VLOG | weekend in Mallorca

A few weeks ago two friends and I spontaneously booked a trip to Mallorca with the intention to try deep sea climbing. While I'm not the strongest climber (I've plateaued 😞) I'm always up for a little adventure!

Daniel and Pablo left almost a week before me to fit in as many climbs as possible and I joined the last 3 days. One would think, after hearing so many stories about how wonderful Mallorca is, we'd be basking in the sun in 22 degree temperatures but sadly it was mostly grey skies and a bit of rain here and there the whole weekend.

Also tip, if you ever were to go to places like Spain, Itlay, or Portugal in the autumn months, bring warm clothes for the apartments! They're build to stay cool during the summer but goddamn, we were freezing our butts off in the evening.

We still had a lot of fun though. The landscape there was something I've never seen nor experienced before. There was a lot of hiking to make up for the lack of climbing (for me at least) and we even managed to brave the cold waters and go for a quick swim the second day at Cala Santanyí. 

If we were to go again next year I'm going to try to train a little bit more before the trip. We're also considering bringing our bikes along to cycle around the island. Now that'd be an amazing trip.

VLOG | milan, verona, venice, lago di garda

I also created an accompanying video for the Italy trip. It's the longest I've ever made and creating travel vlogs were one of the main reasons I started dabbling in video editing in the first place. I really enjoyed making this one and it would be a nice slice of memory to look back on in the future.

TRAVEL | italy with adam

After a long year of uncertainty I finally felt safe enough to venture out of Germany again for a bit of travel. Luckily Itlay was one of the earlier countries in the EU that have opened up their borders for tourism again. Adam and I, after experiencing some light cabin fever and suffering through horrible spring allergies decided to jump the gun and just book ourselves a ticket to Italy for a week. We decided we'd also work remotely there as to not be too tempted to eat outside amongst the crowd as much. 

Overall, the first trip out was a massive success. It was also our first trip as a couple and that's always a bit of a rite of passage. We managed to find a stellar airbnb in the heart of Verona, where we stayed for the week. We also got to travel to Venice for a day-trip, which was especially special since tourism was only limited to European residents. It was a bit surreal to see Venice so empty and sleepy. I don't think any other visit will ever feel the same. I feel extremely lucky/privileged to be able to experience something like this.

One of nights we bought a handful of antipasti dishes from the nearby grocery shops

and had a feast of our own at home. I made a salad and we paired it with a cold octopus
salad, grilled squid, and other misc. dishes.

Adam found a foccaia spot not to far from our airbnb. The quatro fromaggi

was to die for. We ended up coming back a few more times to try some other
focaccias with different toppings. The bread was perfectly fluffy, crispy, and
greasy, definitely not something you'd want to be eating every day.

VLOG | first half of may

 

It's finally summer.

Overall, I've been extremely lucky throughout this pandemic. I've been privileged and fortunate enough to have my health, my job, my apartment etc. Being an introvert, it was pretty easy to navigate the past year as we fluctuated in and out of lockdowns. My flatmate and boyfriend had a heavy hand in keeping in a good headspace. 

However, earlier this year I was hit by the worse case of allergies I've ever had to endure in my life. I felt my quality of life drop from considerably and I was really struggling to get through my day-to-day life.  But since the seasons starting changing and Berlin started easing up on lockdown restrictions I started to feel that fog lift -- finally. These past few weeks have been so beautiful with the late blooming cherry blossoms and beers by the lake.

VLOG | to gubin and back

Last week I took the week off from work for a nice 10 day holiday. While we re still in the middle of the pandemic that made choices for holiday destinations extremely limited. We were basically stuck in Germany and even then there were new lockdown measures added every day. In the end we decided not to leave Berlin and instead take a cycling day trip out to the edges of Brandenburg instead. We started at Frankfurt Oder and started cycling south towards Gubin, a city that sits right on the Polish and German border.

I tried my best to document as well as I could. This vlogging thing is pretty difficult and kind of intrusive to be honest, since I have to consider how to film and when it's the best time to whip out my phone for some footage. It definitely takes you out of the moment for a bit and can stress out the person being filmed, but I'm trying to get better at that. To be as low key as possible as well as making feel comfortable when the camera's on them are skills I still need to hone. But at the end of the day, the whole thing pays off because I have so many nice visuals to remind me of this special little trip. Hope to create a lot more when it's warm enough again to be outside.

As for the trip, in the end we managed to cycle close to 122km. The longest cycle trip I’ve ever done in one go (for Adam as well). Our legs felt like jelly towards on the train ride back but there was a definite air of accomplishment. Been talking to some friends about doing a cycling trip to Prague later this year. Hope it all works out!

 

VLOG | No. 1 Grunewald & Cooking

 

Here's the debut of my first little video project! The idea for this is to keep it as barebones as possible so that I wouldn't loose any motivation creating these. So far I'm enjoying it and will be posting more in the future.

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This test clips were taken last week on a short trip to Grunewald with Adam, Rikard and little Frankie. The weather has been pretty uninspiring as of the last month so it does take a little bit of push to get ourselves to do anything that requires the least bit of effort. But it’s hard to say no to a large dog park in the middle of the forest. We stopped at a part of Grunewald I've never been before called Hundestrand Grunewaldsee (Dog beach Grunewald Lake) where dogs can walk freely without leashes. The loop around the lake only took an hour but it was super nice to be out in nature, even for a little bit.

That evening Rikard whipped up a famous German dish - white asparagus with hollandaise sauce and boiled potatoes. For years I've been hearing about Spargel season in Germany and I've finally gotten to try it. The white asparagus is only available for a few weeks of the year and the Germans go absolutely Ga-ga over them. The dish was much easier than I expected to prepare it and Rikard made the excellent decision to mix some chipotle powder into the hollandaise to give it a smokey/spicy kick. Will definitely be doing that if I recreate this dinner in the future.

PERSONAL | brunch and a walk

I've taken a loooooooong break from blogging. It was always something I had planned to get back into but it's one of those things where, the longer you put it aside the more intimidating the task becomes. Until it becomes this behemoth of a thing (all in my head though) that you just sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist anymore. I've always missed my blog but at the same time I feel like I've also lost my passion for documenting and photographing. Until now that is. I think?

Maybe the pandemic and lockdown had something to do with it. But I'm not sure if I can blame it all on that. Sure, there wasn't as many trips last year but it's not like there were none. Anyways, I look back on my photo reel from 2020 and I've barely taken any photos. 

That being said, I've been watching a lot of youtube and vlog content lately and have been feeling super inspired to be more creative. Who cares if the photos are boring. At least I'm doing something! Here's to bringing blogging back - and to starting a new endeavour I've been meaning to since forever - videos!!!

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Lots of changes in the past year, I don't plan on diving into details, but recently I've started a new relationship (Hi Adam if you're reading this!) and while Germany is still cold af and in a semi-lockdown phase, this means no nights out, no parties, no bars or spritzes by the Spree, restaurants - you get the jist. But we've been making it up with nice evenings in, series binging and wholesome brunches. 

I mean look at that yogurt bowl. Granola was top notch from the new cafe in Wedding, { Julius }. 

Lazy weekends are also cut with long walks outside if the weather permits. We always walk towards coffee and then back home when it finally gets too cold. It's been a nice weekend routine that's currently bringing me a lot of joy.