Berlin

Within two hours of getting here I’m carrying the ingredients for a feta salad, good dark roasted coffee, a fresh whole wheat loaf of bread, and water. I'm walking through some previously unknown street of Xberg now thinking I live here. I am the happy resident of a two bedroom 3meter-ceiling apartment with two hours for myself before the record company posse gets here.

My cab driver from the airport was definitely a drummer. I just know. I felt shy, like always with drummers.

I’m reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. We all must read it now because Julia Roberts is on the cover of the paper back edition. The other travel book I took with me is a library book! (Don’t tell your librarian friends). Eat Pray Love is kind of like my life this second – or maybe my life is a lot better right this second. (I’m not sure how I feel about finding my own personal guru for example.) More comments on the book another day when I have read more of it.

My suitcase was five kilograms overwheight I was informed. Please, remove four kilos or pay 10e per extra kilo. Somehow this whole exchange at Helsinki-Vantaa felt very personal. As if we were really discussing my body and not my luggage. If it had been my body, I would have been able to say that on the moon I weigh nothing so what’s the big deal. But I was aware of the line behind me and so I was silent and embarrassed and I half opened my suitcase there infront of the counter and pulled out a box of CDs (2,4kilograms), a pair of knee-high boots (hardly weighed anything) and then panicking I rummaged for a shoulder bag and a canvas bag to stuff everything in there – oh, and the power extension for my computer! Suitcase closes again and now it was 21,2 kilograms and I was a red-faced free woman (with two pieces of hand lugagge).

I will be blogging when I can from this tour but at least once a week the blog will appear on Rumba.fi (in Finnish) and at times I may add something more here in between.