old friends, new friends, best friends

On Friday I missed my train to Edinburgh. I had never missed a train before, so I felt quite glum. But all glumness evaporated as soon as I stepped off the train in Waverley. I drank cardamom hot chocolate every day. My best friend, my brother and I talked about - nothing in particular. My brother fell asleep on the sofa while Emma cut Kevin's hair. I received some excellent hugs and declared my love for Edinburgh repeatedly. These weekends away are everything to me.

oh the mind, mind has mountains

Before I left Austria, my mum and I went to the mountains for a day. I feel strangely at home there. I don't like the sea, I don't like flat landscapes. This is not necessarily because I grew up in a mountainous country (apparently only 32% of Austria is below 500 metres!) - I grew up in a big city, and even though we went to the mountains and hills whenever we went on holiday, I'm not exactly Heidi. If anything, I'm Clara, Heidi's friend who grows up in the big city. But growing up in Austria meant growing up with the myth of the mountains: the photographs of my dad and granddad on various peaks, children's books where kids grow up in the mountains, Heidi on television, skiing as a national sport. The idea of the mountains was more powerful and interesting than the reality of the flat (and rather dull) East of Austria. To me, the English landscape is exotic: it fills me with astonishment.

breakfast

We ate breakfast at various small cafés every day when we were in Hamburg. Is there anything better than the combination of eating muesli, having a good conversation and drinking a cup of tea? I think not. Breakfast time is my favourite time of day.

the good things

 

One of the things I liked best was walking home in the morning. Those mornings would have been good in any case, but the path from his house to mine was one of the nicest things in that city. Another thing I liked was sitting by the river, talking with my friends. About politics, about food, about religion. 

Now my favourite part of the day is walking to work in the morning. I drink my tea and listen to episode after episode of In Our Time, possibly the best radio programme ever. (The episode about the Siege of Vienna was so good!) It feels like being back there, like waking up to Radio 4.

When I went to Italy

 

When I went to Italy in June I had just about had enough of England. It had rained constantly and it seemed as if summer would never arrive. (It never really did.) Durham felt small and boring, I wanted ice cream and swimming. It's hard to describe what it felt like to step out of the airport in Bologna. It was warm, sure, but it felt oddly familiar too, even though I hadn't been to Italy for almost a decade. Maybe the things that you get to know when you're very little stick with you, or maybe mainland Europe does have something about it that can't be found in the UK (I'm confirming some horrible stereotypes here, sorry...). Well, those four days in Bologna and Florence were pretty dreamlike. Yet at the same time they also felt like waking up from a long sleep. I kept swinging my arms, blissfully uncovered as they were.

mirror pictures

    1. When I went to Bologna, July.  2. When we went to Paris, September.  3. When my best friend was on a visit in Vienna, October.

We packed all of my things into my brother's car. I didn't believe it could be possible, but we managed it. I put some clothes into a bagpack and left the house for the last time. The next morning, we took a train South. I do really like St. Albans. I love the cathedral and the quiet streets, I like the birds and the Roman heritage. It's a good place for rainy Sundays. Soon, we were off to Paris.

on being a spoiled Southerner

Pictures from last summer, a.k.a. the best summer I've had so far.
When you're happy because you only had to wear one jumper that day - indoors - then you know that something is wrong. I'm finding it increasingly hard to tolerate the fact that I'm not running around in shorts.

beginnings

I spent part of the weekend in Edinburgh, hung out with lovely friends and walked from one café to the next to read Middlemarch. It was great. I like it when I'm so familiar with a place that I don't feel like I have to go off and do exciting things. It's perfectly fine for me to seek out all the places that I know I like.

Here are two interesting things that you should check out:
1. I was wondering why there were drought warnings in England even though it has rained a lot recently. Today I came across this story: "(...) only a fraction of the rain which fell over the weekend is collected – and the rest runs out to sea." Whoah!
2. Upon reading the latest post on Miss Moss, I was pleased and a little surprised when I realised that my friend Caitlin is the model in this lookbook. So strange to suddenly discover a familiar face that you haven't seen in years on the internet.

hello, goodbye

The strangest thing about being apart is that the people and places I love become fiction. It is only through talking to them that I realise that they are real and not just figments of my imagination. This is probably the most difficult aspect about any kind of long-distance relationship, romantic or not.

elsewhere

Home is a photograph you taped to your wall.