do impossible things

it's been a stressful week

2012-01-30T14:06:00.008+01:00

Thank you: Sufjan Stevens, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Indian chai tea, tangerines, the one cigarette I smoked today, Radio 3, Radio 4, my dad's old jumper, my mum's scarf, Devin and Ollie, my family, tissues, everyone who has hugged me in the past week, the long walk we took on Saturday, cold bright mornings, the kindness of strangers, feeling ashamed for crying in public, not sleeping alone, eating freshly baked bread, friends friends friends.

walls

2012-01-26T23:33:00.002+01:00

I work during the day and go on the best walks at night. Yesterday I revisited a street we had walked along a couple of nights before. It's nice to discover places when it's dark, it gives me the chance to come back to them and, quite literally, see them in a new light.

forever and ever

2012-01-23T15:09:00.001+01:00

This is my favourite song.

I like it like this

2012-01-18T22:59:00.002+01:00

Happy moments:
1. My best friend called me on Skype and played this song for me on his ukulele.
2. A seven-year-old and I played Ludo. I lost.
3. Reading short stories until I fall asleep.
4. I ate freshly baked bread.
5. We watched The Future. After that, we watched Up. That was a good evening.
6. This song.
7. My friend sent me a badge with a house on it.

without wretchedness

2012-01-12T22:32:00.003+01:00

"At a distance unassailed by his looks or his kindness, and safe from the perpetual irritation of knowing his heart, and striving to avoid his confidence, she should be able to reason herself into a properer state; she should be able to think of him as in London, and arranging everything there, without wretchedness."

A friend and I discussed Jane Austen today. He said he just couldn't understand why her novels are considered classics. He thought they were dull. I disagreed, but couldn't quite find the words for why he was wrong.
Hours later, I came across this quote from my least favourite Austen novel, Mansfield Park. I had scribbled it on the back of a train ticket because it struck me that all of the pain and heartbreak of hopelessly being in love had been summed up in just one sentence.

elsewhere

2012-01-11T21:13:00.002+01:00

Home is a photograph you taped to your wall.

goodbye Vienna

2012-01-08T23:53:00.003+01:00

"I'm always a tourist in Vienna."

One of my favourite activities when I'm in Vienna: walking round the city with my dad.

does not

2012-01-03T20:07:00.004+01:00

I am ashamed to remember for how many years, as a boy and a young man, I read nineteenth-century fiction without noticing how often its language differed from ours. I believe it was work on far earlier English that first opened my eyes: for there a man is not so easily deceived into thinking he understands when he does not.

C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words

what I like

2012-01-02T23:27:00.003+01:00

Tonight was a disaster

(My neighbourhood and sad pop songs.)

this year was important

2011-12-31T13:18:00.004+01:00

sometimes I can't believe it
I'm moving past the feeling

In June I watched 'Scenes from the Suburbs'. Win Butler's voice, talking about the past, got stuck in my head and provided the theme for the entire year. "I guess those aren't the pieces you remember", he said. I listened to the title track all summer long.
It was true: I really couldn't believe it. I was moving on. My life had changed abruptly in 2010; some of the most important things had fallen away. As is often the case, this turned out to be a good thing - even though it did feel terrible at the time.
2011: months spent in the library, writing my dissertation, and after that the best summer I've ever had. Weeks and weeks of feeling free. And then I moved to England, and I didn't know what to expect, and my life is not what it was but that's good. Sometimes I think back about the years before this one. It's hard to believe that they existed.

Flagey

2011-12-30T15:14:00.003+01:00

Kevin's neighbourhood in Brussels is pretty amazing.

rooms

2011-12-27T21:01:00.003+01:00

"Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy."

I'm staying in an empty flat. Things that I enjoy: Listening to Mozart with my headphones on. Eating clementines and very dark bread. Drinking one of the many teas I got for Christmas (no more teabags). Walking barefoot on wooden floors again (I've missed that).
I'm also re-reading "Sense and Sensibility" instead of reading the books that I ought to read, and very much sympathise with Edward Ferrars when he talks of his shyness.

brothers

2011-12-25T19:04:00.002+01:00

The best thing about being home.

(Currently listening to brother #1 playing the piano.)

VIE

2011-12-23T12:25:00.003+01:00

I know you might roll your eyes at this

but I'm so glad that you exist

now your smile comes over in your face

2011-12-21T13:07:00.002+01:00

Yesterday morning I woke up on the train. We were approaching Vienna. The sun was rising.
And I was struck by the colours. England is still green, but the Austrian soil is red and ochre now. The landscape looked painted in the early morning light, and that, combined with the lack of sleep, the immediate reunion with my family and the knowledge that I'd be in my hometown again in just a few moments - that made me sit there, open-mouthed and silent.

Elsene

2011-12-20T20:00:00.002+01:00

A few things I liked in Brussels:
The view. I like squares.
Shop windows.
The cornershops have great food.
Cakes, and bread.
The colours in the underground station.
Speculoos cheesecake. Yes. Yes. Yes.

"lol"

2011-12-18T21:28:00.002+01:00

Look! A flashback to August 2010 when we found lulz on a wall in Vienna!
I guess it's always fun to be around good friends, but not all of them make you laugh out loud by saying strange things such as, "I think you're confusing speculoos with Sweden!" - or are surprised that Foucault's first name was Michel...

Ixelles

2011-12-17T11:30:00.003+01:00

Europe by train, once again: I'm on my way back to Vienna for the Christmas holidays, but I'm staying in Brussels for the weekend. I like it that I just had to take two trains to get here, and I like it that in the past three months I've seen my best friend more often than usual.
The first 24 hours in Brussels: excellent food, lots of rain (and snow, later).
Have you seen the interactive version of Arcade Fire's new video?

companionship

2011-12-14T20:54:00.004+01:00

I had to move to a small town to realise that sometimes it's not about where you are, but who you are with.

cold

2011-12-08T19:18:00.003+01:00

Last weekend was nice. I found a spot from which you can see the cathedral, the castle, the viaduct and the old miners' hall. My best friend came up to visit me. We drank coffee which he thought was tea and ate lots of food, as we always do. Life is good.

books in Leiden

2011-11-30T10:32:00.002+01:00

1. The Books They Gave Me - a tumblr after my own heart.
2. I'm slowly reading this book when I'm not reading books for my seminars. I'm halfway through and it's already one of my favourite books: endlessly fascinating, beautifully written. Of course I have started to read books written in German once I have left Austria - whereas before I only ever read books in English.
3. Nice.

the suburbs

2011-11-27T20:48:00.003+01:00

It's been a good week. I celebrated by doing my favourite Sunday thing: taking a walk on my own. This time round I was skipping down the street to The Supremes. The idea of living in a suburb is still foreign to me, the aesthetics are still unfamiliar and interesting.
All week T.S. Eliot's flat voice has been echoing inside my head. "Have I the strength to force the moment to its crisis?"

V&A forever

2011-11-25T13:30:00.003+01:00

I went to the V&A again.
Whenever I'm in London, I end up going there. Maybe it's because I still find London a little overwhelming, it makes me yearn for something that isn't in flux, something constant. I like the V&A's slightly arbitrary collection, the possibility to get lost in there. This time around I finally made it to the architecture section thanks to a friendly museum attendant who showed me a short cut, and with it a part of the building I hadn't seen before.
I see museums both with the eyes of a visitor and with those of someone who works in them. One thing that I like about the V&A is the way the objects are labelled and described: quite simply, like something you'd read in a children's book on architecture, art, glass. I copied the description of "Homes" into my notebook:

"The home is the most common form of building around the world. Whether housing a large extended family or just one person, all homes are organised around domestic routines and activities. Local traditions affect the ways in which private and public rooms are designed. The size and individuality of our homes may also say something about our social standing."

a glorious autumn day in Islington

2011-11-21T23:07:00.001+01:00

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.

a room of my own

2011-11-14T19:46:00.003+01:00

Sunday night, 10 o'clock, London Kings Cross. I was waiting for my train. It was delayed. The weekend had been interesting, intense, and now I was ready to go back home, go to sleep. I looked up and realised that there was a couple sitting next to me, holding each other close. There were two couples sitting on the bench in front of me, two more standing close by and another one kissing next to the cash machine in front of me. It felt like a scene from a Richard Curtis film. It felt strange. At that moment, my ipod playlist started playing one of my all-time favourite songs. A strange coincidence, and definitely not the happiest moment of my life.

little things

2011-11-11T18:41:00.002+01:00

Do you know what makes me happy?
When I think, "Maaaaan, I wish my brother was on Skype right now so I could share my enthusiasm about Beyoncé with him". And then log onto Skype and see that he's online for once. And he's writing lots of weird stuff that makes me laugh so hard I almost swallow my tongue.
That's what makes me happy.

South

2011-11-09T11:17:00.003+01:00

Last Tuesday Kevin and I went to Brighton and I took lots of clichéd photos of the promenade. It was a beautiful day and Brighton is of course completely different to Durham, it felt like being on holiday for a day. I don't care much about the sea (forever landlocked), but I fell in love with the architecture. This came as a bit of a suprise because I had been to Brighton several times before so I thought I was used to it. Well, maybe living in another English town has changed my point of view, who knows. It certainly felt much more Southern than it had before, whiter, brighter. In the evening we went to see British Sea Power, the real reason for our trip. They're one of my favourite bands and this is one of my favourite songs. Yes.
The day after, Kevin went back to Brussels. My brother had gone back to Vienna the day before. I had soaked up as much familiarity and ease as possible and went back to Durham.

Oxford Circus to Russel Square

2011-11-06T14:07:00.003+01:00

That was without a doubt one of the nicest walks I've ever taken in London.

boys

2011-11-04T18:43:00.003+01:00

I went to London to spend some time with these guys. It was so great to have a third of my favourite people around - not having to say anything special, just being goofy, that was exactly what I needed.
We met up on a sunny Saturday morning and took a walk along the canal. It's strange to see someone again after more than a month when until then you've never really been apart for that long. Especially if you're used to seeing them everyday. All the tiny little changes that you wouldn't even notice suddenly seem more pronounced.

good weekend

2011-11-03T14:18:00.004+01:00

some cities make you lose your head

2011-10-26T13:23:00.003+02:00

I saw some great houses this summer, a result of some epic walks and bike tours. Time to get on my bike and explore the suburbs of Durham, I think.

and again

2011-10-25T14:38:00.001+02:00

My friend Meriel came to visit me this weekend. It was great.
I'm finding it hard to deal with being apart from my family and best friends. Before I came here, I thought that finding new friends would make it easier to accept the absence of my old friends. It's not. It just makes me realise why my old friends are my friends. It makes me realise how familiar and easy human interaction can be, how I took things for granted. You see, one of my fixed ideas is that to understand other people we need to know their background, their history. Without this knowledge, other people are almost always strange. The problem is that this knowledge can only be aquired over time, so even if you're surrounded by a number of interesting, lovely people, it'll take ages until you actually know them. Sometimes this freaks me out and I feel alone in a sea of strangers. Sometimes I ignore my sentimental streak and simply enjoy myself.
I wonder if living in the 21st century means that I'll be forever separated from people I love. I still hate Skype, it only increases the distance. I don't like e-mails that much either, the only exception to this being my brother whose emails are so incredibly idiosyncratic that they're completely in character. Facebook messages are the worst, tiny anonymous blocks of text. Really I think my favourite mode of communication is thinking of other people intently, looking at their pictures, making the occasional expensive phonecall (why this feels different from Skype I have no idea...) and receiving things in the mail. Postcards. Letters. Parcels. Even if it's something completely random. My best friend used to send me concert tickets. I can deal with that, random things are the best because they make me feel as if I was a part of the other person's life instead of a friend who you have to make time for. It's pretending that the other person is still around instead of hundreds of kilometres away.

pink

2011-10-23T20:24:00.001+02:00

Pink things that I like: My walls, my favourite cup, one of the few modern buildings around here.

missing you

2011-10-19T23:23:00.001+02:00

What is is that makes us think of the family as a category of its own? Is it really blood and genes? Or is it time? Is it the years that we've spent together? Why do we love them as we do? (No, wait, not everyone does. But I do.) There are people who don't have much in common with me in terms of hobbies or interests, and yet they are closer to me than everyone else. It's strange. It might well be time.

lucky

2011-10-17T10:44:00.002+02:00

Saturday was the best day I've had so far in Durham.
Technically it started at midnight when I was dancing with new friends in the smallest indie club I've ever been to. (2011 has been the year of unexpectedly amazing dance parties.) When I woke up much later, the sky above the trees outside my window was blue and the air was warm. So I took a long walk on my own. I bought a toasted sandwich and ate it after walking up a semi-hidden alley to a wild overgrown park behind a church, looking at the castle on the hill opposite.
It's so green here, and there are so many unexpected views. While I'm here my love for trees might replace my love for town houses, out of necessity almost because there are no town houses. There are so many footpaths, it almost feels as if I live in the countryside. I've lived in a big city all my life, albeit with a forest close by, so this feels as exotic as anything.
When I came home I sat on my balkony/roof terrace with a cup of tea to read another chapter of "North and South". The light was beginning to turn the trees and the cathedral orange. I felt incredibly lucky to be there.
Later, one of my favourite bands played a concert in a tiny room in the centre of the city. You could see the moon through the open window behind them. This time around they had brought a banjo, a mandolin, a violin and a cello. I've been to so many great concerts, but this one was incredibly special: My friend and I sat on the floor with about twenty other people and after the first song he turned to me and said, "Thank you for telling me about this." Perfect end to a perfect day. Let's hope that there'll be many more days like this.

yes, mum and dad, I've been eating

2011-10-15T19:18:00.002+02:00

I've been eating...
1) a Dutch breakfast: toasted bread with chocoladehagel
2) (faux) Italian lunch: a toasted sandwich with bree and cranberry sauce from the Mediterranean bakery
3) lots and lots of vegetables from the greengrocer's close to my house - today I bought three apples, an aubergine, spinach, six eggs, a bunch of flowers and a rosemary plant for four pounds. Success!

That being said, I'd kill for some carrot bread with butter and honey.

Utrecht

2011-10-13T00:26:00.002+02:00

Utrecht: Dream city. As usual, I had the best time there. We just wandered around and ate good food. Kevin came up from Brussels and we encountered funny cats and dogs. I bought books, including my favourite book from when I was a child in the original Dutch version. It was the perfect end of a truly wonderful summer.

This is not new, but I think you should WATCH THIS. Caitlin Moran on How To Be A Woman. Yes, yes, yes.

the North

2011-10-10T00:08:00.002+02:00

Two weeks ago, my mum and I packed all of my most valued possessions into the trunk of her car and set out on a road trip to the North East of England. We drove through Northern Germany and spent several days in the Netherlands before taking the ferry. It was a beautiful, sun-drenched journey, the light was so different and so amazing.

Durham

2011-10-08T18:22:00.003+02:00

Where I live now: Steep hills, girls who don't seem to feel the cold, stark realism on posters in hidden alleys.

what I see now

2011-10-03T00:58:00.002+02:00

When I look out of my window, I see trees, the obelisk, the cathedral. I arrived in Durham on Thursday and have barely had time to unpack my bags since then.

leaving Vienna

2011-09-24T15:23:00.002+02:00

The first thing I used to see every morning.
No more: I'm moving out of the flat I've lived in all my life today. My mum's car is packed with my bike, my longboard and my other things and we're travelling up to Durham over the next week or so.

3

2011-09-23T00:01:00.003+02:00

1. Thank you, Luise. See you soon, summer.
2. Songs For The Young At Heart
3. Beginners - I'm usually not a big fan of post-90s romantic films, but I really liked this one.

my neighbours

2011-09-22T00:21:00.003+02:00

Today I asked my neighbour if he'd like to draw a house for me. I've asked several people to do that because a) I like houses, and b) it's interesting to see what they come up with.
My neighbour has lived in our house all his life, he's now in his eighties. I've lived in our house all my life as well, but I'm only in my twenties! So much has changed since I was little, but his stories are simply incredible.
So I asked him to draw me a house because he's a bit of a painter. He went away, came back with several notebooks and folders and told me to choose whatever I want. There were dozens of drawings of villages and towns. Here's my dream: A room with the walls covered in (framed) pictures of houses, streets, cities. You take the outside to the inside and extend the space of your room to something much bigger. A room with a wall covered with images of interiors might be interesting as well.
(I chose a view of the Danube, two drawings of Rome, and a funny little figure none of us could place.)

lots of words about my face

2011-09-19T14:55:00.006+02:00

Hello. This is me. Something has been bothering me, and I can't stop thinking about it, so I thought I'd share it.

Last week everyone who's working in my department got their pictures taken for our new website.
The pictures were taken by a professional photographer, and we had to show up at a specific time. I had to be there at 8:30 on a Monday morning. Having worked on the film set the whole weekend meant that I had gotten very little sleep and felt pretty exhausted in general, but I still got up early enough to wash my hair, put my favourite shirt on, take care of my skin and so on. This picture is going to be in the public domain with my real name attached to it - not like this blog, or a social network - so I wanted to look presentable, nice, clean.

I cycled to work. The photographer and her friend were already waiting. "A professional make-up artist will be there to assist you", the e-mail announcing the project had said, and yes, there she was, with an endless amount of colours and brushes. Now, I had done the make-up for the film the weekend before, so it didn't feel entirely alien. But that also meant that I knew exactly what I like and don't like. Or so I thought.

"Sit down, you're getting your make-up done before we're taking the picture."
"Umm, I'm already wearing make-up?"
"You are? No you're not. Where?"
"Everywhere? I just don't like to look as if I'm wearing make-up, I like it natural."
"But you're not even wearing mascara!"
"Yes I am, just not a lot of mascara."
"Why don't you like wearing make-up?"
"Well, because covering up my scars is enough for me and I'm glad if I don't have to do much more. I really don't want more than that. Do I have to get my make-up done now? Really?"
"You'll need it with the flash light."

And that was that. The make-up artist went to work. There was no mirror, so I only saw the result when the photographer showed me the pictures. I was non-committal because I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. When I saw myself in the bathroom mirror afterwards, I gasped. This wasn't me. This was an incredibly tanned person with very smooth, painted skin, shiny lips, a bloc of blusher across her cheekbones, painted eyebrows and smokey eyes. I looked flawless. I also looked older.

I went home and washed my face, and I got angrier and angrier. I'm not a film star beauty and I'm certainly not flawless. Covering up scars or pimples or veins is fine with me, I do that myself. However, why paint another face all over mine? Why make me look conventionally beautiful when I'm not? Why did they think it necessary to put make-up on my face at all? After all, I'm young and alive, and lucky enough to be okay with myself.
Or I used to be okay with myself. I'm still young enough to remember vividly what it's like to be a teenager, to be uncomfortable with one's face and body. I couldn't be happier that I've grown up to be a woman not plagued by body issues, but that doesn't mean I'm super confident, it means that I'm indifferent to my flaws. Receiving the message that my ordinary everyday face was too ordinary to be photographed, even though it was only for work, was admittedly a bit of a blow.

I'm not a big fan of faking it in any way, and I thought that in the country I live in that was more or less an accepted point of view. If you look at pictures in magazines, even advertisments for big supermarkets or drug stores, they're hardly retouched, and if they are it's hard to see what has been done at all. The models often don't have perfect teeth; you can see that they shaved their armpits, you can see that their under-eye circles were covered with make-up and not edited away. The women on the street don't wear much make-up either, especially compared to other countries.
I like that attitude. That's why the mission to cover my face came as such a surprise to me. It felt incredibly regressive, even sexist: Why did I get that treatment when my male colleagues had nothing done to them? Why do I have to look perfect and beautiful? Why is it that when future visitors see my picture the first thing they'll think is that I'm a painted doll? A copy of other painted dolls, as my female colleagues got a similar treatment?

And here's the most obvious question: Why didn't I just make a fuss about it then and there?

great weekends (3)

2011-09-18T21:09:00.003+02:00

Great weekends, part 3:

This one, which began with freshly baked cinnamon rolls and L'Avventura, both really good. Other than that it was a bit of a family weekend, away from the internet, doing things I like on my last weekend in Vienna: We had breakfast in a bakery and went to the Max Weiler exhibition which was excellent, really excellent. My brother and I went skating at dusk, you have no idea how happy I am that I bought a longboard, best decision ever! And today it was still warm enough to wear shorts, so we took a long walk up the hill and through the forest.
I'm trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible before it gets too cold and dark to do so, but after reading about Jeannette Winterson's article "Why I Adore The Night" here, I'm thinking that maybe I should just embrace the change of seasons instead of rejecting it? (Or maybe that's all just because I'm finally reading Theodor Storm's Der Schimmelreiter which is so bleak and wet and autumn-y that complaining about a 21st century winter makes me feel like the biggest wimp on earth.)

great weekends (2)

2011-09-18T00:12:00.003+02:00

Great weekends I've had this summer, part 2:

Three days in Belgium, a great weekend mostly because of the company and because we did some of my favourite things: We went for a walk around my friend's neighbourhood, ate very spicy food, went to a great museum, and watched a Hollywood film which I actually thought was amazing. More of this, please, and soon!

Sommer in Wien

2011-09-15T09:50:00.003+02:00

Oh, the summer.
I took that last picture yesterday. Here's what I did:
1. Got my bike back from the bike doctor, after two weeks of riding my mum's Hollywood star bicycle mine felt small and simple, but also super fast and dynamic, perfect for going uphill, downhill, around corners.
2. Met up with Dani and Max to watch Les Amours Imaginaires which was described by a local newspaper as a Canadian "hipster tearjerker". They got that about right. But I ate icecream, drank Makava, put my feet up and enjoyed the soundtrack, if nothing else.
3. We went back to Max' place to BAKE BREAD. Exciting. It was so good!
4. We decided to watch another film, The Bicycle Thief, "a 1948 Italian neorealist film" which I enjoyed much more than the hipster tearjerker. It was beautifully made, if only I could have seen it on a big screen! I'll definitely have to see it again one day.
5. There's nothing greater than cycling home after you've watched a film about bicycles.

romance (is boring)

2011-09-13T22:39:00.003+02:00

A love scene.

What you can't see: The camera, the microphone, the make-up bag, the sound system, the six other people listening closely. The 25 times I pressed a button and said, "Sound is on". The 25 times the couple giggled and kissed. The silly grins on our faces as we watched the scene.

And now, that's over and my days will be filled with packing and unpacking and packing some more.

sentimentality

2011-09-12T11:51:00.002+02:00

The days are getting more and more intense, filled with activity and goodbyes and last times. I've been barely at home, and almost never on my own. Riding my bike has been the only time I haven't talked to someone. I'm helping a friend with the make-up/costume for a film her boyfriend is shooting and spent the weekend in a strange little bubble. On Saturday I got up when it was still dark outside, sleepily ate some breakfast and cycled to a café in the centre of town when the sun had just gone up. The sky was the loveliest light blue, the streets were completely quiet and peaceful and I felt just great. Sixteen hours later I cycled back home: The city was filled with laughter, people enjoying a night out, a lovely late summer night. I was extremely tired which contributed to the growing sense of sentimentality I felt when I floated past the tourist spots, baroque buildings and churches, the emperor's palace, the huge museums, big streets turning into ever smaller streets the closer I got to my neighbourhood. This town really is the oldest friend of mine.

bit of a blur

2011-09-08T11:35:00.002+02:00

My idea of a great evening: Nice simple food (preferably including zucchini), good music, friendly friends, cups of tea, feeling comfortable.

go away, darkness

2011-09-06T22:28:00.003+02:00

Why I don't want summer to end:

1. Fresh fruit and vegetables.
2. No tights, no socks, sandals, bare legs, shorts.
3. Walking, running, cycling outside.
4. The park.
5. Leaves on trees, not on streets.
6. Natural light.
7. I'm not cold or uncomfortable.
8. Early morning sun.
9. Everyone is more spontaneous.
10. Health.

(And an extra reason: Today I saw a dog that looked exactly like a fox. It was on a leash. It even had the same arrogant way of walking. Before August I'd never seen a fox in real life before (Vienna), this summer I saw three, two in London, one in Berlin, plus this fake one, clearly a creature called fog.)

breakfast

2011-09-04T23:32:00.002+02:00

What I'm going to miss:

Breakfast at the kitchen table. Every night when I go to sleep I'm looking forward to eating breakfast in the morning.
I like tea a lot, I like the ceremonial aspect of putting tea leaves into the little sieve and waiting four minutes. Sometimes I forget about it, then my tea is especially black - or, as my uncle said the other day, "This can't be tea, that's coffee!" Obviously weak black tea and tea bags are my idea of culinary torture.
Just as important as tea is bread, however. You can buy good tea almost everywhere. Bread, however, is different. Carrot bread, or walnut bread, or anything with lots of seeds and various cereals in it, is my favourite food. It's damn hard to make yourself which means that I'll be saying goodbye to this most simple of pleasures when I move north.
Then there's the luxury of fresh fruit, something that I'm going to miss during the winter. Technically it's possible to buy anything at any time throughout the year, but do I want to eat strawberries when they're not really in season? No, of course I don't.

great weekends

2011-09-03T20:15:00.002+02:00

Great weekends I've had this summer, part 1:
Indietracks, always a favourite. This year was the best though. I met new friends whose company I enjoyed immensely, drank tea at a fika tea party and danced to my favourite songs. It was so good that talking about it is no use at all.

forgotten youth

2011-08-31T19:50:00.003+02:00

Night trains are fun and arriving in Berlin when it's hot and lovely is even more fun. We packed our bags, took a train to a lake, rode our bikes until we found a spot we liked and spent the afternoon there. I'm not a great swimmer, but the water was perfect. It was the first of five wonderful days. Later that day my friend Q and I danced like kids on a deserted dancefloor and Luise put on one perfect popsong after the other.
Oh, summer. This is what they talk about when they say you're perfect.

Rotterdam

2011-08-25T17:32:00.003+02:00

After Utrecht I spent a day in Rotterdam which may have been the strangest day of the trip. I had never been in a city like that before, a city that felt like the future, or maybe a 50s version of the future. Whereas my hometown doesn't ever seem to change, at least not drastically - and whenever it does change, people can't stop complaining about it - Rotterdam felt like a continual work in progress. It was fascinating, but it also felt strange. Looking back it seemed more than apt that we went to the Nederlands Fotomuseum. New Topographics. Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape was on show, "a re-make of an influential exhibition about new landscape photography that was taking place at the George Eastman House in Rochester (USA) in 1975". Brilliant.
I'm off to Berlin now to meet my friends again. See you soon!

forgery

2011-08-22T22:04:00.003+02:00

"You could strip all the romance from a place if you were determined enough, even the romance of decay."
(Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child)

Oddly enough, no one else has claimed my favourite spot under that tree yet, and therefore I get to enjoy its shade every afternoon. My favourite park is two Lucksmiths songs away from my house. Due to its location, there's a complete absence of a) tourists, b) businessmen during lunch break, c) fashionable young people, d) anyone who is older than 16 or younger than 60, really. It's also completely beautiful.
I finished reading the Hollinghurst book yesterday with very mixed feelings. It appears to have been written for literary critics, conscious of its own cleverness. Before I started reading a new book, a sort-of-biography of Constantine Simonides (a particularly clever present of my dad's, combining his interest in classics with my interest in 19th century Greece) I lay in the grass, stared up at the sky and leaves, ate some carrot bread with butter and listened to this podcast. My favourite podcast in a while - Neil Bartlett is in it, that's almost enough for me!

stories

2011-08-20T18:59:00.002+02:00

Whenever I imagine meeting the author of one of my favourite books, the most pressing question I can think of asking is, "But, what exactly happened to Cecil?"
I guess it's a good thing that I stopped studying Comparative Literature.

away

2011-08-19T11:08:00.003+02:00

Next year. I move to Durham in October.
When my friend Q looked it up on Google Maps, he found this. Glorious.

together again

2011-08-17T23:30:00.002+02:00

I took a train from Brussels to Rotterdam. When I was almost there, my friend Q called. "Change of plans, can you come to Utrecht instead?" I was more than happy to do just that. When I stepped out onto the platform, I felt both excited and relieved to finally be back. Utrecht used to be my friends' home, and it is maybe the only city other than Vienna where I, too, feel at home. Everything was strangely familiar, the streets and houses and even the supermarket hadn't changed that much even though I hadn't been there for more than two years. And of course two of my dearest friends walked around with me and made the experience even more enjoyable. Soon we shall be reunited in Berlin, and I can't wait. But this day in Utrecht with its various coffee breaks will remain one of the best days of this summer.

bff

2011-08-16T23:14:00.002+02:00

Things to do on a bank holiday weekend in Vienna if you want the weekend to be perfect:

1. Pick up your best friend from the train station. Go to the farmer's market, buy walnut bread. Eat Viennese breakfast at a typical Viennese Konditorei.
2. Get on your bikes, cycle from one Pawlatsche (courtyard) to the other.
3. Eat great pizza, go to a small cinema, watch "Never Let Me Go". Cycle home, singing your favourite songs loudly while doing so.
4. Eat walnut bread for breakfast. Drive to Lower Austria, do some more cycling, this time along the Danube and through the fields.
5. Drive back to Vienna, watch a silly Hollywood movie, discuss the movie.
6. Have breakfast in the sunshine in the back garden, then go for a swim in the Danube. Make vegan pancakes, go for a walk.
7. Go to the Museum of Constructed Languages and the Museum of Globes. Drink tea and eat a pastry at another traditional Konditorei.

yes

2011-08-12T22:27:00.003+02:00

A week ago, I had just returned from England, feeling over-emotional and quite happy. On Friday we packed our hiking boots and not much else and drove west to spend the weekend in Styria. It was more beautiful than these pictures suggest.

houses and books

2011-08-11T19:23:00.005+02:00

The houses in Brussels were interesting to look at. We did my favourite thing and just walked along side streets. This really changed my view of Brussels to the better and now I can't wait to go back. Yes, really.

Today I spent a lovely hour reading Alan Hollinghurst's new novel "The Stranger's Child" on a church square close to my house just as the light turned yellow and the air got cooler. What I saw when I looked up from my book: Old trams crossing the square very slowly, people playing badminton, little children on tiny bikes, three men having a conversation in a language I couldn't understand, a guy drinking water from the fountain, the owner of the local inn (I presume) talking on the phone ("Ah you know Vienna is a very small town really!"), flowers.

I'm extremely happy to be reading this novel. So happy, in fact, that I rolled around on a bed last weekend, exclaiming, "This book! This book! Aaaah!" (To which my friend Max replied, "I wish I could say that about my book, but it's about the slave trade.") It's the first novel I've read in a long, long time and it's by one of my favourite authors. (I found it hard to read novels again after sticking to academia for half a year, wasn't used to things like a plot or fictional characters anymore, so I've been reading autobiographies for the past month or so.)

Here's something strange though: This is another novel that reminds me of "The Go-Between" by L.P. Hartley, at least for now. Is it just because of the setting - an English country house? No, it's also that sense of innocence versus semi-hidden private activities. It's a good topos, obviously, and Hollinghurst's version works much better than Ian McEwan's who pretty much copied "The Go-Between" when he wrote the first part of "Atonement" which in turn spoiled that book for me. Sometimes I get uncomfortable when authors are inspired by very famous works of fiction, even though I know perfectly well that it's a postmodern thing to do. It's really quite irrational, but it almost ruined Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" for me. Maybe if it hadn't been a novel I really like, but "Howard's End"? Really?

Let's stop here before it all gets too much. Just one more thing: Michelle (who is writing one of my favourite, favourite blogs, M Dash) has asked me to make a post for her "My Favourite Dress" series and you can see the result here. Thank you for having me! I feel quite honoured.

grand madness

2011-08-10T21:29:00.004+02:00

So I finally went to Brussels. As you may or may not remember, I have never been there, haven't had the time and energy to visit even though my best friend lives there now. In the end, all it took was a night spent on a train. There were only two things I wanted to see: Kevin and the Palace of Justice. We walked closer and closer to the huge building and I got more and more excited.
Here's why: W.G. Sebald has written a particularly memorable paragraph about it in his novel "Austerlitz", and Sebald is one of my favourite writers. For some reason, I found exactly this passage online. It's a long one, but it made such an impression on me that I still remember how I felt when I first read it. It sounded unreal, like something he had made up, one of those things Sebald keeps doing in his books where you can't be sure about fact and fiction. And yet, when I saw the building and walked around in it, it all seemed true.

"It was several months after this meeting in Liege that I came upon Austerlitz, again entirely by chance, on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels, on the steps of the Palace of Justice which, as he immediately told me, is the largest accumulation of stone blocks anywhere in Europe. The building of this singular architectural monstrosity, on which Austerlitz was planning to write a study at the time, began in the 1880s at the urging of the bourgeoisie of Brussels, over-hastily and before the details of the grandiose scheme submitted by a certain Joseph Poelaert had been properly worked out, as a result of which, said Austerlitz, this huge pile of over seven hundred thousand cubic meters contains corridors and stairways leading nowhere, and doorless rooms and halls where no one would ever set foot, empty spaces surrounded by walls and representing the innermost secret of all sanctioned authority.

Austerlitz went on to tell me that he himself, looking for a labyrinth used in the initiation ceremonies of the Freemasons, which he had heard was in either the basement or the attic story of the palace, had wandered for hours through this mountain range of stone, through forests of columns, past colossal statues, upstairs and downstairs, and no one ever asked him what he wanted. During these wanderings, feeling tired or wishing to get his bearings from the sky, he had stopped at one of the windows set deep in the walls to look out over the leaden gray roofs of the palace, crammed together like pack ice, and down into ravines and shaft-like interior courtyards never penetrated by any ray of light. He had gone on and on down the corridors, said Austerlitz, sometimes turning left and then right again, then walling straight ahead and passing through many tall doorways, and once or twice he had climbed flights of creaking wooden stairs which gave the impression of being temporary structures, branching off from the main corridors here and there and leading half a story up or down, only to end in dark cul-desacs with roll-top cupboards, lecterns, writing desks, office chairs, and other items of furniture stacked up at the end of them, as if someone had been obliged to hold out there in a state of siege. He had even heard, said Austerlitz, of people who, over the years, had managed to start up a small business in one or other of the empty rooms and remote corridors of that great warren: a tobacconist's, a bookie's, a bar, and it was rumored, Austerlitz added, that a man called Achterbos had once turned a gentlemen's lavatory down in the basement into a public convenience for, among others, passersby in the street, installing himself at the entrance with a small table and a plate to take the money, and that later, when he engaged an assistant who was handy with a comb and a pair of scissors, it was a barber's shop for a while."
(via here)

And here's a random bit of information from Kevin's guide book: "While the labyrinthine Palais de Justice is undoubtably grand, it is not easy to secure. Indeed in several high-profile cases criminals have managed to abscond from its precincts." Great.

graduation day

2011-08-08T16:08:00.002+02:00

Right after my final exam, I cycled to my dad's office where 3/4 of my immediate family was waiting with champagne and cakes and sandwiches to celebrate my new status. "Overjoyed" seems to be the right adjective.

nowhere near

2011-08-04T18:48:00.007+02:00

Train stations I have seen: Cologne, Brussels, Rotterdam, Alfreton.
This is the song I've been listening to since I've come home.
Fair warning to anyone who reads this: The following is a product of lack of sleep, euphoria and a terrible habit of mixing my metaphors.

Yesterday I was on a train to London, contemplating the past week or so, when I realised that there's an obvious problem with using a device like a Pensieve. (Let's just pretend for a moment that it's real. Non Harry Potter readers, I'm talking about this.) It's quite simple, really - memories aren't either pure, or have been meddled with.
In fact, they are always tainted or tinted, by other experiences or nostalgia. They are shaped by the narrative we force upon them, the stories we tell our friends and the confessional notes we scribble into journals. A wonderful, unique moment is gone in an instant, as per definition. If it is retrieved however, looked at again, it can never take the shape of those neat and orderly scenes encountered by Harry Potter when he dives into the Pensieve. We know that. Historians have tried to either ignore that fact or work around it for ages.

But still, it is a dilemma. I'd love to keep the memory of certain moments safe, like an old photograph hidden in a dark place so as to keep it from aging. This means keeping it locked up, not sharing it: The more you look at the picture, the more fragile it gets. And the more you talk about moments, share them with others, the more they turn into a story - until you can only remember them with the words you use to describe them with. And of course words aren't all that accurate.

It's similar to something I discovered when I (finally) met my friend Q again and we talked about the last time we had seen each other: Our memory was shaped by the photographs we had taken. It is confined to the limits we imposed on it.

Basically, I am facing quite a simple question: Is it better not to take any pictures? And, even more importantly: Should you avoid talking or writing about precious moments? Your memory will remain in the solitary confinement of your brain, undisturbed, it won't turn into a story that loses its depth of feeling after having been told for the third, fourth, fifth time. It will, however, be all the more prone to merge with illusions, what if's, daydreams, wishful thinking, until the original is changed, until it's hard to tell what actually happened. And one day, you'll forget about it, forget what it meant to you that day, the immediacy will be gone.

In the end, what happens is this: You sit on a train, and then later you're at Heathrow and it's six in the morning. Instead of writing down what has happened, events, people, places that have had an impact on your life, instead of facing the dilemma of turning your feelings into nothing more but words and a story because you want to keep at least a part of them alive forever... instead of doing that, you just write about what a strange thing memory is. Contemplating what has actually happened seems like a task you can't face right now.
You talk to your friend Martin who wisely says, "You're overthinking this, aren't you?"
Already, nostalgia has set in.

Later, you'll board a plane. You come home and, half-convinced that you must have been dreaming, you tell your friend all about it, just to confirm to yourself that things have happened. The moment is gone, tainted, mixed with longing and regret, just a memory, bound to fade. Only wizards and robots know how to keep them pure.

away we go

2011-07-20T22:31:00.003+02:00

Europe by train:
Vienna - Brussels - Gent - Rotterdam - London - Indietracks - Durham - Austrian mountains
I'll see you in August!

food for hot summer days

2011-07-17T21:36:00.002+02:00

Dinner, dessert and a drink.
Do share yours. (Nothing fancy, I'm not patient enough for fancy stuff.)

1. My favourite kind of food can be eaten with a spoon, looks slightly disgusting and is basically a combination of vegetables. Right now, I make a kind of zucchini-tomato stir fry at least once a week. I fry the zucchini, add the tomatoes until it looks like a mess, and add haloumi to make the whole thing even more messy. If you mash potatoes into the whole thing (which is what I like best), you get a glorious reddish mountain of vegetables. Or you can eat it with pasta. My brothers gave the ultimate sign of approval when they told me reluctantly, "You know, we hate to tell you this, but this is both healthy and tastes great!"
2. Lemon yoghurt blueberry cake. I'm so glad it's blueberry season again!
3. Basil lemonade (something like this) + white wine + strawberries = heaven. I have to think of a name for this drink. Hmm.

this town is the oldest friend of mine

2011-07-17T10:40:00.003+02:00

My mum lives in an amazing part of town. I ride my bike to her house at least once a week to sit on her balkony or have dinner or water the plants when she's away. The streets are quiet. On my way there I get to indulge in my love, bordering on obsession, with all the different kinds of houses in Vienna. The other thing I like are places that don't feel like they're part of a big city anymore, quiet corners, trees, nothingness.
Have you noticed that this blog has turned into an endless love letter to this city? It's because I won't be here for much longer, and I've started seeing Vienna with the eyes of a stranger, mixed with the emotion of someone who belongs here. It's the strangest feeling. Suddenly I see everything quite clearly, I notice all of the peculiarities that inhabitants who have lived here for more than twenty years don't see anymore. The colours, the trees, the smells and sounds, all of the lovely things that you take for granted. It's a great feeling.
In two months, I'll be moving to another country.

summer camp

2011-07-13T21:17:00.004+02:00

I apologise for my continued absence, especially to everyone whose messages I haven't yet replied to: I'm working at the museum's summer camp. This means that I'm basically on my feet for nine hours and fall asleep straight away when I get home. My days feel a bit like a Summer Camp song. Nothing compares to cycling to work at eight in the morning when the city is a strange mix of quiet (the shops still closed) and bustling (the morning commute) - especially when you know that it's going to be another super hot summer day. Viennese summers, you're my favourite.

SUMMER CAMP - Round the Moon from Paddy Power on Vimeo.

writings on walls

2011-07-08T18:12:00.003+02:00

Dear everyone, I'm a Mag.phil. now. This means that I have completed my degree in History and am pleased and relieved. Yesterday morning I had my final exam. Sitting round a table with three examiners was one of the oddest experiences of my life, but the first question ("If someone told you that South Eastern Europe was just another part of the Eastern Bloc, what would you say to them?") put me at ease and I knew I could do it. Weird to think that it's all over now though - the idea of not reading books about the Balkans anymore is really weird.

fragmentation

2011-06-29T23:25:00.004+02:00

My life, March - October.

I have real news to talk about, but for now let me just say this: I spent a lot of time on British trains last week, reading
a) this book which I strongly recommend to anyone who reads German - it's your neighbourhood, it had an impact on all of our lives, we should know about it and it's one of the best books that I've read on South Eastern Europe,
and b) the review section of the Guardian where I came upon this article about a new sort-of-biography of the Mann dynasty. If ever there was a book that was designed to appeal to me, this is it.

sky blue

2011-06-20T17:13:00.002+02:00

These days I...

... have come to realise that I only really like a very limited colour scheme.
... listen to this playlist a lot.
... am finally happy with the living room wall because I've managed to incorporate many of the things I like: Giorgos Seferis (representing modern Greek history/culture), a polaroid of the male part of my family, this picture (my favourite), a picture of Lake Ohrid that I took when I went to Macedonia last year, a famous coffehouse owner (representing Viennese culture), past people having fun skating and Greek graffiti.
... discovered a bathroom at university that I had never seen before (no basilisk, but nice colours).
... use my tumblr as a kind of scrapbook for things I like: songs, videos, pictures, links, quotes. I've also decided to put all self-portraits there. I feel awkward doing outfit posts and yet I still take pictures of myself to document what I wear and what I like. It helps with my ongoing struggle to choose what to keep, what works for me and what to give to charity.
... watched "Scenes from the Suburbs", i.e. the Arcade Fire film. I walked into the cinema having no clue what the film would be about, but I liked it instantly. It basically combines two of my favourite tropes, the thoughtful teenage movie (a la Gus van Sant's "Elephant") and dystopia. Excellent. Then I watched "The Tree of Life" yesterday which was, without a doubt, one of the silliest films I have ever seen, platitudinous, obvious, boring, frankly I'd be able to construct wittier Christian metaphors. Random dinosaurs: never a good thing.

staring at the sky

2011-06-17T12:07:00.002+02:00

Because I don't live in a vacuum of neighbourhood fun and games, here's something that happened in the museum today: I explained why aeroplanes stay up in the air to a group of teenagers and then went on to discuss the impact air traffic is having on the environment/the climate due to the massive amount of emission. Then one boy said, "But even if we don't take the plane, it won't have any impact because that plane will still be flying."
And I thought, Fuck this. How can it be that it is necessary to explain market-based economies and the principle of supply and demand to children as soon as you talk about the environment? It felt as if I was suggesting that the only power they really have is through being a consumer. How utterly depressing is that?
Not as depressing as when children think that all the garbage that they throw into the bin will be turned into shiny new things by a mysterious recycling animal, or that all electricity we use is renewable energy (I have yet to meet a child that isn't convinced that we only use water/wind/solar power) but still...

Home

2011-06-13T17:55:00.003+02:00

Today I

1. did what I'm supposed to do which is to study for my final exam. So I read a book about the late Roman empire. This is in fact one of my favourite periods in history - and historiography. We obviously only have a vague idea of what was actually going on, therefore I find it fascinating (and sometimes slightly puzzling) that historians present their version of events with an authority suggesting that they have travelled in time, and not simply studied the limited amount of written and archaeological sources available. To be honest I found Gore Vidal's novel "Julian", presented as an autobiography, just as convincing as biographies of the same emperor by esteemed historians. At least Vidal made clear that it was a novel.
2. listened to this song repeatedly. So good. Headphones on, please, those backing vocals deserve your attention.
3. continued the slow process of decorating our living room. Phew. I'm sitting on my bed surrounded by photographs, trying to choose. Luckily I have radio documentaries and the new Indietracks compilation to keep me company.
4. cycled round the neighbourhood, as usual (I should stop mentioning this! I do it every day!) and realised that one thing I like about it is that it is quite unkempt. I mean, there are gaps between houses where there are bushes and grass and, well, nothing really, and there are old factory buildings and new buildings which are weird and apparently uninhabitated. And then there are parks and churches, obviously, and the train tracks. It doesn't really feel like a city, it doesn't feel like the suburbs either, it's a weird in between thing. The streets were deserted today (bank holiday). Ah, the hymns to my neighbourhood. There's a reason why I still live here, after all, but don't worry, it won't go on forever.

three

2011-06-10T22:51:00.003+02:00

Three things I've enjoyed recently:
1. The smell of lime-tree blossoms when I cycle home. If I could smell of anything, if I could get someone to make me my own personal fragrance, it would be this.
2. Houses. Always. The other day I spent an entire afternoon walking around, staring at the different houses. (I don't have a clue about architecture, I just like the various shapes and sizes. Sorry if this is boring for everyone else. Only not really)
3. Yesterday we watched Mannen Som Elsket Yngve. I somehow didn't expect it to be brilliant, but by the end of it I was completely heartbroken. What is it about Scandinavian films about teenagers that's so utterly realistic and touching? It's been impossible to get the story and the characters out of my head.

grrr

2011-06-08T11:57:00.003+02:00

Yes! A thousand times yes!

a love letter

2011-06-05T13:39:00.005+02:00

Dear my best friends who live in far-away places,

hi! Yesterday I woke up and I realised just how much I miss you. Being stuck in a library sort of puts every emotion other than stress and anxiety out of your mind - but here I was, a Saturday with nothing much to do stretching out ahead of me, and I thought of you. It would have been a perfect day to go swimming in the river, or to just walk around doing nothing in particular. Instead I just walked around on my own and took lots and lots of pictures with my crappy Lomo camera and thought about how impossible it is to share what I see with you. Not only because I don't have a camera that is up to the job of capturing what my eyes see, but also because you'd have to be there, hear the birds and children, smell the flowers. The sunlight, for example, was particularly bright and my street looked washed out, colourless, like a Lowry painting if Lowry had ever painted sunny Viennese streets. (Not likely.)

Long-distance friendships are easier nowadays, but they're also less real. You can't hang out via Skype. All I ever want to do is hang out. Most days I still can't believe that you don't live here anymore.

if thou wouldst be perfect

2011-06-04T10:43:00.002+02:00

Things I've done since handing in my dissertation (part 2):

I had the best day yesterday, it was almost perfect. My brother and I slowly cycled to an Italian restaurant, the temperature was just right (about 25 degrees) and I was about to eat really great pizza for the first time in months. I had daydreamed about eating pizza when I was stuck in the library... my daydreams are often quite mundane.
Plus I was wearing nice tan sandals for the first time in years, a fact that is clearly made of win. I've mostly stopped buying (non-thrifted) clothes and am in the midst of a lenghty process of giving about half of my stuff to charity shops. My brothers claim it is in fact a never-ending story. Whenever I do buy new stuff, it's stuff that is supposed to last years and years. Many 32 degrees Austrian summers will be made more comfortable by these sandals.
After the pizza I went to the cinema on my own, surely one of the greatest pleasures ever. To choose whatever silly film you want to see and go in the middle of the afternoon is just the nicest way to put your mind off things. I have a weird thing for semi-political spy movies, don't ask me why. When I left the cinema, it was raining. Summer rain is nice. I cycled home and thought about how to decorate the living room, something that I haven't had the chance to do because every creative impulse of mine was squashed by my dissertation. As you can see, hanging pictures on the wall is a very slow process.
In the evening, I made cinnamon buns - as promised - and listened to my brothers' friends and our neighboors cheer and groan all throughout the Germany vs Austria football game. Making cinnamon buns takes a long time (yeast!), but I listened to a radio programme about the Pelagian controversy and read several articles I've been meaning to read for ages whilst doing it, so that was all right. I'm not a great baker or cook, mostly because I'm impatient and don't really care about perfection, but working with yeast is very satisfying, especially when you get to think about the religious disputes of the 4th century, arguably one of my favourite topics ever.

always a relief

2011-06-01T22:51:00.003+02:00

It's taken about a year to reach this point (due to an unlucky combination of studying in Austria, chosing a difficult subject and various personal problems), but yesterday I finally completed my dissertation. Writing it made me realise what I love and what I hate about history as a discipline - and to be honest my doubts about whether it's possible to actually say anything meaningful about the past have multiplied ad infinitum. The most important lesson I've learned is that what I've come to dislike is not and never will be history per se, it's just the area I've focused on. Everything else is still as exciting and new as it was when I first started reading biographies about famous Frenchmen at the tender age of eleven.
Now I have to do lots of revision for my last and arguably most important exam ever, but I don't really mind - reading about Late Antiquity is exactly what I want to be doing right now. Plus, it can be done outside, in a park or in a café. I think it's time for another list though. Let's call it:

Things I'm going to do now that I've handed in my dissertation (part 1):
- Bake cinnamon rolls. I did this a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling restless and I loved the result. I'm not a terribly good cook or baker really, therefore I'm always pleased when I manage not to burn something.

two more days

2011-05-29T21:32:00.004+02:00

My brain feels as if it's melting. I can't wait for it to be over because then I'll lie down in our garden and SLEEP THE CLOCK AROUND.

You should listen to this with headphones on, crappy laptop speakers just don't do this song justice.

crunch time

2011-05-23T20:23:00.003+02:00

A dreamy place.

Keep your fingers crossed, my thesis is nearing completion. This definition from urban dictionary is quite correct:

The interval of time immediately before a project is due, when it becomes apparent that the schedule has slipped and everyone is going to have to work like dogs to try to complete the project in time. Crunch time usually occurs during the period between the next-to-last scheduled milestone (prior to which everyone was able to delude themselves that the schedule had NOT slipped) and the final deadline for delivery.

Oh, the joys and pains of being a student.

inner child

2011-05-21T23:06:00.003+02:00

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."

Words of wisdom by Albus Dumbledore.

the view from my part of the living room

2011-05-16T20:06:00.001+02:00

Domestic scenes.

gushing

2011-05-14T20:56:00.002+02:00

I've experienced several particularly beautiful moments lately. I love you, moments.

1. One evening, I was feeling particularly down about everything. Thankfully, my relationship with my best friend has improved dramatically over the last few months and he came to the rescue by a) talking non-stop, and b) saying, "I've got a song for you, especially for you. It's about you. Always remember that." Have you ever listened to "Morning of Our Lives" by Jonathan Richman? If you haven't, do so now. Then maybe you'll understand why I cried and laughed at the same time. It felt incredibly appropriate, and it's honestly the nicest song ever, a feel-good song without being... well, a feel-good song.
2. When I felt particularly glum after leaving the library on what had been a not very successful day, my mum called and asked if I wanted to join the rest of the family at the Heurigen. I cycled there as fast as I could, from the centre of the city to its very edge. The number of trees increased, the number of houses decreased, and the amount of strawberry punch in my stomach reached a satisfactory level. What would have been a dull kind of evening had turned into a lovely one. Timing is everything.
3. The next morning, I walked to the Heurigen again to pick up my bike which I had left chained to a fence. It was t-shirt weather already. Everything was quiet, only elderly people and their dogs were out and about, but the chestnut trees were in bloom and their roots had cracked the concrete so that the streets felt slightly wild and romantic. May truly is the most wonderful month, it makes familiar places seem fresh and new all over again.
4. I took my thesis for a walk in the park and sat down on a bench to introduce it to a place other than the library. The day was almost hot, too hot to sit in the sun. Elderly people, politicians, tourists and school children walked past me, sat down next to me, looked at me and my laptop, looked at their babies. I enjoyed an impromptu conversation with nice German tourists and listened to them debating where to go next, completely confused about Viennese geography. A choir started practising on the big square opposite the park, preparing for a festival a couple of days later. It sounded eery and beautiful. My thesis liked it.

grand solutions

2011-05-10T23:09:00.004+02:00

This is for a certain person who claims to dislike this church. Let's just say we agree to differ on that one, yeah?
(One of my favourite things is rediscovering beauty in familiar things. I've seen this square a thousand times, but I've only come to love it this spring. Observing things from a different angle, preferably from above makes everything more interesting.)

Easter (6)

2011-05-09T23:40:00.002+02:00

Nice things, part six:
Side streets, unexpected colourful garages, patches of light on the street, old buildings next to new buildings.

Easter (5)

2011-05-08T20:10:00.005+02:00

Nice things, part five:
30% thesis writing, 70% soul-searching in the backyard on a Sunday morning. The nice/strange thing about long-distance friendships is that whenever you do get to see each other in real life, you try to fit a month's worth of conversation into a couple of days.

Easter (4)

2011-05-06T00:51:00.002+02:00

Nice things I did during the Easter holidays, part 4:
After enjoying a second breakfast (including one of my favourite drinks: hot milk with honey) we cycled to a friend's place and I spotted this graffiti. It's probably easy enough to understand even if you don't speak German. "Fuck morals". I like graffitis like this one best, blunt statements and sentences, the longer the better. This one's my favourite, although polite ones are even better.

Easter (3)

2011-05-04T22:00:00.002+02:00

Nice things, part three:
On Saturday morning, I waited for Kevin's train to arrive. It was sunny and quite warm already, the sun warmed my legs (no tights!), the train was half an hour late and I listened to a Harry Potter chapter and drew more houses into my notebook, looking forward to Kevin's arrival and the sunny weekend ahead, filled with lazy best-friends-forever-activities.
A couple of hours later we cycled through quiet, empty, sunny streets. There's nothing quite like having a conversation when riding a bike.

Easter (2)

2011-05-03T23:27:00.002+02:00

Nice things, part two:
I rode my bike down a street I know quite well, braked abruptly and took this picture. The flowers, the graffiti, the elderly men, everything about this moment was perfect.

Easter (1)

2011-04-28T16:20:00.003+02:00

Nice things I did during the Easter holidays, part 1:
Kevin was in Vienna and we had pancakes for breakfast. He gave me one of his old jumpers, it's nice and soft and stripey. Excellent. My brother played terrible pop music and we sang Britney Spears songs in the kitchen.

red, white, green

2011-04-24T21:01:00.001+02:00

Other people's flats are interesting and sometimes, like this one, beautiful.

imagined communities

2011-04-17T23:20:00.001+02:00

currently pondering...

a passing interest in the past

2011-04-15T23:22:00.005+02:00

Recently I've enjoyed the following activities:
1. Cycling through sunshine, wind and rain listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks. Writing a dissertation apparently means constant headaches and feeling braindead, so this is the most relaxing thing I can think of. (I do hate how Stephen Fry makes Ron appear a bit dumb though.)
2. Time spent with my brothers - cooking, watching football, silly conversations. It's the best flatshare I can think of.
3. My mum and I watched this film, it's a documentary/essay film about Europe at night. If you get the chance to see it, please do! The camera is used to observe different episodes without any comment whatsoever - apart from the way the scenes are arranged, obviously. Humanity is so strange and interesting.
4. Days spent in the library are actually amazing, if only because I get to observe all kinds of strange behaviour. The other day I saw someone play World of Warcraft! I also keep finding new and wonderful books that I want to read once I have time to read what I want again.
5. Listening to this song about twenty times in a row every day. I guess being ready to say, "This is my favourite band" is a sign that I'm growing old.
6. Thinking about this quote by Charles Tilly (one of those historians with an absolutely incredible output of books) and trying to figure out how I feel about it: „We shall know that a new era has begun not when a new elite holds power or a new constitution appears, but when ordinary people begin contending for their interests in new ways. Of course, changes in contention could occur mainly as effects of changes in elites or constitutions. The historical challenge is to try out that hypothesis, not to take its validity for granted.“
7. Staring at houses. I do love houses. And the occasional, surprising glimpse of what must be a church tower. I've not fallen out of love with you yet, Vienna, and looking down on you every day from a window of the library, right underneath the roof of the university, and seeing more roofs and trees and cranes and hills and trams makes me feel all sentimental about your strange 19th century charms.

One of these days, I'll stop writing these lists and start composing actual texts.

can't believe you didn't feel a thing

2011-04-09T18:41:00.002+02:00

Dear pop songs, my favourite thing about you is that with one simple sentence you manage to express so much, simply because you combine words that would feel banal by themselves with sweet sounds.

I wanted you to feel the same.

sartorial choice

2011-04-08T20:07:00.002+02:00

What I wore vs. what the people I study (ambassadors, a hundred years ago) wore.

the loneliness of a long-distance phonecall

2011-04-04T20:24:00.003+02:00

My best friend moved to Brussels in autumn. I haven't had time to visit and it's killing me a little - I have never been to Brussels and don't even know what it would be like to walk around there, go to the supermarket, take the train etc. So I asked him to take pictures on an ordinary day. Here are some of them.

successlessness

2011-03-27T21:38:00.004+02:00

This is my life right now. I'm reading primary sources during breakfast in the kitchen, then cycling to uni which is usually the best part of my day because it's an opportunity to sing along to the Lucksmiths. I spend most of my day in the library, always in the same room. When I can't see straight anymore, I take my shoes off, drink tons of water and look out of the window. The view is quite beautiful. When night falls and the library is closing, I cycle back home.

Here are three things I've enjoyed outside of the library:
1. The Teenage project looks absolutely fantastic. Great blog, great trailer, can't wait for the film to come out. Old pictures that don't romanticise the past are of great interest to me.
2. This video for The Wake's "Crush the Flowers".
3. Calvin & Hobbes. Always, but especially this one.

Also, can I just say that whenever I read arguments for or against protest marches and demonstrations, it's always about whether it actually changes anything, whether there's any real power in protest. And I do wonder, is it always the aim of protest to change policies? Isn't it just as important to show publicly that there's a large group of people who disagree? Isn't that a good enough reason for protests to exist? At least that way the unhappy part of the population won't be forgotten by future historians, even if it might be ignored by present politicians...

stay together

2011-03-20T14:42:00.002+01:00

March: Lonely walks on cold, wet days, listening to my favourite podcast. A kite lost in a tree. A visit to the Natural History Museum. One of the first nice days, spent inside. Childhood toys and happy brothers. Libraries and frowning friends. Endless tramway rides, artificial light.

my favourite spring song

2011-03-11T17:44:00.001+01:00

If we just want to by junijarvi

Spring is just around the corner.