Travel | London on the Horizon

Londres: Picadilly Circus by Zyllan Fotografía

In all my years of travel and all my years of living in the center of Europe, can you believe that I’ve never been to London? It’s actually rather embarrassing. I’ve invested the energy to travel to the likes of Sierra Leone, Peru, and Uganda, but I’ve never made the quick and inexpensive jaunt over to London, for god’s sake?

Well that’s changing very soon! Taking advantage of a work trip, I’m spending a free weekend in London Town. It’s not a ton of time, admittedly, but I’m definitely making the most of it by focusing on two things I’ve missed most about big city life since arriving in Germany — food and theater. (Sorry, Berlin, I love you, but it’s just not the same.)

Like any good modern traveler, I crowdsourced ideas via Twitter. Thanks to the advice of @elmadaeu, @zurika, and @fraudietz, I have tickets to both the Book of Mormon — a musical that’s been a hit on Broadway since 2011 and in London since 2013 — and a revival of the comedy Relative Values.

In terms of food, @fraudietz and @winerambler suggested Abeno for Japanese pancakes, Gymkhana for Indian, The Dairy, and Trinity. I’ve also decided to test out Vayable — a website where you can book activities led by local insiders — for a street food tour of East London. Yum, that one will definitely deserve a blog post of its own afterwards!

Even though my trip will be short and sweet, I really can’t wait. And I promise to report back here on my adventures!

Where are your favorite places to eat in London? Do you have any tips or stories to share?

For more posts about London, check these out:

March 2, 2014

Bremer Karneval

Having spent my entire 5+ years in Germany decidedly in the north of the country, I’m no expert on German Karneval (or Fasching). The heart of Carnival is really in Germany’s Rhineland (Cologne, Mainz, Düsseldorf), so much so that it’s basically impossible to get any normal work done there during the week leading up to Ash Wednesday. You either spend the week partying in costume or you flee the city — finding a middle ground seems to be very difficult (or so I’ve heard).

But the northern Germans do like themselves a good parade — the Schlager Move in Hamburg or Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin, for example — so I couldn’t resist checking out Bremen’s version of a Carnival parade. Of course it wasn’t anything like the grandiose parade in Cologne, but the Bremer don’t seem to mind. In fact, their motto is “In Bremen ist alles ein bisschen anders – auch der Karneval” (Everything is a little different in Bremen, even Carnival).

And indeed, the Bremen parade lived up to its reputation. It was full of music and costumes and drumming groups from all over Europe. Even though the weather wasn’t so great, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

My feet turned numb after the first hour and half, so I didn’t even watch the entire parade, but I was pretty impressed with the costumes that I did get to see. It’s not so clear from the photos, but quite a few of those in the parade were on stilts, which is made even more impressive by the fact that the nearly the entire parade took place on cobblestone streets! Good fun on a Saturday afternoon, and then everything basically went back to normal.

Have you ever celebrated Carnival, in Germany or in any other country? Did you love it or hate it?

February 25, 2014

InstaWalk Hamburg

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Instagram. Although I love the challenge of photographing with my DSLR and love the images I can capture with it, taking photos with my smartphone has become my new favorite thing. I always have the phone with me, and there is something to be said for capturing glimpses of beauty and quirkiness and rough edges right now, in the moment, as they strike me.

On my way to Hamburg for my first ever InstaWalk.

So when I heard about an InstaWalk happening in Hamburg — my first German home and still one of my favorite cities ever — I was immediately on board. Basically a group of Instagrammers get together at a certain location in their city and take photos. I’ve gone on photowalks before — in Hamburg, actually! — but there is something very appealing about being able to instantly upload and share your photos with others on Instagram.

First stop this afternoon on the Instawalk in HH: Baumwall.

And indeed, it was awesome. Instagrammers Hamburg organized a photowalk through some of HH’s loveliest U-Bahn stations. We met at Baumwall on Hamburg’s waterfront and rode the U-Bahn from there. At the designated stations, all 20+ of us would step out of the train to take photographs for about 10-15 minutes before getting back on and riding to our next station. I found it to be usually just enough time to search for a few shots, choose my favorite to edit, and then upload before getting back on the train.

I also found it pretty entertaining to watch where others searched for and found their inspiration. Plus, using the hashtag #igmeethh16 , I could immediately see the results of our InstaWalk efforts. Although we were all presented with the same scenes, I loved the variety of creative interpretation in everyone’s photos.

It was definitely an entertaining challenge and a fun afternoon — I took a few photos that I liked, met some fun people, and now have a bunch of new photographers to follow on Instagram! If I can swing the travel to Hamburg, I’ll definitely take part in future InstaWalks. And maybe I can try to convince Instagrammers Bremen to become more active…

Have you ever joined in on an InstaMeet or Instawalk? What did you think? Would you do it again?

February 16, 2014

Color//Colour Green

You’ll forgive me for keeping this brief, right? It’s been a doozy of a week, I’ve gotten very little sleep this weekend, and I have 12 miles up on deck for my run today. So I’m trying to conserve energy where I can. But finding green this week has not been hard at all — Bremen is the city of green, after all. Especially with such mild weather that almost makes you think it’s spring (in the middle of February)…

You can find even more on the color//colour tumblr and I’ll keep sharing mine throughout the week on Instagram (purple is up next), as well as here at the end of the week.