(#23) Travel Diaries: Copenhagen + Ljubljana 2024
Naive Yearly, Economic Noise, and Slovenian Tasting Menus
Excerpts from my 2024 Europe travel diary to Copenhagen and Ljubljana.
Friday, September 13, 2024
12pm Decided on Europe.
2pm Flights booked.
3pm Packed while in meetings, video off.
4pm Headed to airport.
Instead of waking up in LA, we landed in Copenhagen.
On the flight I read “Choose Good Quests”
History is the record of top players completing good quests.
The vast majority of quests, even during times of great progress, constitute what functionally amount to economic noise.
At the same time the Wright brothers were experimenting with flight, a sea of successful financiers filed paperwork that shuffled numbers on the global spreadsheet.
What do I do for work?
“Economic noise.”
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Up at 2am, 3am, 5am.
Light feels so different here.
There are either 100 or 101 steps up to my place in Copenhagen, depending on who is counting. No elevator.
There’s a Lagkagehuset that opens early on my block.
Tried not to eat a cinnamon roll for breakfast, but I did.
So juicy.
I’m going to try not to eat one tomorrow.
“I’m downstairs,” Emily texted.
I throw the keys down from 5 stories above.
No way I’m walking down to walk back up.
[Later I learned this is what buzzers were for]
At my home in LA I can walk for 30 minutes and encounter nothing but houses.
In this city walking for 30 minutes I encounter 500 potential destinations.
The block I’m on is alive. Hundreds of apartments. Communal playground courtyard. Multiple coffee shops, the amazing spot we went last night to dinner with the bread that blew our brains, clothing shop, barber. A canal to swim in and dock your boat. All in a space that is like 30 homes in America.
We keep laughing about how Haley could have named her daughter Bailey instead of Bell.
“HALEY & BAILEY” we say randomly and laugh.
We are now using Bailey as an alias for every child.
Maybe it’s the jet lag?
I can’t sleep.
Even boring audiobooks don’t help.
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Emily: “I’ve never dangled my feet over water.”
So we did.
21,640 steps.
Monday, September 16, 2024
So many art books in my place. Noticed some of Andy Warhol’s diaries so I’ve been reading them.
Interviewer: “Do you put emotion into your art?”
Warhol: “No.”
Moon museum → Voyager 1 and 2 → List of artificial objects leaving the Solar System → New Horizons → Deep Space Network → Heliosphere → Terminal shock → Solar Wind → Escape velocity
Me: “I feel so unproductive.”
Emily: “Don’t worry about it. Go back to your space reading.”
“Osamu Tezuka died of stomach cancer on 9 February 1989 after he was rushed into the hospital in Tokyo. His last words were: ‘I'm begging you, let me work!’, spoken to a nurse who tried to take away his drawing equipment.”
The sanders hotel rooftop is my favorite place to co-work in the entire world.
Hours inside Facebook ads. Why can’t I escape?
Interviewer: “How much do you think your success as an artist is a result of your own personal image as a work of art?”
Warhol: “I don't know… I work all the time.”
Reffen was closed by the time we got there and I got super sad.
We tried Tiger Lily and it was empty and I hate that (I want to be surrounded by happy people eating) and the kitchen was closing but it ended up the best meal I’d had in weeks. Completely unexpected.
The smashed cucumbers broke me.
Walking back from Emily’s I rented a bike and took the long, long way home.
Cold wind on my face, empty streets, crossing bridges, absolute perfection.
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
I AM NOT CALM TODAY.
It’s probably these f****ing ads. Tracking p&l on an hourly basis is helpful to everything except the nervous system.
Took a long walk to clear my head.
Found a spot by the giant seagull origami idols.
Butt hurts from the hard wood planks.
I am so uninspired when people are bad at their jobs.
I can’t remember how I stumbled on this essay but I’m obsessed with it and it’s such a weird combo of people I find interesting.
Earth in my Window (2005)
Somehow it’s on Gwern’s website (WHY?!) written by Takashi Murakami (the superflat artist). Hayao Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli) is mentioned throughout.
Some tears came while reading (WHY?!).
I must be thinking about something else.
The heroic sight of Howl, transformed into a kamikaze-like flying fighter amidst a landscape reminiscent of firebombed Tokyo, is rendered real by the fact that Howl indeed has no goal.
I chewed on this one a long time and wrote:
“I have no goal, and that’s scary — my focus goes towards selling amazon products, security systems, dog food, whatever pays the highest commission. This makes no sense. I’m a man without a goal, a mercenary, no loyalty but to himself and a few compatriots. My talents are sold to the highest bidder.”
Overdramatic, but I was quite taken with this for 7 minutes.
I continued:
“My personhood is corroding — and it’s my choice. I’m giving myself up each day to the marketplace. To Amazon’s commission structures. To Facebook CPC’s. To daily profit and loss. I’m not building anything of semi-permanence, which is really the closest we can get. But I am far from that, even though it’s meaningless, a sandcastle by the shore of time. It’s a rollercoaster, sometimes it’s scary and sometimes it’s fun, but you end up right back where you fucking started.”
I’m talking like I’m in college again.
I tried telling Emily all of this at Karla’s (2nd time, crispy pork and potato leek soup), but two loud Americans sat right next to us and I clammed up.
I hate seeing Americans abroad.
“What is it you hate in them that you see in yourself?”
Hypocrite.
We made it to Reffen in time, and it was absolute complete wonderful perfection.
The best pizza was still the best.
The Moroccan food slapped.
A smashburger for dessert.
Long, calm bike ride home.
“We are a two slice pizza family.”
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Landed in Ljubljana.
So far I hate it.
I don’t want to tell Abraham bc he loves it.
I just have a bad attitude, it will settle.
Haley: “I think that we have to end a trip with CPH cause this happened with Italy. Like in comparison other places are just not as good and it’s unfair. It just makes you wish you were in Copenhagen longer. Although Emily’s layering situation was making me lol. Josh has a proper jacket BLESS”
Feeling guilty for leaving the Hobbes.
Late night call with Abraham.
Everything is about to change.
Thursday, September 19, 2024
The food here so far reminds me of my hometown in Florida.
Like, it’s fine I guess?
Is the reason I can’t leave LA because of the food?
(Preaching to myself) Find the good here. Stop focusing on imperfections.
Good things: cobblestone (minus where they get lazy and fill in spots with asphalt), cool building door (minus the abandoned shopping cart and garbage bags), fresh air (minus all the cigarette smoke), shiny red steel door (minus where someone cut into it with a saw)
Today I’m longing for all the things I can’t have.
What a waste of a morning.
Old drunk men sitting at the park at 8am laughing and jeering at every woman who walks by.
Walked for hours.
Saw the same people at a coffee shop that I saw at breakfast and now I hate myself.
Went to Maxi w/ E and we ate deli food but at least it had veggies and she found me a coke with ice so I’m feeling less foul.
Finished the last book of Three Body Problem. Mind blowing.
Boat ride with the conference peeps! I was nervous at first, just hung out at the edges. Even after all these years I’m awkward at events.
Post-boat dinner with Thom, Joel, Sarp, Emily. Feels good to have a lil group, reminds me of college where the people you meet the first day end up being your people. [Later Thom called this summer camp friends.]
T is especially smart and interesting and challenging my worldview: “I know what I’m going to get when something is rated 4.5/5. But 1.5/5… now that’s an experience.”
Friday, September 20, 2024
Naive Yearly conference all day. So good. Kristoffer is such a gem.
I am really happy and proud to have helped make this happen.
More of this in life.
Emily: “How did Kristoffer get all these people to fly across the world when we couldn’t even get our best friends to come?”
Left the conference lunch and walked to a park to swing on a swing by myself.
Got quiet REAL FAST when I learned Sarah had a PhD and is a professor of cryptography.
T: “My whole life I’ve been told I have potential. At what point is that an insult?”
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Best day yet.
We all hung out in Tivoli Park for a couple hours, just a bunch of nerds laying in the grass and chatting. Kristoffer is such a good curator, not only of online content, but of real life.
Got invited to dinner, said yes without knowing anything.
45m crazy taxi ride into the hills, but WOW.
Ended up at a Michelin star restaurant in a country neighborhood (Grič). Not into tasting menus, but it was perfect. New friends were perfect. View was perfect. Food was perfect (and artful). Great conversation, hearty laughter, healthy debate.
At some point I said “this is happiness” — such a rare fleeting feeling.
The last time I felt this was 7 years ago in Hong Kong, on the junk boat with Miriam and friends.
Adventure + New Friends + New Place seem to be the combo.
Perhaps that could be simplified to Adventure + Friends.
Is this a once in every 7 years thing? The next time I experience it I’ll be turning 50?
How can I hack it, find it again sooner?
Waiter: “You said no fish, but chef thinks is best with fish, so we left fish in.”
Later: “Did you die?”
T: “I would erase the entire Ghibli canon in exchange for Miyazaki not being an asshole”
And yet he’s attracted to him and his work. Such a paradox.
We bummed a cigarette for the taxi driver from the chef.
T: “Everything invented would have been invented anyway; there’s no need to be an asshole about it.”
(disagree, with fondness)
Everyone trying not to throw up on the winding drive home while T continues his Duolingo streak on speaker.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
My first time driving in Europe.
ROAD FOOD!!!!
McDonald’s, inspired by Warhol.
They have BUCKETS.
(gross)
On the cable car there were cats in backpacks?!?
Consciousness will slip through our fingers
I guess life makes sense: For some reason there’s a universe and that universe has lots of atoms bouncing around and sometimes they bounce into patterns that copy themselves and then those patterns go to war for billions of years and voilà—you.
Soaked my feet into the river until they were numb. I wouldn’t have done that without Abraham’s pool challenges.
The gem here is the countryside for sure. I like Ljubljana more now, but I LOVE the countryside.
Waiter: “If you sit outside now, you have to stay outside. Don’t ask me to come inside. It gets cold soon. Decide now.”
until next year…
Josh
I love this format. It feels like the written version of meeting you. And again, thank you a million!