Swoosh: across the Alps and into a way-too-fancy airport hotel where I spent a good 6 hours in a meeting. All I truly experienced of Italy was the sveltering heat outside and a plate of penne all’arabbiata.
Some crew and ground handling chaos later: swoosh back over the Alps again. Such is the life of an employee of a global company – until we run out of oil, or all the flying picks on my conscience too much.
(Over the Alps; June 2019)
The prettiest work meeting location. Lots of energy for performance indeed. Why do I not conduct walking meetings much more often? As my primary office (aside from home-office) is in London, I should really try to remember the beautiful little park we have across the street.
(I thought our Copenhagen office was in the middle of an industrial district – until my colleague showed me these meadows and cows.)
(Copenhagen, Denmark; June 2019)
As with everything in society, there are cemeteries that are more trendy than others. Cemeteries that are elite and attract many notable people, and celebrities wishing to be notable. In the case of such cemeteries, to be cool one unfortunately has to be dead and buried. This is how it is at Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen: the list of poets, philosophers, American jazz musicians (?!) and scientists buried here is long. 
If you are into grave-sightseeing (really!), two notable graves on your list should be Hans Christian Andersen, the man behind the fairytales The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Clothes; and Soren Kierkegaard, the man behind existentialism. 
If you are just into strolling and picnics, a basket of delicious goodies and lots of time is recommended. And no, it is not morbid to have a picnic here – people do it all the time. When the cemetery was first built, 250 years ago, it was so far from the city center that people probably made a picnic out of the trip anyway.
(Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen, Denmark; June 2019)
A weekend in Finland: summer sun, an idyllic little ironworks village, and bluegrass music. In the style of our family we arrived five minutes before the last gig ended. Oh well, we can still claim we attended the bluegrass festival at the ironworks. Even if it was mainly for a stroll and an ice cream in the sun.
(Strömfors, Finland; June 2019)
For nearly a year these perfect picnic spots have been mine to explore while traipsing around the backs of my little home town. There never was a picnic, though, and I never saw anyone else on a picnic, either. Perhaps because of the shockingly high number of ticks in any grass around here: if I just sit in it for a while I can count the black dots crawling my legs.
And yet this lovely place never felt like home. I know nearly no-one outside of home, save for the taxi driver who takes me to the airport and back. And perhaps my next-door neighbors, although I never exchanged more than polite greetings with them. It is a difficult life for a natural extravert to have to leave the country (or take the train to its other coast) to be able to go to work or to meet with friends. And it has been a trying year overall. Somehow I find myself still here, now also with a Danish employment contract.
The boxes have been nearly packed and in a week’s time it is time to open the door in a new apartment in a proper town. Hopefully it is also time to open the door to new friends and hobbies nearby. 
(Brande, Denmark; June 2019)
This watermelon has nearly no seeds, a very thin rind, and barely any green flesh at the edges. Seedless watermelons exist – and who knows when one might run into an almost rindless watermelon in the grocery store?
One does not need genetic manipulation to significantly alter life: a few centuries of focused work does just as well. The watermelons in Giovanni Stanchi’s 17th century fruit stilleben look more like the oversized berry that a watermelon botanically is: a green fruit with swirls of red flesh covering clusters of seeds. My watermelon on the kitchen counter looks quite alien in comparison, almost industrially produced, don’t you think?
(Brande, Denmark; May 2019)
One random wing shot in my smartphone camera roll. I cannot remember where I was going, or where I came from. Helsinki, Copenhagen, Billund, London, Stockholm – could be any of them.
There is clarity up there, while I gaze out on the wing. There is time and space to think. To compose, reflect, and create. Some people are most productive in thought while walking or running. Others while taking a shower. For me it is the cramped airplane seat that works best. Not being able to leave my half a square meter space (possibly even less) for hours. This is when I review my behavior the past day, taking responsibility for the rights and the wrongs. When I walk through crucial conversations that need to take place. And it is when I revise the steps in my life plan: what to do, learn, read, and create next.
Voluntary confinement 10 kilometers in the air works for me. What works for you?
(Somewhere above Northern Europe; May 2019)
Spring in Helsinki means carpets of blue scilla. Someone must have started importing these plants from the Middle East and Caucasus, and now they claim their own space in every garden and park.
There is no better place to sit down for a glass of sparkling wine than in the middle of spring flowers.
(Helsinki, Finland; April 2019)
In my hotel room there is an old aerial map of the London docklands, the way they were when the Port of London was the largest port in the entire world. The Thames river winds across the land, out to the sea, and Londoners built basins between the zigzags of the river. In the late 19th century dozens of docks, basins, and ponds created a mosaic map with exotic names such as Lavender Dock, East India Dock, and Canada Pond.
Not much is left of these docks today. The Port of London was born, grew up, and then sank into poverty and disarray. Then the same thing happened as happens to so many neglected neighborhoods: someone finds them ruggedly charming. And so today much of the area is gentrified. Today a banker across the river at Canary Wharf can spend money in staying in a fancy business hotel that takes the guests across the river in its own ferry.
(Docklands, London, United Kingdom; April 2019)
As I stood by the DUMBO waterfront I tried to calculate how many people these huge boxy buildings on the opposite shore would contain, any given moment in time. This is the Manhattan skyline as as we know it. “As WE know it”. Because really, just 150 years ago it was like any old town. And just 500 years ago, when Europe was restless because of religious reformations against the Catholic church and Shakespeare wrote his famous plays, Manhattan was mostly swampland. With mosquitoes.
Times Square was a crossing of two rivers and a beaver pond. There were salt marshes and grasslands and forests, all home to turkeys, beavers, elk, and those mosquitoes. The area holding up the skyscrapers I was looking at was sea floor (much of lower Manhattan is landfill). This is the real New York. If this is news to you you might like this excellent article by the National Geographic.
My view of Manhattan is a fart in the history of time. Quickly formed, possibly also not very durable. And yet this is the “iconic” New York “we all know”. Hudson, visiting in 1609, knew the beavers. I doubt city kids today know beavers from anything else than school books (sorry, educational internet websites).
Were do New Yorkers go to rewild? Is Central Park enough or does one have to leave this once so lush and bountiful island?
Lower photo humbly borrowed from “Before New York”, National Geographic, September 2009
(New York, USA; April 2019)
This blue marble 