by keeping warm

This time every year I wonder how I managed to survive another winter.

summer camp

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.

stay together

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.

goodbye

Goodbye 2010. Here are five moments that I'll remember:

1. July. It was hot, really hot, and I had to finish an essay. My brain felt as if it was melting, so Kevin and I went for a swim in the Danube. We walked to the river in our shorts and t-shirts, stayed in the water for 15 minutes and then walked back. That was the nicest thing I did all year.
2. June, a trip to Macedonia and Greece. We spent hours and hours on the bus and I saw fields and mountains and villages. I was reading Alastair Campbell's diaries and it was the biggest contrast I could think of: In my head, bitchy politicians, drama, London. Everywhere around me, heat, the past, seemingly analytical scholarship.
3. September. I was cycling to the archive, the streets were deserted, everything was calm and lovely. I was listening to politics podcasts and giggling to myself.
4. March. On the plane back from New York, I started to read Isherwood's "A Single Man" and wanted to cry.
5. August/September. I hugged my best friends one last time before they moved to far-away countries. You probably know that feeling when your body can still recall a touch, when you look upon yourself as if it was a movie. That's what it was like.

Thanks for reading, readers. Tell me about something that made you happy in 2010. Anything.

inbetween days

Right now I feel as if I was constantly pressing the "refresh" button on my life, waiting for an update on a live blog on a slow news day, and yet nothing happens. Which means that my life is like politics in Austria where nobody even bothers with live blogs because nothing ever changes.

there always has to be an equal amount of hair in the world

My hair is short(er) now. I'm feeling philosophical about it.

(Which is to say, almost indifferent. Things that are much more intesting: WikiLeaks, bedroom dancing and my "dance dance dance" playlist, long Skype conversations with far away friends)

you know I can't sleep at night

Remember what I wrote on January 1st?
2010 hasn't turned out to be the year I imagined it to be. In fact, it has been in many ways a worst case scenario that turned into real life. When I took this picture in Greece back in June, it seemed to be an accurate description of my mental state: WAR WAR WAR.
(2010 isn't over yet, true. But honestly, the only redeeming quality about the remaining miserable three months of this incredibly disappointing, heartbreaking, frankly depressing year is the oncoming skijumping season. And Christmas.)

what remains

let them leave language to their lonely betters
who count some days and long for certain letters;
we, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
words are for those with promises to keep.

for heaven's sake!

yeah

the loneliness of a long-distance phone call

guess how much I love you (much more)

no exit

...

whatevs

Random things: Cat is cutting out pictures from old encyclopedias at the moment which is a pretty awesome job. I've been working a lot and watching the Olympics a lot, I've also read the last Hollinghurst novel I didn't know already. It was so good, why do some authors just get it right every time? The children at the museum have been telling me that 1) I am skinny and have lost all my baby fat, 2) I look like a man because I have short hair. I pretended that a 10-year-old who looked exactly like Draco Malfoy had killed me when he showed me his jiujitsu moves, falling to the floor and all. The older I get the more I realise that I've a penchant for drama, unfortunately the kind that kids appreciate and grown-ups just don't get. (I got called a drama queen the other day, and also a fashion victim which actually really hurt. A bit.) Yesterday I woke up to a cup of tea and vegetable curry which was the best thing ever. Winter sports are also pretty great, what's cooler than watching biathlon or random things like ice skating in the middle of the night?
Proenza Schouler's F/W 10/11 show made me pretty happy. You can watch it here. We watched a documentary about them on arte a couple of weeks ago, it was great and really made me appreciate how clothes are made, how much attention goes into little details. I keep having discussions about that sordid subject, "is fashion art?", and sure, it doesn't have to be, especially not in the jeans and t-shirts and H&M dresses wasteland I live in, and I could care less about what's this season's must have, but it ain't easy to make a dress, and it's even harder to think of something that actually looks good, or interesting. I know I couldn't do it and I admire everyone who can.

oh lah

Hello! It's the first day of the summer holidays for me!
I had my last exam yesterday. Oral exams always make me nervous and this one was about Cyprus. Lots and lots of dates and proposals and rebels. The professor is one I admire, he always makes me want to do particularly well. I don't always manage. I was actually shaking with nerves. As soon as we had a discussion about the role of the church going it was all fine though. He seemed to be really pleased with everything I said and I left with a huge grin on my face. I get my kicks where I can.



And now I'm free! Free at last! Oh wow. Max and I cooked a weird dinner yesterday, an imitation of the Greatest Burger I've Ever Eaten in Amsterdam. We booked a hostel in Berlin. I fell asleep during "Jules et Jim". Today the first thing to do was finish "At Swin, Two Boys" and crying, of course. Why do great books never have a happy ending? There's always death, in some way or other. I hate finishing books. I miss them so much.
Holidays! What ever shall I do? There's so much freedom! I think I'll just go and ride my bike for a bit, all the rain and university-related stress has kept me from cycling lately.



And then I'll read some more and maybe go to a museum and have dinner with my brothers. I'll be grinning with pride because my dad got invited to give a paper at Oxford. I'll be thinking of Dani who is now in London to see Blur play Hyde Park. Oh, the jealousy! (She saw Franz Ferdinand at the airport yesterday too and her updates via texts were the best thing ever: "They are now drinking 4€-coke!" I'll always be a fangirl...)
And I'll be looking forward to going to Berlin in a week, and to meeting The Lucksmiths and other nice people there, and to seeing the pal of me heart again, as it's called in "At Swim, Two Boys". He gave me that badge and I've been wearing it every day, questioning everything.

days like the waves

I really like shoes like these. And pictures of feet. Feet in shoes, that is.
It's been raining all day. Not exactly typical, Vienna is all about looking like it's about to rain, grey sky, heavy clouds and such, but none of this nonstop, British rain. I don't really mind though, at least there's fun to be had and you can bet that there's going to be a bit of chaos. My tramway had to take another way because there was an accident which seems to happen every single time when the weather isn't its grey/sunny dry self. Summer rain is good.
There was this one summer when I was about sixteen when it just didn't stop pouring for weeks. There were floods all over Austria and the rest of Europe. My family and I had been on a hiking trip that was supposed to take several days, but my brother, my cousin and I gave up because we were so wet and uncomfortable. We took a train back home, leaving my mum and my aunt somewhere in the mountains. I remember spending the days in our flat without any adults about, Konstantin, Joachim, Lisa and I. We didn't really go outside, just sat watching movies and it was like being stranded somewhere. Some days later my friends and I went to the zoo. It was still raining and we all got soaked, rainjackets and umbrellas didn't help. That was also the last time I was part of a big group of friends, that summer. When it was over, I got moody, fed up with everything, but especially groups of friends who gossip and know everything about everyone. And I started listening to The Smiths. Oh, how I like a good cliché.

100 hours

So like I said before the museum was opened for 100 hours straight. Visitors at every time of the day/night. I only worked about fifteen hours out of hundred, but that was more than enough - people were going crazy. Friday night kids could stay overnight and sleep on the floor of the assembly hall with their parents. I was responsible for taking their data and explaining everything to them, dragging sleeping mats about. It was what the museum called "night of games" and there were children everywhere. My colleagues and I finally left at half past twelve and Oscar drove us home in the pouring rain.
Whenever there's free stuff to be had, whenever there's an option for parents to have their children entertained by other people but themselves, they become quite shameless and impolite. Today Stefan told stories of drunk people stumbling through the museum at night, not being able to stand up straight anymore. It was much more quiet this morning and nobody seemed that interested in using a microscope or writing on old typewriters, so we just sat about and talked about love and the museum. These seem to be the most popular subjects among us. There's something to be said for those random talks, this easy cameraderie of people in their twenties, all stuck at work on a weekend. The other guys read the love-letter I had typed and proclaimed it was the best thing ever. We ate cookies. I drew pictures into my diary with the crayons that were supposed to be used by children for drawing faux-medieval initials. There was no marching band today and the morning passed quietly and peacefully. I went home and finished "Jill".

sad is for the lonely

Today was such a grey day that I did something out of character and skipped my lectures. I sat in a park instead and finished "Giovanni's Room" which didn't really make the day any happier to be honest. Such a bitter, painful, amazing book.
I just walked around and sat on a tramway and felt quite detached, trying to find detached music on my ipod which was an impossible task because indiepop is useless as soon as it's detached, all they've got is their enthusiasm! Then suddenly I was home and so were my brothers and there was food and dancing and playfighting and politics and all was well again. Sometimes home is the only thing that's real, isn't it?

The other day I watched posh kids. Two posh law students talking to each other with cigarettes in their hands, one of them reminded me of my father when he was young, or how I suppose he or maybe his friends must have been like, posh but then not really. Later we sat in a garden drinking coffee and there were all those boys from the nearby boy's school which my dad attended back in the day. They were revising for the final exams, about to graduate, and my father told me what it had been like for him at school, how there used to be real rebels in his catholic boy school, one of the few all-boy-schools still around. "Those rebels back then at least really looked different, not like today. Long hair. Dirty. Listened to David Bowie." He used to hang out in cafés, skip school to do that. His past seems so real, so present, infinitely more exciting than my past really even though from what I can gather he used to be rather shy, really in love with dead languages by the age of sixteen.

Thursday

Horse/whores/Hawes

Hello there. Just now I realised that I've sort of stopped saying "Dude!" either in my head or out loud during the last week which is slightly disconcerting.
I've been in Edinburgh and tomorrow I'll be leaving again which doesn't really make me happy even though the tea is actually better at home and I'm not scared of people/public transport assaulting me. There are J.K. Rowling signs here though, and dozens of photo opportunities of Kevin looking absolutely DISGUSTED because there's Glasgow/men's toilets'St Andrews in the background.

I wish I could stay at least until Thursday where an event described like this will take place: "Come along if you like: a) eclectic, non-playlisted indie music, b) a selection of delicious Jamaican or Indian lager, c) posters with drunk badgers on, or d) dancing! If you're not a big dancer, don't worry, we have a smoke machine. We can shroud you in mystery so nobody sees."

Nice one!

life

The weather is shit, water shouldn't be allowed to turn into slush, it's pretty terrible. The days have been way too short lately, they've been packed with work both at university and the museum. Stress is replaced by waiting and vice versa. When there's nothing to be done, I'm always waiting.
I've been folding paper planes all weekend. Today I blew bubbles and dressed up as a sailor.
My Greek is getting better and I'm getting A's on the grammar exams. I bought new headphones because I'm never home and I want to hear every single beat, every keyboard note. When I don't listen to Franz Ferdinand, I listen to a female voice repeating Greek texts about post offices and weekdays ad infinitum.
Yesterday I ran into a lecturer and told her my feet were cold when she asked me how I was doing, so she told me to forget about the library and go sit in her office instead.
I might have figured out what I want my diploma thesis to be about. There's still time, but I talked to my professor about it and he seemed to be superenthusiastic, talking about challenging me and doing something difficult.
It might be a symptom of being way too tired and strung out, but I do love Lily Allen's latest single. Whenever I can't think clearly, I'm drawn to pop music it seems. The video's pretty though.

I am sick and I am dull and I am plain

The downside of waiting in the cold for a tramway is that at one point, your feet are turning into sodden freezing bits of bone and skin which in turn results in a cold. It always shocks me how terrible something simple like blowing your nose can feel. I'm not really ill very often, but this means that when I do feel unwell, it knocks me off of my feet immediately.
I don't mind staying in of course, but I'm actually too dizzy to read. My eyes don't seem to focus right. Actually my ears don't seem to focus right either, but I really don't know what verb I should use here. Let me quote The Clientele: "The noise of the nearby trains stuttered in in fits and starts." This is what it feels like. There are even trains nearby.
There's one thing I'm able to do though. I'm just going to practice my Greek all evening by talking to myself. I'll try to find out how to pronounce that "s" correctly - or rather, which version I prefer as there seems to be no correct way. My father claims that half of the Greek population is suffering from sigmatism and I'm inclined to believe him.

Other than the pronounciation-problems, life is good. Sure, the workload is enormous, but luckily it's also incredibly interesting. It's lovely to spend days in the library with tea-and-cake-breaks in between and to get home in the evening feeling vaguely accomplished and knowing that there're things to look forward to. Every week is basically the same, the familiar pattern of reading and writing and discussions about theory and late-night conversations, "telling endless sleepy stories about nothing". And chocolate muesli.

Have a photo of my awesome t-shirt as a reminder that I'm not a whining, red-nosed person wearing pyjamas all the time:

Powerful.