I just had a few days in Berlin, before flying off to meet a friend in London. I always try to spend a couple days before and after larps before traveling, since it gives time to hang out with friends and recover. And I made the most of it, going out to eat with friends both nights, seeing a few of the Christmas markets and getting a chance to wander the Pergamon Museum.¹

It looks like I’m going to be spending the next couple weeks in tourism mode; quick visits² to London, Dublin, Hamburg, and back to Berlin. I’ve written about this before; there’s a tension between being a tourist and being a resident which is difficult for me to resolve. Staying longer helps — two weeks in a city means I can relax, in a way that staying a weekend doesn’t — but I was still discovering things about New York City after years of living there. I almost always wish I could stay longer.

This is compounded by the Schengen visa rules. I’d genuinely love to spend a month in Berlin, and Paris and Rome and Madrid and Athens and Stockholm³ but … you simply can’t. Not without different visa arrangements. So I have to be very careful about time spent in Europe. It’s easier for me to spend three weeks in Croatia than it is for me to spend one week in Zürich.

It’s nice⁴ to be pushed out of my comfort zone, to be forced to travel to places further afield than Continental Europe. But it means I’m passing through Europe as often as I’m settling in. I’m visiting through the cathedrals and museums and attractions as much as the coffee shops and farmer’s markets and thrift stores.

But these are the rules, and no manner of logic or special pleading is going to help. Tourism is fun, if exhausting, and if visiting friends and attending larps means I have to travel as if a paranoid museum guard were lurking over my shoulder, making sure I didn’t linger too long over any single exhibit, well, I can slip in and out of Europe as seamlessly as anyone.

Next: London (LGW) to Dublin (DUB)
Prev: Leśna to Berlin

Footnotes

¹ Still undergoing renovations. I got the see the Ishtar Gate and the Aleppo Room, but the Pergamon Altar was off limits. As it was the last time I tried to visit.

² Meaning 2–3 days

³ And Oslo and Rotterdam and Barcelona and Florence and Helsinki and Copenhagen and Cologne and Wrocław and Vienna and Brussels and Milan and Lyon and Lisbon and at least a dozen other places. You get the idea.

⁴ Well, probably healthy, anyway