Blog Swap: The best thing about being a blogger

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Karen

Today’s post is brought to you by Kandace from One Red Wall. We are participating in the 20SB 7th blog swap, so you can find my post over at Kandace’s blog. But now, back to Kandace.

_________________

Hello all, I’m Kandace from One Red Wall. Karen and I are participating in 20sb’s Blog Swap 7. You would imagine that since I have been blogging for almost 10 years total that writing a guest post would be the same as writing my own. You may believe it would be easy, since you write for whoever chooses to read, even if you don’t know them. Except it’s Not the same. You are set to witness my first guest post. It’s actually pretty intimidating. After all, you follow this blog because of the wonderful writing stylings of Karen. And clearly, I’m not Karen. After considering many ideas, and then rejecting them as more of a My blog topic than a Dream Once More topic, I decided I’d write about our suggested topic.

Would you like to know what I think the best thing about being a blogger is? It is that your blog is whatever you want it to be. If you look around any of the blogging communities out on the internet you’ll find many different types of blogs. I’m a list maker, so I’ll give you a partial list, even though you probably already know. There are wedding blogs, baby blogs, sex blogs, tech blogs, photography blogs, cupcake blogs, fashion blogs, personal blogs… Basically write about Anything You Want. You can tell everyone you know about your blog and link it to your other social networking sites, or you can be anonymous and blog under an assumed name. Again, Anything you want. My blog is a semi-anonymous personal blog about my life and thoughts. I don’t tell the people I know in real life about my blog except Husband, who chooses to keep his very common first name private.

Personal bloggers are able to share parts of our lives with people. I’m able to write about the things I can’t just randomly talk about to the people where I live. Either it’s never relevant, or it’s something I’d rather they didn’t Know. Or it may just be that on my blog I can go into detail and be as dorky as I want. Even better, over time we find or are found by the people who connect with us based on the things we are thinking or feeling. Most of these people wouldn’t have found us without the help of the blogging communities out there, like 20sb. Having those people you like to read and who read what you have to say just make the blogging experience that much better. That’s what makes a blog so much better than a paper journal, the interaction and the support. I’ve made several online friendships, but I’ve even made a few real life friends in the past with other local bloggers. It happens. For those of you in your 20′s who blog and Haven’t found 20sb yet, Get over there. It’s a Wonderful place. It’s amazing the way the people of the blogging community come together for each other. Like LoveHarder, when many bloggers came together to help a blogger in need. We grow and build friendships of course, but there are so many times when they are there for a stranger just because a blogger they Do know puts the word out. It’s kind of amazing.

There are so many reasons to love blogging and to appreciate blogging communities. Your blog can be whatever you want. Just start there, with what you love or what you need out of your blog. Then with the help of blogging communities you can find a whole world of personal connections you’d have never found around your neighborhood.

Protected: A picture says more than words

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Karen

This post is protected for reasons of privacy. Please email me at dreamoncemore[at]gmail.com for the password.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

An unlikely friendship five years later

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Karen

After taking my exam Saturday morning, I hopped on a train to Frankfurt where my friend J. picked me up at the station. J. was my roommate while I was living in Norman, Oklahoma. For 9 months, we shared a room, and neither of us can believe how well that worked out and how well we got along. Not only was sharing such small space for such a long time really something to get used to, I also never expected us to get along as well as we did, because we are so different.

I think the only thing we have in common at first sight is that we are both German, we are both blondes, and we both went to the same university. That was reason enough (well, the blonde part didn’t really play a role) for us to decide to room together, rather than be paired up with a random stranger. But honestly, I never thought it would work as well as it did. J. majored in math, I major in literature. She is very pretty and very smart, and was quite the manizer (I know that’s not a word but now it is!) when we lived in Oklahoma. She always dresses up, always wears high heels, and considers a 3″ heel low. While I loved and still love wearing jeans and a t-shirt and flip flops. Now she works in management consulting which is so not my world and never will be. But you know, aside from these obvious differences, we really got along great, and we still do. Turns out, all those differences didn’t matter. And I am very glad that we went to Oklahoma and roomed there together, because without that, we would have probably never met, let alone become friends.

In late 2007, while I lived in Spain, J. graduated and moved to Frankfurt for a job, and the last time we met must have been sometime in or before July 2007. We did stay in touch, though, and when we were on the phone a few weeks ago, we decided that a meet-up was way overdue.

Buildings at the Römerberg in Frankfurt

After J. picked me up at the train station, we went for some sight-seeing in the city center of Frankfurt, and then we went to her apartment to drop off my stuff. We had some wine (okay, I was actually pretty tipsy by the time we went out for dinner at 9:30pm), and then went for dinner at a sports bar (hello buffalo wings & country fries goodness!) and a cocktail at another bar. Back at her place we stayed up a little longer to chat and have a little more wine (resulting in my being somewhat hungover the next day) and today we slept in and had breakfast, and cooked lunch together.

A church (Dreikönigskirche) in Frankfurt

Cooking together was actually a somewhat weekly tradition we had in Oklahoma and we reminisced about that time and about all the meals we had. Often we invited our friend B. over when we cooked, and he had to eat our sometimes good, sometimes not so good meals. I remember one time I tried to fry potatoes without cooking them first (which always works for my parents) but the potatoes stayed semi-raw (turns out you need to put a lid on the pan!), but we ate them anyway. Another time J.’s steaks didn’t turn out so great. And yet another time, B. thought it was very unusual for us to have made a lasagna without cottage cheese. Turns out, that’s how you cook lasagna in the States. Well, it’s not how we do lasagna here, it’s béchamel sauce all the way.

We both had an amazing time in Oklahoma, and it was great to remember things together, especially because we each remembered things the other had forgotten about. It was just great to spend time with her. It still seems very natural and we have a great time just chatting and laughing. We agreed that I would definitely visit her again before I leave Heidelberg, probably after my exams. I have no idea where I will be moving once I have a job, and while it could be Frankfurt, it could well be further away than I live now. So we want to make sure to hang out again before I leave.

The beautiful view of the Frankfurt skyline from J.'s bedroom

I had such a blast with her, and it was a great way to unwind after the five-hour exam that I took Saturday morning. Which I will write about in another post.

How was your weekend?

P.S. I will publish another post shortly that will be protected of a picture of J. and me (for reasons of privacy). But if you have commented here before and are not a stranger, you are absolutely welcome to ask me for the password. Really, I do not mind at all. So either email me (dreamoncemore [at] gmail.com) or comment on this post and mention that you’d like the password.

Phototastic

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Karen

A couple of weeks ago, my best friend came to visit me for a day. It was so great to have her here, even though one day seemed way too short, and was over so quickly. And I know it will be a few more months till I see her again. We decided to visit the local zoo. Seeing as she has visited me here before, she is already familiar with all the usual tourist sights. And I had not been to the zoo here either until last summer, when I found out it is actually pretty nice. Heidelberg is a small town but its zoo is really nice to spend a few hours at (of course Munich’s zoo has many more animals, for example, no penguins or polar bears here, but Munich is much bigger too).

Speaking of Munich, I think I will have to pay the Munich zoo a visit when I’m back there – I think the last time I went was about nine years ago. I used to love going there as a kid, and I think it would be so interesting to go back there now. And what with my possibly moving elsewhere for a job, it would be so nice to go there again before I do.

While I was shooting away on my camera, I realized again why I would really like a camera that has a better optical zoom. In general, I do love my camera, and it takes pretty good pictures most of the time, but the zoom is really not that great on it. Right now I cannot afford a new camera, and this one is still working just fine, so it will be a while until I will be able to replace it, but it is definitely near the top of my list.

But enough talk, here are some of the pictures I took there. As I am still in love with the cross-processing function on Flickr, as per usual, click on the picture to see the original version.