So far, this is the rainiest summer I’ve spent in Berlin. My first few summers here were good, so last year I was already surprised when June was cold and rainy. This year the cool and rainy weather continued into July, with quite a few days where it bucketed down. Sometimes it was cool and rainy, sometimes warm and rainy with thunderstorms. Continue reading
In Czech, June is called červen, which might be related to the word červený, meaning red. Another theory is that červen could come from červ (worm), because the cochineal larvae used for making red dye were around in early summer. Apparently they are now almost all extinct. Either way, June is a red month. The red poppies are out in all the fields and some of the red fruits (cherries, strawberries) are ripe too.
Popelka is the Czech version of Cindarella, screened every year around Christmas time (she’s also quite popular in Germany and Russia, I’ve heard). Fairytales are popular in Czech Republic; they are on TV all the time. Continue reading
Every year I say this, but this year seems like the fastest one ever. I feel like we were celebrating Christmas not long ago and here we are already on the 1 December again. We’re into winter days already (not officially since winter starts on the 21 December) but golden autumn is definitely gone and it’s got a lot colder. Since I haven’t written a weekly small pleasures post for a while (a blog event started by Mani at A New Life Wandering), I thought I’d update on some of the highlights of November. Continue reading
Well, June disappeared quickly, didn’t it! I have missed quite a few weeks of Weekly Small Pleasures, as there have been quite a few meetings and a lot of work this month. So one of this week’s small pleasures is getting the opportunity to participate in this blog event again this week 🙂 Thanks to Mani for being so diligent and keeping this blog event running all this time!
Here were this week’s small pleasures:
1.Summer weather. In South Africa I took sun for granted most of the time, but living through Berlin winters has taught me to appreciate every sliver of it. We’re having a lot of good, sunny weather this year. Continue reading
About an hour from Prague are other cities and towns well worth a visit. We’ve made a couple of day trips to several of them. Two cities, Pardubice and Hradec Kralove, lie relatively close to each other, and not far from Pardubice lies the town of Chrudim. We visited this lovely town again this weekend and I thought it was about time I posted some photos of it. Continue reading
Finally some free time I could use to work on my literature review write a blog post (:-) and what do I end up doing….playing around making example wedding invitations online.
But it is addictive, see here. With the online templates you can change the text, add your own photos and so on. So far J says all of my creations are too pink (even the purple ones). He is now keen to have a simple invitation with a protea on it, the South African flower I’ve chosen for my wedding bouquet. Let’s see how that evolves.
This past weekend we were kicked into wedding planning gear by J’s sister (and rightfully so, since we’re planning a June wedding but have not organized much yet at all). We’d done a bit of research about all the forms required to get married and had visited a priest at Christmas in Hradec Králové who’d informed us that to get married in a church we’d have to do the marriage preparation course. We’d also located a church in Berlin where we could do the course, although the usual parish priest was away so we’d have to wait before meeting with him. Other than that, we had not settled on either a church or a reception venue. Continue reading
Time for part two of my recap of 2015 using some of the Instagrams I created on my phone throughout the year! I don’t have Instagram photos of all of the places we visited, but going through my Instagram folder has given me an overview of 2015. When I ended off in the last blog post, we had just reached summertime. Along with a lovely trip to the Ostsee (Baltic sea) in summer, we also took a four day trip to visit some friends in Seville. Together the four of us also travelled to Granada, where we visited the beautiful palace of Alhambra. Continue reading
As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look back on the year and prepare for the next one. Since my phone is overloaded with photos I’ve taken during the year, I decided to clean it up to make space for next year’s adventures, but in the process ended up browsing through my old Instagram photos and thinking about the year that has passed. For those of you who don’t know Instagram, it’s a phone application that allows you to edit your photos easily and share them with others. The instant filters are fun to use and sometimes help capture the feeling of a place better than the original photo, since when you’re taking photos the light isn’t always ideal. So without further ado, here’s a look back on 2015 with the help of some Instagrams. I’ll split it into two parts as it’s a lot to go through! Continue reading
