Kristen Sinclair

“ A world without memory is a world of the present. The past exists only in books, in documents .” -           Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams (1993) Dementia runs in my family on my dad’s side. We sometimes call it ‘doting’ where I’m from. I wouldn’t say this was the reason I began making scrapbooks and journals, but throughout my teenage years, it helped to justify my rather uncool hobby of documenting my life piece by piece. I imagined that one day I’d be a senile old lady able to sit back and read over my life story, significant and insignificant details sellotaped side by side. I’d no doubt forget and read it all over again with renewed amazement. I vomited on the first scrapbook I ever had sitting in the front seat of my mum’s car on the way to hospital. I can’t remember why we were going there exactly, because I was very young and it’s a vague memory. But I can remember what the book looked like, as soon after, I received an iden...

 1.   Every stereotype about Amsterdam is true (even the train tickets cost €4.20 Sweaty and hauling my rucksack all the way from Centraal Station to Museumkwartier, it struck me that Amsterdam was just how I had imagined it; a labyrinth of canals and bridges decorated with colourful flowers and endless bicycles, quaint Dutch buildings, tourists and hipsters alike dodging the trams and, of course, an omnipresent smell of weed from the famous ‘coffee shops’ to live up to the cliché. In short: the place stinks of weed and everyone has bike they’re not afraid to run you over with.   2.  Google Maps is your best friend (most of the time) Whether it’s navigating the endless canals of the Dutch capital or street after street of bars in Berlin, there’s no better (or annoyingly necessary) way to use up all your monthly data allowance. You’d literally be lost without it – that is, until it sends you on a wild goose chase and you end up asking for a taxi...