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!

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TTT23 #7: Copenhagen, Denmark

Posted on December 26, 2023 by anthonycaferro

My fourth visit to Copenhagen cements it as one of my favorite places on Earth. Having explored much of the city previously, I’m elated to return with my nephews Ronnie and Jake for their first visit to this culinary, bicycling and hipster Mecca. Plus, Danes are happy, like Finns in Helsinki. We cop a fancy hostel dorm room, we rent bikes, we wait on line to eat fusion ramen, we dive deep in some serious agave based spirits. That’s day one. It ends with a ridiculously humbling sunset.

The next day, we hit Christiania. I explain separatist communities and my love of them. I am a habitual line stepper but also a genetic dissenter. That’s right, it’s in me genes to dissent.

For real though, Christiania is beautiful place. It’s not quite what it was when I was here ten years ago, but then again what place is? I can’t recognize my own city of Buffalo ten years later. If for example, in 2010 you had said that a hamburger in WNY would soon cost $18, there might have been riots. Real riots. Not anymore. The continued (and false) positing of “renaissance” and “resurgence” of Buffalo by everyone from civic leaders to Forbes magazine only rings true with the ruling class and those that make the decision to visit. Resident still deal with poverty, scarcity and one of the highest and most continuous levels of racism in the country. Probably the most of any town north of the Mason Dixon line. That’s the triple truth Ruth. You betta ask somebody.

Coming at the tail end of a month of traveling with family, I get time to finally unwind and unpack some of my thoughts. I’m enamored with my mindset while traveling and exploring. What delineates it from my mindset at home or work. I admit to creating the expectation of something so deeply intricate that I am unattendant of the present and then fear the missing of opportunity to attain the expectation. That’s a lot. I unpack and attempt to overcome these expectations. These fears. These insecurities. A moment. With nothing. No walks. No runs. No rides. No coffees. No beers. No food. No writing. No reading. No yoga. No music. Just the present moment. I’m talking to myself like I’m my own therapist. But I don’t have therapist so that certainly can’t be true. Ask my therapist who their therapist is, go see them, ask them the same thing until I get to the final boss therapist and defeat them with my train wreck of a life. All this thinking is disrupted by 500-600 people cruising by on rollerblades. It’s a skating slow roll! Yet another reason I love this city!! I take a deep breath breath and turn the music back on. Poignant lyrics push me along, to the next one…

“Suckers i clobber, because my town is full of cops and robbers. You’re not promised tomorrow in this little shop of horrors.” Kool G Rap, Ill Street Blues

“I try to keep it stress free, take every day at a time, make sure the family’s in place and let the music unwind” Double K, PUTS, Acid Raindrops

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