the taste of childhood

A Japanese friend of mine, who lived in Germany for a few years, told me that eventhough she thought German chocolate are very delicious, she still couldn't say she likes them more than the Japanese chocolate. "Japanese chocolate have this special taste, which reminds me of my childhood. I love that taste so much!"

I understand her very well. The German chocolate are very, very tasty, but nothing can beat Silver Queen, my ultimate childhood chocolate!

It's probably the combination of the milk chocolate and the cashew nuts inside. Or just the childhood memories that comes up with each bite. Whatever it is, I love this chocolate.

Do you have childhood snack or sweets you love until today?

fashion diet 2012

VILA t-shirt  //  MANGO shirt  //  ZARA cardigan

MANGO belt  //  I AM earrings 

It all started when I heard about the 1 Dress 365 Days project. One girl wore the same dress for one year long, only pepped with different accessories each day. The result was amazing. So as in March 2012 I suddenly realised that I hadn't yet bought any clothes, I decided to challenge myself not to buy any at all in 2012 (well, other than my wedding dress).

And sure enough, I won the challenge. By not buying any clothes in one year I was forced to be creative, to mix and match, and to really reconsider my collection. Now what did I learn from it?

• I have too many clothes. I couldn't even wear all of them within a year. 
• I tend to only wear my favourite pieces. There are not enough of them.
• There are many pieces that don't match my current style anymore. I didn't realised that, because until then, I didn't even know what my style was.

The challenge has helped me understand, that just because something look good on me, it doesn't mean that it (still) suits me.  So when the year turned 2013 I promised myself only to bring items I will definitely love into my closet. My definition of a favourite piece is when I want to wear it so much that I don't want to wash it and wait until it's clean again. My goal is to fill my closet only with that kind of clothes.

The three pieces on the picture above were one my first clothing items this year. So far, I must force myself to wash them. I love them so much.

Do you think you can survive one year without buying any clothes?
 

MUJI diary

Do you have a MUJI store where you live? There are a few MUJI stores in Germany, and I'm lucky that both Berlin and Munich have one. I like the simplicity of their products, especially their blank, pocket-size notebooks. I've been using those as my 'offline' diary since 2009, and I was surely devastated when I found out, that they don't carry those anymore this year! All of their notebooks in Berlin were either lined or checked (German notebook style, which I hate...) and no one could say whether the blank ones would ever be in stock again. Misery!

When I went to Munich I tried my luck and dropped by at their MUJI, and they still had some left! Those seemed to be the last ones though, so I directly bought two of them, just in case (now that I think about it, maybe I should've bought more).

I love the smoothness of the paper, which let me write or sketch easily on it, no matter what pen I use. I also love that the cover is also blank, so I can create my own cover for each book. For the first one I sewed a cloth cover. For the second one I just used some masking tapes. This time I combined a few different materials:

• masking tape
• lace tape
• DYMO embosser
• old magazine
• permanent marker

HOW TO

1. Paste the masking tape and lace tape to your heart's delight.
2. Create a dymo label, maybe the title of the book?
3. Cut a speech buble from an old magazine and write a message on it with a permanet marker.

nette geste

Nette Geste literally means 'nice gesture' in German. It's like, when you visit your friend and bring a bottle of wine or a bouquet for the host. When I arrived in Berlin two days ago I found an origami-folded paper in my mailbox. It turned out to be a Happy New Year greeting from the new neighbor in the house. I found it really cute and it was definitely a nette Geste.

I've had thoughts about how to get to know your neighbors when you are new in the house. I'm not even sure how people do it in my home country. I guess there it's easier to encounter your neighbors and have a little chat with them now and then, especially since most of the people are curious about their neighbors. In Germany, especially in big cities like Berlin, people don't really care about their neighbors. At the most, you meet them when they took your packages for you.

That is rather sad, I think. I have incredibly nice neighbors in my apartment building. My life would be not the same without them. When I'm Munich they water my plant and empty my mailbox. We often have tea time or dinner together. They even taught me how to crochet. I will awfully miss them when I move to Munich. And it all started with a small greeting in the staircase. Now I wonder how we could greet our future neighbors in Munich.

Do you greet new neighbors as an old dweller? Do you introduce yourself in any way as a new kid in the block?

restaurant 181

One of our wedding presents was a voucher for Restaurant 181 in Munich from Mr. A's lovely co-workers (it came with an awesome pop-up card, too!). Now we are a couple who usually forget things like anniversaries and vouchers. So instead of keeping the voucher for a nice candle-light dinner at our one-year anniversary, we decided to go out for a dinner date last Saturday, before we completly forget about it.

Restaurant 181 is a revolving restaurant located inside the Olympiaturm. We could choose between a 4-course or 5-course gourmet meal - thankfully we chose the 4-course one, we were so full afterwards! We started with Martini Blanco as appetizer (left picture). Between the 2nd and 3rd (main) course they gave us a mango lemon sherbet (right picture).

Appetizer - mini Caesar salad
1st course - Surf 'n Turf: roast corn-fed chicken with shrimp, Virginia peanuts and coleslaw
2nd course - 'caned' tomato soup with Gin, mini tortilla and scallop
3rd course - Nebraska beef rump steak with garlic mashed potatoes and homemade barbecue sauce
4th course - New York cheesecake with vanilla ice cream and cranberry compote

Everything was really delicious, so I would recommend this restaurant to anyone who would like to experience some culinary, 181 meters above Munich.

circus krone

Circus Krone is said to be the biggest circus in Europe. Its prime location for the winters is in Munich. Mr. A and I haven't seen any circuses for more than 20 years, and so this winter we came upon the idea of going to this one. It was really fun and it made me want to see Circus Roncalli in Tempodrom, Berlin.

The highlight of the circus was an amazing Nord Korean trapeze group, which was very difficult to capture (hence no picture of them). I also loved the costumes of the whiteface clown. They were twinkling and glistening in all different kinds of colors and patterns. They were also hard to capture, unfortunately.

Have you been to a circus lately?

what new year's eve looked like

On New Year's Eve Mr. A and I went to a rather spontaneous party. Two people organized the location at a student dorm, and each of us should bring some food to share. It was a kind of potluck with a theme: 'Asian food'. Most of us brought Chinese food, some brought Indonesian food, and some brought not-so-asian food, which suprisingly still matched the rest.

From left to right, top row:

• semur bola daging (meatball stew)
• untitled chicken (chicken pan dish)
• tahu tauge (stir-fried bean sprounts and tofu)
• spring rolls with sweet chili sauce
• gulai ayam (chicken coconut curry)
• rice

From left to right, bottom row:

• untitled chicken, again (grilled chicken)
• fu yung hai with sauce (egg foo young)
• mun tahu (mun tofu)

I forgot to photograph the dessert: kue sus (profiterole) and brownies.

At midnight we watched fireworks on the neighborhood and then played Activity in German, which was really funny, since none of us were native. It was a really nice and cozy New Year's Eve, I hope we can do it again this year.

What did you do on New Year's Eve?