what I read: june 2015

Here are the books I read in june:

• Roßhalde - Hermann Hesse
• Books vs. cigarettes - George Orwell
• Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis - Douglas Adams
• Feuer der Seele - Vincent van Gogh
• The melancholy death of oyster boy & other stories - Tim Burton
• Das Rosie-Projekt - Graeme Simsion
• Girl in a band - Kim Gordon
• Are you experienced? - William Sutcliffe
• Der alte Mann und das Meer - Ernest Hemingway
• Candy - Maxwell Kenton
• Das Restaurant am Ende des Universums - Douglas Adams
• Die Leiden des jungen Werther - Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
• Die Pest - Albert Camus
• Der seltsame Fall des Benjamin Button - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Yesterday - Lars Saabye Christensen

As you might have guessed, I love reading, but to be honest I am no big fan of writing about books. So I´m not going to describe the content of every single book I´ve read, but I´m going to recommend a few to you. 

"Yesterday" - the english edition is simply called "Beatles" - is a coming-of-age novel about the teenage years of four Norwegian Beatles fans in the 60s. It´s about love, revolution and growing up and I couldn´t put it down once I´ve started reading. A must read for Beatles fans and everybody who would have liked to live in the 60s.

I also adored the Douglas Adams books, which are the first two books of the hitchhiker´s trilogy. I´ve never been into science fiction, but I gave it a try, because a friend of mine recommended the books to me - and I loved them. I can´t wait to buy the next one. Science fiction fan or not - you should definitely read those books.

budapest 2015

Three weeks ago my sister and I left for Budapest - a city I knew nothing about, a city I´ve never been keen on visiting. 

Little did I know that I would totally fall in love with it.

Sandra on the chain bridge by night

As soon as we started planning our trip we realized that there´s a lot to see in Budapest and that we would hardly manage to visit everything on our list. 

Luckily it was love at first sight, so instead of running through the city to take pictures of every tourist attraction, we said things like: "We can still visit it when we come back." on our third day there.

We stayed with Mustafa, an air bnb host who cooked "Köfte" for us and thought that "this famous painter from Italy" was called Leonardo DiCaprio. (That actually made my life.)

On our first evening we strolled through the city, went to see the chain bridge and took a ride on the ferris wheel, because a very nice guy gave Sandra a ticket for free.

on our way to the citadel

The next day we got up early and climbed the citadel, which was quite a piece of work, but the view was totally worth it.

The weather was lovely and to our surprise there were hardly any tourists around, so we were able to take hundreds of pictures without being disturbed by crazy people with selfie sticks.

fisherman´s bastion

On our third day we went to see the chain bridge again and walked up to the fisherman´s bastion, which looks like a Disney castle. Instead of going there by bus - like all the other tourists did - we were stupid enough to walk all the way by foot, but Budapest is so pretty that you forget about hurting feet very soon. 




In the end it was totally worth it, because the bastion is a wonderful surreal place and you have a terrific view over Budapest. 




On our fourth day we went to the central market and did some shopping. In the late afternoon all of my dreams became true when I was able to meet Eric Idle, but that´s another story and will follow later.



And this is where the trouble starts. I promised myself over and over again that I would keep a travel diary, that I would write down everything we did and all the funny things that happened. Unfortunately my brain was terribly fucked after I shook Eric´s hand and therefore I was no longer able to keep a travel diary or to think straight. I pretty much forgot about everything that happened afterwards, which might have to do with the fact that we dumped our travel plans and drank and ate our way through the city. Nevertheless we enjoyed just walking around Budapest without a certain destination, because that´s how we got to know the city.

We both fell in love with it and I didn´t really want to come back to Germany after these seven days. 
We had to, though, but we know that we´ll be back soon.

PS: More pictures are going to follow soon.

24

Birthdays have always been a bit of a difficult topic for me. 

Of course I liked to celebrate with my friends, stuff my face with cake and get presents, but it also made me feel melancholic, because another year of my life had passed by.

I started thinking about missed opportunities, about all the things that should have happened, but didn´t happen, about all the goals I hadn´t reached, about everything that went wrong and was to go wrong in the future. I sat in front of my cake and thought: "Oh well, another year over, another year without big successes, another year of being single and things will probably never change." 

A few hours ago I turned 24 and some people asked me: "What do you wish for?" And of course I answered: "Nothing, I´m fine."

It was not until later that I realized that I had spoken the truth. I am fine. The last 12 months have been wonderfully insane. For the first time in my life I can say that I´m truly happy with my life. 

I´ve got awesome friends, a job that I love and most importantly: I don´t hate myself. 

I might be forever broke and I don´t have a thigh gap, but I can live with that. Maybe it´s because I met Eric Idle and still feel like nothing could ever go wrong again, maybe I´ve just grown up. 

It was about time, after all. 

back for good

I´m a horrible mess when it comes to computers and that´s why I still haven´t figured out what happened to my blog "tanja-in-wonderland", but I know that I won´t be able to post there anymore. I still love writing and sharing pictures and stories and so I started a new blog - which is this one (huge surprise!).

I´m going to blog about everything that comes to my mind, such as books, travels, concerts, poetry, music, art and so on.