It is a sunny Sunday in Amersfoort, and I am sitting on the tiny third floor balcony of our rented flat, looking out over the back yards of our erstwhile neighbours. Across the way and several back yards up a quartet us hanging their laundry and inspecting their garden; a neighbour two doors down shouts greetings at them, sticking his head out his third floor skylight so that they can hear him.

The clock is ticking down to our check out time at noon, but I am choosing to eke out every minute of peace before we enter into the maelstrom of Amsterdam and then home.

Oliver and I spent two very happy days with friends here in Amersfoort, a gathering catalyzed by our friend’s Elmine and Ton on the occasion of Elmine’s birthday. It is the second time we’ve joined the “birthday unconference” caravan, and even though Tom and Elmine have moved across the country in the four years since we were last here, it feels like coming home.

It seems folly to try to document what happened over these two days (although Frank has done a good job), so I will instead focus on three things that stand out.

First was Oliver’s talk.

The “un” in “unconference” means “there’s no formal program, and there’s no audience: we and us form the program together.” And so Oliver stood up on the stage—a tiny step-stool—and pitched the idea of presenting “Google Home and Amazon Echo and Ring Doorbell and Police Surveillance Cameras.” He received an enthusiastic reception, and a time was set on the schedule for him.

At the appointed hour, with me advancing the slides from the balcony, he presented his slide deck (see slides here) with confidence. The last slide in his deck was “do you have any questions for us?” and this then precipitated 45 minutes of rousing discussion on privacy, access, streaming music, and home control. I was very proud of him: the initiative was entirely of his own doing, he crafted his slides on his own, and got himself on the schedule through his own will. He is becoming a force in the world, and that is awe-inspiring to see.

The second highlight is an event that preceded Oliver’s talk, the “icebreaker” part of the day that led things off. I have always dreaded the “everybody introduce yourself” part of meetings, especially meetings of diverse people whose lives inevitably seem much more interesting than my own; this, thankfully, was dispensed with, and instead we were prompted to gather with people we didn’t yet know and to talk about our best and worst moves in life.

What proceeded from this simple prompt was a rich discussion of what it’s like to live as an expat, how difficult it is to make friends as an adult, and the power of neighbourhood connections. Oliver and I were in a group with Heinz and Elja and Martyn, and we talked for almost an hour. I have no idea what any of the others in our group do for a living, but I know that Martyn mowed his lawn this week in preparation for a neighbourhood party, that Heinz lives in an apartment block where it’s hard to get to know his neighbours, and that Elja has lived in Hungary, the USA and Turkey, and has the most popular Dutch blog post on making friends.

Finally, and most deeply, I appreciated the chance to reconnect with old friends, and to make new ones.

I proposed a session on accessible housing, and through that session got reintroduced to Xavier and Simone, who I’d met four years ago.

Oliver and I rode the train from Berlin to Amersfoort with our friend Martina and this both afforded us a chance to talk more intimately than long distances have allowed, and also provided me with support when the trip took a challenging turn, and I needed someone to bear witness and to seize control over shifting logistics.

Our friend Pedro flew from Indonesia to be here and we instantly reconnected and both picked up the threads of conversations we’d left off four years ago, and shared stories of our more recent sorrows and adventures.

I sat with Johnnie, who I hadn’t seen since Reboot many years ago, on the couch in the living room for a few short minutes before lunch and our chat quickly turned to the joys of participating in projects or discussions or meetings where you have only a casual interest, and thus no hill to guard.

It was a pleasure to meet Frank, who’s joined Ton and me in an ad hoc effort to understand the Indieweb, in person, and to participate in his session on redecentralizing the web; our digital discussion will be so much more powerful now that we’ve met in the flesh.

I got to spend time–not enough–with Lilia and with Robert, also “stuff that matters” veterans from the last round, and to learn of their latest adventure, starting a new company.

Elmine’s brothers, Harmen and Siert, were both there and I got to chat with both of them, and to witness Harmen’s Olympic-level avuncularity with his niece Y., and to hear about Siert’s adventures in 3D fabrication since I heard him talk about RepRap machines at reboot a decade ago.

Ton introduced Oliver and me to Matthijs, the son of a collaborator; he is a dynamic young man considering a move to Canada, and we had a good chat about education, employment, escaping the orbit of your home culture, and what may lay ahead for him. He also gave me an excellent survey of the current state of Android phones, pointing me at models I’d never heard of.

There were almost 40 of us in total, and even more at the Saturday barbecue that formed part two of the weekend, and the chance to spend time with such a diverse and interesting bunch, in the almost-as-if-purpose-built surroundings of Ton and Elmine’s new house, was a great privilege; to have Oliver join me as a partner in the endeavour made it all the better.

The day wasn’t entirely without dipping into the hard “stuff” of “stuff that matters”: Oliver and I constructed a pneumatic tube-based messaging system that allowed notes to be sent to the garden, an activity that provided a way for us to truly to something together, but also to step away from the fray a little.

As the night wound down yesterday, and friends and family took leave, we found ourselves the last to depart, leaving Elmine and Ton and Martina and Pedro to recover from the whirlwind and get some sleep.

I took this photo, a little blurry alas, but heartfelt nonetheless, of Pedro and Elmine sitting on the couch; the photo is both a testament to a great friendship, but also a proxy for the feeling that washed over our time here. Ton and Elmine are courageous explorers of new social terrain; I’m so happy to be part of their merry band.

There is a small playground across from our flat in Amersfoort with this sign posted in front. I love the rules and how they’re communicated in words and stick figures.

When we last left the trail of our summer’s-end trip to Europe we were in Malmö, Sweden, preparing to head to Berlin.

On Monday morning we woke up to a dreary day in Malmö, with the threat of rain just over the horizon. We packed up the Swedish operation, had the last breakfast in our Airbnb (a lovely flat should you ever find yourself looking for lodging in the city). With the impending rain, and a wish to exercise every option available to destress the travel day, I ordered us up an Uber (only my third ever) and a friendly cab driver arrived 5 minutes later for the quick run to the Triangeln train station. A few minutes later we were whisked away on the Øresundståg across to Copenhagen.

As we were traveling first class (which was insignificantly more expensive than second class), upon arrival in Copenhagen we were able to retire to the utilitarian DSB lounge overlooking the main station floor; it was a busy, chaotic morning in the station, and while the lounge was absent canapés and butlers, the quiet and remove were worth every penny.

At 12:52 we boarded the first of three trains for the day: the first run was from Copenhagen to Fredericia, a main railway junction in the western Denmark area of Jutland in; from there it was a change of trains and south to Hamburg and in Hamburg we had a short 30 minute layover–just enough time to grab a pineapple popsicle from the DB lounge–before catching the final train, to Berlin.

The train pulled into the main Berlin rail station, the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, at 8:30 p.m. We quickly hopped on the S-Bahn to Ostbahnhof, an 8 minute trip. From there we walked to the A&O Hostel on Köpenicker Str. where we arrived just before 9:00 p.m. We checked in, dumped our bags in our room, and walked at a brisk pace to Freiluftkino Kreuzberg, just 500 metres up Adalbertstraße. We bought tickets for The Shape of Water, and took our seats. At 9:15 p.m. Just as the show started. It was the travel equivalent of a perfect game.

Freiluftkino Kreuzberg is one of my favourite places on Earth, period. And it’s certainly my absolutely most favourite place to see films. It’s tucked into a courtyard beside Kunstquartier Bethanien (which also houses Druckwerkstatt, where I spent many happy Tuesdays printing back in 2011). The films are shown outdoors, on a large screen; seating is either in garden chairs or loungers. There is popcorn and German beer. And the scent of pot smoke in the air. And bats and birds flying around. On Monday night it was windy and threatening rain, and thus the perfect night to see a film about a watery monster falling in love.

It was the best way imaginable to start a trip to Berlin.

We woke up on Tuesday morning just a little exhausted from travel (and just a little more from the granite beds at the A&O). After the uninspiring but helpful hostel breakfast we headed over to Companion Coffee to seek an antidote to the hostel coffee (made out of the same materials as the beds, from the taste).

We then hopped on the U-Bahn into Mitte for lunch with my friend Igor, tucking into MUJI for some emergency stationery browsing for a few minutes before our appointment meeting time.

We enjoyed a very pleasant lunch with Igor and his office mate at Made in China on Schönhauser Allee, stopping for (excellent) ice cream at Cuore di Vetro on the way back. We bid our lunchmates goodbye and headed to do your read me?!, the magazine shop of magazine shops, then to R.S.V.P., the stationery store on Mulackstraße that has doubled in size since I was first there in 2011, spreading to a second location across the street. At R.S.V.P. I acquired a lovely Kaweco AL Sport fountain pen that’s just the right size for carrying around all the time, and some cord made from an exotic-sounding material called baumwolle that I later realized is simply cotton (“tree” + “wool”).

With a first round of stationery shopping out of the way, we retired to Hackbarth’s where we met my old friend James, a Canadian long a Berliner, as I’ve written before, a sharer of a childhood barber, and always someone I enjoy catching up with enormously.

My friend Morgan came along after work to join us for a drink (you’ll remember him from such episodes as The One Where I Blow Up the Car and I Am a Connection Machine) and afterwards we moved on to Salt n Bone for supper, where we were later joined by our friend Tiffany.

We rolled in to the A&O just after 10:30, happy to have spent a day with friends.

On Wednesday morning we subjected ourselves to the A&O breakfast again, but avoided the coffee in favour of an extended morning coffee break with friend Peter, whose office is as well-located an office as I’ve ever seen, embedded as it us in the same complex as Modulor, the world’s greatest stationery superstore. After catching up with Peter we spent almost 2 hours roaming the aisles of Modulor, finding enough unique items of interest to fill a small shipping box; so a trip to the post office around the corner was our next stop (Modulor helpfully has a packing and wrapping station, well-equipped with scissors, tape, kraft paper and string that made this much easier).

For lunch we walked across the street from Modulor to Prinzessinnengarten and shared an meal of creamed chickpeas with cucumbers over rice and couscous while perched on a rattletrap table made out of tree stumps nestled between forest and garden. After lunch we toured the site, and stopped to make some sketches.

From the Moritzplatz U-Bahn that opens on to both Modulor and Prinzessinnengarten we rode into West Berlin to go to Hamburger Bahnhof, an art gallery in a former train station where we’d never been before, despite many visits to the city. We were lucky to find three intriguing exhibitions in place: a room full of works by Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly organized with “thought bubbles” beside each containing a collage of influencing imagery, Hello World, in the upper gallery, “a critical inquiry into the collection of the Nationalgalerie and its predominantly Western focus,” and, on the other end of the building, a monumental collection of installations by Qin Yufen.

Once we’d toured the gallery we found ourselves tired and thirsty and I debated whether we should simply grab a coffee at the pleasant looking canal-side café attached to the gallery, or forge onward into West Berlin for something possibly more interesting. I channeled Catherine in this regard, and followed what I knew would be her advice to take the easy coffee at hand; this turned out to be exactly the right decision, and we emerged ready for the final activity of the day.

This final activity was a supper, thoughtfully organized by the aforementioned Morgan, at a Shaniu’s House of Noodles on Pariser Str. Morgan is a member of a ragtag group that, over the winter, gets together for a weekly TV watch-and-potluck; he called together a special summer session to visit Shaniu’s, and we were invited to join. The company was a diverse mix of people connected by myriad threads, all interesting; the food was transcendent, with several flavours that were completely new to me.

We arrived at the hostel at an “early” 10:00 p.m. and fell quickly to sleep after a quick round of preemptive packing.

Thursday morning we woke up at the unusually early hour of 7:00 a.m., ready to head east to the Netherlands.

In total we were in Berlin for a little more than 48 hours, and we managed to do a lot of visiting in that short time, and to visit my favourite haunts. Oliver was very, very generous and patient with me, indulging my stationery obsession and abiding many conversations with friends.

As usual, we spent too little time in Malmö, didn’t get to do all the visiting we wanted to do, didn’t get to have all the conversations we wanted to have. But we made a valiant effort to squeeze in as much as we could, and our efforts reached their peak over the weekend.

We started off meeting up with Olle and Luisa just up the street at ReBike, which was holding a bicycle auction. The auction proved to be dissatisfying, so we redirected to the nearby flea market. We emerged hungry for lunch, and a stop at the McDonalds next door was proposed, an atypical emergency measure given hunger levels (and an opportunity for us to spend our “we’re allow to go to McDonalds once on every European trip if circumstances dictate” allowance). Some of our party being vegans, our visit was predicated on the presence of the McVegan on the menu (yes, this is a thing). It was not on the menu, so we decamped.

At this point Luisa returned home and Olle, Oliver and I redirected to Mitt Möllan, where Olle had Indian food and Oliver and I enjoyed pizza from the excellent Pizza dal Sud.

Sated, we caught a taxi, magically invoked by Olle’s phone, and headed to the Moderna Museet Malmö where we rendezvoused with Olle’s friend David, and took in an exhibition of 19th century photography (upstairs) and a retrospective of the work of Polish artists Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński (downstairs).

After our visit, we retired to the stratospherically orange café, where we enjoyed coffee and cake and got to know David a little better. He is, we learned, a practitioner of “stealthy” photography–the taking of photos in such a way as the moment is captured without artifice. I decided to try my hand, and, in the flick of a moment, took this photo, which is either a photo of David and Olle, or a photo of the tiny man in the background talking on his mobile.

At this point we left David and Olle, and the newly-joining Eric, to their own devices, and headed off in search of an early supper, hopeful that the rain would hold until we were under cover.

We found both food and cover from the rain at Nguyen’s Sandwiches, where we enjoyed tofu bánh mì.

Outside the impending rain became driving rain, and so I quickly pulled out my phone to see if there was a movie we might watch, so as to avoid a soggy walk home. The Children Act, an Emma Thompson film, was starting in 15 minutes just a few blocks away, so we scubaed through the rain and made it just in time. And, in so doing, we got to experience interesting aspects of the Swedish cinema-going experience: reserved seating, a convenience store-like concession (similar to what we saw in Oslo in 2015), and a phalanx of political advertising during the pre-show.

When we emerged 2 hours later, the rain had passed and it was a brisk, bright Saturday evening, perfect for a walk home. While walking I texted Olle to invite him over for tea, and when we arrived he was standing in front of our apartment waiting for us; we did, indeed, drink tea, and ate potato chips, and talked well into the evening.

Sunday morning’s task was to do our laundry.

Our Malmö apartment had a communal laundry room in the basement that we could reserve the exclusive use of for 4 hours using a board in the lobby, affixing a lock to the hour range we wanted. As our key was in the countryside with our apartment’s owner, we were advised to stick a piece of paper in our slot:

At 8:00 a.m. I packed up our near-week’s worth of laundry and headed down. Only to find the door locked. This was quickly resolved by a ping to our Airbnb host, who had a neighbour unlock the door, and by 8:30 a.m. I was in business, decrypting the not-all-that-hard-to-decrypt Swedish washing machine.

The highlight of the experience, though, was not the washing but the drying, as the drying was done in a C.S. Lewis-sized drying cabinet, with swing-out bars on which to arrange wet clothes. It did an amazing job at drying everything quickly and completely and without wrinkles.

So the laundry was done and folded by 11:00 a.m.

It being Sunday, Oliver expected waffles. Fortunately I had Malmö-based experience in this regard, and we walked down to Kungsgatan Café for its weekend brunch, which included cheeses and meats and buns and granola and yogurt. And make-your-own waffles.

After lunch we took a walk in the sunshine, and then headed to Olle and Luisa’s apartment–just 5 minutes walk away–for a fika they had kindly organized in our honour. In attendance were friends I’d met before–Nene and Loe and Johanna–along with Lovisa and Mikael, who were new. There were cakes, and tarts, and ice cream, and cardamom-infused coffee and delightful company.

The highlight of the fika for me was an extended conversation with Nene about our shared love of fountain pens (her love is deeper than mine, which only served to deepen my own). Nene brought her entire fleet of pens, and kindly allowed me to try them all, and provided helpful commentary about each. She then left me with the unexpected gift of a pen and some intriguing inks. We will, I’m sure, have more to talk about on this in future.

As fika wound down, friend Jonas, who’d had to miss the afternoon to attend a baptism, radioed in and offered to drive us out to his allotment (which, in the Swedish sense, is a community garden plot cum modest summer cottage). We got a cook’s tour of the allotment, followed by a tasty take-out supper of vegetarian bibimbap from Spoonery.

Jonas dropped us back at our apartment late Sunday night, and I finished the day in a frantic drive to clean things up and get organized for our departure for Berlin this morning.

Which is where I type right now, en route presently from Fredericia to Hamburg, with Oliver across the way, wearing a red wool sweater that Olle loaned and then gifted him:

Next stop, Berlin.

It is high election season here in Sweden, and election advertising is on every street corner (and consumed almost all of the pre-show at the movie we went to yesterday).

This ad for the Green Party is especially noticable: “Now,” it reads, “the climate cannot wait.”

We had the pleasure of visiting the Siri Aurdal exhibition at the Malmö Konsthall this afternoon, and while wandering through a forest of tinted plexiglass, I spotted this view of Oliver.

Malmö, like its Danish cousin across the sound Copenhagen, is a bicycling city, and the number and diversity of bicycles inspires awe, especially when compared to Charlottetown, where cycling remains the preserve, primarily, of the young, the car-less and the sporty.

Ever since my first visits to the area a dozen years ago, I’ve looked longingly at the cargo bikes that are used to haul around groceries, IKEA purchases and children. Nine years ago, when Oliver was 8 years old, I test rode a Nihola child-carrying bike with an eye, perhaps, to using it as a family transporter, but nothing came of it. But the candle burns as bright in me now as it did then, and finding myself in Malmö again, this time with Oliver, prompted a return to the notion.

I was fortunate in this regard to have stumbled across Cargo Bike of Sweden online; it’s based just east of the central train station and an easy bus ride from our apartment, and so we headed there this afternoon.

We were placed in the care of the personable Nils, who showed us first the Cargobike Classic Electric, a 6-speed cargo bike with the classic box-in-front design and a 250 watt electric motor for pedal assist. The box was roomy enough that Oliver could fit inside it comfortably, and we could likely squeeze Ethan in as well:

For such an ungainly-looking elephant, it was a joy to ride, and the electric assist allowed us to zip along at a comfortable pace. Oliver reports that the front bucket was comfortable and stable.

After a test drive of the electric assist, Nils asked if we wanted to test ride the non-electric version, and I took him up on it so that I could compare. As you might expect, it felt like pedaling a Sherman tank, and was the best advertisement for the wonders of electric assist you could imagine.

Here’s Oliver in the non-electric model, looking suitably unimpressed (although still comfortable):

The Cargobike Classic Electric sells for 21,995 SEK ($3142 Canadian); because of a generous rebate from the Swedish state, however, Swedes pay only 16,496 SEK ($2357 Canadian), a savings of 25%. That seems like an eminently reasonable price given what standard e-bikes are selling for. Cost to ship to Canada would need to be factored in, of course (the bike comes in two large boxes, one for the bucket and one for the bike; together they weigh 50 kg).

Our cycling season in Charlottetown is shorter than it is in Malmö where you can almost cycle all year round, but this is still an attractive option, and while we might not get it together for this season, perhaps for next.

On the last episode of “Peter and Oliver Try to Eat at Kao’s” we were dogged by payment challenges, and ended up abandoning the effort and reconciling ourselves to never eating there.

Tonight, however, we met up with our friend Jonas for supper, and, having read yesterday’s post, he suggested we make another attempt at an ascent.

So we walked east 15 minutes–a path well-trod from yesterday–and found ourselves at Kao’s front door, wondering whether they were open or not. It was hard to tell from the outside looking in, whether the lights were on or off, and the hours on the door were suitably confusing that their status was unclear.

“Why don’t you just try the door,” Jonas suggested (why didn’t I think of that?).

So I tried the door.

And as soon as it was open a crack, a piercing siren filled the neighbourhood, the volume and travel of which I’d never heard the likes of before.

Perhaps the person who was closing up remembered to set the alarm, but forgot to lock the front door?

I slowly backed away, and we gingerly and all-innocent-like moved up the block to consider our next move.

Jonas, in a further paean to my vegetarianism, suggested to reroute to Raw Food House, and we heartily agreed.

This required a walk whence we came, but the company was good and the weather pleasant, so we had no complaints.

When we arrived, 10 minutes later, at Raw Food House, we found that it had closed at 6:00 p.m.

Malmö, it seems, does not want me us to eat vegetarian.

We redirected two doors up to Ciao, an Italian restaurant that had the benefit of being open, free of klaxons, and with vegetarian options.

Jonas enjoyed a mushroom pizza, Oliver pasta with beef, and I had a very tasty pear tortellini.

Perhaps we will never eat at Kao’s.

The day started well.

When we returned from a morning out, I investigated Sweden’s replacement of its paper currency a little more, to see what my options were for exchanging my old for some new; I found this helpful answer from Sweden’s central bank:

I am a foreign citizen and I have some Swedish banknotes that has ceased to be legal tender. Where can I exchange them or redeem them?

If you are a tourist and discover that you have invalid Swedish banknotes after you have left the country, you can send them to the Riksbank, who will redeem them. The Riksbank will deposit the appropriate amount of money in your bank account (even if it is a foreign bank account). However, the Riksbank charges a fee of SEK 100 for every redemption case, so there is no point in trying to redeem less than SEK 100.

This investigation required that I take my cache of Swedish cash out of my wallet, which required that I take my wallet out of my bag.

Hold that thought.

Oliver, meanwhile, was deep inside Yelp, figuring out where we should eat lunch, and decided we should go to Kao’s, a vegetarian place about 20 minutes walk from our apartment.

We made our way through Möllan toward Kao’s, passing familiar haunts (“hey, Oliver, that’s the bar where Jonas and Olle and I go at 3:00 a.m. when we’ve been out drinking”), and arriving very ready to eat.

To purchase lunch–a buffet–at Kao’s, you pay at the bar next door.

“Shall we pay now,” I asked.

“Either now or later,” replied the barkeep.

I decided to pay in advance, lest I forget.

This was a wise move: I’d left my wallet, absent its currency, on the table in the living room of the apartment, 20 minutes walk away.

“We’ll be right back,” I told the barkeep.

My first thought was that we’d simply walk back to the apartment, retrieve my wallet, walk back to Kao’s, and enjoy lunch.

But it was hot. And we were hungry. And we were on a schedule, due to meet Olle at 4:30 p.m. at the central station.

My next thought was “hey, Oliver has a bank card; let’s find an ATM.”

We wandered around, following the architectural scent of banks, but to no avail.

“I could pay with Google Pay!”, I exclaimed.

But it turned out that when I’d activated my SIM card, I hadn’t set up mobile data. And to get the mobile data settings, I needed mobile data. And I needed mobile data to use Google Pay.

At this point we realized that Skånetrafiken buses have free wifi on them, and it’s possible to connect while the bus is standing in front of you at a bus stop. Hilarity ensued as I tried to connect to bus wifi and Google the settings for my SIM card, all before the bus pulled away. I failed.

I was almost ready to give up, when an open wifi access point appeared on the horizon. I connected, got the Lycamobile APN settings, and got myself fully online.

Back to Kao’s. Kao’s has an old terminal that doesn’t process Google Pay.

“We could take the bus back to the apartment!”, I exclaimed.

I’d even installed the Skånetrafiken mobile app on my phone, ready for just such a situation.

And now that we had mobile data, I could buy a mobile bus ticket.

Back to the apartment on a bus that magically appeared in the right place at the right time.

Found my wallet waiting for me.

Sold Oliver on the idea of not going back to Kao’s, as, by this time, we were really hungry.

Walked to The Masala Box inside the Mitt Möllan arcade and had a delightful vegetarian lunch.

Which I paid for with my credit card.

From there the day only got better: we took the bus to the central station, rendezvoused with Olle, bought sushi for supper, took the bus to Luisa and Olle’s allotment in the near-countryside, and enjoyed a very pleasant evening in their garden, eating sushi and drinking tea.

Experience has taught us that it takes the first day in a new place to get set up for paying for things, taking public transit, and making phone calls. We achieved all three, with some adventures to include in our fringe show about father-and-son travel hijinks to boot.