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James

Site owner at Canadianomad

I sold everything 8 years ago to play professional sports & explore the world. After living in 7 countries, I made this to share everything. 100% authentic and strange!

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This is a simple post for personal purposes to catalogue the adventures of summer 2021 for memories sake. Feel free to read it, though I won’t describe things too in-depth because, well, it’s really all just for my own memory collection and archive.

May

Such a delayed spring and summer season, the sun barely revealed its power until the last few weeks of May. In the meantime we managed to throw a few underground raves at the perfect location. That is until the venues and sunlight began to re-open and made our jank yet exciting adventures a bit moot. Escaping from security and police is always fun though, isn’t it? Ahh, how nice it is to be a shithead.

Ecstatic dances, sporadic park-parties, and general adventures – Berlin really transforms itself when the heat makes itself available. Mauerpark and Tempelhofer Feld feel almost surreal to my Canadian-adapted brain.

A bike trip to Potsdam with Ciaran for a nice and cozy cottage evening and some clay mining – my favorite!

A visit to Vineria Del Este, my favorite restaurant in Berlin, was very needed to gorge on top quality Spanish food. Thank you Nicol for the amazing time! Highly, highly, highly recommend eating there some time!

June

A well needed re-visit to Vogelsang with the amazing Khora crew for some deep nuclear base exploration & infiltration, and then a month of the Euros 2021 was a nice way to set the season into motion. Football at the parks, random späti gatherings, and electric vibe all over, this was exactly what was needed after a rather grim and somber winter/spring season.

A crazy soundbikes parade/critical mass took place and I finally got to accomplish the soundbike dream! Not without being heckled by some police as soon as the clock struck 10:00 of course, but all in all it went off smooth.

Tempelhofer Feld turned into what felt like a literal festival with vibes that were just through the roof! Oh how the sunlight and creativity makes a place flourish.

Oh yeah and Siemore and I went over to Sächsische Schweiz for a very dire yet entertaining bikepacking trip. Oh how the taste and feeling of sand will never leave my mind – what with cuddling up drenched at night in a sandy cave while sleep deprived and completely soaked gear. Another memory for the books! Perfect way to end the June.

July

Sporadically ending up at the perplexing Utopia festival in the middle of the month, it was a nice set of shenanigans to finally get my music and dancing urges out. It also connected me to a lot of amazing people and helped me sort out the future plans of where to move/end up to. I ended up damaging a very nice and close relationship in the meantime, however that’s the way life goes and I’ll try and integrate new learnings into future connections.

Houseboat adventures with Siemore and Moritz down the Havel river provided for a nice little break from the city and to enjoy some of that fine life.

Ended up in the fashion show @ Sisyphos as well – nice venue, nice vibe, and met some nice people!

Finished off July with a little bit of volunteer work @ Anura Festival at Haselhorst 13 – my current favorite music venue in Berlin (alongside Sisyphos)

August

To kick off August was the cozy 3000Grad festival which had reminded me of Motion Notion in Canada. A nice little escape and insight into the German festival culture. It’s always nice to geek out to a VOID accoustics subwoofer stack 🙂

14th of August denoted the annual Hanf Parade – should be cool, right? 9 sound trucks, thousands of people, and well, it’s a hemp parade! Wrong. ONLY hard techno & similar music, no one getting baked, weirdly aggressive and odd vibes from police and citizens – what a shame. Here’s to hoping for legalization to bless Germany some day…

Also, went to the absolute worst bar in all of Berlin – Kingston. Literally terrible drinks, god awful nachos, terrible service which even asked us to pay before we even got any drinks or food. Talk about sketchy – avoid this place like the plague and boy, just ahhh, what a memory haha.

September

A quick hit off to the mediocre Wurzelfestival (seriously, who puts 2 dancefloors 30 meters away from each other… agh!) before embarking to the incredibly intense Hedoné festival was a nice way to end the summer of Berlin.

Hedoné was an immense experience back at the same castle which Utopia was at and provided for an incredibly valuable learning experience. Surreal, incredible, and heartfelt, it re-opened my heart and helped me process so much of lifes happenings & traumas. Very powerful and necessary – something like this should be almost mandatory for all people!

Finally, a move over to Portugal on the 27th of September will mark the end of this gigantic cluster of a powerful summer.

Misc

Multiple visits to numerous lakes, we managed to kick off to Wannsee (grossly green), Teufelsee (cool but also too edgy), Plötzensee (heavily populated), Liepnitzsee (beautiful blue), Müggelsee (shallow but vast), and my favorites at Kaulsdorfer Seen – nice vibes, good for swimming, lots of nice spots. Thanks to Ciaran, Finn, and Nicol for being companions for the multiple adventures to these spots!

Some visits to Dog Shit Skatepark, meeting that lovely crew of Americans, some photoshoots with the incredibly talented Andrea, Zug Der Liebe (please, can we get something other than techno??) among other things were in there. I learned to make amazing burgers and got to discover some delicious food places.

Summary

What a time to be alive. This summer sped through and was just packed of adventure, excitement, and fulfilment. I completely feel like I’ve gotten so much of my energy out in these past few months and now strongly look forwards to some internal development and growth in Portugal.

I’d like to just thank every person who I’ve connected with and shared good times with (and apologies to any I’ve forgotten to name) – Kris, Ciaran, Finn, Siemore, Nicol, Daniel, Andrea, Luisa, all of the Khora crew, and so forth – you all have made this terrific time possible and without you, it’d be a lonely world!

Much love and heres to many more adventures!