Back to Vesterbro

Future home street in Copenhagen

It's insane. We got an incredible flat from Vesterbro. It's everything you'd imagine a Copenhagen flat to be like. Light wooden floors, high white ceilings. So much light it almost hurts your eyes. A balcony and 55 square meters to live in.

I still haven't secured a job. I basically have nothing waiting for me, except for the 2 best Summer months in Copenhagen and the freedom to do whatever I want.

If only I could earn an extra 1000€ so I could head down to Southern France for August to do a bit of surfing and enjoying the sun. I almost feel ashamed that two months in the city I like so much, in an apartment that looks like it was ripped out of any arty folk's dreams, isn't enough and I want even more. Isn't that the curse of wanting it all?

But hell, it's insane.

I'm listening to that Feet in the Water-song on repeat, because I need someone to slap me and tell me it's all better than I even realize yet.

"Dynamic employee for the Summer" "Freelancer" "Hej! I am a 20-year-old girl from Helsinki" and other things from my sent e-mails folder

London ages ago

Everything's going fast, fast, fast but so painfully slow - job applications, job rejections, rental applications, unanswered e-mails, the last day of day job tomorrow, new job applications flying around, cold cover letters, freelance work, temporary work, a month, a month and a half, obscure time patterns.

Copenhagen is constantly interrupting my thoughts. I have weird dreams at night and keep seeing catalogue models who look like someone who I wish I won't run into in Osterbro.

I want to send a message to Copenhagen that I'm coming soon; sing it like that swedish Veronica, jag kommer and such but my voice wasn't meant to be recorded and I don't know if I want anyone to wait for me or not.

I keep having second thoughts about everything; about quitting my job and about having these napoleon complex-like wishes, but then again, it's so useless to worry about how life goes. If you do good, it will come back to you. I'm beginning to sound like a self-help book - alarming.

And whenever I've been feeling let down and apathetic lately, I've resorted to this song. I wish some of its quiet power and beauty and rawness will transfer through my headphones.

Om nån minut så går jag härifrån och då ses vi nog aldrig mer.

Time has gone quickly. My day job ends for good on Friday evening. After that - emptiness. Or as I like to see things nowadays, anything and everything. I'm excited. There's a dozen of things that could go extremely wrong, but hundreds of things that could shape my life in the best possible ways.

The last few days have been bizarre, so to say the least.

I learned that if you don't have a corkscrew you might as well quit struggling while trying to open that bottle of red wine creatively and just smash the cork in immediately. I also learned that by doing so, the wine tastes like the music festivals you used to go to when you were younger. Awful.

Sitting in the kitchen, a law student from Bologna revealed that had he known how cold Helsinki is, he never would've come here in the first place. I told him I wouldn't recommend it anyway.

A certain canadian showed me what the rooftops of Helsinki look like from the eighth floor. And made me laugh quite a bit. And made me sound like a hard-core capitalistic asshole when we talked about world politics in the morning.

I love how some things, some people, feel inexplicably easy to be and deal with. Sometimes it's not as complicated as you normally would perceive it.

I got asked if I knew the rules of the game and I said yes. I got kissed on the forehead and I stayed the night.

Lust for Life is certainly the best way to explain how I feel right now. Collateral damage hasn't hit me or anyone else - yet.

That's alright, that's okay, I'm alive

You know when there's that certain kind of wind or that certain kind of sky that makes you remember things? Tonight it was the deep blue sky and the traffic lights that made me think of Copenhagen and airports and wide streets and things to come.

I received my first subscription issue of the International Herald Tribune and some books for LSE and Houghton Street. It's almost spot-on six months until my home city is London. I feel like smiling like an idiot. Nothing dramatically positive has happened, it all just somehow feels right. Everything's going to be alright.

For a few hours everything has been in its right place. Time has been frozen for a while, right now I refuse to worry about London or fret about the job situation in Copenhagen.

I'm going to see Helsinki-Vantaa again sooner than I thought. I'm leaving early Sunday morning to make a flash visit to London, see where I'll be spending the next three years, try to fall in love with the place, try to see myself on a morning run in Hyde Park or staggering home tipsy with someone wonderful. I feel like it's going to go well.

Tomorrow things might be different but right now I feel sweet and strong and capable and lovely. I have achieved something already. And it feels overwhelming. Now it's time to take it further.

I started to write a real paper diary again, because it finally feels like this life is something worth writing about.

Det är så jävla svårt

How can something so insanely wonderful take such a fast turn and become something ugly and consuming. I can't even put this to words, I'm so angry.

I just went running like a maniac, ran past my old school, stopped to cry a little, ran even harder, stopped to cry again, realised that the sobbing little creature in the window's reflection was me, and then let my feet go.

And it's about money, isn't it always. Either money or boys. This time probably both.

I mean, I knew living in Islingon or near Covent Garden wasn't going to be cheap and I wasn't expecting it to be. But I didn't know a year could cost me a year's savings and a whole Summer.

I was supposed to go to Copenhagen, then travel around, then come home for a while and say goodbye to everything and everyone and go to London. But hey, things never go as planned.

I know I'm being childish and selfish (I mean, look at all the I-letters in this post) but this still stings. A lot. More than anything ever.

This was supposed to be the last carefree Summer before diving into a world that's so new and exciting and draining and difficult and rewarding. This was supposed to be the time to really fall in love with that boy in Copenhagen and smell of coffee beans every night after work, have tanned skin and sea salt and sand everywhere and a sun that shines so powerfully that you feel like you can't breathe.

This is turning into a nightmare. I'm not good with money, I'm only good at being young. I feel like quitting but I know London and where I'm going is a chance of a lifetime that, to be honest with you, most people will never get. I know I'm being irrational. I know I'm being an asshole. I'm simply angry. So angry that I feel like not breathing ever again.

I'm so angry and sad and confused that I just couldn't gather the courage to run across that bridge over the highway. Because, you know that people are divided into two categories:

Those, who don't feel a thing when they cross a bridge.

And those who, when standing somewhere high get a tingling in their body and however happy and full of life they might be cannot stop thinking of a simple thought: what if I jumped now?

I don't know how I'm going to survive. But I will do it, fuck this I will do it.

Vi skulle nog ha hamnat här ändå

Top to bottom: the sea and Louisiana, Micke and Toby and me and Roosa's place on Ingerslevsgade, Louisiana and tiny Roosa, new shoes from naked, drinks bartended by me in Vesterbro, making a white russian with Carl, Kastellet

I'd love to write it all down but det er ikke let. What I can say is that I haven't felt this free and beautiful and charming and loveable in a long time. When you feel free the words don't come easy. Genuine happiness isn't supposed to be written down.

French kissing in Copenhagen turned into hanging out at the bar after hours and talking about music in the only bar that was open in Nørrebro. Talking about music in Nørrebro quickly became drinking white wine on Nørrebrogade. The moment I wished the minutes would slow down was the moment I knew I had momentarily fallen in love with it all.

Vesterbro, Nørrebro, Christianshavn, Kastellet, Nordhavn.

The wind of change blew hard but soft in København.