At the end of October, teashoe, puzzledpeaces, C. and me went to London for a (very) long weekend, where we met aber_karramba, D.+K., skittlesandolives, s_whiteant, inkbot kowalski and elbi. The original idea was to visit the ComicCon again (as we did two years ago), but it wasn’t as much of a part of the entire program this time than it was the last time. Instead we just enjoyed the city.
At the end of July/beginning of August, I went to the Côte d’Azur with my family for a week. It was a trip that was preceded by organisational difficulties that mostly came from the fact that we didn’t all book together and at once and that it is very difficult to distinguish between Saturday and Sunday. Also, my family on trips will cause chaos, period.
In any case, one of my sisters, V, and her family flew in on Tuesday (which was planned), my parents flew in on Saturday (which was planned) and my other sister, A, her baby and me flew in on Sunday (which was not quite as planned). We flew to Nice and lived in Vence in two houses, one for V and family, the other for my parents, A, the baby and me.
France is not only the land of ugly postcards, it is mostly the land of sexist postcards. The amount of naked (female) butts that you can send from there is staggering. So when I found these babies on my last day, I knew I had to throw money at them.
July saw me going to Riga with puzzledpeaces, teashoe, aber_karramba and C. for a weekend. Almost all of us turned 30 this year and we decided to celebrate with a trip together. After a lot of discussion, we finally settled on Riga because none of us had been there, we could all fly there cheaply and it looked interesting. It turned out to be an excellent decision.
All images taken by and from C. who takes more and better photos than me.
In November (yes, I’m still crying about how far behind I am with my posts, why do you ask) I went to the UK with puzzledpeaces for the wedding of a friend. And since we went there already we added a couple of days in London (for sightseeing and such) and a couple of days in Cambridge to visit aber_karramba.
We started Thursday morning and when I say morning, I mean so fucking early in the morning it was still dark. We caught a bus to Bratislava airport (after we found it – it took us a bit, not only because it was dark but because the bus station is being renovated and the bus doesn’t leave from its usual spot and being the creature of habit that I am, I didn’t even look left and right and just went to the normal spot, actually walking past the bus that had BRATISLAVA in huge letters on its side).
In any case we made it to Bratislava where we had to hang around the airport for a bit before our flight to London left. In case you don’t know it, Bratislava airport is about the size of a living room and has about three shops and two cafés or something. There are no flights between about 11pm and 9am and there is nothing much to do. But we made it through the hardship of having to entertain ourselves and made it on the plane without issue and off we went.
“Bratislava Airport new terminal BTS” by Andrej Neuherz – Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The Easter Holidays saw me going to the Baltic Sea with (some of) my family, including three of the many dogs in the family. We rented a small house on the island Usedom and spent a little over a week there, exploring the area and the wonderful beaches. Consider this post a suggestion that you should totally go there. At least if you like beaches like this:
The beach in Karlshagen
In October, teashoe, C., J. and me headed to London. Our reason to go was actually the ComicCon there, but since neither of us (except teashoe) had actually seen much of London, if anything at all, we also added a little bit of sightseeing to the mix. And it was absolutely brilliant.
[teashoe took this brilliant image. Just like a postcard.]
As you might have gathered from my various mentions of it, I went on holidays. On actual, honest to goodness beach holidays. For the first time in ten years. And it was absolutely glorious.
We went to Costa Calma, Fuerteventura and stayed at one of those All Inclusive Clubs that would be horrible if they weren’t so comfortable. 8 days of doing almost nothing but lying on the beach and reading. Though we also went on two day trips around the island to at least get an impression of our surroundings that doesn’t consist of tourists and the ocean. So let me tell you about my holidays.
In January, I went to Berlin again for a couple of days with my parents. Mainly to visit my sister and her family, but also to get away for a bit. Plus, we crammed culture in that trip like it’s nobody’s business.
The last month has brought many changes in my life. I quit my job, entered university again (courses will start in October; sociology and educational science) and I’m about to move out of my beautiful, wonderful, bright apartment with a terrace and into a small, rather dark apartment I’m gonna share with my sister. I’m pretty excited about it all, as is my mom who never really understood that I didn’t want to finish uni in the first place.
Anyway, we decided to celebrate my life change by seeing to it that I wouldn’t just let my 6 weks of break time pass me by and let the time get swamped and lost by organisational details: so the two of us went on a weekend trip to Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary is a spa town, famous for its hot springs, so we booked a spa package and just let ourselves get spoiled for the weekend.
My sister is doing a fellowship at the hospital in Newcastle (upon Tyne). Which means I had the best excuse to finally go to the UK again. So I did. ;) Surprisingly, this time I didn’t need any extra bags to bring all my shopping home with me and I didn’t only buy books but even (gasp) clothes.
But since I didn’t only shop but actually saw quite a lot, let me start at the beginning.
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