Sunday 3 March 2013

This post mentions Telmo

but it's mostly about cities.

POZNAN (I can't write it properly with my keyboard, but the last "N" has a little thing over it.)



I went there for a training on Hate Speech and Hate Crimes. To be honest, before going, my expectations were really low. Both towards the training and the city. I figured Poznan would be a small place in Poland with nothing that interesting going on.
I also had scary flash-backs of my EVS training week in October. 
I just don't like playing team-building games and talking about feelings, ok?




But after a week there I was in love with the city and super excited about everything in the training.
The workshops and discussions were interesting and everyone else was really cool. Me and Ceren both felt we will miss having a big noisy group around us while having lunch and dinner. After months of silently eating tupperware food in the office, it was a real change!

I didn't have much time to see the city. But went for a walk on the first day, with Ceren, and we both concluded that Poznan has a really pretty old town and sex shops on every corner.
 
During the time of the training we mostly stayed in the same street, where the hostel and conference room were. But, even in that one street, there was a vegetarian restaurant, a cute coffee place filled with hipsters (I've been in Vilnius for time enough to actually be surprised to see hipsters and feel a weird urge to hug them all), a shop/restaurant with gluten-free food, a really cool bar for shots, a nice italian restaurant we went to one of the nights, a organic cafe, a second hand shop... know what I mean? Poznan is like, a smaller cuter Berlin.



BERLIN
After the training, I went to visit Telmo in Berlin.



I had never been there, and I feel like I'll disapoint some of my berlin-enthusiast friends when I go back and tell thenm I didn't do any crazy partying and the closest to a night out was me and Telmo eating cheesecake in a dark bar and talking about feelings, plans for the future and learning how to love oneself.



To explain how I felt about the city I'll first talk about Sandra Juto.
Those who know me for some time are familiar with my issue with her. Sandra Juto is my pet hate. The poor lady doesn't even know me. It's the most idiotic form of antagonism: I hate Sandra Juto because DEEP DEEP DOWN I wish I was her.
I generally use her name as an adjective. So, if I had to describe Berlin, I'd say Berlin is very Sandra Juto. Which makes sense, since she lives there.

In her website, Sandra Juto introduces herself as a "blogger, graphic designer, online shop owner, artist, illustrator, photographer and crocheter." She's not exceedingly good at any of this things, but managed to get this ridiculous expensive wrist warmers business quite popular.

She has a blog depicting her perfect instragram-coloured life. Her apartment is neat and white and nicely decorated. She doens't have tampon boxes and supermarket discount flyers laying around. Her landlord didn't left any collection of pots, or butterfly decorations in the house that she can't get rid of and are awfully ugly.

She always eats amazingly good-looking food, and goes for coffee with her friends. 





 I believe everyone in Sandra Juto's world dresses well. No one wears Slipknot tshirts, they don't have unflattering haircuts or an ugly handbag that I-got-it-for-free-why-shouldnt-i-wear-it?

She's always in nice photogenic places. Sandra Juto has never been spotted in a lame pub with mirror walls, dolphin shaped dream-catchers and unflattering fluorescent lights.



So, in one of the days walking around the city, I sat on the subway and noticed people around me.
Everyone looked like her.
They all looked like someone she knows.
They probably all ride bikes and buy nice things in flea markets and sit in cafes and listen to Bon Iver while smoking rolled cigars.

Maybe they're even vegan.

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