maroc

when i put my hand on the back of my neck i can still feel the moroccan sun. it's red, dry, and feverishly hot. maybe i was sunburnt and that is my souvenir.

on my last morning, i climbed the stairs to the roof of the riad and nestled myself on a sofa under the open air, it was dark but stars decorated the sky, in the distance the mosque shone and blanketed the medina in a thin layer of golden light. i wanted to freeze time in this ancient red city. i was so far away from all i knew, i began forgetting things.

when i was a child i moved around a lot, at least once a year, to a new city always, and before going i would cry to the people i am leaving, why are you sending me away. but when you are young, you grow and flourish where ever you are planted. whenever i would arrive at my next destination, i would talk the way these new strangers did, forgetting the old dialect i spoke in, play the same games these new friends did, and forget the names of those i spent months with.

you create a new future because it is the innate way for you to survive, and you begin to forget life before hand, as if life had only begun in this new place. that was how morocco was starting to make me feel, it captivated me, and i had spent so much time being immersed in another world that priorities began unconsciously shuffling.

but i couldn't freeze time. the moon was soon pushed away by the rising sun, and i headed downstairs to leave.

now it is all just a warm memory in my mind, and i hope dearly it stays.

translation:

love: it is a feeling people cannot live without

it is beautiful and attractive

if you are stressed:

smile

people should choose a simple way to express it

liberté

île de bréhat

postcards from italy

many times i thought i was in a dream. surely no place can be this beautiful — over and over again.

my body turned to a light, feather-like cloud each time the air (thin as it was) vacuumed into my lungs. and the stillness of the landscape made everything look as flat as cardboard. i thought if my arms reached out far enough, i could rip each scene off the wall.

venice, italy

the vatican

lisboa, portugal

lost in the post

i have always liked traveling by myself, you arrive as you can, go as you please, yet the places you feel most alone, are always the cities with many others. i liked my time in berlin and barcelona, because i could feel the culture and sense of community on my skin even as an outsider. but in london, the only thing i felt connected to was the tate modern, and in madrid it was the reina sofia. the cities were a giant silhouette to me otherwise. oh bagels from a bakery called beigel in london, i went there twice a day every day it became a little creepy.

the places i fell in love with, would have to be italy, portugal, brittany in france, and morocco. more photographs to come i promise. here are the very few photos i took of passing cities.

berlin

beautiful berlin is your name from now on, because in the words of sinéad o'connor, nothing compares 2u... uuuuuuuuu. it feels though all the congenial forces in the world gather and bake cakes from rainbows in berlin. i would return here in a heartbeat and plane ticket.

copenhagen

copenhagen is like an elegant, perfect, rich cousin that everyone wish they could visit so they can play with all her dolls and stroll in her gardens, and maybe speak to her. but the price they need to pay to reach her glorious castle is too much... for a travelling student, anyway. and even when you do finally make it, you realise you never liked dolls in the first place.

prague

i almost cried at my incompetence of not being able to buy a bus ticket from a machine for half an hour. i had to take a long walk, clear my head, eat a bounty bar before the epitomist steps of how to buy a ticket in the czech language came to me. the city is breath taking nonetheless.

vienna

sugar and spice and all things nice.

paris

this place kind of broke my heart. i will come back and see you again, properly perhaps.

barcelona

i turned 21 in barcelona. i kept forgetting my birthday, nothing unusual. below is fruit from la boqueria market, the place is wonderful, fresh juice, candy, happiness... and with it you travel to sit on the longest park bench in the world designed by the craziest architect ever, looking over barcelona in its entirety, and the feeling becomes pretty euphoric.

nederland

it is always nice to be greeted at an airport, (unless it's by interpol). often i try and hold back my smile when i walk through the final door to the arrival hall. i want to smile because the feeling of adventure makes happiness run wild all around me, but i don't want to make a fool out of myself before i even get a chance to leave the airport, so i stay composed as much as i can in front of the people looking for their someone.

this time was different because a friend was going to pick me up from amsterdam airport, and i smiled from take off in london until i arrived at schiphol.

roj and i became friends in high school due to our similar assignment starting hours, almost always the day before, and we would stay up through the night giving each other encouragements, and thinking of ideas to buy more time. she was a part of my photographs when i first became interested in photography, and is still one of my favourite people to take portraits of.

she gave me a space to sleep on her floor in leiden, her room was beautiful, the ceiling seemed to reach the sky and the window was the wall itself. we wandered around leiden one of the mornings, eating raw herring, kibbeling, bitterballen and stroopwafels, not all at once but i am pretty sure within 2 hours.