InstaFriday | Bremen’s First Instawalk

InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
The Marktplatz

Seems like every time I blogged about how much fun I’d had at the Hamburg InstaMeets and InstaWalks, I always wished that Bremen would host one too. Well, wishes do come true sometimes! Hosted by Bremen Tourism, 25 Instagrammers had the chance to take a walk through the city, photographing Bremen’s treasures and tagging our photos with #InstaWalkBremen. Although we visited the Hansestadt‘s most well known corners, our guide made sure to tell us plenty of little known facts (nearly all of which I’ve promptly forgotten).

We started at the statue of Roland in Bremen’s main square before walking over to the Bremen Cathedral. From there we made our way to the Schnoor, the city’s oldest neighborhood dating back to the 10th century when it was a fishermen’s district. Today you can wander the narrow lanes, lined on either side by crooked, charming houses from the 15th to the 18th centuries.  We then walked to the Schlachte waterfront promenade — which used to serve as the city’s harbor — and up along to Böttcherstraße — which is a street only 100 meters long showcasing beautiful architecture from the 1920s and 1930s.

We ended our InstaWalk in Haus Atlantis’s Himmelsaal, climbing an Art Deco staircase made of concrete and glass up to the sky room with a fantastic display of blue and white lights. This was hands down my favorite part of the walk — I didn’t even know it existed!

InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
Schnoor Viertel
InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
The Schnoor Viertel
InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
The Schnoor Viertel
InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
The Schnoor Viertel
InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
Böttcherstraße
InstaWalk Bremen | No Apathy Allowed
The Himmelsaal (sky room) in the Haus Atlantis

What a great afternoon! I met a lot of great Bremen Instagrammers and still have more than a handful of photos that I haven’t posted on Instagram yet, but they’ll definitely make their way into my feed. The walk was also covered in the local press — see if you can spot me in a few pictures here and here.

Think it sounds like fun? They are already planning a number of other InstaWalks in other parts of the city, so keep an eye on the City of Bremen’s social media channels for more info!

Have you ever taken part in an InstaWalk or InstaMeet? What did you like most about it?

InstaFriday | August Break 2016

Photos | August Break | No Apathy Allowed
Day One: Morning light

I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time for words right now, which actually makes it a perfect time to chime in about August Break 2016, organized by Susannah Conway. It’s about taking a bit of a break from writing and instead focusing on the visual, specifically in the form of daily photo prompts. I don’t follow the prompts every day, but they do serve as a relaxed sort of inspiration for my Instagram feed  — I also participated in 2013, 2014, and 2015 — which is the perfect sort of inspiration, in my book.  So here are few snapshots of August so far…

Photos | August Break | No Apathy Allowed
Day Two: Leaf
Photos | August Break | No Apathy Allowed
Day Four: Sweetness
Photos | August Break | No Apathy Allowed
Day Five: Midday
Photos | August Break | No Apathy Allowed
Day Nine: Red
Photos | August Break | No Apathy Allowed
Day Ten: Yellow
Photographs: August Break 2016 | No Apathy Allowed
Day 15: Love is…

There are still a few more days left in August (thank goodness!), so I’ll be back towards the end of the month with more photos. Or if you can’t wait, follow me directly on Instagram!

Training | Bremen Half: Week 5

Bremen_Half_Marathon_Week5
Via DailyMile

Yesterday afternoon I was glued to the screen for the entire women’s Olympic marathon from start to finish via livestream. Need some extra motivation for your own training? I highly recommend watching elite runners compete, especially under difficult conditions like the high temperatures and humidity in Rio. The US team was a power house, with Shalane Flanagan, Des Linden, and Amy Cragg coming in 6th, 7th, and 9th — I think it’s best US performance ever as a team. And I was totally floored that Germany’s top finisher Anja Scherl (44th place with 2:37:23) — who qualified for the Olympics with a third place finish in the same Hamburg Marathon that I ran — has a full-time desk job and trains for marathons on evenings and weekends. Amazing! (There are no excuses, I guess.)

So, what did my week of training for the Bremen Half Marathon look like? The distances and cross-training workouts are slowly on the increase…

Monday: 40-minutes on the stationary bike. This is definitely not my favorite form of a workout, but my legs did feel like jelly afterwards, so I suppose it’s having the intended effect.

Tuesday: 4-mile easy run + 15-minutes strength training.

Wednesday: Planned rest day. Time for my monthly massage, yay!

Thursday: Unplanned rest day. Another long work day trying to meet a deadline.

Friday: Speed training. 10 minutes warm-up, 7 x 400m, 10-minutes cool down. I’m getting closer and closer to my target pace here, so it seems like I’m doing something right. Maybe by my next speed session in two weeks, I’ll make it (although the number of repeats increases every time, making it more difficult).

SaturdayEasy 30-minute run. How can you tell when you overdo a training run? When your easy run the next day feels like death. Yeah, I was definitely dragging.

Sunday: 8-mile long run. My GPS didn’t kick in until about half-an-hour into my run (seems like a pattern), so I just relied on my pre-measured route. Legs were definitely still tired and my shoulders and arms were stiff because the day before I hauled my new end table up all of the steep steps up to my 3rd floor apartment. But I powered through and enjoyed some good foam rolling afterwards while watching the Olympic marathon.

All in all: I’m happy with my mileage and hitting all of my planned workouts. I’m still not a fan of bunching up the majority of my runs over the weekend, but I guess it’s better than not getting them in at all. Same story as last week with my strength training — I’m gonna keep trying to get them in!

Which Olympic events are your favorites? Did you watch yesterday’s marathon?

Travel | Going Back to New York City

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed

After a few days in DC with friends, I traveled up for a few more days in New York City. My six years of living there seemed like an eternity at the time, but now I’ve officially been in Germany a couple years longer than I ever was in New York — kind of a strange thought. Even so, NYC is still one of my very favorite places to be. Even just driving into the city felt like home to me. Every time I go back, it’s this bittersweet noticing of how much is exactly as it’s always been and how much is constantly changing.  Yeah, life. 

In any case, I didn’t have too much planned for my days there — I just wanted to visit some of my favorite haunts, hang out with good friends, go running, and get some shopping done (of course). I stayed with a friend on the Upper (upper) West Side (thanks, Sara!), which put me just steps away from an old favorite, Absolute Bagels — everything bagels toasted with butter, for life — and offered up two favorite running routes: Riverside Park and Central Park.

One afternoon I wandered through Park Slope, where I lived for four years — walking past my old apartment building, buying coffee beans at Gorilla Coffee, and picking up some goodies at the Chocolate Room. Ah, the nostalgia! Fittingly enough, I was on my way to have dinner with my good friend and old Park Slope roommate and her family, who now live not so far from our old place. 

Before meeting some friends in the Village for lunch one day (at Quantum Leap, of course), I had some extra time and coincidentally passed by NYU’s Deutsches Haus — which is where my learning of the German language all began! Wow, how life has changed since those days, right? On my way back uptown, I walked along Christopher Street and remembered that just days before, Obama had declared the Stonewall Inn a national monument — just a couple of weeks after the Orlando shooting. 

Another afternoon I spent at the Cooper Hewitt’s Design Triennial Exhibit: Beauty. I didn’t remember until I was in the building that I’ve  visited the museum before — the former Carnegie mansion definitely makes an impression! The exhibit features over 250 design objects organized into seven themes of beauty: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental, and transformative. It was all gorgeous and fascinating! I highly recommend making a visit — but hurry, because it’s only open until August 21st.

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed
The gardens of the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed
Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed
Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed
Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed
NYU’s Deutsches Haus

Travel | New York City | No Apathy Allowed
Park Slope

If you go back and read my post about my last trip to NYC in 2012, you’ll probably notice some similarities — especially where food is concerned! I didn’t go to Blue Ribbon Sushi this time around, but made up for it with lots of good Mexican food. All in all, it was a wonderful and relaxed visit and I’m already looking forward to next time!

New York City: yay or nay? What’s your favorite bagel combination?