It's the best addition to the interwebz since... facebook? Google even?
An entire online community of really kind, chill people interested in seeing the world and meeting other world travelers.
I spent a couple of hours perusing profiles, searching for couches that accomodate my July itinerary, and now my inbox is flooded with offers for free places to stay, cool people to share meals with, locals to act as tour guides or take me to cool bars, even introduce me to their friends.
My experiences so far have been nothing short of incredible. I have a whole family of friends back in Berlin, I've met rad people from Finland, Australia, Italy who came to Copenhagen, and I'm sure after the month of July, I'll be able to boast friends all throughout France, Spain, and Portugal. If you're a solo traveler or even a group of travelers who'd prefer local flavor to following the rambunctious hostel crowd, couchsurfing.org is the way to go.
I don't mean to be such a promoter, and surely no one is paying me to say these things. I just... I'm looking forward to my trip that much more, now that I know of a few rad looking people I'll be meeting along the way.
I guess it's scary, being a young solo female, entering into strange apartments... ok. It is scary. Hopefully I survive the month of July without any horror stories. Perhaps I hope I survive in general...
But so long as wonderful people keep using the site, and creepers stay the hell away, I should be fine. I'll be fine!
Look! Another offer for a couch in Lisbon just popped up. Woo! Options!
Monday, July 2, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The Stoke: The Best Month Ever
I can't stop smiling.
It feels too good to be true.
I just spent the afternoon meticulously planning my July travels. Finally. It's taken form.
And the itinerary is fucking dreamy.
Fucking. Dreamy.
Excuse my language, but I'm that excited.
The plan:
5/7----Fly from CPH to Amsterdam with Thomas and Clara for Pitch Music Festival.
Spend 2 days listening to great music, partying, being with people I adore.
8/7----Take the train from Amsterdam to Vichte, Belgium to visit Brouwerij Verhaeghe (I hope they give tours!) to taste my favorite beer, The Duchesse de Bourgogne, straight from the source.
Then, that evening, take the train to Paris.
8/7-12/7---- Paris with another Amazing best friend, Daniel! If he can get it off of work, that is... I hope so!
12/7----Take the train from Paris to Bordeaux to hang out with a wine connoisseur Katie met while travelling Europe last year (Wine!!! Bordeaux!!! Holy moly!!!)
14/7----Stop for a beach day in Biarritz, maybe rent a surf board or just read on the sand and try and regain some color, then head to San Sebastian in Basque Country for the night and the following day. Nothing but beach and delishhhh food! (I found a blog that rated San Sebastian as the number 2 foodie destination in the world!!)
15/7----Take an overnight train from San Sebastian to Granada. I'll basically traverse the whole country by train, bypassing tons of amazing destinations, but I've got to get to Granada! It should be a nice train ride... I hope. I can't wait to see the Alhambra!
...Ouch
21/7---- Take an overnight train from Madrid to Lisbon, where I'll kick it in Portugal (Yes!) until...
25/7---- Fly from Lisbon to Copenhagen
26/7---- Take one last look at Copenhagen. Probably cry
27/7----Try not to go crazy during my 18 hours of travel from Copenhagen to San Diego.
Bring it, July.
It feels too good to be true.
I just spent the afternoon meticulously planning my July travels. Finally. It's taken form.
And the itinerary is fucking dreamy.
Fucking. Dreamy.
Excuse my language, but I'm that excited.
The plan:
5/7----Fly from CPH to Amsterdam with Thomas and Clara for Pitch Music Festival.
Spend 2 days listening to great music, partying, being with people I adore.
8/7----Take the train from Amsterdam to Vichte, Belgium to visit Brouwerij Verhaeghe (I hope they give tours!) to taste my favorite beer, The Duchesse de Bourgogne, straight from the source.
8/7-12/7---- Paris with another Amazing best friend, Daniel! If he can get it off of work, that is... I hope so!
12/7----Take the train from Paris to Bordeaux to hang out with a wine connoisseur Katie met while travelling Europe last year (Wine!!! Bordeaux!!! Holy moly!!!)
14/7----Stop for a beach day in Biarritz, maybe rent a surf board or just read on the sand and try and regain some color, then head to San Sebastian in Basque Country for the night and the following day. Nothing but beach and delishhhh food! (I found a blog that rated San Sebastian as the number 2 foodie destination in the world!!)
15/7----Take an overnight train from San Sebastian to Granada. I'll basically traverse the whole country by train, bypassing tons of amazing destinations, but I've got to get to Granada! It should be a nice train ride... I hope. I can't wait to see the Alhambra!
18/7----Take a train to Madrid in the afternoon. Maybe I'll do something unethical like going to see a bull fight.
...Ouch
21/7---- Take an overnight train from Madrid to Lisbon, where I'll kick it in Portugal (Yes!) until...
25/7---- Fly from Lisbon to Copenhagen
26/7---- Take one last look at Copenhagen. Probably cry
27/7----Try not to go crazy during my 18 hours of travel from Copenhagen to San Diego.
Bring it, July.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Professional Paradox
I've been toying with the idea of going back to school to get my Masters next year, applying this upcoming December.
Besides the stress of prepping -Portfolio, letters of recommendation, and the oh-so-daunting GRE -I have discovered how absolutely asinine it is to get a Masters in Architecture in such a bad economy.
I know, if you can't find a job, it seems productive to go back to school. Sure it is, if you are from a country where your education is free and living expenses taken care of by the government. But in the US? If you're going to shell out $150,000 for a Masters degree, you hope that when you get done with your 3 years of strenuous suffering, you have a job waiting for you to help you pay off that mountain of loans.
I sit right next to the woman in charge of hiring interns and employees here. About 300 hopefuls have applied for an internship here, and I'd say about half of them were cut from the pile right away -no matter how talented, how impressive their tome of work, how long their CV or list of recommendations. If they have a Masters degree completed? They're out. Buh-bye.
Why?
They're too damn expensive. In Denmark, at least, there is a minimum wage set by the Dansk Ark- Architecture association. If you're an architecture student, pre-completion-of-Masters, the wage is about 1/4 of that of a degree holder. If you're a company suffering from recession, who are you going to choose? A youngin' with a modest amount of experience, sufficient technical know-how, an open creative mind, and a reasonable price tag, or someone with marginally more experience, slightly more refined technical-know-how (but really, very little difference), and a pretty costly price tag -not to mention a diva attitude and a list of demands, simply because, well, they hold a Masters.
The choice is clear.
And for me, as well. It makes no sense at all -the only reason I would go back to school within the next year-ish is if I'm really itching to do my own work again. But then I should just time-manage and enter into a few solo competitions in whatever free time I can manage to scrape up.
For now, I don't mind being paid in beans, living on Struggle Street, gaining experience anywhere I can find it. For now, I'm finding work opportunities, against all odds, and the work opportunities will keep coming so long as I am fairly cheap to hire, and willing to work (and stupidly? I am!). And when I'm done with my Masters? With such huge debt looming over my head, I won't be willing to take a crap-paying job. I simply won't be able to afford it.
And when I do finally go get my Masters, I'll have a pretty strong sense of what kind of designer I am, and a diversified CV to boot, so when I do have to trump other Masters-holding hopefuls and make my way to the top of the job-application pile, it'll be no sweat.
Who would you choose? An expensive Masters-holding Architect with little to no work experience, or one with a wide range of experience, plus the work done in school?
No offense to those who've decided to go the Masters route directly out of school. Perhaps I'm just justifying my own route to myself. But really, good luck out there. It's a grim market, and those loans won't pay off themselves...
Besides the stress of prepping -Portfolio, letters of recommendation, and the oh-so-daunting GRE -I have discovered how absolutely asinine it is to get a Masters in Architecture in such a bad economy.
I know, if you can't find a job, it seems productive to go back to school. Sure it is, if you are from a country where your education is free and living expenses taken care of by the government. But in the US? If you're going to shell out $150,000 for a Masters degree, you hope that when you get done with your 3 years of strenuous suffering, you have a job waiting for you to help you pay off that mountain of loans.
I sit right next to the woman in charge of hiring interns and employees here. About 300 hopefuls have applied for an internship here, and I'd say about half of them were cut from the pile right away -no matter how talented, how impressive their tome of work, how long their CV or list of recommendations. If they have a Masters degree completed? They're out. Buh-bye.
Why?
They're too damn expensive. In Denmark, at least, there is a minimum wage set by the Dansk Ark- Architecture association. If you're an architecture student, pre-completion-of-Masters, the wage is about 1/4 of that of a degree holder. If you're a company suffering from recession, who are you going to choose? A youngin' with a modest amount of experience, sufficient technical know-how, an open creative mind, and a reasonable price tag, or someone with marginally more experience, slightly more refined technical-know-how (but really, very little difference), and a pretty costly price tag -not to mention a diva attitude and a list of demands, simply because, well, they hold a Masters.
The choice is clear.
And for me, as well. It makes no sense at all -the only reason I would go back to school within the next year-ish is if I'm really itching to do my own work again. But then I should just time-manage and enter into a few solo competitions in whatever free time I can manage to scrape up.
For now, I don't mind being paid in beans, living on Struggle Street, gaining experience anywhere I can find it. For now, I'm finding work opportunities, against all odds, and the work opportunities will keep coming so long as I am fairly cheap to hire, and willing to work (and stupidly? I am!). And when I'm done with my Masters? With such huge debt looming over my head, I won't be willing to take a crap-paying job. I simply won't be able to afford it.
And when I do finally go get my Masters, I'll have a pretty strong sense of what kind of designer I am, and a diversified CV to boot, so when I do have to trump other Masters-holding hopefuls and make my way to the top of the job-application pile, it'll be no sweat.
Who would you choose? An expensive Masters-holding Architect with little to no work experience, or one with a wide range of experience, plus the work done in school?
No offense to those who've decided to go the Masters route directly out of school. Perhaps I'm just justifying my own route to myself. But really, good luck out there. It's a grim market, and those loans won't pay off themselves...
Monday, June 25, 2012
Heaven helps those who help themselves
I find myself so irritated by those who make plans, make promises and then drag their feet and don't follow through, all the while blaming others for their misfortune, their crummy lives, their lack of accomplishments.
Just, like, take some responsibility, man!
The worst part is, I am sometimes one of those. A professional pussy-footer.
But Nat, give yourself credit where credit is due! If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. No questions asked. In what time frame? That's a whole different story.
I've been feeling so stressed out about my summer plans. Today is my last Monday at Henning Larsen Architects. This is my last week. Oy gevalt!
I finally committed to going home, and booked a flight last week. July 27th. That's my final European deadline.
When I booked that, and started looking into my July travel plans, I felt such a huge weight lifted. All of the guilt of putting it off for so long, gone. The crazy thing is, I always build these tasks (cleaning my room, booking a flight home, packing, blogging, even) into huge mountains in my head that become daunting and cripplingly incapacitating until I finally take care of them. And when I do? I find they take no time at all, and I feel immediately like a champion. 10 points, Nat. Scratch that off the endless to-do list.
I am always making resolutions. One more: I resolve to be more proactive about my own life. That empty package of gum floating around the bottom of my purse? Throw it out before 15 more accumulate, and I begrudgingly take an entire afternoon (5/6 of which is spent procrastinating the simple task at hand) to finally clean out my purse. Ugh.
Get it done. Move on.
Feel enlightenment.
Just, like, take some responsibility, man!
The worst part is, I am sometimes one of those. A professional pussy-footer.
But Nat, give yourself credit where credit is due! If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. No questions asked. In what time frame? That's a whole different story.
I've been feeling so stressed out about my summer plans. Today is my last Monday at Henning Larsen Architects. This is my last week. Oy gevalt!
I finally committed to going home, and booked a flight last week. July 27th. That's my final European deadline.
When I booked that, and started looking into my July travel plans, I felt such a huge weight lifted. All of the guilt of putting it off for so long, gone. The crazy thing is, I always build these tasks (cleaning my room, booking a flight home, packing, blogging, even) into huge mountains in my head that become daunting and cripplingly incapacitating until I finally take care of them. And when I do? I find they take no time at all, and I feel immediately like a champion. 10 points, Nat. Scratch that off the endless to-do list.
I am always making resolutions. One more: I resolve to be more proactive about my own life. That empty package of gum floating around the bottom of my purse? Throw it out before 15 more accumulate, and I begrudgingly take an entire afternoon (5/6 of which is spent procrastinating the simple task at hand) to finally clean out my purse. Ugh.
Get it done. Move on.
Feel enlightenment.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Mr Dobalina
"The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself."
Me me me me me.
I must get my ducks in a row, and stop placing my energy elsewhere as a diversion.
Clean up and sort through room, preparing for departure.
Me me me me me.
I must get my ducks in a row, and stop placing my energy elsewhere as a diversion.
Clean up and sort through room, preparing for departure.
Finish that damn pesky portfolio of mine, to have something to (hopefully) be proud of.
Book a flight home, plan my summer travels.
Focus. Follow through.
These are not my strengths, but damnit, I will make them my strengths.
As a side note: I can't wait to leave this place, where fidelity is unheard of. The shit I see go down here is unbelievable. Married men blatantly lying to get a shot at some variety. Guys with girlfriends on the prowl. I just don't understand. It grosses me out. If you want to be single, be single. But I guess the problem is just as prevalent back home, perhaps just slightly less visible or socially acceptable to talk about. Trust no one.
Honesty is so hard to come by these days. I have recently been told a few things by a few different people that would certainly warrant lies -should end up as skeletons in their closets. But I respected them, all the more, for just dealing in honesty. My rate of forgiveness and acceptance is exponentially higher when the truth comes out first. If you want my respect, just be honest. If I want to respect myself? Kick the liars to the curb. And finish my portfolio. I should finish my portfolio first. Curb-kicking later.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Espere
Waiting for miracles also includes exercising willpower to suspend your belief that miracles come about by will alone.
I can do this. I can do nothing. I can wait.
Learn patience, learn grace, learn to keep those last shreds of dignity you've been concealing in your coat pocket.
I can do this. I can do nothing. I can wait.
Learn patience, learn grace, learn to keep those last shreds of dignity you've been concealing in your coat pocket.
Monday, June 4, 2012
A Yawn at Dawn
It's 2:16 AM and the sun is already coming up.
I should get my butt to sleep before my room is completely bathed in sunlight.
Nordic Summer.
The lighting here is bipolar. But the weather is still consistently cold and wet.
I should get my butt to sleep before my room is completely bathed in sunlight.
Nordic Summer.
The lighting here is bipolar. But the weather is still consistently cold and wet.
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