Gritty and grey, but beautiful.

Gothenburg felt so right*.

*This may or may not have had anything to do with the number of beautiful boys I fell in love with whilst there.

Obsessions.

We spent our life savings on coffee and cinnamon scrolls. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Despite being close, my friend and I are very different people with very different tastes. We ended up balancing each other really well, and did lots of exploring that I otherwise would not have done by myself. (Plus, his tolerance for cafes, galleries and vintage stores seems to have exponentially grown since he lived in Adelaide; and my tolerance for trashy rappers has exponentially grown since he left!)

I took a train to Stockholm and met up with one of my dearest friends, who I hadn't seen in over a year. He had come from dreary London, and I hadn't experienced a sunny Stockholm before. We had the most wonderful time.

The end of Copenhagen. For now, but certainly not forever.

Things that happened that have no images:
- Freaking out in peak hour cycling traffic/being on the wrong side of the road when I went riding through the city
- A wonderful lunch with Katrine
- Drinks with darling old friends at Kalaset
- My own little studio apartment in the centre of the city
- WEEKDAY
- Hours and hours spent at The Log Lady
- Having that funny little language fill my ears, mind and heart
- Pastries
- Walking by the lakes and never ever wanting to leave

I drank an obscene amount of coffee during this trip. This one was at Sort Kaffe og Vinyl.

At first I was disappointed with how unreliable my camera proved to be. I hardly used my digital, so these are really all I have. But I'm coming to love the quirks and the magic. In a way, it's true to life.

I went to an exhibition that radically altered my perspective on the cities that are closest to my heart. I think it's the reason why I have come back feeling they way I do about Adelaide. This place is hard work. Which is fine - I'd rather be a creator than a consumer - but it's draining. In a city like Copenhagen they're constantly looking 25 years forward, instead of only realising now in 2011 that urban sprawl, a focus on macro instead of micro, the lack of useful and inspiring public spaces, and a heavy reliance on cars is not only unsustainable but makes for a dead city.

A visit to the old Carlsberg Brewery (accompanied by a great podwalk which you may be interested to listen to anyway) blew me away. An enormous, once-industrial space quite close to the city has been abandoned, and will take 15-20 years to redevelop into housing. We have a similar situation here in Adelaide with Bowden. Yet while Copenhagen works out exactly how to best develop it, it has opened the entire space up to start making people feel comfortable and at home in the area. Interactive artworks like the ropes; well-thought out street furniture that carefully considers the way people interact not just with the space, but each other; and a continuous stream of festivals and arts events means that by the time housing starts to spring up in Carlsberg, everyone will already feel completely at home there. Place making at its very, very best.

I also picked up a great study on cycling in Copenhagen and was fascinated by the statistics. 68% of Copenhageners cycle at least once a week, and up to 50% use cycling as their mode of transportation to work or study. Meanwhile, when you take into account transport costs, security, comfort, branding/tourism and health factors, the net social gain of cycling in Denmark is DKK 1.22 per kilometre (20-25 cents). The cycling culture is making Copenhagen money! Comparatively, for every kilometre driven by a car, there is a net social loss of DKK 0.69. You can download 'Copenhagen: City of Cyclists' here.

From my notebook on this day: 'Is there any better place to be in the world than Copenhagen in late summer?'