Greetings from.. Munich

As some of my friends already now, I've been on a sightseeing trip to Munich last weekend. And now I am sitting in my bed, sorting through the hundreds of pictures I've taken and felt like writing a blog post about it before going to sleep. Ever since I came back from Munich, I could just sleep all the time - but I did and walked so much more than I usually do during the weekend, and then there is and was the heat, so I guess it is no wonder that my energy resources are empty. So I'm just having a lazy few days before I'll go on a trip to Osnabrück to visit a friend on the weekend. Oh, and in the meantime I'll also get the rest of my wisdom teeth removed tomorrow - not looking forward to it, but at least then all sucky teeth procedures are behind me. Yay! ;) Health insurance must start to hate me for all the expensive procedures I make them pay for this year. But let's talk about Munich now..

When I first arrived on Friday (I went with one on those new long-distance buses, that aren't exactly comfortable for a longer time - might be because I'm too impatient for long drives, anyway - and have the disadvantage of traffic jams, but the advantage of free Wifi and plug connectors, so they are a good alternative to trains for me).. well, I have to admit I first didn't like it much. I was standing at this big bus station and it kind of was a typical scene of "small town girl arriving in the big city": I didn't find the subway, I was overwhelmed by the mass of people, I hadn't thought of bringing a map .. it was a bit of an adventure to find my hotel, and when I did it's neighbourhood didn't seem too friendly and nice either, and I seriously wondered why there is such a hype about this town. So Friday evening was only spent with a walk through the neighborhood because I needed to find some dinner, before I retreated to my hotel room.
But on Saturday I started to enjoy my trip to Munich much more, also because then I discovered the more beautiful parts of town. The first half of Saturday was spent entirely in the beautiful and huge park of Nymphenburg castle. The park is really worth a visit and offers many different aspects: seeing the castle from the outside (there also is a museum on the inside, but I'm not interested enough in old paintings), beautifully arranged flower fields, sculptures, water, a canal with a gondola, woods, lakes, many many ducks and swans.. I spent a long time there, just walking around, taking pictures and trying to befriend a duck.

Nymphenburg Castle

..and its backside..

..and me with one of the creepy sculptures

After exploring the park, I went to the city centre, which turned out to be a huge contrast. The park was relatively quiet and peaceful, but the city centre was packed with tons and tons of people, both masses of tourists and locals on shopping sprees - no wonder on a Saturday afternoon, though. I guess it is the busiest day there is. It really was extremely crowded and hard to really look at all the beautiful architecture, and with the heat it was a bit exhausting, but it also had some fun aspects. One was the view from St. Peter tower. It's a big church tower, and my feet and legs complained a lot after climbing all those seemingly never-ending stairs, but the view was worth it, as it offered a chance to have a look at all of the city centre and in the distance, other parts of Munich. In the far distance, there also were the Alps, but only as a grey shadow. Another fun aspect was that there was a Hare Krishna celebration in town. When I met members of this group in Würzburg or other tows before, I always found them to be very annoying because they tried to sell me books and convince me of their religious beliefs. Plus, they do seem like weirdos while they do that.. But taken out of the annoying missionary context, I had a whole different impression, as they were just very lively happy people in colourful clothes, dancing in the streets, giving fruits to passengers, and having fun. And it was interesting to witness.

Frauenkirche & Neues Rathaus

Hare Krishna celebration

To have a more relaxed look at the architecture, I went back into town in the evening, and saw all the illuminated buildings. By this time it was still busy, but less crowded, so much better to really explore the city. And I enjoyed the atmosphere, with street musicians playing at every corner.

Sunday I went to Englischer Garten, and coincidentally I arrived right on time for the start of a Japanese festival! I didn't even know it would be on this day, so I was very lucky. And with my early arrival, I had time to peacefully look at everything before the masses of visitors showed up. There were booths showing all kind of Japanese stuff: crafts, games, decorations.. it was also possible to see Martial Arts, hear traditional music, and of course there was food. I was especially in awe with all the Japanese festival visitors in traditional clothes. Especially the little girls in kimonos looked sooo cute! My highlight was the Japanese Tea House, that is located on a little island within the park. It was possible to go inside and witness a tea ceremony, which was very interesting and so different from the way I make and drink my tea. A long, quiet, strictly structured ceremony instead of just throwing a tea bag into a mug.. ;P It gave off kind of a meditative vibe, and I'm impressed that people have the patience to learn all the steps!

Japanese Tea House

..from the inside

Festival visitors

After I had explored the festival and Japanese culture enough and before I had to catch my bus towards home, I spent some time just sitting at the edge of the river, letting my feet hang into the cold water and relaxing. I especially liked the parts of Englischer Garten with the river, it is so beautiful and relaxing, even when there are a lot of people that go swimming. And since I saw less of the park than I had planned because the festival distracted me, I would definitely want to go there again to explore the rest of it!

Englischer Garten and me ;)

So my resume for my Munich trip is that it is a lively town with beautiful spots and architecture, great food (not that I ate any Bavarian foods, but they have awesome Greek and Turkish food ;) ), so much to offer and to do that it is not possible at all to experience everything during one weekend,.. but it is also very busy, loud, crowded and expensive. I don't really get why so many people dream of living there, as I wouldn't want to do that at all, I prefer more peaceful places for that. But for a city trip, it is great and was definitely worth the trip!! :)

Summer Mail

I remember that in my last blog post I complained about the rain, cool temperatures and summer not being summer... so it may seem a bit weird that in the beginning of this one, I am happy about a bit of rain and grey clouds outside my window. But we had summer weather for a while now, and while I really like sunshine and warm temperatures - I don't like heatwaves! It's no fun to sweat all the time and feel like being boiled when leaving the house or opening the window. I know, I complain when summer doesn't show up, I complain when it does, and probably I will complain about the grey sky in a while again ... but for now it is nice. The rain just needs to go away on time for my sightseeing trip to Munich next weekend. It shouldn't be hot, but I also don't want to get wet while exploring Bavaria's capital. It's been a really long time since I last visited it. In fact, I can hardly remember it, but my parents insist that I was there as a child. So, I'm really excited to visit this town for a weekend!

Anyway, not much has been going on in my life lately that I would need to share here, but I am in the mood to make a post, and realized I haven't shown my mail pictures in a while. So let's just do that. :)
To start, I want to show off my newly created writing place. I think I excitedly mentioned it in most of the letters I have written lately, so why not add pictures to the excited rambling? It's cozy and I surprisingly enjoy to sit and write there. And there may be some trips to Ikea ahead to make it a bit more colourful.

My newly organized desk

Yankee candle wax, summer drinks and Friedhelm the cactus keep me company

My newly acquired letter holder

 Yes, I do realize it is actually a napkin holder, and there are similar things out there that are very pretty and actually say things like "letters". But .. I got it for 1,50 Euros and couldn't resist this bargain, while the ones meant for mail were much more expensive than those meant for napkins.. And it does do the job..

Desk drawer of shameful addictions....

And I might have gone a bit overboard with my envelope making lately, but it is soo relaxing. Don't think I ever need to buy envelopes again.. And now let's move on to the actual mail pictures!

From Brigi in Hungary

From Claire in South Korea

I love the Alice bits of her envelope!

From Dilyana in Bulgaria

From Kathrin in Germany

From Ksenia in Ukraine

To Vanessa in the USA and Edii in Poland

To Maude in France and Postcrossing people

To Elena in Spain

To Bahanur in soon to be Korea

To Julie in France

The beginning of summer

It's the beginning of summer ... and nobody notified the weather! It is grey and mostly rains. I'm missing the sun and warm weather already. Not the crazy heat, just lovely weather that makes going outside more comfortable. However, the rain stopped long enough for a walk this afternoon - and it kind of amused me to walk around in gumboots and a sweater that I usually only wear in late autumn and winter, while it was supposed to be the official start of summer.

The highlights of my walk were the picking of pretty flowers to give my apartment a summer vibe, and letting my inner child out while trying to befriend a snail. I've always liked the ones with shells and now still think that they are cute little beings. Plus, they make me think of snail mail.
As a child, I was often carrying them around or let them sit on my hands. I always thought I was doing them a favor when I helped them across a street - they are so slow compared to cars and bikes, I didn't want them to be run over! Let's just hope that they even were about to cross the street, and not just finally done with slowly crossing it and I ruined it all and carried them back... ;)

All this talking about snails reminds me of a CD I used to listen to in my early 20, "a.Ura under das Schneckenhaus" by Samsas Traum. I listened to this band all the time and also went to a few concerts. Very fond memories! Being reminded of it makes me feel nostalgic, and I'll dedicate some time to listen to my old favourite songs by them. I'm sharing one that I used to love here with you, just found a video online, and I still like the song a lot. And I love that they still play the old songs in concert!

The one advantage of bad weather is that it is perfect for indoor activities, and I've spent last week on writing two letters. The first is going to Vanessa, with a lot of questions about her recent life changes. The second one was an intro letter to Edii. While writing it, I felt like we already new each other a bit from Instagram. I always admire her photos when they show up in my feed! And I'm looking forward to building a friendship with her. Over the weekend I've taken a short break to not overuse my writing mood (it can be a fickle thing), and tomorrow I'll start on a long letter to Elena. While I wasn't writing, I dedicated some time to reading. I've finished a big fat novel by Ken Follett and started on "It's a Nightmare", an interesting book I've received from Bahanur. It seems promising so far, and I want to discuss it in a letter to her soon!

And now it's enough of the rambling ... Here come a few photographic impressions from today!

I'm still so exciting about liking my new glasses!

Picturesque Tenerife & La Gomera

A few days ago, I came back from my vacation and now want to share some of my vacation pictures! As usual, I've made far too many of them and will never be able to use them all to put on my walls or in photo albums, but it was fun looking through all of them and some will go on the blog here .. and of course I will endlessly spam Instagram with it! ;)

As I actually enjoy writing about my travels in my letters, I guess there won't be too much text here - would be boring for my penpals who read my blog to have to read about it twice, wouldn't it? But maybe it would be fun to actually see the places I ramble on about in my letters? I hope so ;) Anyway, let's just say that my vacation was lovely and it was fun to discover another two Canary Islands, and I definitely want to go back to also discover those I haven't visited yet. It wasn't as relaxing as I had hoped for because of damn karaoke bars around the hotel and I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted, but I had some fun trips and saw a lot. And here come the pictures!

Let's start with La Gomera. A one day trip was too short do explore all of it, but it did provide me with some great views..

 

..and a walk through (small parts of) Garajonay National Park. I would have loved to spend more time there, it is so beautiful and peaceful! 

Isn't it magical?

Me from behind .. somehow those photos always turn out better ;P

But Tenerife, the main location of my vacation where I spent the rest of the two weeks, also has some beautiful places once you leave the touristy towns that only consist of giant hotels, bars and souvenir shops behind. I especially loved the Teide National Park! I couldn't actually get on top of the mountain, so this remains on my travel bucket list and I'll need to come back to fulfill it, but it was also nice to just see the area.

I also visited the very old and big dragon tree, located in Icod de los Vinos, that the locals seem to extremely proud of.

And of course I couldn't go to the Canaries without going on a boat trip! I was impressed by the giant cliffs of Los Gigantes..

 ..but even more so by the many dolphins and few pilot whales that I was able to spot from the boat. I go on such a trip during all my visits on the Canary Islands, but it fascinates me again every time to see those animals in their natural habitat.

Being back to health and a growing mail pile

I just noticed that I've been ignoring this blog for almost a month now, but in-between my hospital stay and recovering at home, there wasn't a lot to write about. But I figured that it is time to give an update on the health situation, as I have good news to tell! :)
My hospital stay went as okay as a hospital stay can go: I was lucky and only had one roommate who was mostly nice and only sometimes annoyed me, all the doctors and nurses were again very nice and really seemed to care about their patients, I could leave and go home after a week, and last but not least: the surgery went well! They removed one of my ovaries and my omentum, and because of some adhesion, also my appendix. In the beginning it was rather painful and I felt quite helpless because I couldn't move around much, but it already has gotten much better by now! Walking for a longer period of time still gets uncomfortable, but the feeling is less intense and I'm also able to do more walking. After seeing a short walk up and down the street as a challenge only a few days ago, today I was already able to walk around the city center of a nearby town before it started to feel uncomfortable. So that's big progress! :)
But the best news is that yesterday, I finally got my lab results about all the samples they took from my remaining ovary and my abdomen. Fortunately those results are the best results possible and don't show anything. So after the surgery, all bad cells are gone and I am healthy! :) There is a prospect of it coming back in the future, but I will just see my gynecologist very regularly from now on and have check-ups every three month (I can hear the universe snickering at me, as now I will kind of make up for all the visits at the gynecologist that I missed in the past years..) to have the remaining ovary controlled. And hopefully all will go well and it won't come back anytime soon! :)

So, after one and a half weeks of complete laziness since I went home from the hospital (all I did was read "The Rosie Project" - great book! -  and binge watch three seasons of Nashville), I'll now go back to more productive days again. My next challenge is decision-making, as I have some trouble to make up my mind about where I want to go for the further lawery education in the fall. Do I really want to leave Bavaria and go to Baden-Württemberg? Or maybe Bavaria isn't so bad and I want to stay, after all? Ugh... I will just apply to both places and postpone the decision for a while, but I also don't want to end up flipping a coin in August. So from now on I'll have a new project: actually visit towns to find out if I like them or not, see if it is easy or a huge hassle to get there in the morning, and so on. Hopefully that will help a bit with making a decision that I won't regret later - and trips are always fun, anyway! Especially with the nice spring weather that we are having at the moment. Oh, and in May I will go on a trip to Spain!

Today's trip also included this very nice spot

Before I end this blog entry, there will also be a bit of mail talk. My own writing mood has left me for now, so I didn't send anything out recently. But I received a bunch of great mail!

 The Penpalling&Letters group on Facebook is organising Cheer Up!-Swaps, and I received lovely mail in a pretty envelope from Katia in Brazil recently.

The Letterworms group is also hosting a swap at the moment, and I received this lovely postcard and flower seeds from Liisa in Finland! I am very bad with plants and am afraid that I would kill them if I planted them in a pot myself (there was a tragic incident with a cactus that dies because I wasn't giving it enough water - I never knew that you could give a cactus too little water!), so they will be planted in my parents' garden. This way they have a good chance to actually grow into beautiful flowers!

My friend Nadine was on a vacation in Tokyo recently and sent me this great postcard. In the past her postcards had a history of not reaching me at all or reaching me in a destroyed state, so it was extra great that this one reached me safe and sound! :)

I also received a nice letter from Maude in France. She is living so close to the German border that she actually sends her letters with German mail! And I really liked the stationary that she used, so I will indulge in one of my guilty pleasures and check the LaPapierre-shop soon..

Tessa sent me a great and superlong letter! In fact, it is the longest letter I ever received, and I loved every page of it. Also, her letters have a tendency to show up in my mailbox with perfect timing and when I really need something to cheer me up, so that is great too. :)  She also included funny cards, and I just have to show off the card with the dog, because it is the weirdest card that I ever received - the eyes actually move! :-D For some reasons, the mail services often stick those weird labels onto her envelopes. It is a mystery that yet have to figure out..

Yesterday I also received this lovely long letter from Elena in Spain. It was great to read from her again, and great timing to get the letter because I could really need the distraction before going to my appointment in the hospital. She also included these pretty postcards from Madrid that will go on my wall!

Health-related news, the Divergent series and a bit of mail

I wasn't sure if I should publish the following news on my blog or not, because on the one hand, it is kind of bad news and I also don't want to come across as being dramatic, nor do I want a lot of people to be worried. But on the other hand, some of my pen pals have already heard in letters written after my last hospital stay or messages exchanges lately that I was still waiting for laboratory results, and I do want people to be updated on what is going on. I'm just not sure if I'll feel like writing the same information over and over. So, I decided to just use my blog to give a general update on it.
A few days ago I finally got my laboratory results and unfortunately, they weren't as positive and harmless as I had hoped. Despite my doctors' prediction that the recently removed germ cell tumor would turn out to be benign with even a 99% probability, there were malignant cells in it. And since it was a tumor in one of my ovaries, I will have to get that ovary removed (luckily I can keep the other one, though! So that doesn't affect my ability to have kids in the future). So in the week after Easter, I will go to the hospital again for another surgery. It felt a bit weird to make plans for another surgery when the stitches from the last one were not even completely gone yet, but I want to get it over with as soon as possible. Fortunately, we caught the whole thing very early and my doctors are sure that the malignant cells so far only are in the one ovary, and it hasn't spread anywhere else. They will look thoroughly at my abdomen during surgery and collect samples for more laboratory tests, but I've been told not to worry about that, because I should make a full recovery and live a cancer-free life without further trouble with it when the ovary is gone. At least my doctors sounded very optimistic and sure of that. I'm not looking forward to the hospital at all, especially because this time it will be done with a laparotomy instead of a small laparoscopy and I'll have to stay there a bit longer than last time. I also don't like the thought of losing an organ very much. And it was kind of a blow to get the results, and it still is scary, but I'm trying to adopt my doctors' optimism and to think positive, so I just keep telling myself that it will all be behind me soon!

And now on to the parts of this blog entry that were already written and waiting to be published before I decided to add these news :)

 ~~~~~~

Ever since I joined Goodreads, I discovered that I enjoy writing reviews about the books I read. So I might as well use my blog for it, right? At least this will give it a purpose, besides showing pictures of my mail.
So here we go with a novel I have read lately: 'Insurgent' by Veronica Roth.

Insurgent - mostly read in my bed

The book was mostly read in my bed, while drinking teas I've been obsessed with lately. I can't decide if I like the Rooibos or the other one more, but both are fruity and tasty and give me kind of a summer feeling. The 'Landlust' tea was a bit of an embarrassing purchase, though, and I still can't believe that the supermarket tricks work on me so well! ;) Buying tea wasn't on my list at all, but I had to wait in line before I could pay for my other groceries too long and there was this mountain of tea conveniently positioned next to the checkout counter line. So after staring at it for a while .. I suddenly needed to have it ...

But now let's start with the book talk! :) Last December, I already read 'Divergent' in a matter of days and enjoyed it a lot. The concept was both odd and weirdly fascinating at the same time. A society divided into five factions based on human virtues, in which every person is reduced to only one personality trait: it is so obvious that this must go wrong, and how it is possible that not all people are divergent but the majority only fits into one faction was a mystery to me. But at the same time, I could see the appeal of such a concept: knowing exactly who you are and where you fit in. That must be kind of nice. Of course the book also prompted me to think about which of those factions I might fit into (my guess would have been Amity, or at least it sounded like the most appealing faction to live in), and gave me the opportunity to do fun online tests. According to those, I would be divergent as well and share traits of Amity and Abnegation. Damn, what a nice person I apparently am! ;) (I personally really like online tests and think they are fun to do, even when they can hardly be taken seriously, so if anyone feels the need to test for a faction: http://divergentthemovie.com/aptitudetest

But although I really enjoyed the book, 'Divergent' didn't have a long-tasting impact on me. Otherwise I can't explain why I ran through bookstores on the 24th of December searching for the sequel because I was convinced that I wouldn't survive the Christmas holidays without it, bought it right after the holidays .. and then waited until the middle of March to finally read it. Sure, there was a serious amount of exam anxiety and other life events that kept me from reading it, but I also just lost a bit of the excitement.

But let's finally talk about 'Insurgent': This novel starts directly where the first one ended and for a moment I had to strain my memory to recall what had been going on. After that I got into the novel pretty fast, although some of the characters that appear again in this book I couldn't remember at all. So either they didn't make an impression on me before, or my memory is that bad. But just like the first novel, this one also turned out to be a page-turner! In my opinion Veronica Roth is a good writer and knows not only how to create a feeling of suspense, but also how to use words, so once in a while there is a sentence that even has a poetic ring to me - something I don't necessarily expect in a Young Adults dystopian novel.
What I liked about the plot was that I got to know the factions a bit better. After only having really gotten to know Dauntless and Abnegation and only a glimpse of the other factions in the previous book, now I also have a much clearer idea of Candor, Erudite and Amity. Major disappointment with Amity, though!

My favourite thing about the plot is the main character, Tris, suffering real consequences from the trauma she just went through at the end of 'Divergent'. It was interesting to read about her emotions on this matter as it was not only very believable to be that way, but also gave her a new perspective on other previous events and made her more understanding towards other peoples' past actions. I often found her to be too short-minded before, so this was a nice change, and it made her much more likable for me. And in a way, her suffering from the traumatic events and this huge amount of grief and personal guilt she has to deal with made this book way deeper and more emotional than the previous one. Just one of my favourite paragraphs:

"He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done (...), and another list of the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being A. (...) For the first time I feel like I understand. I am tired of being Tris. I have done bad things. I can't take them back, and they are a part of who I am. Most of the time, they seem like the only thing I am."

Another aspect that got more interesting in this novel in comparison to the first one is the love story. I enjoyed reading about Tris and Tobias before, but it wasn't the most interesting aspect of 'Divergent' and the book even could have done without it - because while it was cute, it was more like a "aaw, puppy love"-cuteness and didn't seem to contribute so much to the story for me. But now, with Tris' emotional state having consequences also for her relationship, the romance aspect of the story got more interesting, too.
And of course there also was plenty of action in this novel! Those parts were usually fast-paced and suspenseful, and I had to keep reading to find out what would happen next. But to me, 'Insurgent' is much more than a Young Adult dystopian action novel: it is a novel about grief and guilt, about belonging and identity, choices and sacrifices, painful betrayals and unexpected allies...

If I had to name a flaw in this novel, it would be the side characters because once again, they didn't make a lasting impression on me and I didn't care too much about them, even though they had their entertaining moments. This probably is because it is a first-person-narrative and so much focused on Tris and her emotions, but I still would have liked the other characters to have more distinct voices and be less exchangeable. Another flaw is a slight predictability. Some things in the beginning sounded like they were supposed to be some kind of revelation, but I saw them coming too easily. And in a few of the action scenes it also was a bit predictable how they would turn out. But it didn't happen too often and therefore didn't ruin the overall feeling of suspense for me, and I still enjoyed this novel a lot. And of course there was an ending that surprised me and confused me a bit, so now I really want to know what exactly is going on and how it will all unfold in the sequel. So, I definitely want to read 'Allegiant' and am already looking forward to it! But before this can happen, I have to give my huge pile of other unread books some attention. That is, unless I decide that I am allowed to buy new books for the hospital.

That's all with the book talk for now, but last but not least, I also want to share the mail that I've sent and received lately! There hasn't been a lot of it, but I received one letter and sent out a few things. :)

Outgoing:

A card and some tea for Tessa in the Netherlands

A letter to Brigitta in Hungary

Postcards for Bianca in the USA and Bahanur in Turkey

Incoming:

From Angel in Taiwan