underground greens at malmö station

When I saw the sea of Öresund strait from the train eventually going to Gotebourg, the sea diminished its boundaries between itself and the gray sky. In the sky, the white snow flakes began to fall gracefully, but a little bit heavily. A few sea gulls were just flying over the strait. They seemed to literally just fly, not look for small fishes for their dinner, or not enjoy going over the snow-strait which had myriad small white waves on it. 

 

The winter at the end of that year was so severe that all I remember while walking around Copenhagen or around the Malmö city at the time, were the cafes where I always needed a cup of hot coffee to escape snows. Maybe, I had a paper cup of a hot coffee in the train  that eventually stopped at the Malmö station, because of the severe weather.

I took off the train, and saw the lines of screens on the wall of this underground station. There were green trees and blue lakes on them. No sound, no people, no music and no voices. Just images of scenery. Outside, maybe, some cm (inches) snows maybe would bother me to walk from the station, to find still opened cafe around there. Thinking about that,  I just looked at these images, crushing a paper cup in my hand after finishing the coffee.

Here was underground at the Malmö station.

snow, silent, a sign board and frederiksborg slot

After getting off a train at Hillerød station, at first I saw a small station having white snow on its roof. It was in the morning on Sunday, at the middle of winter, and the sky in here was cloudy gray as usual, and a small bird flying enough high near the ceiling of the gray looked like a tiny black dot.
On the way to the bus stop, I had to take care of my steps on the powder snow, which had hardly been frozen tightly even under the freezing point. Its color was kind of a mixture of white and light brown.The bus for the famous Frederiksbourg palace had yet to come there, so I had to wait for a while. A middle-age woman and I were the only potential passengers for the bus at the time. On Sunday, few merchandises were open even in Copenhagen for not only tourists, but also even residents. So, under freezing point and with few shops open on street, I saw few people walking around the stop. Nicely silent and powder snow.


Taking a bus that would take only less than 10 min ride to the Palace, I found a relatively big shopping mall, which had a big sign board of "H&M", Hennes and Mauritz, one of tenants of that mall. Curiously enough, when I went back to my memoir of Frederiksbourg slot, at first, I happened to encounter the red sign of these two words that I saw at the time through the bus window, without thinking any, but maybe looking for a hot coffee somewhere around there or my destination, the palace.


Here was Frederiksborg slot, a beautiful palace in winter for me.

once a driver living in apartment in monaco

Maybe, it was my teens when I watched an hour-long TV documentary program, which focused on a life of a not-so-famous driver for formula one, in short, F1 driver. I'm not a kind of F1 geek, but I think he was not a type of well-known figure that typically had won many trophies with an envious red ferrari, because the program just showed his everyday life as it was, and it seemed to be quite ordinal, not the special, or celebrated one. I do not have any words for it, but just do say it is ordinal.

 

He lived in his home country with his wife, and he bought a small but nice house in the countryside, and he just did his training and necessary duties as a driver routinely in his countryside house, and sometimes went to a big city, maybe capital in his country, and sometimes went abroad. Nothing was special, except he also bought an apartment in Monaco, where always one of F1 grand prixs has been held since mid-50's. Whenever Monaco grand prix was held, always he had stayed in his apartment alone. The apartment was at around 10th floor, maybe, and he had always enjoyed the beautifully shining sea from a wide window, while doing routine training in his apartment.

This is the reason why I came to this small country, sovereign city state, at the middle of April. The breeze was so nice, and always the blue sea was shining with reflecting the warm spring sun. Of course sea gulls flew high. In my teens, I just imagined that when I was enough old to come to this city state, I could buy or rent an apartment like the envious one F1 driver enjoyed. 

Now, still, all I can do was just looking for the window of that apartment I watched on the TV program once, while waking around the uphill and downhill slopes.

Here was the Principality of Monaco.

at a bagle cafe in leuven

It was in autumn when I saw some college students riding their bicycles on the old stone pavement in Leuven city. Their bicycles seemed to be a little bit old fashion, but its silver body was nicely glittering. I just stood at the end of a small alley at the center of the old town, and after the bicycles passing by, I walked across a relatively busy street. Maybe it was around 13:00, and just in time for lunch in here Belgium, so fortunately, I found a nice, casual bagel cafe standing along with the street. 


In front of the cafe, there were several tables which were already occupied by young people enjoying the afternoon sun shining. Inside the cafe, I listened to the mild-sound of jazz-like music running like a favor of coffee. I took a small table, and ordered a salmon sandwich with sesame bagle, a small glass of beer, stella artois, and a cup of espresso. The sandwich was good, since I enjoyed the incredibly fresh salmon. Shipping an espresso, I saw young people, maybe students of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, talking like singing with cups of coffee as if they were holding a seminar in a classroom, though it was Sunday afternoon.


Here was Leuven, this city has an old university.