Germany
I slept through my first visit to Germany since my dad and I were going on a bus during the night to Czechoslovakia, as it was called back then. I was just a kid and I was amazed how the seats on the bus turned into a bunker bed and my dad and I got the upper bed. I was squeezed in between all the passengers around me and the roof of the bus above me. I got a bit claustrophobic but at the same time it felt safe, like I was sleeping in a womb. It was actually the opposite of safe because if the driver would have to step on the brakes, then we would all come crashing down on the floor in a pile of each other. I remember seeing the street lights passing us by through my closed eyes and I was excited to be in an exotic place like Germany. For some reason I will never forget this, and I both wanted to see Germany at the same time that it was enough just to know that we were there while I would be sleeping.
It took me a long time to go back to Germany to see it for real, I was now an adult in my late 20's and I was going to Berlin to visit my love interest Felicia. We had been seeing each other for a year back in Sweden but I wasn't ready to commit because I had been so hurt in my last relationship. When she moved to Berlin and I went away for a trip to Iceland, and all I still would think about was her, that was the moment that I understood that I had to open up for a possibility to get heartbroken again. I told her I was ready to commit from a hostel basement in Reykjavík and she had been waiting to hear those words for a year.
The beginning of a relationship
As soon as I got back from Iceland I booked a flight to Berlin and she came to meet me at the airport. Love was in the air and we went to her apartment that she shared with her friends that I also knew from before. We spent many hours in bed as you do when you're madly in love in the beginning of a relationship, and during one of those I asked her to officially be my girlfriend and she said yes.
I had done my research before going to Berlin so we went to see the apartment where David Bowie and Iggy Pop had been living, and then we had a nice break at the gay-friendly café next door called Neues Ufer where they used to hang around. We went to the Ramones museum and after that we played 3D black light mini-golf that made you feel high. No wonder all the drug dealers were in the park outside.
We also went to a screening of a movie inside a shipping container and it felt so Berlin. Especially when it was a documentary called Bar25 about four young individuals whose freewheeling way of life transformed a riverside wasteland into a fantasy club land by the river Spree. There was a lady two chairs beside me at the screening and she managed to spill red wine over me, I still wonder how that was possible with the distance. It felt very Berlin to come home from the cinema with wine stains over me. Of course we also went to the more traditional tourist spots like the Berlin Wall, that used to separate the city in two parts, and the TV Tower, the tallest structure in Germany.
When we got tired of the city we took the train 50 km south of Berlin to go to Tropical Islands, which is Europe's largest water park indoors. The enormous dome was originally built as an airship hangar and it now hosted both a nude section and the regular section, as well as you could stay for the night inside a tent or a cabin inside the dome. You could even fly a balloon inside, but Felicia wasn't up for it, she told me to do it for real outside some day instead, which hasn't happened yet. We paid extra to be able to go inside the nude section and it was being in a foreign country that gave me the confidence to go around naked in front of strangers. Nothing beats swimming nude with your lover in the beginning of a relationship and we couldn't keep our hands to ourselves. They even had a restaurant in this section so we sat nude and ate, and it was amazing that I had found such a fun loving girl as Felicia that was up for anything.
For being Europe's largest water park the swimming areas outside the nude section were pretty dull and small actually. And we even had to pay extra to use the slides which seemed like a bad joke. Felicia's love had given me the confidence to use the largest water slide even though she warned me about it. I went for it and it was horrible, I felt the swimwear disappear up my behind and I couldn't breathe because the water was splashing my face all the time. When I finally got down I took a large breathe and said never again!
We had been there for many hours when we saw a small path leading somewhere we hadn't been before. Suddenly the best area of the regular section of the water park appeared, and we couldn't understand how we could have missed it the whole day. We enjoyed ourselves until we had to leave to catch the train back to Berlin again. For me it was time to leave Germany and pretty soon Felicia came back to Sweden to move in with me.
The middle of a relationship
We went on a cruise from Gothenburg, where we lived in Sweden, to a small city in northern Germany called Kiel. I love being on cruises and our cabin was modern so I loved spending time in there, especially the feeling you get when you take a shower while you're on a boat, it feels weird in a good way.
When we arrived at Kiel we took the free bus that takes all the tourists to a huge mall. It was nothing out of the ordinary and people just go there to buy lots of cheap alcohol I guess to bring back to Sweden. So we went into town again, nothing special there either, it was an alright town with nothing much to offer so we went back to the boat again to play some games and continue to love the cruise life.
There was nothing with Kiel that would make me want to go back, or wait, there was actually. I found out that you could enjoy the luxury spa suite on the boat instead of the usual cabins. It had it's own private patio with a jacuzzi with a view out to the sea and it would be the perfect location to celebrate New Year's Eve. I saw us sitting in the jacuzzi with champagne glasses watching the fireworks exploding over the sea. The only thing that made me doubt the decision to book it was that it was expensive as hell. For once I didn't care about the price and I told Felicia that I would pay for the suite as a gift and so the countdown began to New Year's Eve. It never happened, Felicia started acting weird and she complained about everything I did, no matter what I did. If I went left, then I should have went right, and if I turned right the next time, then she had changed her mind to left. It was impossible for me to do the right thing in her opinion and the tension was building, and in the end we broke up. The trip was still booked but it was pointless now, when we wouldn't go together.
The weeks after we had broken up was quite tense, it felt as if we would get back together one day, and the next day it felt as if we would never speak to each other again. When things got a bit better I asked her to go on the trip as friends, but she had already made other plans with her friends. So in the end we postponed the trip without knowing when it would take place, or even if it ever would.
We got back together as close friends which ended up being more than friendship even though we didn't make it official. The trip was postponed for Valentine's Day and even if we wouldn't be able to see fireworks this time, we would make the best of the trip. We went to Kiel again and did the same routine as last time with going to the mall and then back to the city centre. But all we waited for was to get into the luxury suite and jump into the warm jacuzzi in the cold February. I went in the jacuzzi nude since it was our private patio and drank some sparkling wine with my ex slash future girlfriend. We had the best night of our lives, enjoying ourselves in the jacuzzi talking and singing all night, and we refused to go to bed because we had such a blast. It was like magic in the air and I will never forget this night. Some months later we made it official that we were back together but it was almost as if this night was the true date when we found our way back to each other for real.
The end of a relationship
Suddenly Felicia told me that she was moving back to Berlin again, and that she would be moving with her friend. She hadn't even discussed it with me before she had decided that she would go, and I found that quite odd since we had been in a relationship for 5-6 years by now and had been talking about having kids in the future.
Felicia had been staying with her parents for the last couple of years to focus on her career so we lived in different cities. It was quite difficult since we both worked and we had to struggle to find time for each other each week. Sometimes it could take us 2 weeks before we saw each other just for a couple of days and then back to not seeing each other for a while again. I didn't want it that way and we had discussed the fact that our relationship would be better if we didn't live apart. So it came as a surprise to me that instead of moving together she would move by herself to a different country so I wouldn't be able to see her at all. I had no interest in moving to Berlin, because I don't really see the big deal with the city, it's gray, industrial and alright at the most. I had no money to do it either, but I know that love is the most essential thing for me so I said goodbye to logic and told her that I could join her. I expected her to jump of joy but instead she looked as if she needed a way to get out of this situation. She told me it was a big deal for her to be living on her own, so I thought there's nothing more for me to do than let her go and hope that we would still be together when she would return. By the way when would she return? She said she might be abroad for the rest of her life, and maybe she would move to Australia or maybe somewhere else, and she didn't want to know the answer to that and just go with the flow instead. Well it's kind of hard to have a relationship with that attitude.
She moved in with some random people she didn't know in Berlin, so apparently it wasn't that big of a deal to live on her own anymore. She just didn't want to be living with me I guess. She stopped talking to me and as soon as I wrote to her she always answered that she didn't have time, which was quite weird since she didn't even had a job or any else obligation. Suddenly she talked about going to Fiji on her own, and Fiji had been a dream we had together, that one day we would go there together. She even told me I could throw away her stuff she had at my place so it was obvious that she had no plans to come visit me. I gave it one last shot and asked her if she wanted to move in together anywhere in the world where it at least would be possible for me to get a job, because everybody needs to pay for food and rent no matter what. I suggested Oslo in Norway for her, so that we could make money for a while and then we could go wherever she wanted. She said she had never thought about going to Oslo, so it was out of the question. I gave up and just let her live her life, there was no us anymore, it was just about her now when she had saved up some money by living at home for 2 years. She seemed to have forgotten when the tables were turned and I was the one with money, I always stood by her side and helped her get jobs and paid for a lot of her stuff so that she could have some fun outside of the misery of working shitty jobs.
One day we talked a bit, and she told me she loved me and that she would take a shower and then we could talk some more. I told her the same and after I had my bath I started talking to her again and the first thing she said was to let me know that this was the end of our relationship. I got mad at her for obvious reasons. When we got back together I made her promise that she would let me know as soon as she felt that the relationship was turning sour so that we would have a chance to save it if that was the case. She had known for months that she would leave me, and she just made herself go through the pain of it to be able to let go when she was ready. But she hadn't told me anything at all so I just sat there hoping everything was alright even though she treated me like air. If anything, I should have left her, but I knew that the grass isn't greener on the other side. Relationships that lasts forever are filled with obstacles and it's those couples who pushes through that comes out at the other side with everlasting love as the reward.
Almost immediately after she had broken up with me she was back living in Sweden again, even though she had made it pretty clear that she would stay in Germany for a long time before that. She came home to me and we had a good talk and she told me she was sorry for how she had been treating me, and she left on a good note where she told me she loved me and kissed me on the cheek. I thought that our deep friendship was the most important thing so I was happy that she was back and that we could be friends again. The next time I spoke to her she said we would never meet again. I was so tired of her mental abuse that I stopped speaking to her, but I also felt this was so stupid, why shouldn't we be friends? I knew she wouldn't get in touch with me even though she should be the one who should reach out to me. So even though she was the one who hurt me I told her that it was ridiculous that we weren't on speaking terms anymore. Her answer was that she was mad at me for making us end on a bad note. Really? Me? I was the only one of us trying to save our friendship.
I had enough of her mental abuse and put her behind me until I was robbed with a knife at work, and I thought I was gonna get killed. I was so devastated by what had happened that I contacted her and told her about it. Even though we didn't speak to each other at the moment she was still the only one I could have deep conversations with. Her answer was just something in the lines of "Oh, ok, sorry to hear, hope you feel better soon". I had spent 6 years with this person and now she didn't even seem to care if I lived or died. I wrote her another message explaining it in detail how I felt since the robbery and boom she was back, the girl I had fallen in love with. She was so nice to me and gave me support and we ended the conversation with the chance of being friends in the future. I didn't hear from her in a while and so I visited her Facebook page and there it was. She had moved to Oslo in Norway, you remember the place where I had asked her to move with me and she had said she had no interest in that city whatsoever. She hadn't even told me she didn't live in Sweden anymore and it was obvious that she had no plans of us being friends. I talked with her and she told me I was selfish for wanting to be friends, and now I had enough of her. This was the last time she was going to fool me and as Leonard Cohen sang "the only thing I learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you". I had made the monster she was by blowing her ego up with my love, her power grew every time I showed my weakness for her. This time I put a mental needle in her and watched her squeel as all the power went out of her body and in the end there was just this little powerless bug on the ground that could do me no more harm. It was the end of years of mental abuse and I never looked back over my shoulders since I walked away from her for good.
And what about Germany? It's alright!
* Best things about Germany – falling in love with Felicia while doing fun stuff like swimming nude in the gigantic water park, the spa suite at the cruise to Kiel was amazing and I will never forget that night, and another night I will never forget was at the bus with my dad going through Germany on our way to Czechoslovakia
* Most mediocre thing about Germany – if you search for mediocre in a dictionary you will see a picture of Kiel
* Worst things about Germany – it's pretty gray and industrial and I can't stand the language, it's as harsh as the surroundings sometimes, the worst part was losing what I thought was my life partner to the country
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Croatia
2. Montenegro
3. Andorra
4. Cyprus
5. Turkey
6. Greece
7. Italy
8. Spain
9. Monaco
10. Malta
11. Netherlands
12. Iceland
13. Denmark
14. Sweden
15. Lithuania
16. Macedonia
17. Portugal
18. Slovakia
19. Slovenia
20. New Zealand
21. Ireland
22. Germany
23. United Kingdom
24. Belgium
25. Poland
26. Estonia
27. Czech Republic
28. Switzerland
29. San Marino
30. Kosovo
31. Romania
32. Finland
33. Latvia
34. Moldova
35. Norway
36. France
37. Bulgaria
38. Luxembourg
39. Liechtenstein
40. China
41. Serbia
42. Bosnia And Herzegovina
43. Albania
It took me a long time to go back to Germany to see it for real, I was now an adult in my late 20's and I was going to Berlin to visit my love interest Felicia. We had been seeing each other for a year back in Sweden but I wasn't ready to commit because I had been so hurt in my last relationship. When she moved to Berlin and I went away for a trip to Iceland, and all I still would think about was her, that was the moment that I understood that I had to open up for a possibility to get heartbroken again. I told her I was ready to commit from a hostel basement in Reykjavík and she had been waiting to hear those words for a year.
The beginning of a relationship
As soon as I got back from Iceland I booked a flight to Berlin and she came to meet me at the airport. Love was in the air and we went to her apartment that she shared with her friends that I also knew from before. We spent many hours in bed as you do when you're madly in love in the beginning of a relationship, and during one of those I asked her to officially be my girlfriend and she said yes.
I had done my research before going to Berlin so we went to see the apartment where David Bowie and Iggy Pop had been living, and then we had a nice break at the gay-friendly café next door called Neues Ufer where they used to hang around. We went to the Ramones museum and after that we played 3D black light mini-golf that made you feel high. No wonder all the drug dealers were in the park outside.
I wanted to do something romantic for Felicia so I took her to a perfumery where she would be able to make her own perfume.
We also went to a screening of a movie inside a shipping container and it felt so Berlin. Especially when it was a documentary called Bar25 about four young individuals whose freewheeling way of life transformed a riverside wasteland into a fantasy club land by the river Spree. There was a lady two chairs beside me at the screening and she managed to spill red wine over me, I still wonder how that was possible with the distance. It felt very Berlin to come home from the cinema with wine stains over me. Of course we also went to the more traditional tourist spots like the Berlin Wall, that used to separate the city in two parts, and the TV Tower, the tallest structure in Germany.
When we got tired of the city we took the train 50 km south of Berlin to go to Tropical Islands, which is Europe's largest water park indoors. The enormous dome was originally built as an airship hangar and it now hosted both a nude section and the regular section, as well as you could stay for the night inside a tent or a cabin inside the dome. You could even fly a balloon inside, but Felicia wasn't up for it, she told me to do it for real outside some day instead, which hasn't happened yet. We paid extra to be able to go inside the nude section and it was being in a foreign country that gave me the confidence to go around naked in front of strangers. Nothing beats swimming nude with your lover in the beginning of a relationship and we couldn't keep our hands to ourselves. They even had a restaurant in this section so we sat nude and ate, and it was amazing that I had found such a fun loving girl as Felicia that was up for anything.
For being Europe's largest water park the swimming areas outside the nude section were pretty dull and small actually. And we even had to pay extra to use the slides which seemed like a bad joke. Felicia's love had given me the confidence to use the largest water slide even though she warned me about it. I went for it and it was horrible, I felt the swimwear disappear up my behind and I couldn't breathe because the water was splashing my face all the time. When I finally got down I took a large breathe and said never again!
We had been there for many hours when we saw a small path leading somewhere we hadn't been before. Suddenly the best area of the regular section of the water park appeared, and we couldn't understand how we could have missed it the whole day. We enjoyed ourselves until we had to leave to catch the train back to Berlin again. For me it was time to leave Germany and pretty soon Felicia came back to Sweden to move in with me.
The middle of a relationship
We went on a cruise from Gothenburg, where we lived in Sweden, to a small city in northern Germany called Kiel. I love being on cruises and our cabin was modern so I loved spending time in there, especially the feeling you get when you take a shower while you're on a boat, it feels weird in a good way.
When we arrived at Kiel we took the free bus that takes all the tourists to a huge mall. It was nothing out of the ordinary and people just go there to buy lots of cheap alcohol I guess to bring back to Sweden. So we went into town again, nothing special there either, it was an alright town with nothing much to offer so we went back to the boat again to play some games and continue to love the cruise life.
There was nothing with Kiel that would make me want to go back, or wait, there was actually. I found out that you could enjoy the luxury spa suite on the boat instead of the usual cabins. It had it's own private patio with a jacuzzi with a view out to the sea and it would be the perfect location to celebrate New Year's Eve. I saw us sitting in the jacuzzi with champagne glasses watching the fireworks exploding over the sea. The only thing that made me doubt the decision to book it was that it was expensive as hell. For once I didn't care about the price and I told Felicia that I would pay for the suite as a gift and so the countdown began to New Year's Eve. It never happened, Felicia started acting weird and she complained about everything I did, no matter what I did. If I went left, then I should have went right, and if I turned right the next time, then she had changed her mind to left. It was impossible for me to do the right thing in her opinion and the tension was building, and in the end we broke up. The trip was still booked but it was pointless now, when we wouldn't go together.
The weeks after we had broken up was quite tense, it felt as if we would get back together one day, and the next day it felt as if we would never speak to each other again. When things got a bit better I asked her to go on the trip as friends, but she had already made other plans with her friends. So in the end we postponed the trip without knowing when it would take place, or even if it ever would.
We got back together as close friends which ended up being more than friendship even though we didn't make it official. The trip was postponed for Valentine's Day and even if we wouldn't be able to see fireworks this time, we would make the best of the trip. We went to Kiel again and did the same routine as last time with going to the mall and then back to the city centre. But all we waited for was to get into the luxury suite and jump into the warm jacuzzi in the cold February. I went in the jacuzzi nude since it was our private patio and drank some sparkling wine with my ex slash future girlfriend. We had the best night of our lives, enjoying ourselves in the jacuzzi talking and singing all night, and we refused to go to bed because we had such a blast. It was like magic in the air and I will never forget this night. Some months later we made it official that we were back together but it was almost as if this night was the true date when we found our way back to each other for real.
The end of a relationship
Suddenly Felicia told me that she was moving back to Berlin again, and that she would be moving with her friend. She hadn't even discussed it with me before she had decided that she would go, and I found that quite odd since we had been in a relationship for 5-6 years by now and had been talking about having kids in the future.
Felicia had been staying with her parents for the last couple of years to focus on her career so we lived in different cities. It was quite difficult since we both worked and we had to struggle to find time for each other each week. Sometimes it could take us 2 weeks before we saw each other just for a couple of days and then back to not seeing each other for a while again. I didn't want it that way and we had discussed the fact that our relationship would be better if we didn't live apart. So it came as a surprise to me that instead of moving together she would move by herself to a different country so I wouldn't be able to see her at all. I had no interest in moving to Berlin, because I don't really see the big deal with the city, it's gray, industrial and alright at the most. I had no money to do it either, but I know that love is the most essential thing for me so I said goodbye to logic and told her that I could join her. I expected her to jump of joy but instead she looked as if she needed a way to get out of this situation. She told me it was a big deal for her to be living on her own, so I thought there's nothing more for me to do than let her go and hope that we would still be together when she would return. By the way when would she return? She said she might be abroad for the rest of her life, and maybe she would move to Australia or maybe somewhere else, and she didn't want to know the answer to that and just go with the flow instead. Well it's kind of hard to have a relationship with that attitude.
She moved in with some random people she didn't know in Berlin, so apparently it wasn't that big of a deal to live on her own anymore. She just didn't want to be living with me I guess. She stopped talking to me and as soon as I wrote to her she always answered that she didn't have time, which was quite weird since she didn't even had a job or any else obligation. Suddenly she talked about going to Fiji on her own, and Fiji had been a dream we had together, that one day we would go there together. She even told me I could throw away her stuff she had at my place so it was obvious that she had no plans to come visit me. I gave it one last shot and asked her if she wanted to move in together anywhere in the world where it at least would be possible for me to get a job, because everybody needs to pay for food and rent no matter what. I suggested Oslo in Norway for her, so that we could make money for a while and then we could go wherever she wanted. She said she had never thought about going to Oslo, so it was out of the question. I gave up and just let her live her life, there was no us anymore, it was just about her now when she had saved up some money by living at home for 2 years. She seemed to have forgotten when the tables were turned and I was the one with money, I always stood by her side and helped her get jobs and paid for a lot of her stuff so that she could have some fun outside of the misery of working shitty jobs.
One day we talked a bit, and she told me she loved me and that she would take a shower and then we could talk some more. I told her the same and after I had my bath I started talking to her again and the first thing she said was to let me know that this was the end of our relationship. I got mad at her for obvious reasons. When we got back together I made her promise that she would let me know as soon as she felt that the relationship was turning sour so that we would have a chance to save it if that was the case. She had known for months that she would leave me, and she just made herself go through the pain of it to be able to let go when she was ready. But she hadn't told me anything at all so I just sat there hoping everything was alright even though she treated me like air. If anything, I should have left her, but I knew that the grass isn't greener on the other side. Relationships that lasts forever are filled with obstacles and it's those couples who pushes through that comes out at the other side with everlasting love as the reward.
Almost immediately after she had broken up with me she was back living in Sweden again, even though she had made it pretty clear that she would stay in Germany for a long time before that. She came home to me and we had a good talk and she told me she was sorry for how she had been treating me, and she left on a good note where she told me she loved me and kissed me on the cheek. I thought that our deep friendship was the most important thing so I was happy that she was back and that we could be friends again. The next time I spoke to her she said we would never meet again. I was so tired of her mental abuse that I stopped speaking to her, but I also felt this was so stupid, why shouldn't we be friends? I knew she wouldn't get in touch with me even though she should be the one who should reach out to me. So even though she was the one who hurt me I told her that it was ridiculous that we weren't on speaking terms anymore. Her answer was that she was mad at me for making us end on a bad note. Really? Me? I was the only one of us trying to save our friendship.
I had enough of her mental abuse and put her behind me until I was robbed with a knife at work, and I thought I was gonna get killed. I was so devastated by what had happened that I contacted her and told her about it. Even though we didn't speak to each other at the moment she was still the only one I could have deep conversations with. Her answer was just something in the lines of "Oh, ok, sorry to hear, hope you feel better soon". I had spent 6 years with this person and now she didn't even seem to care if I lived or died. I wrote her another message explaining it in detail how I felt since the robbery and boom she was back, the girl I had fallen in love with. She was so nice to me and gave me support and we ended the conversation with the chance of being friends in the future. I didn't hear from her in a while and so I visited her Facebook page and there it was. She had moved to Oslo in Norway, you remember the place where I had asked her to move with me and she had said she had no interest in that city whatsoever. She hadn't even told me she didn't live in Sweden anymore and it was obvious that she had no plans of us being friends. I talked with her and she told me I was selfish for wanting to be friends, and now I had enough of her. This was the last time she was going to fool me and as Leonard Cohen sang "the only thing I learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you". I had made the monster she was by blowing her ego up with my love, her power grew every time I showed my weakness for her. This time I put a mental needle in her and watched her squeel as all the power went out of her body and in the end there was just this little powerless bug on the ground that could do me no more harm. It was the end of years of mental abuse and I never looked back over my shoulders since I walked away from her for good.
And what about Germany? It's alright!
* Best things about Germany – falling in love with Felicia while doing fun stuff like swimming nude in the gigantic water park, the spa suite at the cruise to Kiel was amazing and I will never forget that night, and another night I will never forget was at the bus with my dad going through Germany on our way to Czechoslovakia
* Most mediocre thing about Germany – if you search for mediocre in a dictionary you will see a picture of Kiel
* Worst things about Germany – it's pretty gray and industrial and I can't stand the language, it's as harsh as the surroundings sometimes, the worst part was losing what I thought was my life partner to the country
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Croatia
2. Montenegro
3. Andorra
4. Cyprus
5. Turkey
6. Greece
7. Italy
8. Spain
9. Monaco
10. Malta
11. Netherlands
12. Iceland
13. Denmark
14. Sweden
15. Lithuania
16. Macedonia
17. Portugal
18. Slovakia
19. Slovenia
20. New Zealand
21. Ireland
22. Germany
23. United Kingdom
24. Belgium
25. Poland
26. Estonia
27. Czech Republic
28. Switzerland
29. San Marino
30. Kosovo
31. Romania
32. Finland
33. Latvia
34. Moldova
35. Norway
36. France
37. Bulgaria
38. Luxembourg
39. Liechtenstein
40. China
41. Serbia
42. Bosnia And Herzegovina
43. Albania
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