The Beauty of Learning

I love to learn. I like trying new things, challenging my brain and just learning something new for the sake of it. Knowledge doesn't need a purpose other than that I enjoy to aquire it. Just mastering a new skill or being able to remember a certain thing after studying fills me with joy. That's why I thought I'd share with you some of the things I am currently learning and/or practising. Not all of these stimutlate your brain but i went out of my comfort zone and tried some new stuff.

• Memorising countries on a map. I realised that I don't remember shit from geology in school so I started to learn where which country is located on the map. I started with Europe which is where I live and at the moment I am doing Central and South America. I also have an app that asks me all countries in the world but I'm no good so far, except for European countries to be honest. If you want to try learning the map, there are many tests on the internet as well as some app which you can find easily.
• Sewing by pattern. I made a bathrobe following a pattern with a little help from a friend, pictures will follow soon, i hope. I want to make a nightgown that goes with it when I finally find the time to sew for a few hours.
• Memorising the periodic table. I used to know what Au or Se stand for because, wel, I had chemistry in school. Now, I hardly remember any of it and I don't like it. At all. So I'm currently practising that with yet another app.
• Doing the splits and the bridge. Because I hate sports but I really need some exercise. And because I was able to do them both. I'm still kind of flexible but I want to be able to do them properly. I will link the videos which I use do the stretching exercises below!

What are you learning or practising at the moment?
Have a great day,
The Countess

London! Part One

(This was written in autumn, I know it's spring by now, sorry about that, I kind of lost a few posts in my drafts.)

London doesn't need  a lot of words, just let the beauty of the city speak for itself! This is part one, more will follow soon! These pictures were all taken on Sonja's and my very first day, before the others arrived. We were incredibly lucky, the weather was really nice, it wasn't cold at all and it didn't even rain except for the night we arrived which was great because guess who forgot to bring an umbrella?!

Yay, light

Feed me!

Surprisingly, London squirrels aren't much into chocolate rice crackers

Yes, that's a thing.

See?!

Yay to the way the light falls in this one. Again.

Sonja trying to take a decent picture of a squirrel

Have you ever been to London? Which are your favourite places?

Have a great day!

The Countess

On How To Treat Your Loved Ones

I don't like children and I am not really a family person. Yet I have the tendency to go all mommy on the people I love. Not in the patronising kind of way, I don't believe in not letting people make their own decisions, I just like to make sure everyone is okay. There are a lot of people that have come into my life one or the other way, maybe through school, maybe through coincidence, maybe through the Green Youth, maybe through the internet and often it's kind of hard to keep in touch. Time is a very limited thing, unfortunately, and it's not always easy to see and/or talk to everyone as much as I'd like to. So I try to make up for it.

I haven't realised it for the longest of time but I tend to surprise people with food (especially cake and crisps and chocolate) and little tokens of my love. As I have horribly little time seeing people is a bit difficult but it is really important to me that I make sure my friends still know that I think of them and that I love them dearly. I'm not really sure why I do it, I just know that feeling loved and appreciated is wonderful so I want to make my friends feel like they have someone who thinks fondly of them. Maybe this kind of appreciation comes through a selfmade vegan cake, maybe through a little present, a decorated letter in the mail, a bottle of cheap vegan white wine I bring around or just a facebook message telling them that i miss and love them. Because I might not have time to give but I do have these things. It's not ideal but it's a start and I am sure my friends know how to read these gestures.

What do you do to make your loved ones happy?
Have a great day!

A Collection Of Stones

I found this in my drafts, wow how could I forget to post this, silly me...
 
I have told you on several occassions that I love and collect semi-precious stones and also fossiles but I never really showed you any. Well, I re-decorated my commode the other day and finally my collection has a worthy spot in my room. I have no idea if you are interested in these things but I thought I'd share some impressions with you anyway.

First of all, a few shots of some of my favourite stones. I don't always know their latin names and way too often I forget how they came into my possession but I like them a lot and they all have a special place in my collection.

 And look, you can wear them around your neck! Those aren't all charms I have lying around and I also have a few rings but they aren't that interesting to photograph as they are very simple.

Agate slices are my very favourite, they are so delicate yet hard and cold. I mean, look at this one, isn't it beautiful?

 

When I was a child my dad made me the little shelf. He used to collect stones, too, the big blocks of rose quarz were originally his. It became a tradition that he used to buy me a stone whenever we were at a market or on holidays. Now I buy them myself and I really need a new shelf as this one is full. At the Moment I keep the other stones in that little white bowl but even that one is too small now...

Do you collect anything?

Have a great day,
The Countess

A Little Bag

I am in the process of bringing more structure into my life and one step is trying to figure out how I can carry things in my huge hand bag without having to search smaller things for ages. I have a walking pharmacy and a selfmade bag for my pens and pencils which didn't turn out great so I'm not showing you. What I do want to share is this little bag I made:

I made it from one of the patchwork fabric pieces I bought and just added a bit of lace. It's handsewn because I wanted to do some actual needlework for once, I sew most things with my Singer to be honest. Anyway, this little thing now sits in my walking pharmacy and contains some random things no sane person would carry around but we are all mad here, aren't we?

So this is what I keep in there:

• Candy
• Chewing gum
• Salt
• Sweetener in the little flower thingy

So, who the fuck carries sweetener around you'll ask. I do. From now on at least. I recently found out that the sweetener in uni contains lactose and as a vegan I really don't want to use that (and I don't really like sugar in my coffee...).
It's a regular little plastic bag but I didn't wnat to make it look like I carry around drugs so I put some washi tape around it to make it look more harmless. And hey, everything looks better with kitchy flower patterns, right?

Do you carry around any weird things?

Have a great day!
The Countess

Pattens and Colours and Stuff

I buy too much stuff. But hey, at least I have something to blog about then!
The other day I bought two sets of patchwork quarters at the euro version of the dollar store. Yes, ten patchwork pieces cost a euro there. They came in two different colour schemes, one has blue as the dominant colour, the other one is pink. And...just look at them! Aren't they pretty?!

I bought them without really knowing what to do with them but since then the creativity fairy tickled me a little. I use one as a glasses cloth (creative, I know, aren't I artsy?!), I made a little bag for my pens and I made another bag for some random stuff I carry around and which i will show you in a different post. I will probably go and buy more packs so I can make a table cloth for two friends who just moved flats and an apron for myself. 
Do you have any ideas what i could do with these beauties?

Have a great day!
The Countess

Carnival!

So remember that time of the year where I dress up? Well, it was that time of the year again! i love carnival, it's a great opportunity to be really creative and try out some costumes and make-up styles without any boundaries. it is actually socially acceptable to wear wigs and rhinestones, how could you not love that?!

For the first day I went as a zombie queen:

Yes, i might have overdone it with the fake blood.

Aaaand for the other days I went as Flora, goddess of bloom:

Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the outfits but I tend to put the focus on the make-up anyway. 
Do you like to dress up? As what/who?

Have a great day!
The Countess

A Feminist Opinion on Splitting the Bill

Tonight after a political meeting some of us went for the optional but very necessary beer. It was a nice evening, just three of us (a woman in her early 40s and a [male] friend of mine who is about my age), some beer and nice discussions. The woman who waited our table was really nice and friendly and we never ran out of drinks. In the end when we wanted to leave we asked her for the bill and while the woman paid for herself the waitress immediately asked my friend if we were going to pay together.

First of all: No.

Secondly: Why did she assume that? Are two people of different sexes who are about teh same age immediately a couple? What kind of hetero-normative bullshit is this? Would she have asked this if I would have been sitting next to a girl? We are living in the 21st century, is it really that absurd that two people go for a drink (with another person!!) without being involved? Is there no such thing as friendship between a guy and a woman?

Thirdly: I don't let people pay for me, full stop. My boyfriend of 5 1/2 years doesn't pay for me either. I am an independant woman and I don't need someone to provide for me. So even if this guy would have been my boyfriend, why on earth would he pay for me? Do we still live in an era where women cannot provide for themselves? Where they are dependend on their lovers to pay? Where men have to earn enough to provide for another human being?

Sometimes I pay for both myself and my boyfriend. Sometimes he pays. In the end, it deoends on who has more money at them in that moment. It equalizes itself. But I do make sure he doesn't end up paying on a regular basis for the reasons I have mentioned before. It's important to me to be financially independant and thus I get mad when someone assumes that I don't provide for myself. I do not believe in these traditional gender roles. Which sounds like a disadvantage for menis nothing but open blantant sexism. Women are dependend, money is something associated with men. I do not blame the waitress, she was merely trying to be nice, after all she grew up in this society where men paying for women is the norm. Which is a bit ridiculous.

What do you think when it comes to this topic? Do you let other people pay for you/do you pay for your significant other?

Have a great day,
The Countess

The Tasty Pasty Company

Today I accidentally stumbled into a café and it turned out to be the best thing to happen this week so far. A uni friend and I were on our way back to the main campus after a lecture and we agreed we were in need of some refreshments. We saw a little café just across the road that we hadn't noticed before. It looked really cute from the outside, bright yellow, some balloons and a simple sign that we liked immediately:

Curiously, we entered. It turned out to be everything but an ordinary café, no, we stumbled into a brand new British pasty shop! The reason we hadn't noticed it before even though we pass the place on a weekly basis was because it had just opened a few hours ago. Lucky us! 
The owners are two really nice English men who immediately greeted us with their charmingly British accents. The first thing I noticed about the café was the size: The whole thing is tiny! It doesn't have any tables but a bench on one side of the room, opposite to the counter. The interior is amazing, you feel comfortable the second you get through the door: Red brick walls, old dark wood lightened up by a baby blue vintage looking counter. But see for yourself:

I regretted not being hungry because the pasties looked amazing! They have several vegetarian options and even one vegan version which of course makes the Tasty Pasty Company a must on my list of restaurants and cafés to try. Next time I will go for the vegan pasty for sure! Today, though, I only chose an iced tea. Not one of those boring, over-sugared beverages that taste more like a fizzy drink without the fizz, nope. This iced tea was light, not too sweet and tasted fantastic!

Shut up, it's not blurry, it's arty^^

It lasted me quite a while, I drank the rest in uni.

I asked the owners if I could take a few pictures for the blog and they happily agreed. In exchange they asked if they could take a picture of us with our drinks for the photo wall they are planning. What a lovely idea! They told us about their facebook page (which I liked as soon as I opened my laptop) and were just really nice and chatty in general. Oh, and they built everything themself! How cool is that?!

If you are from Cologne, give The Tasty Pasty Company a visit, it's well worth it!

This is their facebook, this is their wesbite, the adress is: 

Dürener Str. 64a
50931, Cologne

Have a great day!

Home is wherever I'm with you

I'm back.

After a few months where I had to deal with a few private things I am now finally back and I intent to make the best of it. I missed blogging, I honestly did. Tomorrow the last week of this semester starts and I thought it would be a good time to start blogging again. I was hospitalised twice around Christmas and I had/have to work on some personal problems I am having but I don't only come to write about bad news, of course, life rarely is all bad: I have been elected as a member of the board of the Green Youth North-Rhine Westfalia in November! I didn't plan to candidate but when no suitable woman for the position was found (the board has to consist of at least 50% women) they asked me if I wanted to candidate. Not having prepared a speech of course, I got pretty nervous having to stand in front of over 100 people and talk about myself but what I said must have sounded alright because I was elected with a pretty socialistic result. Since then the Green Youth has kind of become my job (not that I am paid). I send dozens of emails every day, I have weekly phone conferences, monthly meetings, seminars, I write and/or amend press releases and invocations, I help organising seminars and of course the big meeting of all Green Youth members of NRW that takes place three times a year. It's a great honorary office, I am learning a lot and it gives my life a certain purpose. But of course it also means I don't have as much free time as I used to have but honestly, I spent way too much time in bed anyway.
So I am back. Because the blog keeps me active, it forces me to appreciate the beauty in life and in the world and I should have never abandoned it.

Speaking of beauty, the last few weeks have been cold but sunny and I managed to catch the sun doing pretty things a few times and I thought I'd share the results with you. I really need a proper camera...

 

Although I also shared these pictures on Instagram too, I didn't use a filter, nature has its own filters and they work way better than anything Instagram could ever come up with. By the way, if you have Instagram, feel free to leave your user name in the comments! I'm the_countess_of_fairytales there and @ThexGoodxFairy on Twitter.

I am really happy to be back and I will definitely catch up with my favourite blogs again, I really missed all of this, wow.

Have a great day,
The Countess