Nevergirl's

I’ve been putting off writing about my trips because I didn’t want to have to pick from all the photos I took. I took loads of photos—and just thinking about going through the albums exhausts me. But let me tell you about this darling little shoe store I visited four times in Europe: the first time in Rotterdam, the second time in Hamburg, the third and fourth time in Berlin, in separate locations and on separate occasions.

A friend had asked me to find her a specific shoe and though the stores I went to had different designs a’plenty, they no longer carried the shoe she wanted. I’m not sorry I went, though. This store, called Trippen, is just lovely!

The floor design is at once simple and intricate, the lighting soft and soothing. Huge shelves line white walls, and on every shelf sits a shoe—each one more beautiful than the last: made of leather, exquisitely detailed, and supple to the touch. You know what was even more impressive? No two shoes are alike! I was also told that if you wear out your soles, they will resole it for free!

The customer service was lovely, too. We were ushered in warmly, and helped so well we felt bad about leaving without buying anything. The visits didn’t go to waste, though. I learned many things about leather shoes.

1. There are many kinds of leather: vegetable, calf, buffalo and that some leather get darker with wear and exposure to sunlight.

2. It’s best to wear leather shoes every third day, not every day.

3. Polishing should be done only once in a while. Shoe cream blocks the leather’s pores, and this decreases the feet’s ability to breathe.

4. Should your shoes get wet, don’t dry them directly under sunlight or by the radiator. Rather, let them dry naturally and use a shoetree to help them keep their shape.

5. Never wear your shoes while they’re wet. This stretches the leather, making the shoes lose their shape.

6. Elf, goatskin, batik, and nubuk leather are more sensitive than most. To clean it, wait until the dirt has dried before brushing it off gently with a soft cloth.

7. The Japanese are absolutely bananas about Trippen, and often buy it in hordes in Europe. This is because by the time these shoes hit Jap shelves, their price tags have been doubled, tripled, even quintipled!

The only thing I didn’t like about Trippen was how pricey everything was! Shoes range from 250 to 600 Euros. The cheapest, simplest, oldest one on sale cost 125 Euros; it cost as much as the most recently released platform-wedged Doc Martens I got only days before!

In Germany, there was a lot of walking. I spent at least four hours a day just walking from Point A to B in the ridiculous cold just because it made no sense to pay cab money. Conversion rates made me feel violated. Every time I had to hand over Euros, I did math in my head. What? PhP 900 for a box of rice with a few strips of beef and vegetables tossed in? PhP 120 for a bottle of water? Php 450 for a cup of hot chocolate? Eventually, I had to strong-arm myself to stop these little mental calculations, if only because my heart could not take any more pain.

Make no mistake: the walking was terrible. It was the coldest winter in recent memory, locals say, and even now, I remember the unrelenting cold. I piled on at least three layers of socks on top of insulating foot pads every day, and yet, I trudge about with feet feeling like they’ve been iced, fingers half dead.

But oh the beauty that surrounded me! Even in winter, with most things around me either dead or in slumber, Germany was beautiful. I remember staying awake throughout the six-hour train ride from Cologne to Hamburg because outside my window, everything looked postcard-perfect.

But oh the cold! Even now, I remember how my gloves chafed my hands, how my fingers felt like they’d fall off. I remember how dry my face felt and how, each time my scarf rubbed against my cheeks, they’d end up scratched and reddened. Sometimes, the cold made me want to stop mid-walk, curl up in the snow, and go to sleep. I heard later on this was how the recklessly young and hopelessly old  died. They go to sleep in the snow, and never wake up.

Surprisingly, though the cold reddened my cheeks and blistered my skin, it never reached my bones. The beauty around me kept me quite toasty, I guess. Looking back, it kept me so warm I could have lit whole towns with the heat.

I remember standing in front of the Kölner Dom, tongue-tied by its grandeur and feeling like the luckiest girl in the world to be standing in front of something so magnificently gothic and beautiful. At that moment, my happiness could have powered rockets straight to the moon.

This will sound cynical of me, and I’m sorry, but if there’s anything I’ve learned repeatedly, it’s that relationships have the knack for using up everything that we are and by the time we finally realize this, we’re either in a relationship or by ourselves—and feeling miserably alone. Strangely, it really is the little things that can save you. In this instance, that little thing for me was Bob Marley.

Today, after being mysteriously re-directed by my browser to a website on the RME Babyface, I found myself looking at a video made by the group Playing for Change. It’s part of their Song Around the World project, and it made my day completely.

One Love is a song by Bob Marley. I was at the premiere of the documentary Marley in Berlin, and I almost fainted during the Q and A before the screening. Bunny Wailer, one of the original members of Bob Marley and the Wailers, and Rohan Marley, one of Bob’s 11 kids by seven women, came. Bunny’s greeting alone did me in:

“Greetings in the name of the most high Jah Rastafari. His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I.”

Needless to say, I kicked myself soundly for choosing not to bring my camera that day. Read more »

If there’s anything that living alone has made me, it’s a little more useful. I’ve been lucky these past 11 years in that I’ve always had someone do things for me. I get driven around when I need to be somewhere. I never had to worry about mealtimes; the help does the cooking. I never had to worry about the laundry either; clothes, whether we need to wear them at the moment or not, end up in a neat pile or, as the case may be, hung in our closets.

Now that I live alone, no one does these things for me anymore so I have to figure out how to do them on my own. W and my friends would surely laugh if they can see what I’ve been feeding myself. It was pretty terrible for a while; everything that I ate came straight out of the can. Now, it’s slightly better; some of the things I eat come from tetra packs and plastic bags. See? When I said slightly, I really meant it. Thank God I haven’t managed to poison myself though I did come close to doing just that a few days ago!

I’m also a bit more in touch with my inner McGyver. Because there’s no one to run to for help, I try to do what I can with a set screw. If you ask me what I want for my birthday, I’d probably point to a Victorinox or a Cable Turtle.

I’m hopeless with wires. Mine always gets into a tangled heap on the table or the floor, and I would love to have one of these punchy-hued donuts so I can stop tripping on my cables. Each one flips out, making winding a breeze. Doesn’t hurt that they come in catchy colors, too.

I don’t know why they’re called Cable Turtles, though. Given that they look like something you can snap up at Dunkin’s, they should be called Cable Donuts, yes?