travelling home. two ways.

at this point i am comfortable to say that the only thing i like about the French is their macarons and their champagne.

 

after 32 hours of travelling i made it back to cape town. the part when i ate all the ladurée macarons, my last euros could buy, and drank all the champagne at the business class lounge was fun. the part when i was stuck on the plane for an extra three hours at the airport till 2am wasn’t fun. neither the part when i subsequently missed my connecting flight and was put on another one that was also two hours late. and neither when this one was also stuck at the airport for another hour due to a dent, which may or may not have been caused by a poor little bird (captain’s words, not mine – fuck that bird!). did i mention that they put me in the last row, middle seat, and that air france managed to lose my luggage yet again?!
yeah, all so not fun and even the macarons barely made up for it. but as they did, i need to thank marie for telling me about the ladurée stand at the airport. i don’t think it would have even occurred to me to look for it, if she hadn’t told me.
so now i’m back and my luggage too with a little delay. i’m sick and exhausted, emotionally and physically. however i am happy to be back in the sun, with my solar powered fairy lights and a big pot of freshly grown basil on the balcony.
but for all of you who were hopeful that once i travelled back to cold, dark germany in the winter and would be inclined to change my mind about moving there, i have to disappoint you. despite the less than fortunate circumstances i liked it. 

i liked that the people in shops and restaurants were really friendly and generally knew what they were doing. a large number of girls sported an unfortunate choice of eyebrows (as in none, replaced by a black marker line), but while it made them look a bit scary, they were still all really friendly and i think it might only be a regional thing.

oh how i loved that things run on time! except very busy surgeons when they meet you for dinner, but how often will that really become an issue in the future?!

my nephew asked me when i was going to come visit him again (i didn’t get to see him this time around) and so i told him about my plans to move to hamburg where he lives. he was so freaking excited and just kept on asking for real? like really?
so i have to move now before he turns into a snotty teenager who couldn’t give a damn about where his aunt lives. 

 

but seriously i am also moving back for the love of pasta. i mean look at this…

i almost cried when i saw the wall of pasta at karstadt and tried to figure out how i can take all some back. in the end i didn’t take any because my bag was full, but i have planned to return there immediately when i move back and buy all some of it.

last but not least: germany is pretty when the skies are blue and yes, even in winter they sometimes are.

the right shoes for travelling the world.

so today i have some exciting news and a champagne headache.

i'm going to be a contributor for travelettes.

that's the exciting news and you just don’t see me shrieking because of the headache. however i  am shrieking  and jumping up and down on the inside.

travelettes is a travel blog with a group of awesome girls who go out into the world and prove that backpacking in heels is not a contradiction. i like that premise and so i sent them an application and some stories. katja, the founder of the travelettes apparently liked my application letter so much that she already posted it on the blog and put my already fragile head into a slight overdrive.

reading important mail on my phone while still in bed with one eye closed is tricky business. i still gathered though that she really seemed to like my writing and since she is neither my mother nor am i paying her to say that, i was genuinely touched and happy and proud.

we may call a blog an online diary, but in the end we write to get read, don't we? a story told needs an audience. it's a bit like that thought experiment "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" if we write and nobody reads it, does it matter that we write? we think that our words matter in one way or another and if someone else reads them it affirms this notion. 

at least that it is one of the main reasons why i write. i like writing, but i do write to be read. having someone tell me that they like what i write makes me happy, makes me want to write more, makes me want to write better, makes me even write in bed on sunday with a headache and it makes me grin silly.

now here is a little problem i have with this whole excitement though. i think i may have lied by omission in my application.

i don't wear heels and i certainly don't travel in them.

ups.

i dare say, i get shoes.  my taste in shoes is impeccable. i may not have many for women’s standards, but the ones i have are really, really good.  i have prada, dries van noten, vintage charles jourdan, pierre hardy, and repetto. however none of them have more than 2-inch heels. i hate to admit it, but i cannot walk in heels. it's not the pain, the pain usually one can drink away, but i simply cannot walk without looking odd and stumbling, sometimes i even add a full-on fall and/or ankle sprain. i don’t do it to myself when i go to work so why would i do it to myself when i go on vacation?

but now you probably wonder if i don't i want to be fancy sometimes and need shoes to go with it? the truth is, i don't think i am a very fancy person at heart. yes, i am sitting here with a champagne hangover but i also spilled a lot of said champagne very un-fancily all over my dress last night. truthfully as a girl it's usually enough to be fancy on top, most people don't care about the fanciness of your shoes. which i guess is a bit sad for the shoes, but also a reality of the world outside of fashion. years ago an ex visited me in new york before christmas. the visit didn't go very well so i was already in an unpleasant mood when our last evening finally came along. we had reservations at the rivercafe, the one truly fancy old school place where they still make men wear ties and stuff. i had already packed most of my wardrobe as i was leaving the next day and left with a choice of wearing strappy summer sandals or sneakers. they were light blue pumas and awesome as far as sneakers go, but obviously an odd choice for the rivercafe. since we were having a snow storm i didn't care and chose them over summer sandals. the ex wouldn't stop moaning and complaining about how they wouldn't let us in due to my shoe choice. he was right in that we didn't get in. however it was due to his lack of tie. because unlike they make it seem in the movies, restaurants like that don't keep a collection of spare clip-ons, they just give your table to some other dude who came without a reservation but wearing a tie.

so i’d say i am more cool (can i say that about myself without sounding like a complete ass?) than fancy and therefore my preferred choice of travel shoes have been my old vintage motorcycle boots. what can i say, unlike heels, they were actually made for walking. i have walked in them to fashion weeks in paris and new york, they have been to the vatican and the dome in milan, they have slept in five star resort in st. barth’s, park city and miami, and have ridden with me on a basotho pony in the lesotho highlands. they have lived by far a more exciting life than any heel that i ever bought, failed to walk in and which subsequently died alone and unworn in my closet.

having explained all of that, dear travelettes, i hope you won’t mind that i will therefore adhere to the credo of backpacking* suitcase-wheeling in vintage motorcycle boots.

*i did admit that i don’t even own a backpack and they didn’t seem to think that was a problem.

Back to school special.

I seem to be having a bloggers block since being on holiday. Argh. So, now I’m trying my hardest to get over it. Tell me if you get bored, but in the meanwhile I will give you another list to get myself going.

I am back home. Very happily so. Home as in Cape Town. Sorry, my German friends, but that’s just how it is. Nevertheless my trip was great. Even the things that weren’t great were in hindsight at least entertaining. As a holiday recap – highlights from great to worst:

Good:
Drinking champagne with Julia in the dingiest dive bar/burger place in Berlin. Her logic for ordering the wrongest drink for a place like this? It was my last night...well, she had a point and it actually felt very right.


Julia with dog from hell.

My & Elvis.

 Better:
Having the complete season 4 of Gossip Girl for the train rides.*

Best:
My Dad and I slurping our test tube soup with a straw in a 1-star restaurant. Loads of fun, which I highly recommend, just don’t try it at home as you will need an audience as in people at the table next you to stare for best slurp results.**

Bad:
My mother stabbing her toe on my suitcase so she wouldn’t have to walk up the Drachenfels. Obviously not great, but to think that she would sabotage her own toe so she wouldn’t have to walk is quite bad ass. We couldn’t take a donkey either; since her trip to Greece she feels bad for them because she saw too many ‘pale, fat German ladies riding poor little donkeys’ there.

Worse:
Stomach bug, followed by sore throat, followed by stiff neck and shoulder and no Enmasse or boyfriend in sight.

Worst:
Standing under a chestnut tree in a storm is not a good idea. I learned that the hard way of course.

Obviously there were many more highlights and non-highlights. I must say though, coming back and unpacking the day I arrived was the best part and very unheard of for me.

*Yes, I am worried about the frequency of my Gossip Girl mentions too.
**No picture of the slurpy soup. As per usual I left my camera at home. Bad photographer, bad!

Bubbling violets.

I do blame my mother for my addiction to Champagne. I must have inherited it from her or something. The bubbles seem to run in our blood and nothing feels more intoxicating to us than hearing the plop of a cork, the swishing sound when you pour a glass and the smell of the first tiny bubbles rising up.

She was always a snob when it came to Champagne and so am I.

Christmas tradition at our house asks for Champagne year after year. One year my Dad dared to offer us a bottle of Mumm (an okaaay German sparkling wine), which he had gotten as a present from someone. He thought it suitable for his beloved family on Christmas Eve. The family wasn’t impressed and went on strike till he forked out money and sent my brother to the store to buy two bottles of Veuve. Crisis averted.

Later my parents discovered Crémant from Alsace. Even though we all drank and liked it, it was still lovingly duped 'Elsässer Plörre' by my mother. Plörre, a slang word from the western part of Germany,  is defined as:

Alcoholic drink which sight makes you afraid you may wake up with a hangover the next day.

Highly unfair to the drink in question, but we just wanted to be snobs as the Crémant wasn’t from the Champagne and the name stuck despite my Dad’s protests. Today he goes along with it and offers me a glass of Plörre the second I step of the plane.

Ever since moving to South Africa I have been in heaven. Living in a country that has mastered the art of making Champagne, I have drunk myself through an extensive collection so far and would blame my cousin and her pool deck for it, if I needed someone to blame. I don’t.

Imagine my excitement when my new favourite wine shop The Mill offered a M.C.C. and Champagne tasting evening. I may have drooled a little bit over my desk when I signed up for it. My food poisoning left me slightly worried if I was going to be able to make it, but true to form my stomach was basically begging me for some bubbles yesterday.

Usually work is quiet these days, but Murphy’s law kicked in at around 4 o’clock and made my boss, who was coming with, and me run around like crazy maniacs till the last minute. I had no idea how I was going to manage ‘tasting’ the bubbly as opposed to gulping it down by the time we arrived. We both just needed a strong drink badly and have had no time for the usual late afternoon office G&T before. Luckily for us the day turned around the moment we stepped into The Mill. A glass of bubbly called ‘Sparkles’ was put into our hand and though the name sounded too cute to be good, we took about a sip or two to be convinced. Nigel, the owner, was a star - once our glasses were empty he had them refilled within a second. He said he is just very good at spotting empty glasses, but I do believe he can read minds.

Me (thinking):  Refill my glass, this is yummy, please someone, refill my glass, please, someone –

Me: Thank you, Nigel.

Once we spotted crackers on the table (we had been worried about that as the Murphy’s law kick in had also prevented us from getting dinner before), we were set to go and do some serious tasting. It wasn’t quite as serious due to the facts that a) we were allowed to pour our own glasses – bad idea, b) Australian jokes being told – bad, but funny, and c) a guy at our table who told a story about opening a bottle of expensive, vintage Champagne at the top of Lion Hill and how it led to holding the cork and watching the bottle fall – bad for him, but really funny.

I learned that I am either not such a snob after all or just plain ignorant as the bottle of a 2000 Guy Charbaut Champagne didn’t nearly impress me as much as a bottle called The Old Mans Sparkle from Groote Post. I think I tasted violets in a bottle and am surprised that the bottle I took home arrived unharmed and made it through the night. After so heroically sustaining from drinking it all by myself last night, I think I will finally treat myself to a nice little wine shelf.  The old man shall be the first bottle of little treasures on it and stay long enough so I can take a picture at least.