Specials

We had just ordered our pizza and were hungrily sipping on our drinks, desperately waiting for our food to arrive after a long day at the world's biggest travel trade fair. It had been a day of small talk and business appointments, but as the evening commenced our press badges and business selves were slowly vanishing. We started chatting about non-work related topics, but naturally always returned to the same old one, the common favorite: Travel. -- Have you been to the Algarve? Can you repeat how to say cheers in Hungarian? What did you think of Bratislava? I suddenly realized [...]

When I look around, everyone seems to be so ambitious. Whether it's people I barely know, or my closest friends, everyone seems to be striving toward something: To lose a few pounds, to graduate magna cum laude, to find the dream job, to gain more Instagram followers, to find the love with that everlasting spark. Being surrounded by all these ambitious friends and acquaintances (aka people I stalk online) can be exhausting. Don't get me wrong though, it's in no way a bad thing to work toward something, to have certain goals. But sometimes I feel like this ongoing ambition contest also leads [...]

"I dreamed a dream my life would be..." -- these are the famous words Fantine sings in Les Miserables when she realizes that her life has absolutely not turned out the way she thought it would. Of course, I'm not comparing myself to Fantine's horrible fate. But her words stuck with me nonetheless: I was 16 years old when I was Fantine in our high school musical production of Les Miserables -- and I had a certain dream what my life would be like in the future, too. It was only a little high school musical show, but for me it was the [...]

I always get a little nostalgic when the new year is about to begin. I sort of like clinging to the old year and remember what happened. At the same time, I like to imagine what the next year will be like -- always hoping that it will be (even) better than the last one. A few years back, a friend and I started to write something we called "The First Time List" during the holidays. We wanted to end the year remembering all the things we had done for the very first time that year. We would put big [...]

I vividly remember when it happened to me for the first time. I was 19 years old on art major class field trip to Rome. We had spent the entire year before learning about Renaissance and Baroque architecture and the history of the Eternal City. Dates and countless names of places, popes, and artists had to be learned by heart to prepare those seven September days studying real art in Rome. When we finally arrived, we had to practice our architecture sketching skills in front of ancient ruins and give presentations in front of famous fountains, half-screaming to be louder than [...]

It was my 27th birthday this week and after my last post on turning older was filled with self-doubt, question marks, and worries about the future, I thought it was time for a little comic relief. Because no, I'm still not a proper grown up yet. Here are 27 things I still have not learned in 27 years: 1. How to not spill food while eating. Just look at my vast scarf collecting and you'll find a detailed summary of what I ate this week. A work friend even just gave me a baby bib for my birthday, because I [...]