"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.

From Vesterbro to Hyde Park Corner to Hietaniemenkatu

I might be meeting a Canadian boy on Thursday evening. He goes by the name of Alexandre from Navy Jerry's in my phone's address book and all I can remember about him is his dark curly hair and funny accent when he spoke french. And the part where he told me that he's going to have to come up with something to brag about for the next time we meet. And the part where I knew I wanted to get to know him.

I sincerely hope that he was lovely and that my memory's not playing tricks on me.

I finally posted a job application for Copenhagen. The first of many.

I recently realized that my comfort zone really sucks. I'm glad I'm getting out of it and fast.

Copenhagen, wine, sun

Vesterbro is beautiful when the sun shines in the morning.

Ingerslevsgade treats us right even when the living room is cold at night. Michael whose name we first didn't know how to pronounce right makes tea every night and plays the Shins on vinyl. He laughs at our jokes and whistles around the apartment. The floorboards creak and tonight we discovered his DJ'ing equipment and made loops of panflute music.

I speak with more volume in Copenhagen and I feel stronger and more free. When the wind blows it blows hard through the city. When the sun shines the light takes up all the space. The city seems alive and its people are beautiful, it's contagious.

Yesterday night we were part of a cosy quartet, sitting in a small bar that played my favourite 80's one hit wonders, drinking beer and wine and ordering more and more of everything. Dice games were a big hit, until I lost three times in a row and had to pay everyone a round. The barman laughed at my story, better luck next time, but I still had to pay the Copenhagen price.

The night showed that French kissing in Copenhagen is some serious competition to French kissing in Paris and when I finished my tenth cigarette and spoke bad English and French together, I felt genuinely happy. The fourth glass of wine was the one-too-many one but in the morning I felt at ease. The arms wrapped safely around me kept the hangover away for a while.

Tomorrow we'll do something new again and try to blend into the beautiful people of this beautiful city.

Being here feels right.

Starting letters on a Thursday evening

Dear Cambridge, I hate you a little.

Dear Work, don't be so draining.

Dear Life, treat me carefully.

Dear November, bring me nice things and entertaining weekends and good tunes and nice boys.

Dear Nice Boys, you are boring.

Dear Me, I'm tired of your face already, get some sleep and get sensible.

Sincerely yours,

Matilda

It doesn't correlate

probably about a month before the summer trip - should've known that the t-shirt was some kind of a forecast...

"Si jamais tu viens à Paris..." a simple 20-minute conversation and an even simpler invite. I already feel like changing my plans all over again. A place to sleep in the 16ème; someone I only met once near the beach boulevards of Nice, suddenly willing to show me the parks and the fancy buildings of the neighborhood.

And for the first time in my life I felt a surrealistic, fleeting minute during which I wanted to phone someone whose last name I don't know, whose face I've almost forgotten and whose digits I definitely do not have, but with whom I briefly shared so much: alongside other things an encounter with this Parisian boy who lives in the 16ème.

I wanted so achingly to gush guesswhoinitiatedaconversationwithmejustnow to that half-stranger, like you do to your best friend when that annoyingly good-looking but brattish boy from that horrible bar last night calls you.

For a moment it felt like he would be the only one who would understand the thing completely and remember the oddly wonderful encounter in the nuit niçoise - the only one who would be able to laugh at it wholeheartedly for a moment and then look back on everything with fondness. And the feeling was true and right: he is the only one who would understand it as precisely as it deserves to be understood.

I quite obviously cannot phone him and it irrationally makes me want to cry.

The whole situation is nearly impossible to explain and translate into comprehensible and coherent text, but I just wanted to make a note-to-self to remind myself of this bizarrely wonderful moment when I realized a half-stranger on the other side of the world has a few memories that are replicas of mine.

It just feels surreal that one could be able to share such memories with a stranger.

And ladies and gentlemen, see - this is what traveling does to you: it does your head in, it spins you around, it plays games with your feelings, it confuses you.

And it gives you new friends who seem to stick by through months of not exchanging a word and who hold a hand out for you when you need it. And the other kind of friends, too, with whom you'll never shake hands again, but who stay with you, corkscrewed in your memories firm and tight, as to not get lost along the way.

(It's 1:36am now. Good night, sleep tight, try to stay loved and warm)