Swedish Nerd Vs. The World

I had a feeling that my friend Erik, who would go with me to Vienna, wouldn't enjoy my architectural interest in Austria's capital. Most people don't want to go around looking at houses, so I was happy to hear that he had the same interest. Erik had arrived earlier than me since he was flying from Denmark's capital Copenhagen while I flew from Gothenburg in Sweden. He had already been to some of the museums that I had no interest in when I met him at our hotel. We hit the streets and we went to the Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment house built after the idea and concept of artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who is my favourite Austrian designer.  The house features undulating floors ("an uneven floor is a divine melody to the feet"), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows. Hundertwasser took no payment for the design of the house, declaring that it was worth it...

It's the world's smallest country and they even call it Vatican City and not Vatican Country themselves. I wouldn't even call it a city, it's more a part of the Italian capital Rome that is dedicated to Roman Catholicism. It's home to the pope and about 1000 others, and the tourists are as many because of famous paintings in the Sistine Chapel. My ex-girlfriend Felicia and I went to Rome for a weekend and we rented a room in an apartment close to the Vatican. I had heard that there was a dress code for women that they have to cover up to enter the Vatican and not be lightly dressed. Felicia was in her summer dress so just outside the Vatican she would change to a sweater and pants to cover up, and she hated to do so because of the heat, and of course because it's ignorant to not let people wear what they want to.  I knew I couldn't go there in shorts either but I always wear black jeans no matter how warm it is, so it was no trouble for me. After ...

As soon as I stepped out from the airport in San Francisco it felt like coming home. It was like I was inside all those movies I had seen through the years, everything felt familiar even though I had never been there before. On our way into the city, Christian and I passed by the ghettos in a minibus and it was clear to me that the difference between rich and poor is a lot bigger than in Sweden. Our hotel was one street off from the heart of the city and that street was full of homeless persons strolling their carts, while the police sirens were on 24/7. As soon as you got passed that street you were suddenly in a big city center where you couldn't even believe there was something called poverty. The contrast was so big. The first thing we ate was pizza and it was disgusting. I would quickly understand that USA is the home of burgers and not pizza. The vegetarian burgers were amazing, especially at Denny's. Big isn't always better Since San Francisco is so ...

"Merry Christmas!" My girlfriend Felicia and I exchanged gifts, and the gifts would be that we would go to Hungary to meet the spring 4 months later. The time finally arrived and so did we to the capital Budapest which I quickly renamed to Budabest since I liked it so much. Pest in Swedish means plague so it sounded better to say best. Budapest is everything I expected Berlin to be, it's creative and charming since it has embraced the worn down buildings. They even got bars called ruinpubs situated in buildings that were doomed for destruction which are now instead equipped with rejected furnitures and beer taps. We arrived at night and took a quick walk around the block before we went to bed. The next day we immediately left the city center to go take a morning bath at the famous and yellow Szechenyi thermal bath. It's the largest medicinal bath in Europe and was opened in the early 1900's. It smelled like fart in the inner sections so we...