Hoping for a Tail Wind

TTT23 #4: Switzerland b/w Liechtenstein

Posted on December 31, 2023 by anthonycaferro

Yup. The ol’ two for one. A side and B side. A one two, a one two. Truth is I hit Zurich Switzerland for a quick three day trip with the audacity of a couple of world wars. AND. It’s a rainy day so I absolutely have to take a train and get to this tiny ass nearby nation known as Liechtenstein. Bucket list includes as many nations as possible prior to expiration. It’s a biiiiiiiiiiig fuckin bucket yo. Two things can be true at the same time. On this Swiss train. I mean, this thing is as baller as it gets. Can all of the things are true all be true all of the time? Bikepack gear space on the public transport kind of all and all and all. On and on. Check it out yall.

Not for nothing. Weather dictates this wonderfully delightful train ride for the roaming family pack and I, so the day trip to Vaduz materializes. I pay 3 Euro to stamp my own passport in the visitor center.

Back in Switzerland – it happens fast in these parts. Actual facts to snack on and chew: Zurich is a vibe. There’s all sorts of sides. The Dada movement to start. The hip hop scene, more acutely. Like a white Istanbul. Yeah I said it. I dunno. I like it tho. Sis and neph and I are riding bikes. Well we were, but we stop at this pop up party and a brewery or something. I dunno. There’s paella.

Mental cerebral uptake kicks in and I maneuver into a Motown mindset. The underbelly forming as the sunsets here sorta reminds me of Detroit in only the slightest. Distinct spaces on earth. Werid shit, I like it. Ask Danny Brown. Equally talented and unique and genuine. Tantor blares in my AirPods back in Zurich. Weird as fuck with proof in just two lines: “This that Black Lives Matter, still sniff cocaine/
Paid for a therapist but I still ain’t change”.

Moms is really making the Swiss Francs rain down, funding this pricey stopover. And I think she likes it here in Switzerland. It’s clean, quiet, healthy, calm. there’s plenty of English too. All the expensive things.

Stoos ridge doesn’t disappoint. The absolute highlight is my nephew Jacob and I going hard in the paint on the hike. We set off with a standard public train ticket from Zurich Central. Couple connections. Steepest funicular train in the world. Apparently. I dunno. It sure is fun though. Still part of the same public transport ticket from our point of origin. We end it up hiking up the ridge. Most take a ski lift type thing. Later neph would admit he ain’t ever hiked anything like that climb before. Reality check. One two. The scenery cannot be articulated. It’s utterly unbelievably perfect. The cows and the cowbells all ringing and reverberating throughout the mountains, mixing with the altitude and oxygen in an intoxicatingly natural high. Literally. “This is probably most beautiful view I’ve ever seen” exclaims the neph. “Big same”, I respond. Attempting to now write dialog which only half happens, I abandon words for video and photography endeavors.

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TTT23 #5: Stockholm, Sverige

Posted on December 31, 2023 by anthonycaferro

Real talk, I was gonna roll my Scandinavian summer romp into one of those just-keeping-warm-in-a-cold-winter-throuple sort of grouped posts for my Top Ten Travel rankings seven, six, and five. Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Maybe it is more like a Scandinavian gang of sorts. Either way… I was gonna. I damn sho nuff forget is what I do. Timespace god damnit. Why is six afraid of seven? Tune in next week. Right now right now, this all means that this will be a short on words send off to a city I might like more than Copenhagen. TBD. Let’s go back to how I get Sweded. Long time syndrome-seeker, first time visitor. I take it in and document less while here. Oh shit. My 76 year old mom just got her nose pierced, completely out of the blue. We ain’t in Malmo, toto. All of everything happening right now. At the same time. I can’t write any of it down. Failed documentarian, successful experiencer. I watch and listen and smell and maybe photograph. The real research and development. I need coffee number seventy seven now on my fourth day here. Needs are real. Maslow meet Pavlov.

Be Kind Rewind to me lavishing in the reality of the archipelago that is the city of Sweden. Proper. Hammer would say that. Here on this bench, that’s where I’ve running-manned my American ass to – a nice 4 mile jog from our apartment in the historic center to this point… at the footsteps of a national fucking park. Which, once we’re rewound fully, I’ll walk and jog and bench a few more miles through. Enjoy The Silence. Thinking in relaxation amongst flora and fauna on a tranquil and cool morning in August. Mos Def. Favorite activities include deeply breathing through my nose. Walking around foreign cities for the first time. Making eye contact with beautiful dogs walked by strikingly exquisite women, whispering silently with my third eye and watching them slowly and inquisitively come towards me (the dogs, of course). Humans of every variety smiling. Parkways and parks and — holy shit did I just stumble into a speakeasy doubling as a flower shop? Yes. Yes I did. Ja.

Having foregone most alcohol until this point in my aforementioned travel romp, I proceed to dive the fuck in and indulge in the interesting cocktail menu, the pretentiously beautiful atmosphere, the interesting customers seated near me at the bar, basically er’thing. Eventually, my sister and nephew find me out and decide to “stop in for one” on their way to a museum, which is when I realize how much easier it was for me to just wander in earlier. Neph is unimpressed, though he has been living in Florida for a few years now. They leave. I stay. Eventually, I decide I’d like to keep moving. I think. I walk out, realizing its still daylight and I conveniently omitted the fact that I’m still in Stockholm from my current brainscape.

Magnetize yourself, Jack Black. Later. Like in a that-place-had-top-50-bar-in-the-world-awards kinda time later, this current version of free public toilet has elevator music and is now thanking me for visiting, it’s jarringly loud robotic British English white man voice — it’s hoping I’m satisfied with this service. Weird. I’m glad it’s free and clean and actually the best public toilet I’ve seen in a minute. I get another 3-4 mile jog in as the sun is setting on what is I think the 8th Stockholm island I’ve now footed to. Like 17-20 miles on the day, fully Sweded.

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TTT23 #6: Norge in Bokmål aka Norway

Posted on December 29, 2023 by anthonycaferro

I’m on this Norwegian fjord cruise. It’s like the 2 hour tour variety, not the port to port type. It’s an electric boat. And def not three house tour. It is point to point though, I’m taking a train back the way I came. Cool. Everyone’s a fucking photographer. Cameras. Camera phones. iPhones. Canon DLSRs. Some dude has a GoPro set up right by the flag taking up valuable handrail viewing space. Yeah. That’s me. I can focus on being present instead of the photos. The Gram. The noise. Fuck that. Me and the nephs are too busy living it up right about now. Later, we can look at those pictures and video. How do you say cheers in Norwegian?

Timespacing on this ship through one of the narrowest fjords in the world with this camera all on autopilot. Think about it, by then, later will be right now when we watch these time-lapses. Great Scott, Marty!

Bergen Norway serves as my first real vacating on what is now the 10th day of the vacation. Situated not far from the Atlantic coast, Bergen is the second largest city in Norway…

Butt.

Fooled you.

We’re not actually in a city. Nope. Negative. Not in Bergen, not the center anyway. We go further out of it every day too.

We are staying and sleeping all up in the mountains. Overlooking it all. Hostel Bergen Montana. Fuck. Yes. Montana heart. Mountains are the closest thing I have to a religion, fight me about it. Been on holiday, been exclusively in cities for it up to this point, and for like three days at a pop. Find a city, find myself a city to live. This ain’t seven years in Tibet though it damn sure is five nights in the mountains. We went to the city or a half day. By day five we’ve mostly hiked and hiked and taken trains and aforementioned electric cruise ships through scenery unsurpassed and hiked and eaten whale and hiked and well, all types of shit. Now, like right now on day 5, I’m just doing casual “work” stuff in the hostel common living room with an amazing view…

It’s like I live there. Paying bills. Setting schedules. Taking phone calls and zoom meetings. This type of shit. I’m recalling that MTV show Cribs, where we’d all get a “candid” look at “celebrity” “homes”. I use quotations not for hyperbole, show or effect, but more in jest of the idea that these words are appropriately being used. Or even mean anything anymore. Absurdity indeed. This is heavy, Doc.

By any means necessary, my mind drifts into a personalized version of what my personal episode of the show would look like — you know — should I ever lose my goddamn mind and go in front of a camera. It could be right here. In Norway. In this hostel, no less. Well, maybe outside of it. Picture it, I idiotically play show and tell with my viewing audience of couch-bound, mouth-breathing sleep walkers about my fjord-front yard. I point at the view and everyone would pull out their phones and snap pics of the video of it on their larger device screens, oohing and awing, or something before posting it on their X. Then I say, oh just wait til you see the mountains we have out back, before cutting to commercial breaks brought to you by every version of every product you don’t ever need. Afterward, we’d get to see the extensively robust daily breakfast buffet and wonderfully clean unisex showers. I definitely wouldn’t show you my dollar box (shoutout to Redman, one of the greatest ever if you consider how well he has navigated and manifested longevity with ever increasing success). We’d end the episode of course rocking with the daily FREE coffee and cookies hangout at 1700. Thats socialism at 5pm for the uninitiated. Once all my various points-of-view in my cerebellum streamline back to the singular reality, I still feel like I live here. With this view. Every day. This refreshed. Imma let the photos do the rest of the typing. Norway, you done did the damn thing my dude. Tusen takk!