The Internet Personified: The State of Linkistan III
Previously known as "the best non-book reading recommendations."
I’m off on hols with mother and husband on Monday so I thought I’d send you one final letter for May. We often take a trip together when my mum comes to visit and this time it’s our neighbouring country, France! Severely underexplored from my point of view, I haven’t really been to France except two trips to Paris about 15 years apart, not since I moved to the EU anyway. I’ve had a grudge against Paris specifically for a while because the last time I was there I used my Indian debit card to get two city bikes and the bloody website took a 700 euro deposit from my bank account and didn’t return it until 2 weeks after we returned to India. So we wandered around Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin extremely broke, living on supermarket food and one hot meal per day (divided) but also staying in these really nice places because we’d booked them in advance. Over 2 euro wine and 5 euro steak in Berlin—K’s parents’ flat was empty so we had a free place to stay back then—I realised I could happily live in Europe, having managed it on a paltry budget. But still Paris stressed me out. I remember trying to get a prix fixe menu 1 by 2, but the waiter was super grumpy which delighted me later (a real grumpy waiter! in Paris!) and also we were literally next to the Eiffel, which meant tourist central.
These newsletters are free, but I do appreciate the odd book to feed my growing collection!
Anyway on this visit, my mum has a retreat in Bordeaux so we do Paris for a few nights, then Toulouse which looks cool for another two nights before we drop her off in Bordeaux and carry on to Marseille where we’ll stay 4 nights. All this by train, even our way there and back which is shockingly hard to do considering the two countries are next to each other, but K is enterprising and has figured out a way—let me know if you want the route, I’ll send it to you.
Also the French language is so much harder than German with all its silent letters. “Vin” should be pronounced like “win” not “VOHN.”
As always, tips and tricks for fun travel appreciated! We’re not very fancy, we like exploring and also eating good food but not in like a Michelin star place.
Shopping
Since my mother was coming from India with loads of suitcase space, I ordered some clothes from new Indian brands to her house. I was pleased with two. This t-shirt from street wear brand Psy Fyi I adore and have already worn TWICE. It runs big so even the XS I ordered is baggy. Also it’s a thick shiny sports material so might be warm to wear on hotter days. However, really good print quality and I love the photograph, it’s so random.
I also got this dress from a sustainable fashion brand called Oziss, apparently all the clothes are made from recycled fabric. This runs true to size, so check the guide before you order. It’s very flattering and floaty even on a short curvy person like me.
The one I was a little less happy with is this cargo skirt from Days For Clothing, which alas, runs small because the fabric has no give, so I’m going to have to wear it with a hair tie through the buttonhole and a long t-shirt because alas, all the return windows on these things are only seven days. It’s a cool skirt and the label on it informs me that it was made in Dharavi which also adds to its street cred, but yeah, I’d go up a size or two if I were you.
My mother also took me shoe shopping where we went from looking for one small pair of Teva sandals (like floaters, quite unattractive but hardy, I didn’t like the way they looked on my foot) to TWO new pairs of shoes.
These Allbirds Mary Janes (beautifully comfortable, but not a walk all day shoe, more like errands-movie-drink shoe) and these Birkenstocks (from the flagship store here which was the fullest shoe shop I’ve ever seen). I’m trying to break the Birks in quickly so I can take them to France but it may not be possible alas. (Allbirds is extremely true to size so I’m lucky they do half sizes, but these particular Birks run narrow so size up and tighten the straps.) (By the way Allbirds has recently pivoted to making AI structures instead of shoes? I don’t know, it’s a bit murky, I’m not sure what will happen to the shoes.)
Oh speaking of new shoes! I also got these second hand silver Pumas off Vinted and I love how they dress up everything. I like a basic white shoe as much as the next Millennial Woman, but there’s something about SILVER that makes you feel fancy. Also from Vinted, a trenchcoat, which I had to do some research on but settled on Gap, which apparently is the best in its class. I’ve wanted a camel coloured trench for a while for the inclement weather we get here in Berlin so I’m quite delighted with how sturdy yet lightweight it is. Plus, as the review says, it does feel quite expensive despite being priced relatively low.
Thus ends my consumerist glut. I hope you enjoyed that.
Reading
Came across this interviewer via James Marriott's newsletter, which always leads me to click on at least one thing. (Most recently, he influenced me to buy The Balkan Trilogy.) Anyway I love her style and it’s worth delving into her archives but I liked this interview with Rachel Cusk especially.
I’ve been seeing a lot of ads for “friendship making services” here in Berlin as well (I even filled out a form for one but took against it when all they asked for was your LinkedIn profile—and 400-ish euros. I don’t want to be friends with anyone whose only interest is in my LinkedIn.) Anyway, this writer did a few test runs with some new websites geared towards making friends and had interesting results.
Any story about twins will suck me in but this one is cuh-razy.
Are you kind of vaguely interested in search-and-rescue missions? If yes, then this blog documenting how the author meticulously searched for a group of German tourists who went missing in Death Valley, USA years ago will be quite fascinating.
“So what makes a friend “a friend”? A friend is not a child, an intimate partner, or an employee, sandblasted bare for you. Friendship is subversive because it doesn’t feed the economy the way other non-professional relations like marriage and families do. What is unique to friendship among all other relations is that a friend, of their own private volition, chooses to love you. It is the absolute absence of compulsion that makes this a gift. Friendship is chaos.”
“How did I end up here? The short answer is that I had a tough breakup in the dead of winter, when I was in my mid-forties, that stuck me with the full monthly rent for a one-bedroom in Manhattan, where I live. In my civilian life, I’m a novelist, and I was working on a new novel with characters who did sex work, which I dabbled in during my twenties and thirties, from spicy modeling to being a sugar baby. In New York City, being a sugar baby was amazing. One client paid me thousands of dollars just to watch marathons of The Great British Baking Show, cozied up like a real girlfriend. After the breakup, I dropped back into it, for research and to try to make rent, but I became increasingly paranoid that it could veer into illegal escort work. So I thought about Nevada. A cathouse thousands of miles away would be legal and easy enough to keep from interfering with my civilian identity. (I spend tons of time at writers’ residencies, so I knew I could just tell people I was away developing a project.) It seemed crazy, far-fetched, bizarre, and like the most prudent, most logical, safest move I could make.”
The world’s richest cat is a recluse (like all cats.)
On a trip to London three years ago, K took us on a walking tour of the Barbican (guided, highly recommend) and since then I went from not knowing it existed to becoming fully obsessed with it. Like when I spot it in movies and TV it’s damn exciting. So this post about what it’s like to live there FULFILLED the voyeur in me.
Do you ever think of the village that Sasha Baron Cohen mocked in Borat? they haven't forgotten.
Another Sam Kriss banger on AI writing.
Forget german (she said thankfully) far more impressive to learn Esperanto.
Have a great week! I’ll speak to you post France, au revoir my darling cabbages.
x
m