The other side of the coin.

Last weekend I went on a little walk to discover the not so pretty sides of my beautiful Stockholm.

The first things that might come to our mind when we think about “big city” or “capital” are great shopping malls, a lot of restaurants, a lot of social life, a lot of space, great sights. But what we more than often forget is, that it means a lot of inhabitants, a lot of garbage, a lot of party leftovers on the street, a big crime scene  and a lot of homelessness, too.

The first thing, which was the easiest one to discover, was the garbage – of any form and color!

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

 

After that came party leftovers like these:

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

 

Finding the more darker sides of Stockholm took a lot more work than just visiting dirty subway entrances. I tried to find some creepy hidden alleys, which wasn’t that easy because it’s not on my usual route, but I made it at some point.

© Jule Helmke

 

© Jule Helmke

The last picture here was kind of a surprise to me. You see I’m pretty near-sighted and I didn’t really see what these fellas were up to until I saw it in detail on my computer screen. And I think that’s why I have a big lens, so that I can zoom in and see things, that I can’t see with my bare eyes. But I thought that this pictures still goes with the topic of this post and I hope that I didn’t make anybody feel uncomfortable and hurt in any way! This is art you know, all about expressing myself

 

 

 

 

Tourist phobia.

Hands up if you agree that the hot spot for tourists in every city is the old town area! Or maybe it’s just like that in Stockholm. And despite the fact that I really like the old town here, I hardly go there. Because tourists give me the creeps. Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel myself! But when I’m on vacation I try to keep a low profile and blend in with everyone else. Because I know how annoying tourists can be.

But yesterday I went there on purpose, to go on tourist hunt. And five minutes later I already regretted that decision! But here is what I discovered:

A good identifier is always: caps, backpack, camera on hand:

© Jule Helmke

They always stand in the middle of the street to take nice pictures of each other

© Jule Helmke

© Jule Helmke

They buy stuff, that they will never ever use again once they are home

© Jule Helmke

They always appear in groups

© Jule Helmke

But please don’t get me wrong, I’m not a people hater or a cynic. Sometimes it just feels like if tourists think they are the only people on earth… So if you happen to be on vacation with your loved ones, turn around before you just stop on the middle of the street to take a picture and don’t occupy whole streets when you are in bigger groups. To keep up the common well-being

I’m bored. Let’s bake.

What better thing to to when your bored than going threw your kitchen for possible ingredients for something yummy! My friend Annika gave me this book with all these amazing recipes for cupcakes and muffins. They are just so easy to make and I could eat cupcakes at any time of the day, so here we go again

Marble Cupcakes

© Jule Helmke

12 cupcakes:
100g butter, softened
150g sugar
3 packets of vanilla sugar
3 eggs
150g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
100ml whipping cream
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
Preheat oven to 170 ° C. Melt the butter with the sugar and stir 1 packet vanilla sugar creamy, then stir in the eggs one by one. Mix flour with baking powder and mix with 100ml whipping cream alternately to the butter-egg mixture.

Spread half of the dough in the forms. Stir the cocoa powder into the other half. Spread the dark dough on top of the light dough. Pull a fork from the bottom up through the dough, so that marbling is created. Bake on the middle shelf about 20 minutes.

© Jule Helmke