a quick travel guide to monaco

It has gone quite some time now since I told you in this post that I wanna share more pictures with you from my travels to the CĂŽte d’Azur in March last year. Since I shot more than thousand pictures during this trip, I never had the time to look through everything and to put it together to an entire blogpost. I decided to divide this little guide into three parts because one huge post would take forever to load.
As you might see below, I didn’t write many recommendations, like what to do, where to go and so on because me and my dad mostly strolled around and we didn’t have had a plan either. But since Monaco and Monte Carlo are such small places, it’s easy to just walk around and to pretty much explore everything within a day. If you want, you can head over to this blogpost from London which is more like a real guide. I’m going to write about Nice and Cannes in the following blogposts, so stay tuned. 🙂

HOW TO GET THERE
First of all, I need to say how much I loved Monaco’s train station! It’s definitely the architectural highlight of Monte Carlo. But let us begin with the actual train ride from Nice, where we stayed at the Ibis Hotel close to the central station. You can reach Monaco easily by train within 25 minutes from Nice Ville. The train departures usually at least once in an hour, so you don’t have to book any tickets in advance. And the tickets are cheaper than you might think, one-way costs only 3€. The train ride itself is absolutely a highlight, take a seat at the window and enjoy the beautiful view over the sea. When we arrived in Monaco I got once more speechless, because this is the most amazing station I’ve ever seen. They built it in the middle of the mountains within a tunnel and it fits just perfectly there. If you didn’t knew it was located there I guess you wouldn’t find it, especially because there is this cute little church in front of it. There are two exits, one to the centre and one to the port. We chose the one to the port. Going down the stairs you can see and smell the sea already. As already mentioned below, it’s super easy to explore the city/country within a day and by foot as we did.

FOOD
To keep it short: I suppose you know this already, but the CĂŽte d’Azur and especially (!) Monaco are extremely expensive places to go to. The many Yachts and glamorous cars aren’t there without a reason. This applies unfortunately also to the food locations, which are mostly very exclusive places with horrific prices. An example: One of this small scoops of ice-cream you see on the picture above costs 4€. If you travel on a budget, just avoid getting hungry in Monaco. Walking small hills up and down can be quite exhausting though, so our solution was to look out after a supermarket and to buy baguette and cream-cheese there. Needless to say that it’s much cheaper, but besides that it’s also nice to sit down on a park bench eating a small picnic. Try to eat a bigger breakfast before going to Monaco and ideally, you take some snacks already with you from Nice.



ENJOY THE GREEN
Maybe this comes surprising, but Monaco got some beautiful green spots hidden between the buildings. We found one park which was actually really calm because there was not one single person. I don’t know at all how we got there, but if you walk a little bit around you’re definitely going to find it. It was on one of these small hills, from where you got this great view over the sea and the port.

THE ROYAL PALACE
The place where the Grimaldi were born is for sure one of the biggest attractions in Monaco besides the Formula One Race and the Casino. Climb up the stairs, it’s worth it. Beautiful view inclusive.


THE PORT
With all of it’s hundreds and hundreds super expensive Yachts, Monaco is the ideal place to see what money looks like. It’s impressive to walk along the landing stage, thinking that one boat is big while right beside of it is a yacht at least ten times bigger. Proportions have absolutely no meaning there. Some of you maybe think this sounds boring, but I liked spotting the Yachts. Everything is really quiet down there, one boat next to another, while the sun adds an even greater glamorous effect to the whole atmosphere.



THE MONACO LIFE
Besides all that glamour it still exists kind of a normal Monaco life. Some people walking their dogs, some working out, some doing grocery shopping… Because I love to watch people, we sometimes sat down, relaxed and just watched people managing their daily life. Although I really liked doing this, Monaco felt kinda empty. Everything was so clean, there were even two guys picking up every single leaf from the ground in the park. It felt like a world which didn’t exist, unreal and only built up.

VIEWS
Unfortunately, many buildings look pretty much the same
and there isn’t much left of the beautiful view to the mountains. Down
below you can see a couple of random photos, like one of a really cool car
(would love to drive this!), beautiful houses and shoots from the clear
blue water.
Go to Monaco if you are in Nice and got a couple of free hours, and if it’s just because of the amazing train ride!

denim + other issues

Eine Woche ist vergangen seit Trump das höchste politische Amt in den USA bekleidet. 207 Wochen noch to go, wie die Satiriker (die mir in den letzten Tagen trotz der tĂ€glichen, beklemmenden Neuigkeiten meinen Tag versĂŒĂŸen konnten) schreiben wĂŒrden. Was ich mich aber wirklich, ganz ernsthaft, in letzter Zeit oft frage, ist, ob angesichts der ErlĂ€sse Trumps irgendjemand tatsĂ€chlich ĂŒberrascht und verwundert ist. Wo sind all die hin, die im Wahlkampf so laut geschrien haben, man solle ihn doch nicht ernst und beim Wort nehmen, den Trottel-Trump? Kein Vorwurf, aber mein GrundverstĂ€ndnis ist, dass man seinen MitbĂŒrgern immer alles zutrauen sollte, egal, ob es sich dabei um die politischen Schwergewichter ĂĄ la Trump handelt oder um jemanden in seiner nĂ€chsten NĂ€he. “Nur weil er das sagt, muss er es noch lange nicht umsetzen” – solche Sager konnte und kann ich nach wie vor nicht ausstehen. Denn was ausgesprochen wurde, wurde gedacht – und alles, was gedacht werden kann, kann auch umgesetzt werden.
Dazu auch eine großartige Kolumne aus der New York Times: How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years:

“What’s new is that someone who talks like this in public has become the
president of the United States. Yet it isn’t surprising, and if we are
not to spend the next four to eight years alternating between
exasperation and confusion as he sounds off, we need to learn a new way
of listening.”

Ich bin keine politische Analytikerin, die Lösungen anzubieten hat, wie man mit einem weltfremden Politiker umgehen soll. Aber damit aufzuhören, stĂ€ndig mit “Naja, schauen wir mal” auf offensichtliche Entwicklungen zu reagieren, wĂ€re vielleicht mal ein Anfang.

Todays look is from June 2016.
Turtleneck Shirt: Urban Outfitters | Skirt: Weekday | Shoes, Earrings, Ring: H&M | Tights: no name | Denim Jacket: Second Hand (Levi’s)



art project – two

Ich möchte wieder so ein
bisschen Kind sein
Wieder unbeschwert durch
die Gegend laufen können
Will mir nicht die Worte
anhören
All das, was die anderen
so einfach sagen

Ich möchte wieder so ein
bisschen Kind sein
Wieder atmen können und
schreien
Will vieles nicht sehen
können
All das, worĂŒber die
anderen morgen wieder reden werden

Dabei war ich doch diejenige
Die frĂŒher immer so
erwachsen sein wollte
Und kein Kind mehr sein

Ich will so vieles nicht
mehr hören
FrĂŒher war es so einfach
Ich hielt die HĂ€nde an
meine Ohren
Und hörte nichts mehr, es
war so leicht

Jetzt, jetzt muss ich
alles hören
Kann auch nicht mehr die
Augen verschließen
So wie ich es frĂŒher
gemacht hab

HĂ€tte mir das doch nur
jemand gesagt,
ja dann, dann hÀtte ich
einen Plan gehabt,
dann, da bin ich mir
sicher, dann wÀre alles
wirklich alles, anders  

Ich will wieder so ein
bisschen Kind sein
So unbeschwert durch die
Gegend laufen können
Will nicht die Worte hören

I wrote these words almost exactly three years ago. Back then, I had sometimes these philosophical thoughts which didn’t let me fall asleep. Instead, I often took the time to write my thoughts down, sometimes digital and sometimes on paper. While getting through old documents on my laptop, I found some of these notes again. No idea what my intention behind these words was, I’m not even sure I had some intentions while writing it. During these sleepless nights, a thousand of ideas were buzzing around in my mind. I liked the messy way of how letters kept forming themselves into words, pouring down on the paper. There were no rules, no advice given to me. Just myself lying in bed, holding a pen in my hand and thinking about how big and endless this world seems to me.
Today, these nights are rarely happening anymore. But the words haven’t stopped floating down my mind.

[may I introduce: Edina, a dear friend and classmate of mine. This was the same art project which I told you about already in the last post, but this picture is definitely one of my favorite ones. You might recognize the tribute to Frida Kahlo.]

art project – one

I wanted to publish these pictures sooner, actually directly after we shot them in November/December, but I never found an intro, something to say about it. I still don’t know how to start, but well, a little bit of explaining won’t hurt. We did the most interesting project in our art class in my opinion this year. The task was to create citates of (more or less) known pictures and to add somehow our own “messages” to it. I found this amazing collage of portraits of Meryl Streep, shot by Annie Leibovitz, somewhere at pinterest when I looked for inspiration. I think everybody is free to interpret these pictures by themselves, but I was so happy with the outcome of this project that I simply wanted to show them here on the blog too. Maybe you also recognize Monika, we did shoot some pictures before. I think I’m also going to make a second blogpost about this art project with pictures from other classmates of mine.




Happy Birthday / Merry Christmas / Happy New Year

Lots of events were happening in the last few weeks. First of all, I celebrated my 18th birthday with family and friends. It’s actually quite awesome to finally turn 18, but at the same time I feel there’s no difference to when I was 17. Personally, I still think I’m 16, so from now on I’ve to really start thinking if someones asks me after my age. But otherwise it’s of course nice to be “officially” responsible for myself.
My classmates gave me the probably greatest gift ever: an instax mini 8! They’re simply the best and it feels truly unreal to be seperated from them after we’ll graduate this year. They are amazing people and it feels so good to be surrounded by people you can trust and have fun with. Some of my friends came to my place a couple of days ago to celebrate once more and, as it’s almost a ‘must do’ for a girls night, we watched all High School Musical movies and stayed up until 6am…

The last few weeks before we went on christmas holidays were exhausting as always – finding presents, sending letters away, learning for tests and so on. These holidays were extremly needed in order to relax and to get new energy for the next couple of challenges which are waiting. Something that always fills me up with energy too, is thinking about my time in Sweden and talking to all the lovely people I’ve met there. Such as my fantastic hostfamily. We finally managed to talk on Skype again after we last saw each other in the summer. All of them sat in front of their laptop, even some of their grandchildren were there. They’re so kind and I’m beyond grateful to be able to call them my second family.
Besides that, I celebrated christmas with my family and for the first time also with our little boy from Afghanistan who lives with us since about half a year. Certainly it’s different to when we it was just our three-person-household, but it’s cool to have a little brother also. 🙂 New Years Eve spent the whole family together at my uncle’s and his wife place, just a super relaxed night to welcome the new year. Can you believe we already write the year 2017? I will never get used to how fast time runs.

The one week which is left before school starts again will probably be a comfy ‘staying at home and re-watching my favorite series’-week. SKAM is a norwegian series and probably the best produced series I’ve ever seen. The storyline is just extremely well made and I’m simply in love with it. Thanks at this point to my friend Jonna from Sweden who recommended it to me, it made me cry and laugh so hard!

I hope you all had a great start into the new year and that you are as excited as I am to see which adventures will wait for us in 2017. There’s for sure an exciting year ahead of us.


do it yourself — gift guide

Christmas is around the corner and so is the hectic time of buying presents. Why don’t you try to make some presents by yourself instead of running around in the city? I’m sure that selfmade gifts are a lot more esteemed nowadays, because the person who’s the gift is for will know that you’ve spend time and love on it. Down below you can find my top five do it yourself gifts for your beloved ones. Each of them is easy to make and very flexible in how you choose to design it to add a personal touch. Happy crafting! 🙂

â†Ș for book lovers

â†Ș for plant lovers

â†Ș for the special ones

â†Ș for interior lovers

â†Ș for jewelry lovers

BECAUSE IT MATTERS

Es sind wohl solche Schlagwörter, die Aufmerksamkeit wecken.
Wahrscheinlich sind es gerade diese Wörter, die eine blitzschnelle Reaktion
erfordern. Hinhören? Weghören? Diese Frage stellte sich mir nicht, als wir –
stimmungsgerecht begleitet von kaltem Nieselregen – aus dem Bus steigen. Ich
frage mich, ob es an diesem Ort sonnige Tage gibt. Wolkenlose Stunden. Es wĂŒrde
sich wahrscheinlich falsch anfĂŒhlen, an einem Tag unter blitzblauem Himmel Geschichten
wie jene zu hören. Da war diese Frau, sie wohnte mit ihrer Familie nur einige
Meter vom Steinbruch entfernt. Der GeschichtenerzÀhler mit brauner Aktentasche
und ein paar wenigen Falten auf der Stirn las die Anzeige vor, die sie damals
an die Polizeidienststelle verfasste. Sie schrieb von „unzumutbarem LĂ€rm“ den
man ihr, einer betagten, gebrechlichen Frau, nicht zumuten könne. Sie schrieb
von ihrem Wunsch einer Mauer, damit sie es nicht mitansehen mĂŒsse. UnverstĂ€ndnis.
Pures UnverstĂ€ndnis empfinde ich. „Egoistisch“, „auf den eigenen Vorteil
bedacht“, schoss mir durch den Kopf.
Diese Schlagwörter, auf welche ich bereits die ganze Zeit angespielt
habe, heißen „Konzentrationslager“. Heißen „Mauthausen“. WĂ€hrend der
GeschichtenerzÀhler weiter und weiter erzÀhlt, beschreibt, anregt, versuche ich
zu verstehen. Zum Beispiel diese Frau. Oder diesen Bauern, der ebenfalls unweit
des Lagers wohnte und einzig seine eigenen Vorteile im Blick hatte. Oder all
diese Menschen, die bei einem Fußballspiel jubelten wĂ€hrend dahinter hunderte
Gefangene einem grausamen Tod in die Augen schauten. Die Zahl wurde am Vortag
festgelegt.
Sechshundertdreiundsechzig. Minus sechshundert. Eins, zwei, drei, vier,
fĂŒnf
 dreiundsechzig. Dieser Wille, dieses Klammern an eine Hoffnung, die
eigentlich nur mehr in der Fantasie existiert, erstaunt mich am Allermeisten. Ich
versuche, zu verstehen und bin doch klÀglich daran gescheitert. Ich versuche,
mich hineinzuversetzen, in das GefĂŒhl der Enge, der Angst, der Ungewissheit.
Und scheitere. In diesen Momenten ist alles so nah und doch bin ich so weit weg
von all diesen Schicksalen. Es sollte mir doch nahe gehen, denke ich, wÀhrend
wir in dem Waschraum, in welchem die HĂ€ftlinge kahl geschoren wurden, stehen.
Das Einzige, was mich in diesem Moment bewegt, ist pures UnverstÀndnis. Es
begleitet mich die ganze Zeit. Jeden einzelnen Schritt, den ich auf diesem
Platz mache, fĂŒhlt sich an wie Trampeln. An einem Ort, an dem ich durch Schreie
meiner Hilflosigkeit Ausdruck verleihen möchte, ist alles von ehrfĂŒrchtiger
Stille geprÀgt.
Die tausend weißen Buchstaben auf schwarzem Boden ergeben Namen. Hinter
jedem dieser Namen steckt eine IdentitÀt, eine Geschichte. Mein Blick fÀllt
immer wieder auf einzelne Namen und wieder komme ich der Versuchung nahe, in
meinen Gedanken ein Kopfkino spielen zu lassen. Als ich es verdrÀngen will,
mischen sich viele Gedanken dazu. War es genau diese VerdrÀngung einer wahren
Vorstellung, die viele Beteiligte dazu verleitet hat, narzisstisch zu handeln?
Der wohl beste Satz fÀllt am Ende, vor den offenen Toren einer
geschlossenen Geschichte. „Die BeschĂ€ftigung mit der Vergangenheit gibt uns die
Macht, unsere Zukunft beeinflussen zu können.”
ad: Ein gutes Jahr ist es her, dass ich mit meiner Klasse Mauthausen besucht habe. Damals schrieb ich auch diesen Text fĂŒr den Geschichte Unterricht. Er erschien mir immer zu trist, um ihn auf meinem Blog zu veröffentlichen. Dieser Tage kam er mir allerdings wieder ins GedĂ€chtnis. Heute ist der zweite Adventsonntag und Wahltag fĂŒr Österreich. Es erschien mir passend, diesen Text heute online zu stellen. Denn sich an die Vergangenheit zu erinnern, ist kein Übel, sich an die Vergangenheit zu klammern, jedoch schon.

what an awesome night

Wow! What an awesome night it was. A week ago, it was finally time for my austrian prom. Together with my classmates, we celebrated an unforgettable night. The day began quite early – waking up on a Saturday morning at 7am isn’t what I’m used to. 😉 But me and my friend Laura, who also is on some of the pictures, had an appointment at the hairstylist already at 8am. My hair was done within half an hour, but Laura’s seemed to be more complex to style, as there were three hairstylists working on her hair. In the end, we were both very happy. We arrived at the event location at 10am, helping to decorate everything and do our final rehearsel. Everything was ready as we were forming a lane to welcome all of the guests. It was really beautiful to see everybody beeing happy and satisfied, since it was a bit stressful to plan the whole, big event all by ourselves. But everything worked out as planned. At midnight, it’s a tradition in Austria to do a so called “midnight show” were every class perform some kind of show to end the “offical” part and start partying. Since our motto was “Memories – Made in the 90’s” we decided to make a choreography to some songs from the 90’s. Me and my friends danced for example to Britney Spears “Hit me baby one more time” – take a look at our outfits below.
Huge thanks to everyone who was part of this awesome night – it was a honor to be surrounded by such fantastic people like my family and friends!

(c) we shoot it
dress: Peek&Cloppenburg

(c) my own pictures

why second hand is the way to go

Maybe you’ve already recognized it. The change in my choice of clothes. Not necessarily the change of my style, I think more about single pieces which I’m wearing nowadays.
It slowly began during my childhood and developed to a real attitude. I’m talking about Second Hand. Second Hand and Vintage are probably the most used words when describing the trend of Hipsters. But I believe the meaning of Second Hand is going way further than just being a short-time trend. I guess that most of you sometimes already wore pieces of your siblings, cousins or whomsoever. Why did you stop doing that when you got older? Why is it weird to answer people “It’s from my sister” when they ask where your “new” jeans is from? When I was younger I’ve got a bunch of stuff from my cousins and I was always so happy when they gave me some of their old clothes. At the age of 14, this changed completely. I still got things from my relatives but I felt like a “recycling place” with all their old clothes hanging in my closet. I wanted to go shopping, buy the latest trends and be able to tell my friends which brand my new jacket was.
And my way of dressing changed again while I was in Sweden. This had mainly two reasons. For the first time in my life, I had to take controll over my finances all by myself. I started to realize very soon that it’s actually more difficult than I thought it would be. I wanted to spend more money on adventures and less on unimportant things like clothes. Although I still wanted to go shopping. Thanks to my hostsister and some friends I explored the world of Second Hand Shops in Sweden. And I loved it! Firstly, because it was cheap and secondly, because it reflects the style of people in this particular area.
But there are several reasons why buying Second Hand is the future. It’s a sign against waste, overproduction and unfair working conditions. Of course it’s only one small step on the way to a more conscious thinking society, but it’s an important one. The complete change to Second Hand won’t happen within a day, it’s actually a slow process. However, it has to start somewhere.
The hunting after unique Second Hand pieces will definitely continue and I’m happy to take you with me on this journey!

If you want to read more about why Second Hand is the way to go, take a look on the articles linked below.
Lisa writes about how to end the fast fashion madness and about good reasons for giving your clothes a second life. She gives even some tips to people who want to change their shopping habits. Maddie from dariadaria published an excellent post on the catastrophic fashion industry. Let you inspire to buy some fair fashion items by the article on heylilahey. And last but not least, I strongly recommend you to read this awesome column (written in german) on glowing – I promise you’ll start to think differently after you’ve read it.

If you want to take a look on my former outfits where I already wore Second Hand pieces in different locations and styles: from austria | from london | from nice | from austriaÂČ

Todays look is from September 2015.
Oversized Blouse: Second Hand (Ralph Lauren) | Jeans: Second Hand (Trussardi) | Shoes: H&M (old) | Backpack: Second Hand




it’s all about changes

Autumn has arrived. This beautiful season is my favorite one of the year, with all the leaves slowly falling from trees. It’s for sure the most changing season, everything old gets a new shade. I like autumn also because you finally get some silent moments for yourself. Autumn is just the perfect time for new beginnings, new aims and new motivation.

Although I’ve to be honest with myself. This last week was very exhausting. I didn’t sleep well (or enough), I felt super stressed because I didn’t get done what I had to get done (or just last minute) and in general nothing worked out the way I wanted it to. People who know me know that I like things to work out as planned in order to avoid stress. But I felt just extremly unmotivated and therefore I neither had the energy nor the the right motivation to get stuff done. When I came home from school, I felt really tired and took a nap, but instead of taking a nap, I slept the whole afternoon because I didn’t get enough sleep during the nights. On top of that, my phone fell in the toilet and of course it was broken, so I had to order a new phone too, which makes the number on my bank account even smaller. And so this week was simply an endless circle of bad habits.
But a new week is waiting around the corner and I try to see things positive again. Just as autumn is the time of changes.

These pictures are from October last year. If you want to take a look on more pictures of Sabeth from this day, click here and here.

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