too much to say too little space/time/sense to write it all down

my summer was....a list of impressions

Albania, aldo, corona, white pebble beaches, blue sea, blue sky

Cuba, pina colada, music, cars, beaches, people, spanish

Heidelberg, Jürgen, Essay, coffee, home

Stuttgart

Its too crude but at least there is a record :)

loving the cheap flights

Im back from a crazy euro trip. Barcelona, Poland, Bonn, Menorca, Barcelona, Stuttgart, Bavarian part of Danube, Stuttgart, Heidelberg. there is so much to tell, digest and sort through: Barcelona is now on my list of favorite cities. I had an absolutely amazing time in Poland - going to a music festival with possibly my two favorite people from imperial, chilled in a beautiful villa in Menorca, schlepped my luggage around Barcelona for yet another day, cycled along the Danube, and now I am here, Heidelberg, home 3. I wonder what the rest of summer will bring?
find Midnight city by M83, skinny love by Bon Iver for the accompanying soundtrack :)

Tingling of summer

I am restless
I have an urge to be on the road
passing landscape, dreaming in a moving vehicle - traveling is end and means in one.
new friends, new faces, new things to see
the world is so big and i have so little time
it seems as though its running through my fingers - like the sand i pick up from the beach.
I want to see so much, I want to do so much, I want to know so much
but when? when?
I am in london, yes and even in this town there is so much i haven't seen and done yet.
It gets lost in the everyday, in the routine and laziness. the conscience about what I should be doing, and the fatigue after long day of lectures.
I need to find something to do - i have another month, not enough for anything formal - sewing, languages or just kicking myself out the door more often?
all the time
i am dreaming of foreign places

road trip: switzerland, italy, france and back

And I almost forgot - I have a road trip to write about! last weekend I arranged for my mums car (I have 5 days off), arranged for 3 days with Jürgen and we drove down through switzerland to lago maggiore where we stayed the night, then down to the mediterranean sea coast, over to france - monaco and nice, stayed over near antibes and then through the haute provence along the route napoleon via grenoble, geneva etc back to stuttgart. A long trip in a short time, crazy but very much worth it. as I need to study now, Ill let pictures speak: (to be uploaded later)

Newly discovered cooking almanac : Food blogs!

Yes, I should be studying at this moment (as I have an exam in 3 weeks, and haven't really looked at any lectures for it yet) so this will be short:
I take quite a bit of free time nowadays - my dance partner is not around which means little dancing and philosophy is over as well. that leaves time to procrastinate, watch movies on bbc iplayer and do some proper cooking - more than just the usual steamed vegetables and bread with topping.

I have discovered the vast landscape of foodblogs. I am only scratching at the surface of what promises to be endless masses of favorite, flavorsome, original (and classic), easy and super difficult recipes from all over the place. It all started when i wanted to describe a type of semolina cake to my flatmates and googled it. Whatever I was after did not come up, but a similar version made with ricotta cheese (italian, similar to cream cheese but less fat and mainly used in cooking and baking). That led me on to a chicken and vegetable oven baked dish which i tried yesterday and was amazing.
The blog i landed on was based around austrian cuisine but with some deviations around it as well.  I do agree with the fellow blogger that despite the italian, french, asian, moroccan and fusion trends going on, traditional "regional" cooking is also worth looking into. Usually adjusted sugar and fat to the lowered calorific usage nowadays does the trick to turn recipes my grandparent's grandparents have cooked into modern delicacies.

On the website of my favorite magazine (which, coincidentally, is about food as well) i have found the link to loads more of such blogs: great for the inner foodie, terrible for the upcoming exams. That brings me back to lectures i need to start...

Want to come for dinner? - needless to say ill cook (pure) veg for you :)

Wim Wenders

I tried out the independent cinema "around the corner" today. Its called riverside studios; hosts a gallery, theatre and cinema and shows independent movies with the occasional blockbuster strewn in between. My course mate Pawel had texted me friday night that we need to go check it out, so i looked up the website and found out that today they showed two wim wenders movies in a double feature.

Wim Wenders, a german director. One of the few who makes me believe that movies are not only the high polished crowd appealing and softly wallowing (not to exercise the brain at all) pictures that can be seen in any big movie palace on this planet. One that makes me believe that movies still can be pieces of art: angles and lighting thought about, music not only fitting but interesting, pictures speaking for themselves and dialogues meaningful, thought provoking, if not too intellectual for the viewer to grasp.

Wim Wenders is the same director of the film "pina" i wrote about a year ago. His former movies "alice in the cities" and "wings of desire" which i saw today were just as touching. the former was about a little girl that in the help of a journalist, a solo male guy who seemed to have lost his identity and his meaning in the world tries to look for her mother. It was a road movie, set in the US, amsterdam, germany. It was a glimpse of life in the 70s, if nothing else.

The latter story was a bit more complicated - the plot being later used for a hollywood remake. It was set in Berlin. Angels exist and walk unseen amongst the people. One of them wants to become human, falls in love. Half the dialogue was in poetry based on Rilke (german poet). And again, beautiful pictures, great music. Sometimes both movies seemed slow, especially after being used to blockbuster full speed action, but anything else wouldn't have fit.
They seemed to be showing life - scenes other movies don't show, like the view out of the front window of a car in heavy rain. Peoples fears, how people think, feel and reflect: not on the surface but the things that go on inside if you are worried or are in pondersome philosophical mood.
It was wonderful - a good sunday, and hopefully a favorite place of the future.

ROH - La Bohème

its not breakfast at tiffanies which gives the world its shine, its a night out at the royal opera house. and today i discovered my favorite show there: la boheme. the best opera i have seen yet. beautiful music, an unusual (but romantic and fantasized of) setting in the poorer artist circles of fin de siecle paris, and a beautiful, touching, heart wrenching love story. halfway through act 1 i admitted for the first time: this is why i love opera. if nothing else had me converted, this production did the trick. today was a special night, the bbc was filming for a documentary. this meant i git ti see act 2 twice! lucky that! i had 9 pounds standing tickets, but after the first interval, gabriel (my good friend and opera/culture company) quickly converted those into 4th row seats. I need to attach some youtube for you to get an inclination of what it was that blew me away:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Y353fyL0w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5IJ_p6WHi8

Book review: The Hunger Games

Why do I have time for this? Im supposed to do haematology for exams!! anyways, I wrote most of this in an email correspondence to a friend so ill just copy, paste and edit a bit:
The Hunger Games:
...a bit too sappy to be a good dystopian novel, but then again i think the author is trying to appeal to all those twilight lovers...anyways apart from the entire last half where katniss is too stupid (blind/not versed in these things) to realise how much that boy loves her, and to what extend she has feelings for him as well, its all right...

MY FRIEND: i know what you mean, katniss's character really pissed me off cos she was so annoying. and yeah i think its quite twilight like with the peeta/gale thing.

I must admit, i was very very bored and did end up reading the first of the twilight books like 2 years ago - and bella just really really pissed me off - mixture between dumb blonde and immature little girl that cannot think. It just kept going in circles! I love him, he loves me, we can't be together, I love him, he loves me, we can't be together... for f*** 400 pages?!? too much for me...

Katniss is fine - at least there is a sense of honor and a braveness and some sort of intelligence to her - apart from when it comes to boys. just sometimes there are some glitches in her character - the way she doesn't get the honor thing on the roof with peeta before the games, the way she doesn't get the love thing - like ever, the way she sometimes reacts quite cold hearted even though we all know she is super protective. That doesn't fit. It almost feels a bit like the author stole some personality traits of bella (in the love sense) and stuck them into katniss. Whats worse, the circles seem to be starting as well. Perhaps the author realized that this sells well (see twilight) and decided to add some in too? It probably works the trick on the wider audience, but I still think its incoherent with the rest of her character.

Another point: the dystopian world with its problems is only created as a backdrop, and not (as a good dystopian novel should) in order to draw parallels to the world we live in and criticize society. It feels like a bit of a genre mix: not really dystopian, not really an adventure novel, nor a romantic one. That means it feels a bit mindless - action, fear, love, that sells well, but it would have been better with a bit more essence. You can tell its written to appeal to a wide audience, motivation of money as my english teacher used to put it...

Despite my ranting, its well written, "kurzweilig" and a nice read - with the potential of more, but that was sadly not exploited.

Beatsteaks, but slightly late timing

Last year I went to a concert by the Beatsteaks, A german rock band who played a gig in KOKO, london. It was one of the best nights ever!!! I finally found the song that gave me goosebumps: Imagine in a crowd of happy people, amongst the first few rows, in an old, converted theatre and then just amazing live music that manages to lift your mood and make people want to dance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIz-oRLDVUM
and for completeness sake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QiNNmRsICg&feature=related
hihihihi. it was epic

my screen background :D

It was so special seeing you. I wish we had more time together

IVDC, dancing, aldo and slavik

Another dance season has ended in the culmination of IVDC, inter-varsity dance competition. The biggest student ballroom dance competition, held annually in Blackpool, in the famous winter gardens ballroom.
the last season was a rollercoster. I could fill a book (or a soap). it started with an annoying endless day of team trials, where Jürgen was over for the weekend, and I really did not have the patience. I met my dance partner, aldo, did a bit of cha, was pissed off with the entire day, realized he'd be rather a pain and that he has quite an ego (which didn't make things better) and got the hell out of there as soon as I could.
first weeks of getting used to each other was hell. he was a dick (and I probably a b*** in response) to the point where our teacher elena gave him a run down on how things work, and he got his act together a bit.
The first comp: two weeks of practice, and somehow we won?! we actually were friends for once...
dance practice and rolling my eyes at aldo took over my life. 4x, 5x, 6x a week even, I found myself in the JCR (Junior Common Room - my second home in london). We won the second competition - and aldo actually started being nice to be.
There was one dispute we had - aldo saying something like, "I just want to be loved" me saying "how do you expect people to love you if you're behaving like a dick?" ... "hmm yea, I guess you're right there"... maybe that was a turning point.
we are friends now - I know more about him than his girlfriend, he doesn't know that much about me - he's not the kind of guy to trust...
SUDC - southern uni championships - we won
in between, watching the UK open, such an inspiration! Watching ballroom dancer with my course mate and fellow dancer Pavel, a documentary of slavik and his ex partner anna melnikova, two world class dancers. I copied in the link to the trailer below.
and finally IVDC, - we won. somehow. clear plate. I am amazed.
The picture shows us before a round.

Its over now, Aldo is out of the country for a month, so no dancing. I compensate by what I am supposed to do: studying, and eating and putting on all that weight I have lost the past few months :(

At last: a treat for the eyes (pretty people and amazing dancing), a story as only life writes it, and the soap like ups and downs in ballroom dancing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnHYJhXXJS0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwc6c_UJu_U&feature=related