to wake up from the Copenhagen-Cologne night train than with a rousing song from Herr Billy?!

Billy Says:

I. Squats

When I wrote to wendy about visiting her, she welcomed me and said, "i´m not doing so well, i´m kinda on the edge of a nervous breakdown." Libby and I arrived just a after a series of bad news had showed up in her life. Numerous close friends are facing charges, squatter friends in louven have already been evicted (not to mention, Ungdomshuset, a well-known and long-standing squat in copenhagen being evicted, despite rioting in response, and kopi, a famous berlin squat facing pressure to close) and wendy´ squat has been served eviction notice by a squad of dozens of cops, guns drawn, at 5am.

Wendy and her friends squatted an old church in antwerpen some years back because the surrounding neighborhood was facing demolition, to be replaced by an office complex. They set a policy of accepting requests for housing from anyone without papers. A number of their housemates steal on a regular basis, one of many reasons the squat drew police repression (all of these sans papiers folks were arrested). The neighbors that had once beens upportive of the squat now say, "did you know you were living with thieves?" in disgust, and are supportive of eviction. When I told Wendy that it took courage to take such a stand as to house undocumented immigrants, she shrugged it off and said, "if you don´t give people papers, what do you expect them to do, if not steal?"

2. Belgians and Africans

All of the neighborhoods i´ve gone to with wendy - are - to my eyes - virtually totally descendants of Africa. I put my foot in my mouth multiple times with comments like, "I don´t see any Belgians." Wendy then reminds me that these communities were established three generations ago in the post-war de-colonization times, when belgium was strapped for labor and encouraged workers to come in huge numbers. She´s right, they´re Belgians now. But still, the mural in the park (in Brussels) talks about fighting to end ghettos, the loss of culture experienced by young people in the neighborhood who feel like "exiles." So, what exactly is happening? It can´t be as simple as Wendy´s "Europe isn´t just White, Billy, you have to stop thinking that." I get that Brussels isn´t Morrocco and that no matter how many moroccan bakeries, fruit stands, mosques and radios fill the streets, it´s still a neighborhood in a major European city. But with so much control of local businesses in "African" hands, it doesn´t exactly remind me of an American ghettto, either. In other words, the "culture" of the neighborhood feels much more "distinctly" African - or even just to say, intact - than an all-Black neighborhood in the states.

One thing I am used to: feeling out of place.

As we (a group of six or so White anarchists) walked through the streets looking for potential buildings to squat, a man yelled out his car window: "it´s over there, on the right. What you´re looking for, it´s on the right." As in, "I don´t know who you are or why you´re here, but i can tell that you are lost."

3. Responses to my book

I sent Wendy a package of ten of my books before visiting. She had read it, as had her close friend Laurent whom I´ve met before and really respect and admire. Both of them were delightfully interested in talking about the book and the thoughts that arose for them from reading it. Wendy said that found it unusually easy to read, given that it is all non-fiction, and finished it in just a few days. The story-telling structure of the book made it much more readable for her. Both Wendy and Laurent spoke about how the chapter on the transportation of Irish people to the New World and their transition to Whites helped contribute to conversations that her friends have been having about the nature of slavery and race. They also both commented about how they originally struggled with the sections of the book that focus on Frederick Douglass High School, and education struggles generally. At first they weren´t sure that the projects were worthwhile, or radical. But they found that by the end of the book they felt much clearer on why I find these projects important, and could feel comfortable supporting such struggles. Laurent explained that part of his resistance to taking the discussion about education seriously is that the American school system treats its underclass students worse than lower class students get educated in Belgium, or Europe. In Belgium, a much higher standard (or "floor" as Bob Moses says) has been set.

All in all, I was very grateful and encouraged by Wendy and Laurent´s thoughtful response. I hope that others, who at first are only interested in schooling and education issues read my book and then become interested in the historical/political ideas, as well.

4. Care and Love

I arrived at Wendy´s house having been sick for a full week. By the time I got to Brussels, the sinus infection had moved to my ears and was causing me great pain and lack of hearing. She immediately said, "Well, what will you do about this?" and we set about figuring out what i might be able to do. We discussed different "natural", herbal options, and also found out about cheap clinics that might prescribe me antibiotics. Then we went to the pharmacist and he insisted that i needed antibiotics. Wendy then skillfully persuaded him to sell us the medicine without a doctor´s prescription. Through it all, Wendy was so caring and tender, and it turns out that antiobiotics were really vital because the pain became so severe in my first night in Brussels that I am now confident I´d have shattered my ear drums without medication.

While I was in Belgium, I got another glimpse of what I consider the really special love between Wendy and Laurent. As it is a particularly anarchist love, based on a mutual rejection of the current society and all of the definitions of happiness currently available, they probably won´t appreciate me going to lengths to describe their love. So, I won´t. But, I promise, it´s a beautiful thing.

Late night card games at the squat-ish collective house (with 5-15?! residents) in Brussels

Wendy and Billy play in the streets of Belgium

Quiet Resistance in the Hills of Värmland

Billy Says:

Tucked in the "wilderness" of Sweden, we stumbled upon a beautiful piece of of the history of anti-apartheid struggle. We first met Andrew,a young father about my age, who had his back broken by Carribinieri in Genova, 2001 and now tries to live out a peaceful life with his partner and kids. Andrew, Malin, Eliann (5) and Lumi (3 mos.) live on Andrew´s mother´s land, in the hilss of southern Värmland, along an 8km lake. It´s a space with no indoor toilet, running or hot water, a well and a wood stove, and the last house to receive electricity from a string of poles running a few kilometres back to town. Andrew´s grandparents bought the land back in the 40s, and though it has mostly been used as a summer home, Andrew and Malin live there year round, and Andrew´s Mother Elsa will soon retire on the land. But the route to this small patch of land (where the sun doesn´t rise above the hills for 10 weeks of the winter) is windy and incredible.

Andrew´s father, Boudewijn Wegerif, was a Dutch man raised in South Africa. He met Elsa on a plane from London in 1964, after spending time helping to bring about the South Africa Defense & Aid Fund in London, roughly the first western anti-apartheid organization (it sprung up in response to Sharpeville). The two decided to get married, and spent seven years together as white, Christan, pacifist dissenters to the apartheid regime. As Elsa says, "Apartheid laws seemed like they were impossible to get around, but if you wanted to - and were willing to be under surveillance by the special branch (many people were watched, but not in trouble) - there were ways around them all... We made no secret of the fact that we weren´t interested in forwarding apartheid." In addition to trying to live out a multi-racial lifestyle, they also participated in some explicit projects against the system, such as helping a group of Swaziland textile producers, inter-racial "sensitivity" gatherings, and the printing and distributing of 1,200 LPs of Martin Luther King´s "Message to the Churches" (which a South African friend had heard in person in the states and recorded).

They felt like they weren´t ever doing enough, despite the surveillance, detention, torture and exiling of their friends (and themselves). Elsa spoke about how, going back to South Africa, she realized how sad she´been. "In those conditions, you have to be strong, you have to give the finger to the wire-taps and stay angry, but you never get time to notice how sad the whole thing is," she said, in describing a new constitutional court and memorial made in the ruins of an old jail for political prisoners.

In 1971, the South African government simply refused to allow them to keep living there. First they went to London, and then in ´84 to Sweden. Starting at four year´s old, Andrew was raised here, and the house was something of a commune, with more than one family living together always, and his mother and father still involved in the radical non-violent dissent that had gotten them kicked out apartheid South Africa. His father was gone for months and even years of his childhood, on long walks to talk about global poverty (Sweden to Rome, Sweden to South Africa [2.5 years of walking] etc.) and jail for civil disobedience (publicly smashing bank windows in defiance of capitalism - he did this three times).

At death, Boudewijn left many papers and books, debt to the banks (which couldn´t be paid because he spent decades "on the goodness of people," and without a legal income) and a chess set. For decades Boudewijn played on a little magnetic chess board, which he carried to the lengths of the earth. Andrew and his brother Marc played a game for it, and Andrew won it. Since his father´s death Andrew takes chess much more seriously (he beat me solidly a good dozen times) and spoke with deep regret about how he was never so good at chess when his father was alive. "I wish I could have given him a good match while he was still alive."

It´s an intense legacy to be born and raised into. Andrew and his family carry on the legacy quite beautifully: emphasizing kindness and love to others and quiet defiance against the current system.

Malin makes the best bread we've tasted on this trip!
(and hey, that´s the WOOF coordinator for Sweden in the background)

Billy and Andrew chat on the shore

Trying to wash Billy's hair without him getting in the lake...

Post-swim picnic on the lawn

Wwoofing at Kulturstationen in Sweden

This video is a good start to understanding kulturstationen and our role in it...

Billy Says:

When we first thought of the idea of spending some time WWOOFing in Sweden, we searched their website and immediately kulturstationen stood out as the most intriguing and beautiful of all the projects. The vision is clear, and excellent. They have taken a space that was once the centerpoint of industry and international trade - within an otherwise sparsely populated rural area - the train station erected by the iron company, and are turning it, once again, into a hub of activity. Except this time, the rail line is replaced by a bike path, and so people come to the station and connect to the outside world through visitors, movies, and the sharing of radical and alternative ideas. The focus is no longer on trading products for money, labor for capital, but instead to trade companionship and conversation, with food and pleasure to go with it.
Artur and Minna have a lot of work ahead of them in order to reach that vision. They have inherited a space that was misused by a crazy animal nut (17 dogs, 17 cats, multiple horses, rabbits, sheep, etc.) for nearly twenty years: a man that walled himself off with a huge fence while his space deteriorated behind the wall. Like I´ve seen with friends doing rehab in the states, taking a space that has been ill-used and putting it to good use is so much harder - and more necessary and honorable, often - than tearing down and starting from scratch. But Artur and Minna are really dedicated folks, and they´ve already been at it for a year and a half, while raising a child and holding down full time jobs as well. Their determination to work through the spartan conditions of the current Myra station, while maintaining a love of the Kulturstationen they see in their minds, reminds me of the steadfast settlers in colonial america (minus the genocidal, money-hungry drive).
Working with Artur and Minna is a wonderful experience. They are both extremely supportive of our autonomy and happiness, and repeatedly reassure us that we are encouraged to speak up and share all of ourselves with the work. It is nothing at all like the typical boss-worker (or even volunteer-manager) relationship. It feels much more like family, like peers co-creating a beautiful thing. We contributed only a small bit of labor to their project. Mostly we just got the outdoor toilet to a good place, mowed the lawn, made a few meals, and tended to their son Josef a bit as well. The nature of our current trip meant that we didn´t have time to help tackle some of the larger projects, such as ripping out the floor in the living/guest room and putting in a new one. Still, I look forward to returning to Kulturstationen in the years to come, both to contribute our labor and ideas, and also to celebrate the coming success of the project. I strongly encourage anyone interested in creating alternative spaces for radical ideas and people to thrive to go and work with kulturstationen.

Billy reads to his young, uninterested pupil, Josef (18 months old)

Billy lounges on the luxurious platform of the future "Culture Station"

Rural setting of Varmland

Forget lawn-mowing... try the weed-whacker!

Snack break with the Swedish high-school laborers

The Beautiful but smelly guest room

Midsummer Candlelight table

Friends of Artur & Minna at Midsummer's Celebration

Midsummer's Feast

Says Libby:

Staying with Artur and Minna was overall a delightful experience. Both Billy and I felt like we were on equal footing with them and that they were extremely open to letting us shape a general assignment into a specific vision of our own.

As for family life, it felt special to be around Artur and Minna and to see their mutual passion for the project they've created, as well as their affection for each other. Artur works full-time from home organizing and fundraising for a large music festival to take place later this summer, so he was quite busy answering and making calls, all the while organizing for the event of the summer: the Midsummer Celebration. Because so many winter hours are spent in darkness, with the sun making only a brief appearance each day (if at all, in the far north), the arrival of the longest day of the year is celebrated with great festivities and revelry. Christmas and Missumers, we were told, are the 2 most widely celebrated holidays in Sweden, but Midsummer i considered the more outrageous, as one is expected to pass Christmas with one's family, but Midsummer ismarked by heavy drinking with one's close friends, as it lacks the religious seriousness of Christmas. Artur had many stories to share from relentless travels all over the Eruopean and Asian continents, of such & such strange or comedic character who'd given him a lift while hitching from here to there. His knack for mimicry made him a delightful storyteller.

Minna, who is designing her own fashion line, oversaw our work, and also flung herself with great dedication to the task of nettle removal; the vast yard between the house/station and the stable, overgrown with tall grasses and weeds, had an abundance of the painful plants. One afternoon when Billy was sick and still sleeping, I had prepared lunch for all of us, as well as some tea I was taking out to B. Minna was pulling up nettles out by the stable, and I stopped by to tell her lunch was ready. "I'm very much in the head of the nettles right now -- I can tell how they think" she said, "and how they grow. They put down these roots and *schoonk!*-- grab together and they become so strong, and if someone tells them not to come up in one spot, they work together to stay connected and find another place to grow, and this is how I want the people who come here to be; theyäll become strong together. I want our people to be like nettles!" Minna seemed to me a wild spirit, someone who takes seriously to the earth and who proved herself to be very sensitive to the energies of those around her.

The youngest member of the Kulturstationen trifecta is Josef, 18 mos., who is one of the most fun kids to spend time with I've met in a long time. When we first arrived, we spent an hour entertaining him/being entertained BY him, and found him incredibly curious. We tried out all of our "kid" tricks within a very short time, and while Josef had a limited attention span for most games, he took forever to get bored of running around us as we lay on the floor of the living room, completing many a lap around its circumference with his pacifier obscuring his broad grin as we cheered him on. There ended up being many children around for the midsummer weekend-- seems like Artur and Minna's generation of friends (though not so much older than us) has hit the reproductive phase of life, and we realied once there were kids crawling everywhere that we were quite content to be able to walk away from the responsibility of tireless attention after an hour or two of play and to let the parents be parents. Not now, thank you. I was also really reminded of the importance of raising kids within the support of a strong community to be able to provide some relief amongst the parents, especially in an isolated area like Värmland.

Midsummer tradition includes the chopping down of a tree. Gender roles are prominent; the men go off into the woods to do the chopping and hauling, while the women and girls gather flowers, vines, and greenery to wrap around the pole. Artur described to us that the ritual had very secular origins, but that the Christian tradition had since influenced the procedure, and instead of a simple pole being erected in to the hol made in the ground (a pretty overt symbol of fertilization), an extra tree was now usually added to make the pole into a cross. Artur insidsted that the ceremony on their land would remain a cross-less, rather hedonistic celebration, and chuckled, joking that they'd brought us there to be sacrificed, not to be simple wwoof volunteers.

Friends started showing up Thursday afternoon. Tuckered out from work and with Billy sick, we curled up for a nap before the commencment of official festivites. One of the more amusing moments of that afternnon occured when a young man popped his head into our bedroom out in the old military hangar about 50 yards from the house. Wearing a little less than our pajamas, I thrust my hand out from under the covers and introduced myself. He said "yeah, I heard I could find you guys out here and wanted to meet you. I'm Yandi, the national WWOOF coordinator of Sweden." I almost burst out laughing and somehow was able to hold it back until the interaction had ended-- there we were, half naked and sleeping, not such great exemplaries of hard-working volunteers at that moment. Over the weekend we had the chance to get to know Yandi much better, despite our hilarious first introduction.

Other friends turned up throughout the evening and we all sat down together for dinner before moving on to various activities. Billy and Andrew played chess for hours, Artur practiced DJing on the turntables he'd rented for the weekend, and we had no idea when we hit the sack at 2 or 3 am that the folks who arrived at that hour would stay up until 7 or 8 dancing and partying. When we finally dragged ourselves from the hangar to the house for breakfast sometime in the early afternoon, we were greeted by others in the kitchen "Good morning." We felt embarrassed until realiying only half of the guests were up yet, and those in the kitchen had just arisen and were eating breakfast.

A lazy afternoon was followed by an evening simliar to the previous night, but this time more people, more food, and more drinks. Dinner began with a hearty toast, and echoes of "SKOL!" around the table, and was several times interrupted by rousing traditional drinking songs. People spread jarred fish in various garlic or mustard sauces onto crackers and bread as part of the traditional fare. Soon dancing and chess again ensued. Our friend Andrew had again attended the party and offered that perhaps we might visit his family's land, 40 minutes south. We were sad to leave Kulturstationen the next day, but were excited for a little change of scenery and another glimpse into life in Värmland...

Minna's Fashion studio

The next Bobby Fisher

This is how we get down (that´s the head of WWOOF Sweden in the middle)...

Ummm... doesn't get much cuter.

Myra Station with the erected midsummer pole

The revived outdoor toilet; one of our proud wwoofing accomplishments

Poetry while you p...

Soon to come...

Updates coming soon on Kulturstationen in Sweden, new friends, squat visits in Belgium, college friends in Augsburg, and fun in Paree...

Funny videos...

So, we now have capacity to include some of the home videos we've been making along the way. Please have a look at some of our earlier blogs and you'll find we've added more photos and videos.

Apologies to our German friends for this one...we couldn't resist the play on words!


Billy tries salty licorice candy in Denmark:

Libbilly and the Critters: International Karaoke Debut

Imagine yourself on the top floor of a crazy ferry-nightclub, with Finnish and Swedish 80's-esque electronic beats and pop lyrics again and again taking all the attention. what about family values? What about good old American music, like the tunes of the Saint Vincent Children's choir? As diplomats from our nation, we had to act...

Fun in Finland...

Finnish: one of Europe's most difficult languages!

Having experienced one night in the true land of the midnight sun in Narvik, we jumped back on the train, which by now has become our second home, and headed the 7 hours back down to Boden, Sweden, where we walked to the bus station that would take us 1.5 hours to the border with Finland (for some reason that we couldn't figure out, and no one could explain sufficiently, to get from Sweden to Finland, one must bus from Boden to a border town called Haparanda, walk 1 km across the border into Tornio, Finland, and catch another bus or a cab from there to a town 25 km away called Kemi, where there's a train station connecting with the line down to Helsinki.) As we were asking for more specific information about the transitions from bus, foot, cab, etc, the bus we needed to get to make the last night train down to Helsinki pulled out of the station. Blast. At first we were a little frustrated and unsure what our next step would be. We kept our stay in Narvik short so that we could catch that bus and the night train, and now it seemed unlikely we'd make our connection to Helsinki. After brief deliberation, we decided to throw ourselves in to adventure and hop on the next bus. Neither of us wanted to go back to Stockholm without a taste of Finland, and we thought there was a narrow, narrow chance of catching the train (turns out we were wrong because of the time change, but our bus went so slow it became irrelevant to consider catching the train). If we couldn't get the night train, we'd try hitching to the Kemi train station and find a place to stay, perhaps in a field with sleeping bags.

The trajectory

Upon arrival to Haparanda, we followed the signs to the border of Suomi (Finland in Finnish), and casually strolled across, grinning broadly as we stuck our thumbs out at any cars that passed. We got smiles and honks but no takers. More walking, we decided. At one point we strayed from the highway that would take us to Kemi, and realized after a trucker stopped offering to pick us up that we were 1 km down the wrong road. "ok" we thought, "we'll ask this woman walking with her dog to be sure of where we need to go." Stumbelina was a short woman with dyed red hair and a huge dog that looked like a long-haired greyhound relative, and at first she appeared to speak no english. She babbled Finnish at us with one eye squinted shut and gave a huge, slightly offputting grin after every statement, waiting for a response from us. Every question from her was met by us giggling about the language barrier and indicating we didn't understand. I joked to Billy that she had said "I'd like to kis s your cute friend", and "is that vodka in your waterbottle?" She kept indicating for us to follow her, and since we were going to walk that way in any case, we decided to tag along at her slow drunk pace with the dog and tried to interact with her the best we could. eventually she was able to summon a few english words and explained to us "i not bad girl; i good girl. my boyfriend loves me. loves dog." we think she also invited us to come sleep at her house and have some coffee, and perhaps we'd have said yes to a less sketchy arrangement, but we gestured that we had to go to get to Helsinki on time and said our goodbyes.

Only 5 minutes later, we scored a ride from a young trucker named Tommy (roughly). He said he could give us a lift to Kemi, and as we chatted more he eventually offered to take us as far as Oulu, where he lives, and where there's also a train station. We gladly agreed to tag along, and the sun set and rose again in the window between midnight and 2 am that we rode along in his truck. He seemed basically to enjoy trucking, (although it meant being away from his 4 year old son alot) and gave us a little insight into the friction between Finland and Russia. There are a number of Russian truckers who'll come into Scandinavia, but next to no Scandinavian truckers willing to sit in the 40 km long border crossing line to get back and forth into Russia, unable to sleep for several days and having to eek forward only a few meters at a time. He also said it's fairly common for Russian truckers to rob Scandinavian ones, and talked about making sure he picks well-lit truckstops to try to avoid getting robber himself, but he said he could understand why - Russian truckers make a fraction of the wage in Scandinavia.
(Billy in front of the 25 meter-long truck at 2 am - this is bigger than most European trucks, but Tommy say he wants to go to Australia, where they drive trucks up to 54 m long)

Tommy wasn't overly expressive, but was curious enough to ask questions about our travels and our lives and seemed to enjoy trying to answer our questions about Finland. His view of the European Union was that it was a fine arrangement that didn't really seem to impact his life so directly, except that there were a lot of stupid silly regulations, like how much light the cab of a truck could give off. (He showed us a ticket he'd gotten for this in Sweden, but shrugged it off as "the company's problem; it's their truck"). By the time we reached Oulu, he offered us a place to stay at his apartment, only 3 blocks from the train station. Both Billy and I trusted him and were excited to not have to sleep outside, so we accepted and konked out on the living room floor around 3, just as the sun was starting to come in through the windows.

Friday we awoke and caught the train to Helsinki. I became a groggy zombie for the entire 7 hour ride after ingesting an anti-nausea pill, so I didn't see much of the countryside, but Finland is known for having thousands and thousands of lakes. The bulk of these, rumouredly the most beautiful terrain, is in the east of the country, and we were in the western half near the sea.

Upon arrival in Helsinki, we met up with our delightful couchsurfing host, Renato. An Italian who moved to Finland "for a girl-- there are 2 reasons Italian men come here: to chase a girl, or to work for Nokia." Renato studies Finnish, among many other languages, is vegan, and doesn't drink, so he offered a humorous, if cynical, take on the heavy alcohol consumption of the Finns. Sure enough, when the 3 of us went out to a bar to check out the scene, the first thing we saw when we hopped off the bus was a guy peeing straight in our direction, and while at the bar, we saw someone get beer thrown in his face, as well as a beer bottle get thrown against the wall. When the management came to investigate, those at the table held up their beers as evidence that he or she were inculpable. The odd bottle out had to leave. Also of note: the Finnish are super into black metal music, and the bar was dominated by black attire, long hair, and dog collar jewelry. As an "outsider" himself to Finnish culture, I think it was really valuable to hear Renato's observations about living in Finland. He joked about how it's common in Finland for a woman to ask a man on a date or to take him home, and how this would "never ever ever" happen in Italy and took some getting used to. As an extra bonus, he also works at the only vegan restaurant in town and brings home leftovers which he freezes and keeps for later, so we had some delicious cuisine at his flat. Before we left the next day, he showed us around a little more and let us print out some readings for our Africa trip at the university library (where printing is free!) We took some fun photos (below) and said our goodbyes. Hopefully we will meet again.

Traditional Finnish dress observed in the market aquare

The "White Church" in Helsinki

(Billy's into leg lifts, can you tell?)


Hmmm....


Billy and Bear reflect...

Then, it was off to the Silja Serenade, a huge 12 story ferry with casino, nightclub, fancy restaurants, tax-free shopping, andddddddddddddd... Karaoke! (Yep, see our video blog above of Libbilly and the Critters!) In some ways the ferry was repulsive and in other ways, fun. We both agreed that we liked Helsinki better looking at it from the ferry as we pulled away, rather than being surrounded by stumbling, fighting drunks.

The ferry pretty much embodied the spirit of capital - every "opportunity" was a chance to splurge, and if you're money sticklers like us, good luck! We didn't spend a dime, and even walked away with a huge box of expensive chocolates (each) for participating in a survey about chocolate box styles. Billy commented that maybe the over-the-topness of the boat was an attempt to compensate for the absolute horror of ship passage in the past. We and the critters enjoyed a beautiful sunset, though we're still far enough north that it never got dark, only lingered for hours and hours and grew light again. We each had a bunk in gendered 4-person cabins in the very bottom of the boat, free with our Eurail passes!
Atlantis Nightclub & Casino
free chocolate!

(Wingman and Bear enjoy a good sunset smooch)

When we awoke as we arrived back to Stockholm, it was a rainy dreary day, and the 3 hour train ride from Stockholm to Karlstad so we could hop on a bus north to KulturStationen felt truncated and short -- we're so used to 7 hour (minimum) chunks of train time that we felt we'd barely settled into the ride when we arrived. Now we're snuggled down at Kulturstationen and it feels good to be outside the train/bus/boat windows and in nature, stationary for a while.