Leaving The 'Zig

Packing up all my earthly belongings and dragging them down to the basement for storage has given me time to reflect on a few random things I will miss in Leipzig ...
* Grocery shopping, GDR style. Fighting people for the last bananas and feeling grateful I snatched the last carton of milk.
*Passive-Aggressive door keepers at school who rule over their domain with a vengeance and begrudgingly hand out keys to the practice rooms.
* 101 extra hours of sunshine. what? yep- as gray as it may be here, Leipzig has 1,624 annual hours of sunlight compared with 1,523 in Hamburg. Shoot me.
*The Basement of Doom, where all said earthly possessions are being stored. It is also where we do our laundry and with it's dark, caged tunnels has enough creepiness to put a Steven King novel to shame.
* Roommates, for better and for worse

I'm off to Berlin, and then in few short days...home.

A belated* but most-happiest-of-birthdays to my brother, the one and only Nano-Who knows I love him even if I did use to put him in suitcases and cardboard boxes , and dress him up as a rabbit...

*cut me some slack guys. I'm moving mountains, remember? crossed off the list today: last lesson with my Professor, packing up of all earthly possessions, getting a new shiny visa at the ausländeramt** and fighting the Forces of Darkness, a.k.a H's former landlords.

**which is fun because you have to follow a sign that says ALIENS and that always makes me laugh.

What? You don't think I need gold dancing shoes that are 100% recyclable and vegan friendly AND SMELL LIKE BUBBLEGUM ??

Shoes: Mel by Melissa

100% random

Someone please go find a small child to give these to. I stopped by a small shop in my neighborhood today and stumbled upon the most amazing set of blocks by miller goodman. Apart from being wildly entertaining they seem like the kind of toy I imagine you might actually want to be thrown across your floor...
I will be back later with my usual banter.

You can tell I'm stepping up my game because now I have a mood board :


clockwise from left: dress-french connection, veil-twigs and honey, sandal-j.crew, beautiful girl-unknown, flowers via once wed from this post, tree- i stock photo

sweetness and light

SOME people seem to think it's getting a little too dark and gloomy around here... so as a gesture of good will I leave you with the loveliest of wedding fou-fou. Which I might just wear on my head. With a trombone. Just because I can.

All veils from the beautiful Twigs and Honey of course

a few thoughts

Things seem to moving along at the speed of light around here, leaving no time to catch my breath. Officially, I was in Hamburg on Saturday for an audition. But between us, that was just the cover story. My real motive was of course my continuing mission: Operation not-ugly-wedding shoes. Sadly I came back empty handed (which was luckily only a partial failure because I did manage to get the job). Next week there will be a chance for redemption when I go for another "audition". Hamburg is very serious about the shopping and it is definitely not for the faint of heart or modest of budgets. It's hardcore- so wish me luck.

also on my mind:

1. Sights and sounds of the new wave Gothic festival. Once a year Leipzig crosses over to the dark side, big time. For a few days the city is flooded with the most fascinating if not mildly disturbing masses of bizarrely decorated human beings I have ever seen. Pierced and tattooed faces, altered eyeballs, sharpened pointy teeth and elaborate black costumes all crowd the streets and trams. The locals hit the streets for the ultimate people watching experience and everybody eats würst and drinks beer (which come to think of it is pretty much par for the course for everything from Easter to Christmas) .Coming home on the tram I felt very conspicuous in my jeans and flip flops and had to laugh as the grandma sitting across from me couldn't take her eyes off a mostly naked corset-clad cat lady .

2. Packing, tying up loose ends, and leaving Leipzig. A hyperactive individual by the name of Uwe called me early one morning to see if he could come get my closet RIGHT NOW. When he got here I couldn't tell if his 1980's Jazzercise headband was ironic or for real but I made him coffee anyways and looked on as he dismantled my furniture.

3. Fonts, stamps and paper. You guessed it-let the invitation fiesta begin! After an afternoon spent on the phone trying to figure out the logistics of Prägezangen and Prägeapparate we're taking this bull by the horns and doing it ourselves. I'm only afraid that like with all crafty projects, things could go terribly wrong and we'll end up with invitations that look like glitter covered ransom notes.

4. My mood these days is very dependent on the mega-to-do-list. Crossing things off makes me very happy-looking at the remaining 20 pages does not. I leave in 14 days and for some reason this stuff is not packing itself...



Photo collage by Richard Avedon

Happy Shavuot ! Enjoy your cheese cake and
I'll be back soon with all kinds of crazy, I promise.


photo by Dutch artist Sebastiaan Bremer

I humbly share with you my flowers from the market, along with the best wedding decision we've made yet:

There are many things I don't know, like who will be coming, or what we will serve them to eat, but all of that just sort of pales in comparison to the importance of DESSERT, and this is just too good to keep to myself...
In an epic summit of east meets west, Baklava meets Peach Pie with Vanilla ice cream.
Can it get any better?
( correct answer : no. )

Wiener schnitzel and golden shoes

Dealing with some major disappointment in these parts... I thought I was going to spend next week eating Wiener Schnitzel and playing a concert at the Musikverein in Vienna, but instead I have to hike myself on up to Hamburg for an audition. bah humbug.

In a feeble attempt to deal with these recent developments and the absence of schnitzel in my near future, I have spent a good part of the day researching fonts for invitations, and the perfect rose-gold strappy sandals to go with the maybe-dress (both which seem to be quite illusive at the moment).I can no longer tell if the sandals I'm looking at are elegant and understated or scream : hello, red light district! This seems to be yet another symptom of a common case of loss of good judgment ,which should be gone without a trace right after the wedding but is making it difficult to make important decisions at the moment. Might just be safer to go barefoot anyways...

In other news, I am very much looking forward to flying home in a few short weeks where I will eat forbidden vegetables to my hearts desire, and take wedding planning to another level entirely