Category Archives: Photography

A tour of my apartment [part 1]

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I promised you guys a tour of my apartment this week. I cannot keep that promise 100% because I have not finished packing everything away yet but I did finish half of my apartment so today you’re getting a tour of my living room, kitchen, and bathroom. I was going to wait with the pictures but today was really sunny and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to take decent pictures so I took them right after getting home from work. As you will see, my living room is still pretty bare. I have yet to put any pictures on the wall (I haven’t quite made up my mind yet and have to buy a few more picture frames as well), and don’t have  a lot of furniture yet. In terms of that, the living room is the most unfinished room of the apartment – as you will see, the office and bedroom are pretty much finished the way they are now. But let’s just get started with the tour …

My living room

This is my living room – still a bit bare. My couch will be delivered at the beginning of April.

My living room

The dining area. I adore the wooden paneling on the wall and ceiling.

My living room

My dining area and part of the kitchen.

My living room

I will have to buy some furniture for that corner of the living room. I was thinking one or two 2×2 Expedit cubes from IKEA. Thoughts?

My kitchen

The kitchen. I love having a big fridge all to myself.

My kitchen

The other end of my kitchen. Love the wooden beams in my kitchen and living room, they really give the apartment a rustic feel. The apartment was completely renovated before I moved in (new floors, new kitchen & bathroom, everything) but the wooden beams and the paneling in the living room hint at the old age of the house.

My kitchen

My small but growing collection of Starbucks city mugs.

My kitchen

Pictures on my kitchen wall – I just put them up yesterday and love how they turned out. Both postcards and frames are from IKEA. I thought the postcards would be perfect for the kitchen.

My bathroom

The bathroom.

My bathroom

The bathroom is pretty small but I do have a bathtub.

Well, that’s it for now. I will probably not be able to do part 2 until next week as I will be leaving for Munich right after work tomorrow, but I hope you enjoyed this first peek into my new apartment. As country as this town is, I really really love my apartment.

Because you will have to wait just a little while longer

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I have been pretty much absent from the blogging world ever since I started my job. In fact, the last post was written the day before I did. Hard to believe I have been working for six weeks already.

I am already super-busy at work and exhausted every night when I get home, so I usually end up watching TV or reading a book every night. I also go to bed much earlier than I used to, though I am still having a hard time getting up early. Lately I have been finding myself skipping breakfast at home (instead stopping at the bakery on my way to work) in favor of another 20 minutes of sleep.

My apartment is still in the process of coming together. Last weekend I bought a couch and it will be delivered in early April (it is custom-made with the fabric I picked out so it takes six weeks for it to be delivered). My office is still looking like a huge mess, though I am almost done sorting through things – the office is where pretty much all of my junk goes as my living room is still pretty bare of furniture.

I was hoping to take pictures of my apartment today – after stowing everything away neatly, but I am not quite there yet. I really do want to get there before the week is over though, so stay tuned for pictures of my apartment sometime later this upcoming week.

To tide you over till you get to see pictures of my current apartment, I scanned some old pictures I came across tonight when unpacking a box of old stuff. Yes, people, this is what my bedroom looked like when I was a teenager (around 18/19).

Why yes, that would be Orlando Bloom, Health Ledger, David Boreanaz and Josh Hartnett on my wall. And Hayden Christensen apparently, though I have no recollection of that poster. Or the Star Wars poster. Ahem.  And no, I did not have too many dust catchers stuffed animals in my room. In fact, I still own a lot of them now – you see, they all have a story, how could I throw them away? (Yes, it’s a problem.)

My bedroom in 2002

My bedroom in 2002

I promise, there will be more posts coming about what I’ve been up to in the past six weeks. And they will hopefully be a little less random than this one was.

What did your room look like when you were a teenager? Would/Did you share a picture of it (on your blog)?

A week in the city of hundred spires

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Note: If the photos don’t show up, please reload the page. There seems to be an issue with Photobucket. If that doesn’t work, please view the photos on Flickr.

Remember how last month I went on a trip to Prague? No? Well, I guess I can’t blame you seeing how it’s been five weeks since I came back and I have still not blogged about the trip, with the exception of that unfortunate accident that cost me my camera. Let me refresh your memory. Be warned, this post will be long & picture-heavy, but they’re all of beautiful places, so bear with me.

Old Town Square

In early September, I went to Prague for a few days with my mom. It was a sort of graduation-type present; my mom had expressed the wish to go on a trip somewhere with me this summer as a mother-daughter thing. Now, our relationship is not quite picture-perfect, and as expected, there were a couple of fights, but all in all, it went well. I am probably not the only daughter who has issues with on the one hand being the daughter but on the other hand being an adult, not a child.

But that’s not what I wanted to blog about. So, back to Prague. I loved it there. Honestly, everywhere you look in that city, you’ll find yourself staring at gorgeous architecture and clicking away on your camera like there’s no tomorrow. In fact, that is how I broke my camera. I was so distracted looking up at this gorgeous building that I didn’t look where I was stepping. The rest is history.

St. Vitus Cathedral

We were really lucky with the weather. It was rainy the day we got there, and still cloudy the next day, but every day after that was absolutely gorgeous with not a cloud in the sky. It was a new experience for me to travel to a place where I do not understand a word of the local language. With the exception of Turkey in 2005, all the places I have been to, they either spoke a language I speak very well, or one that I understand a little, despite not speaking it very well (such as French and Italian). But Czech is neither a Germanic nor a Romance language (all of which I can at least read a few words of due to knowing German, English, and Spanish) so I didn’t understand one word. Luckily, many people there speak English and/or German, so with the exception of a few situations we got by just fine with those two languages. And on the occasion that we didn’t, we just resorted to gestures to make ourselves understood.

Me on Charles Bridge

I took so many pictures on this trip, and while they took forever to sort through, it is an indication for how much I loved Prague; I don’t think I’d ever taken so many pictures on a trip before.

Drinking burčák and eating slané sýrové pečivo at the wine harvest festival

We were also so lucky to be there at the time of the wine harvest festival, where we had some young wine and typical Czech snacks.

Powder Tower & Municipal House

Our hotel was right downtown, in walking-distance from many of the sights there, and I cannot tell you how nice it was to be staying at a 4* hotel instead of a hostel for a change. Not to mention the breakfast buffet. I probably ate enough for two meals for breakfast and we actually did end up skipping either lunch or dinner a few times.

The beautiful old library at Strahov Monastery

I loved this old library at Strahov Monastery. Unfortunately the other room of the library was under reconstruction, so you couldn’t see any of that room’s beauty. Isn’t it amazing? I have a penchant for all things books, so it was really breathtaking to see all these old books and the beautiful room they’re kept in.

Unfortunately, in a lot of the places that you had to pay to see, they either didn’t allow you to take pictures at all and quite frequently, they would charge you extra for a permission to take pictures. I was quite surprised at that. I had never come across this practice anywhere else and thought it was a little outrageous to charge extra for photos when you already paid for admission. I may or may not simply have sneaked in a few pictures here any there anyway. I had heard that Prague is not as cheap anymore as it used to be, but I was surprised at how expensive it was.

Wenceslas Square

This is the picture I was trying to take when I missed a step, fell, and broke my camera. My mom took this one for me. Can you see why I wasn’t looking at the ground? (And I actually had a couple more near-encounters with the pavement in Prague after this accident.)

Vrtba Garden

I loved this garden. There were peacocks walking around the entire garden among the tourists and the atmosphere was just really lovely. Such a peaceful place away from the hustle and bustle of Prague, and it’s right in the city. This was also where I decided that no, I cannot wait till I get home to buy a new camera.

View of the Charles Bridge from Manesuv Most

One of the things that actually disappointed me a little about Prague was Charles Bridge. I know! It’s probably the most famous sight there. And don’t get me wrong, I did love seeing it from afar. But when you are on the bridge itself, it is so incredibly crowded with tourists that it’s hard to really enjoy being there.

Old Jewish Cemetery

On my last day in Prague, after visiting the garden, I went to see the synagogues and the Old Jewish Cemetary. As I spent roughly two hours on buying and charging my new camera, I spent the day by myself (my mom didn’t really approve of my buying a new camera, you see). Unfortunately, I had to make a choice between buying the camera and doing a boat tour but in the end I wasn’t too sad to have missed that. I do wish I would have had a little more time to look at the synagogues but it is what it is. The synagogues were all really beautiful, as was the cemetary. It was really interesting to see all these really old gravestones, and to think of how many people, how many generations are buried there.

On our last night in Prague, my mom and I went to see a black light theater performance of Aspects of Alice which was really a unique and amazing experience. If you ever get to Prague, I can absolutely recommend this. If you are curious, or just cannot imagine what black light theater might be, you can watch some excerpts from the show here (video is NSFW!).

Afterwards we went to the Charles Bridge again (the theater was right beside it) to take some photos of Prague by night. As you can imagine, the bridge was nearly as crowded at night as during the day. But I did get this lovely shot and a few more and that made it worth it. Aren’t shots of cities by night always a little magical? I love all the lights and how they reflect in the river Vltava.

Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle by Night

If you want to see more of my pictures from Prague, you can find a bunch more here. It was so hard to select the photos to put on Flickr, and then narrow those down for this post. It is really a beautiful city to visit for anyone who is into European history and architecture.

I was so happy that I got to go on a short vacation this year after all, and on this trip I absolutely caught the travel bug again. I cannot wait for my next trip, wherever it may take me.

On being the one behind the camera

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Behind the camera

Another post on photography, I know! I hope you’re not sick of them yet.

When I go out with friends, typically, I am the one who brings the camera. I don’t always have one with me, but when I go to a birthday party or something like that, I always do, regardless of whether it’s my own party or a friend’s. I love taking pictures as you all know, and I like to have pictures of my friends and me. I like to think that my friends do too. I try to make sure to send them the pictures (even though sometimes it takes a while).

Unfortunately, usually, I am the only one with a camera. Or another friend or two may bring a camera but not actually take any pictures. Or take pictures but never send them to me. The result of that is that I have a lot of pictures of my friends but none of my friends and me. When you are the one behind the camera, you tend not to be in front of it a lot.

Sometimes I end up asking a friend to take a picture with my camera, and often what they end up doing is take a picture of just me. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but if I wanted a picture of just myself, I’d take it myself (at home, using a self-timer or MySpace style). Not just that, frequently they end up being really close-up (way too close-up) unflattering shots which make me wonder what the person taking the picture is thinking. When I am out with friends, I want pictures of my friends and me. And usually I end up with none or very few.

Of course sometimes you just end up having such a good time, that taking pictures is not your number one priority. That happens to me too. But I always try to take at least a few pictures when I go out. But when I am the only one doing it, those few pictures are the only ones I end up with.

For my farewell party, I was the only one who brought a camera. I ended up with very few good pictures. I was in two of those good ones, though one is blurry. There were a few more of me, one one of those pictures of just me, and one unflattering one that my friend took again and that one turned out blurry. I think my friends assume that I bring a camera because I enjoy taking photos so much. I do love taking pictures, true. But I don’t like being the only one who does. The reason I always bring a camera is not only because I love taking pictures, but because I know that if I don’t, we may end up with no pictures at all.

Maybe my assuming that other people also like to have pictures of themselves and their friends is wrong. Or maybe it’s just my friends who don’t. Because I certainly see lots of pictures on Facebook being tagged by other people constantly. Most of the pictures on Facebook of me were taken by me/with my camera. I hardly ever get tagged by anyone because hardly anyone ever takes pictures at parties etc. Now I really don’t care how many pictures of me are on Facebook or how many were uploaded by whom or whether they are uploaded at all, but I do wish I had more pictures of my friends and me. And I wish I wasn’t usually the only one who brings a camera and therefore has to bring one. I wish I wasn’t the only one taking pictures, and I wish I didn’t have to ask a friend every single time I want to be in a picture rather than being the one taking it.

I love my friends, I really do. This is not a reason I value their friendship any less. It’s just something that I wish was different. Whenever I see photos on Facebook of friends and their friends, I wish my friends were a little more camera-happy. I love to be able to look at pictures of events that happened a long time ago, to remember, to reminisce, to look at pictures of my friends, of my life, of friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. Maybe part of the reason I value this so much is that I don’t take it for granted that I will always be able to see my friends in person. I have moved a few times before, and I have no doubt that I will eventually move to a different place again. Many of my friends are a lot more settled than I am in that way, having lived in either Heidelberg or Munich all their lives, with no desire to leave.

With my family, things are quite similar. We hardly have any pictures of us as a family, except for some that were taken at weddings, high school graduations, vacations and other events. My parents did take pictures of us growing up of course, but at some point the need to document our lives seemed to vanish. In a way, this bothers me a little less because I simply haven’t gotten to see my family as much while living in Heidelberg as my friends there. But I wonder if one day I will regret not having more pictures of my family and friends.

Do you like to keep pictures of your family and friends? Are you always the one behind the camera as well or do you have friends who are enthusiastic about snapping pictures?

P.S. Yes, that is my old now broken camera in the picture. R.I.P., you served me well.