Das Wort zum Sonntag.

In case you wonder what I'm doing on this beautiful Sunday evening: drinking bubbly and nursing a severe case of what I believe is a mix of PMS and Sunday blues. After conversing with two friends whether it was okay to drown my sorrows with bubbly all on my own, and the unison answer was yes, I opened the Old Man's Sparkle. The first glass is still a bit warm, as I usually tend to keep these R90 treasures in the cupboard for special occasions, not in the fridge for easy access, sorrow drowning drinking.

If you wonder what got me so blue, I'm actually not quite sure myself. My attempt at spring cleaning was not completely successful, but not a devastating failure either, so that can't be it. Mind you, not sure how non-cleaning would make me blue anyhow. I did watch a sad BBC show about the killing of tuna in the South Pacific, which spoilt my dinner a bit, which is therefore still untouched and marinating in the fridge. Though I know that I am not the Über-philanthropist (is that word even accurate when applied to tuna?) and will be happy enough again to eat it tomorrow.
I also did cut my finger quite badly while chopping croutons for my Caesar Salad. My finger is fine, but literally felt the impact of the huge bread knife for hours after. Plus this salad made me overeat and stuffed me too much to go to 5 o'clock yoga. Bummer.
Other than that? Nothing official. So I guess it may just be the usual amount of hormones, dreams, and unanswered questions that keep bothering me today. I will deal with it, but why suffer more than I should? I'll let the Old Man help for tonight and know that at least he is not French*.

*Have I mentioned that I have given up Gauloises? Which seemed to be less difficult to be given up than other French things I may add...

P.S. Here is what ultimately made me feel better yesterday: meet the sea dragons, my new favorite animals! I almost burnt my food, but I had to give in, film and share. Yes, I am well aware that this makes me a nerd, but I think they are just awesome and they made me laugh...

David Attenborough and BBC's Life rock!

The joke on me.

Today is a reasonably good day. There will be shopping, a massage, and the new Harry Potter movie all in one afternoon. I even got my ticket already with my perfect seat assigned so there will be none of my usual movie freak-outs, which usually cause me to wait 6 months to see a movie – once it is out on DVD.

Cherry on top of this day – my company got invited by a lovely 5-star hotel to stay the night and have dinner on them. Then I got a follow up email, saying they would like to extend the invitation to our partners. I think the Gods are laughing once again at me, high-fiving their beautiful timing to make an invitation like this come along when there is absolutely nobody, whom I could even remotely pass on as a partner. NOBODY. I guess it’s my own fault, I sent them all to the island...
P.S. In case you know me and feel like I have overlooked you as a potential 'partner' for this night, please contact me and I will apologize for the oversight and make it up to you with dinner & overnight stay. Maybe.

Island life.

One of my ex boyfriends is moving to Canada. In a way this is neither here nor there; we are long done and over with so I don’t really care where he lives, but I’m happy if he is happy. In general I do think it is a good idea for ex boyfriends* to move far away though. It should become an official break-up rule. Especially the ones that only recently became an ex and you realize that out of sight doesn’t immediately mean out of mind. I for once would like to bring some more distance between us to be on the safe side. The kind where you don’t need to wonder about running into him at the groceries in the standard scenario of – you un-showered, sweat pants, out to buy PMS chocolates and rent a sad movie – he with someone gorgeous, who looks like she has never even heard of PMS.
Of course I’m painting a worst case picture, but we all know it can happen just too easily. You can even avoid all familiar territory, but it’s still easy enough to just to run into an ex at a gallery opening, realizing you have common interests you never knew of, and choke on the olive in your martini. In my case this is unlikely as I don’t drink martinis anymore since I broke the martini rule – different story for a different time – and got sick, but you get my point. Murphy’s Law is having a field trip with running-into-your-ex-in-inconvenient-moments incidences. I once worked a promotion in Cologne for an audio book fair. We had to do a variety of activities wearing oversized Styrofoam headphones to show you can listen to audio books anytime. I got lucky and had to just lie on a couch in the middle of a busy shopping street. It was embarrassing enough I thought, but then I saw another girl who had to work out on a stepmaster with her headphones. Later she told us that on top of it all, her ex passed by with his new girlfriend.
In order to avoid any of these scenarios I wish ex’es would just move away. One could even make a television show, call it X-ile^© and fly a whole bunch to a deserted island in the Pacific, where they can do no more harm. I don’t even mind if they get a nice trip and a better life out of it, as long as I can have my town back to myself. I also think it would make for a fun show, as long as you are watching someone else’s ex, so I think the ratings would be good too. It may just make for better television and a better world in general.
Island show or just moving to another place will also give the ex’es in question the chance to redeem themselves a bit by showing such courtesy and consideration. Depending on the degree they have hurt you (or just annoyed you in case you were the one breaking up) they must either cross one boarder, a continent, one or two oceans.

In case you are an ex boyfriend of someone and don’t care about being considered, just remember, karma is a bitch...

In case you wonder...I’m not sure what brought up this surge of cynicism on my side as I haven’t had any recent run-ins like the above. I guess the idea of it is enough to drive me a bit crazy right now.
I shall be off now, island scouting. And no, not to see if they are suitable for any ex boyfriends, but suitable for my Dad and my annual Christmas trip!

*I would also out of personal interest very much like to include what I like to call ‘unsuccessful love interests’ in this group. They should in fact put an ocean between me and them.

No sweet sixteen.

My friend Johanna has a wonderful pearl of wisdom about aging. She says you don’t realize that you are not 16 anymore while dancing the night away, but only upon waking up the next morning. She certainly has a point and I have proven it over and over again since out of my teens. Yesterday I did realize the upside of not being 16 anymore though. The hangover might be more severe, but now I can cure it with pizza and pinot noir at Massimo’s Sunday lunch and crawl back to back afterwards without anyone berating me. These are the moments when I love being a grown up.

The night which brought along this hangover started innocently enough at a friend of a friend’s house party. The host, a recovering alcoholic, welcomed us and told us where to find drinks. With a laugh she said, we shouldn’t expect tequila, making me think some beer or wine would at least be on offer (My definition of drinks contains alcohol, everything else should be called liquids.) No such luck, I got handed a bottle of sparkling pomegranate juice. The party wore on sober, but entertaining enough, though after a few hours of sitting in the cold with neither drinks nor smokes (It has been a week, thank you very much!) Thekla and I decided it was time to sneak out for a glass. We put on our most innocent faces to pull a quick ‘girls sneaking out of boarding school’ stunt and quietly slipped out of the door only to realize outside that our car was parked in. Stuck on top of a road on top of Highlevel Road we discussed options:

A) Go back inside and skip the drink.

B) Go back inside, trying to find the driver of the other car, potentially having the host find out and insulting her with our intended escape.

C) Walk and freeze as for the first time ever I wasn’t wearing a scarf (Why is another story. Ask my mother.)

Of course option C was the only real option for us and we fully admit we may just have a problem, especially considering that we ended up at The Spur for our red wine and tequila. It was loveliness on a fake cow hide bench. But as Thekla was predicting - at least I got a story out of it.

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!

Nesthäkchen is home.

I'm on my final tour stop - Bad Hersfeld, my home town, with my Dad. The weather continues to be crappy and very Aprily and I have given up to look for sunshine. I should have known better when my Dad tried to get me out of bed this morning by saying 'look, the sun is out'. Of course it wasn't. Mean trick... Regardless I really don't care anymore, we are just having a nice time in the rain.
He already announced when I had just arrived that he just really wants to spoil me. And he does. Tonight we are going to the opera premiere and tomorrow we have fancy dinner at a restaurant with a star, which miraculously survived in our town.
Other signs of daddy's little girl being home:

Morels were already soaking upon my arrival.

First dinner.

Welcome home sign and bottles of bubbly in my room.

Berlin without words.

I will let the pictures do the (most) of the taking - things I liked about Berlin:

Royal breakfast from the self-proclaimed breakfast queen Julia. 

 Drink of the summer, Aparol Spritz, in mini desert format.

 In one word: awesome.

Trucker food in most places, hot stuff in Berlin - Currywurst.

 I wonder if someone really tried for them to put up the sign.

 The grass is always greener on the other table.

 Made me feel like home.

 Don't ask. Just your average ghost/jellyfish lamp.

Oversized chocolate piggy. Yum.

 Only now I know that I really want a white plastic Bambi.

I had to include at least one historic building picture - Berlin Dome. 

Pastaholic takes Berlin.

My friend Julia, as you will know by now, is awesome. That showed again yesterday when I was greeted with a bottle of pink bubbly after she dragged my suitcase up seven flights of stairs to her flat. Things only got better when I heard the dinner plans: pasta. Even better pasta at a restaurant called 'Mädchenitaliener' which can only be translated as “Italian food for girls” or “Italian food by girls”. We are unsure of the details. Regardless, I loved the name and the place immediately. Shared tables on the sidewalk, prosecco, mozzarella, parma and figs; can life get any better? We went to heaven when the mains arrived. Your average plate of pasta with shaved truffles and the signature dish of the place, which will need to be re-cooked immediately:

Tagliatelle + baked figs + fennel salami + pine nuts + poppy seeds. 

Read. Read again and be envious. Mädchenitaliener best translated as “happy plates, happy girls”.

Holiday half time.

Half of my holiday is over and I know I have been a lazy writer. Partly due to the fact that I am only slowly emerging into the world now and only now fully recovered from a stomach bug followed by an infected throat. I had enough sense to get sick while I was with my mother, which helped loads since we all know that mothers know best when someone is sick. The sore throat spoilt the first few days of my stay in Hamburg as I couldn't even finish a glass of bubbly without crying in pain. A funny doctor, who gave me antibiotics and told me that South African wines would help a speedy recovery further along, finally made it all better.
Yesterday was Jakob Day and we travelled to the Heidepark, an amusement park with roller coasters and the whole lot, an hour away from Hamburg. Jakob clearly gets his organizational skills from his aunt - me - as he had already memorized a map of the park and knew exactly where the roller coasters that he was allowed to ride where located by the time he got up. Once we arrived he led us with expertise and a very commanding little voice and off we went head over heels.
Over the course of the day I learned that hell has no fury like an 8 year old who isn't 12 yet and not allowed to ride the 'coolest' coasters on offer. It would have been nice if him and my brother could have switched bodies for a day, as he has the heart of a lion whereas my brother, well, …. doesn't. We were all surprised to even get him on the water slides and he still screamed loudest, even though Jakob declared “Ach, Papa, they are totally lame.”

Seven exhausting hours later we got back and I met Marie for dinner at my all time favourite restaurant Vienna. An ex and I once bonded over the fact how much we both like the place and had our first and many more dates there. In a very nice way his spirit seems to linger there and though he lives in Paris now I always expect him to walk through the door when I'm there. Whenever I go it reminds me of a time when I was very young, carefree, and very happy. All paired with the best Wiener Schnitzel and my dear Marie as company made for the perfect evening.
Now I'm on the train to Berlin. I'm excited for the next part of my Germany tour, yet when I look outside everything is grey and measly, I cannot help it: I miss Africa. Especially today as I really want to see the snow on table mountain.

For African feeling in Hamburg: Rooibos ice tea with
pineapple and grenadilla.

African lunch a la Germany.

Sorry, posts have been requested and I will write more, but for now I have my nephew sitting next to me and he wants to go over the roller coasters we will conquer tomorrow one more time. One has to make priorities.

A little anecdote here from an African lunch in Bad Honnef in the meantime:

They actually did like it all and ate it too, but my brother is just being my old stinky brother self.

Anysroad on the road.

Chuck Bass was just shot on Gossip Girl and I cannot find the following episode. I actually don't even know whether this tragic cinematic ending means that the entire season is over, which will mean that I will have to wait even longer to find out if they came up with a good way of brining him back to life. Either way I won't know during the next 14 hours and afterwards I probably won't care anymore. But for the time being Turkish Airlines' inflight program is the only thing I'm really interested in. Since they list Wall-E under new releases in the movie section, one will understand why I get so excited about Gossip Girl season 3...
They also offer all seven Harry Potter, which one can admit openly to like. Only problem is that I can't remember the order just by their titles, so that may become a bit of trial and error. After all one doesn't want to go back to Ron Weasley as a red haired just-nerd in part 1 when you can have geeky cool Ron a la Tom Ford cardigan and glasses in part 7. And yes, I do know Harry is actually the one with the glasses...

In case you haven't guessed – I'm on a plane on my way to Germany. Pitstop in Jo’burg which means no TV as I write, which is truthfully probably why I write. I love inflight movies and most things about flying in general and that does include the food. I'm weird this way. I like it so much, that I was even trying to put together a story with a little list for the Wellness warehouse blog on how to make travel easy and stress free. Today I realized that the only point on the list I actually follow myself is a) Upon arrival have a cold shower and a cold glass of bubbly. Though I usually shower hot and drink the bottle.
Other suggestions included to travel lightly, which already sounds silly to any girl and already my cramping shoulder is once again a reminder that I failed to comply. Same goes for the one that talks about hydrating a lot during the flight, which even I know does not mean drinking G&T followed by red wine and whiskey during the night.
Regardless I am actually no expert, but I am usually never stressed when flying so I guess I must be doing something right. But the problem when writing a story for a wellness blog, you can't really admit that your personal recipe for sleep success are three glasses of red wine followed by two sleeping pills.
So, I'm not perfect, but a happy girl right now and close to take a picture of my little Airbook propped up on the only slightly bigger fold out table. It's as excited as me to be out for the first time in its young life and happy about the admiring looks it is getting. Ok. No. I won't take a picture though, that might be too much. Just imagine it – we do look so pretty together.

By now it is 03h30 and I actually slept a few hours not only thanks to wine and sleeping pill, but also to the fact that I had 2.5 seats. By neighbour at some point realized that it was pointless for him to even try to claim the full seat next to him.
Now it's breakfast and Harry Potter time. I ordered Vishne with my eggs, which is sour cherry juice and it reminds me of my time in Istanbul 6 years ago. Good memories. I'm drifting off again. I already know that Harry will be alright. More once we land...

The second part of the trip wasn't so enjoyable. Two passport controls after one another at the Istanbul airport for no apparent reason whatsoever. Each with a line that made me almost turn around and rather have another 14 hour flight than to to wait my turn. All that in 24 degrees with what seemed 100% humidity at 6 o'clock in the morning. I guess I should have enjoyed it more as it might be the last time on my trip I will feel like summer.
At security I was asked twice whether I had a deodorant or perfume and since I was showing him my products while he asked, I can only assume he was hinting I should finally use it. Fair point I guess, if a bit cheeky.
The flight to Frankfurt was trying to teach me another lesson in patience as I had a mother with a loud toddler and a baby sitting next to me. The baby thought it fun to pull on my jacket throughout. The mother didn't seem to mind very much and it took me all my good memories of baby Isabella not to slap the baby's hand away. One can tell I am not mother maybe, but I was wondering if that was necessary. The baby was lucky that I held back with any judgement other than rolling my eyes.

Now I have an hour to spare before my train goes and the options are overcrowded cafes or a cold platform. I'm choosing the latter and a small stint at the smokers corner, which is a square on the platform contained with a yellow line. Yes, we are outside yet one is not allowed to step over the line while smoking. That is Germany in a nutshell for you.

I'm starting to feel slightly delirious now and it's more than time for that shower and the bottle of bubbly.