"love"

I was in the dating world for about twenty years before I met my boyfriend, Jon. With those twenty years came a lot of experience, both for the better and for the worse. I’ve been ghosted after three months of dating, I’ve dealt with intermittent reinforcement, and I’ve been in my fair share of rocky relationships. But the most common dating experience I’ve had? Love bombing. I only recently realized exactly what love bombing is, so I thought I’d share the warning signs and how to avoid it. Because – trust me – love bombing never ends well.

From celebrity memoirs to a dog named Dottie, here are a few things I’m loving this October 2018.

What do Shawn Mendes, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, documentaries on cults, and green lipstick all have in common? A selection of things I’m loving this month…

Zanzibar sunset. Photo by Helen It has been exactly 56 days since I last posted on this blog. 56 days! The longest I have ever gone without posting on This Battered Suitcase.…

One of the reasons I love travelling so much is because of towns like Lovere. Before visiting Bergamo, I didn’t even know it existed; to my knowledge, I had never read about it or seen photos of it. And yet, when I arrived on that rainy day, it immediately spoke to me: the green and blue shutters on the houses, the cool air coming down from the mountains across the lake, the small coffeeshops in the centre of town serving afternoon espresso. It was the kind of place that made you want to stay longer, made you want to explore its streets through every twist and turn. It was the epitome of why I’ve grown to love Italy so much in the first place.

A Danish reader once wrote to me to tell me how disappointed she was that there was barely anything on this blog about Denmark, despite the fact that I had visited in 2006. Actually, of the 80-odd countries I’ve been to, not that many of them are documented that well on this blog at all. I’ve never really been one for writing “guides”, I guess – I already do that for work, and I prefer to keep this blog more story-oriented.

That being said, after my recent trip to Denmark (which also included Aarhus) I felt the urge to write about why I love Copenhagen so much, and compile a list of all my favourite things to do in the city.