Dresden is worth a journey :-)

Hi folks,

I´m back from a short weekend trip to Dresden, one of the most beautiful cities in east Germany.
Since it is only two and a half hours by coach from Berlin I wonder why it took me so long to get there.

Anyway, I took the coach after work on friday afternoon to arrive in the early evening hours, where my host for the weekend awaited me with Iranian food and a nice conversation over a glass of red wine, before we both retired to our (separate!) bedrooms for an early night. It was my very first experience as a couchsurfer and I must say, I will do this again! It opened up my personal horizon on my hosts culture as well as gifted me with a tour guide for the city :-)

In the morning on Saturday we had a light breakfast and then made our way to the old town of Dresden.

To my surprise there was the Dutch fabric market on the market place! But since I was there to explore the city, I only had a short look and then went on to see the Kreuzkirche, the Frauenkiche, which was bombed in WWII and only rebuild in 2003, the Semper Opera House and of course the Zwinger.

market stalls of the Dutch fabric market...

Frauenkirche

All of these architectural masterpieces had an air of 17th century and Grandesse about them, and I could almost imagine the coaches carried by horses to take some Herzog and his Lady to enjoy an evening of classical music at the Opera... 

Semper Opera House

Zwinger

View towards the Opera House

Zwinger

The weather was nice too, a mix of sun and clouds, not too hot, and it was nice to walk along the river Elbe and enjoy a cool breeze. 

River Elbe with a view to the Dome and the Opera

When I travel, there´s always little details that catch my eye, more than the big sights I like to take snaps of those details. Here´s for example a girl-traffic light, where normally there is always a male figure on display :-) 

Or the drainage in the shape of a dragon clung to the Academy of the Arts. 

Unfortunately it began to rain, no, it poured after three o´clock, so we skipped further parts of town and retreated home to have a hot cup of tea and some traditional music made by some of my hosts friends. 

I really enjoyed this trip, though I didn´t see all of Dresden and certainly not the surrounding regions, but still I´m glad I did it. Now I know my country is at least as beautiful and worth seeing as any other country on this blue marble and I will return to see what else there is nearby (e.g. the Sächsiche Schweiz) or Königsstein. 

Hope you liked my little report and next time there will be sewing topics again (and the promised pictures of my Netties) :-)

Thanks for reading and till next time
XX Milan

Me made may first week review...and a travel report

Hi folks,

here we go and the first six days of May have already passed me by... here are my first three pictures.

As I don´t possess enough self-made clothing (at least not for wearing with these temperatures), I will show you as many as I really wore:

this is a Burda Style Shirt with polca dots :-)

This and the shirt below are from the same pattern, Joanna 

by joulijou, an indy-pattern designer from Germany. Actually this shirt is my first make since I started sewing again :-)

I got to spend a long weekend at my old hometown known as Bielefeld, the city, that doesn´t exist!

Actually, it is an old joke made up by some students in the 90´s to make fun of some conspiracy-theories going on, but it somehow survived the decades and has even resulted in books that focus on that topic... lol.

So, for the first time in a long period I made one way by coach. I like travelling by train and would have done so this time either, but realized too late, that I needed to book in advance in order to get a decent price. So I checked the coach sites on the web and finally decided on a ticket with the BerlinLinienBus for 22€ one way.

The coach was comfy and the trip not as exhausting as I expected, I even had a chat with an elderly Lady sitting next to me, definietely do it again.

When I arrived, temperatures had dramatically dropped by about ten degrees, so I shivered a bit in my leather jacket... but got some warm jumper courtesy of my best friend Christian, once I arrived at his place :-)

I spent some nice days in Bielefeld, though the weather did it´s best to dampen my mood, and I shot some nice pics for you. 

Impressive, ain´t it?

Should you ever come to the area, don´t leave it out, it´s a nice and rather quiet town, lots of bars and restaurants, a beautiful old town and small expensive shops mixed with galleries and art shops. Of course there are the ugly parts of town with dirt and rotten places, but you really have to look for them.

So here come a few shots made in the old town and I hope you like them. :-)

I´ll be back with more pictures from my latest makes, til then, stay safe.

Cheers,

Milan

Spring is coming on!

Dears,

finally, it´s getting lighter in these parts and temperatures are rising! Spring is coming on and I can feel it in the air and nature around me, life starts bursting out again, yay!

Since my last post I read a lot in other peeps blogs, and again came across a statement from Chris at Aussie on the road, who talked about travelling the big world and not knowing about one´s own country so much.

That rang a bell with me, cause since I moved to Berlin, I kind of abandoned the original thought of exploring the city going to a different part of it each weekend.... but last Saturday the sun came out and all the beautiful patterns in the world couldn´t keep me inside.

So I grabbed my Lonely Planet Berlin guide and decided to go to a part of town I´ve never been to before, but heard a lot about: the Plänterwald. It´s in the south-east of Berlin, lying lushly by the river Spree and even sports an abandoned Funpark, which really tickled my imagination. I love exploring abandoned buildings or parks!

I went there by S-Bahn very comfortably and started out walking by the shore, where a lot of boats where roped to the poles, waiting for a rivercruise. A lot of other people had the same idea, but that didn´t spoil the fun for me. The sun was warm on my face and I enjoyed walking in the park.

 

Half an hour later the landscape started to change, as the open grass of the park gave way to beautiful tall trees and newly green bushes, less and less joggers and other folks were around and I left the riverbank and made into the woods. It grew a lot quieter here too. Loved it.

The ground was covered with bear´s garlic, the smell made my mouth water. Woodpeckers were hacking at some trees, other birds were singing, it was pure bliss and I was thankful to be alive and experiencing this in my own city, half an hour train ride from my busy street! I picked some bear´s garlic for my dinner on the way back, it´s so tasty:-)

I came across some strange building from the Funpark, I couldn´t figure out, what the heck it was made for, do you have an idea?

 

 

Anyway, there was so much to see, smell and even taste, that I felt truly blessed for an entire period of three blissful hours.

 

I would have loved to go inside one of the abandoned, but gorgeous buildings I saw along the way, but they were all fenced in and I wasn´t cheeky enough to try my luck.

 

 

 

It was a true joy to explore a part of my city and as spring is coming on strongly, I will do it some more for sure.

 

At last, I relaxed on a bench at the riverbank and held my face up to the sun!

 

 

Do you sometimes go to parts of your town that you didn´t know existed? Berlin is so big and I still haven´t seen half of it, so I most definately will.

 

I will leave you for now, thanks Chris for reminding me of my own neighbourhood and thank you folks for reading what my brain´s producing :-)

 

Feel free to let me know about your experiences and thoughts.

 

Cheers, Milan

 

P.S. next time will be a sewing-post again ;-)



Bucket list for 2014 :-)

Hi lovely readers,

I thought I might share my bucket list with you.
It is the very first time I have such a thing, since it´s been a while that I´ve been travelling and it kinda got lost in the depths of my brain... but a fellow blogger mentioned it on his blog sometime ago, the ever-moving nice guy Chris from Aussie on the road, so I thought I just give it a try. It´s always good to set yourself some goals and then go and achieve them:-). And I recently became an achiever, so what would make more sense?

Long talk, short sense, here it is, my list for this year:

1. Learn to horse-ride
2. go sailing at least once
3. learn to scuba-dive
4. make 5 friends in Australia
6. take a Balloonride over the Ayers Rock
7. do the Harbourbridge climb in Sydney
8. attend a play in the Opera House in Sydney
9. find a fresh water pool on Magnetic Island
10. go fabric shopping in Japan
11. couchsurf as much as possible
12. shoot a gun (thanks for the inspiration, Chris)
13. go whale watching
14. explore unknown regions
15. stay in a 5-Star-Hotel for one night
16. drive a motorbike
17. learn surfing
18. eat something I never ate before
19. ride a bike along the great ocean road
20. walk the treetops in the Valley of the Giants
21. see an actual Kangaroo (alive)
22. get to know australian sewing blogger
23. watch a cricket match
24. play Oz-tag
25. meditate in a rainforest


Thats about it, folks.
What do you think?
It´s not set in stone, also the sequence doesn´t matter. I do hope I will have the time/strength/courage to tick off at least half of these.

What about you, do you make bucket lists before you go on travels?

I would love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Milan