There's something strange about the silence of a rooftop when you already know you won't be here in a few hours. Everything you normally ignore — the city noise, the sky before dawn, even the cold tiles under your feet — suddenly takes on a different texture. It's not nostalgia, because I haven't left yet. It's more like your brain already started saying goodbye without asking you first. Sitting here, luggage almost packed, head bouncing between the flight checklist and work stuff that "will sort itself out" (spoiler: it won't sort itself out), it hit me that it's worth stopping for ten minutes before diving into the chaos.

Tomorrow I fly to Madrid. Then Ibiza. Then Berlin. Then Innsbruck, Linz, Vienna. Almost three weeks on the other side of the ocean, which sounds great until you remember it's three weeks without your own bed, your own kitchen, on hotel wifi, managing the logistics of a solo traveler who has to be the tourist, the tech guy, the DJ going to watch other DJs, and the one still answering work messages from a bench in some European airport.

And I still wouldn't change a thing.

There's something that happens when you leave your city that no productivity book or wellness retreat can give you: forced perspective. Not the kind you look for. The kind that shows up on its own when you're somewhere nobody knows you, the language shifts, the rhythms are different, and suddenly your brain stops running in emergency mode and starts seeing things from the outside. It's always happened to me. I come back different. Not "transformed" in the cheesy sense — just with a clearer head, with clarity about what matters and what was taking up space without earning it.

This trip carries real weight. Cocoon at 528, Marco Carola at Pacha, Keinemusik, Claptone, Black Coffee, Circoloco at DC10, Berghain if the techno gods are in a good mood, and to close it out, Gigi D'Agostino live two nights in a row in Austria. That's not tourism. That's a pilgrimage. Some people go to Rome to see the Vatican. I go to Ibiza to hear music that moves something inside me that everyday life usually keeps buried.

The rooftop is getting cold. The checklist says almost ready. The flight leaves in a few hours.

Next stop: Madrid — first layover before Ibiza.

Me on my rooftop before the trip

Me closing my suitcase