Clothes

As of today my closet is five bags lighter. But let me explain how I got there. Not only do I love clothes and buy them every chance I get, I also keep them for an atypical amount of time. I think I got this from my grandmother, who is known for not throwing things away unless it is absolutely necessary. That’s how I know all the clothes I wore as a baby, I’ve seen how “cute” my baby-shoes were and I know what beautiful notebooks my mother used to have in high school. And now I do that, too. The worst part is that when you hoard clothes for years, you kind of run out of storing places. I took one great step today, got everything I haven’t worn in at least one year and got rid of them. I took them to the Salvation Army (which was a weird experience in itself). I feel better knowing that it’s their problem now.

Notebooks

Cute ones. From all over Europe. But also, some unfortunate ones, bought on a whim from some corner shop, which I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. Anyway.  It’s something about white pages and pretty covers that makes me swoon and I’ve managed to gather quite a collection. It’s my (sometimes quite expensive) guilty pleasure and my weakness.

Digital photographs

This is actually quite tragic. I hate deleting photographs, I don’t know what I’d do if film would be the only way to go. I’d probably store mountains of film rolls  until I’d eventually get squashed by them. And I’d probably be a star on “Hoarders”. But really, I always take more photos than I have to, so I end up with residue. I usually go through them 3 or 4 times before I can delete about 20% of the total, and then I save the rest of them for “future use”. Because you never know when I might need to show someone this photo (I…I don’t even…). There are currently 13,077 images on my computer and even though I have no comparison, they still seem too many.

And in addition to the embarrassingly bad pictures I also keep all the RAW files, ever since I realized that RAW is teh shit! That’s why every single photo I take (including family vacation photos, obviously) has a larger sister with the same name, but with a .nef extension. Just so you get an idea, I made an animation of some of the photos I took of the sky from my room window, in Romania, which for some reason, I find fascinating. They are at least 4 years old, pretty much identical and mostly shitty. But they’re there, nonetheless. I’m sure there is an even bigger folder on my computer called “Sky” or something similarly ingenious but I couldn’t find it so I had to settle with these 68 masterpieces.

I’ve already scheduled a clean-up. It’s for Futureday morning.

PC games

Gosh, these are the hardest to get rid of. I always think “But what if I ever want to play it again?”.  I only remember deleting Roller Coaster Tycoon 1, but that was only after I got my hands on RCT 2. Also, I’ll never forget that time when my mom “accidentally” (so she says) deleted my Sims 2 along with all the expansions – those were hard times. And just so you know, I don’t only play shitty games; my Assassin’s Creed games will only die when my laptop does and that won’t be very soon.

Useless memorabilia

This one’s the worst because it takes up the most space and it’s just…nonsensical. I collect bus tickets, metro cards, entrance tickets to museums, postcards, interesting flyers I find (I really like these, it’s a shame I don’t have photos of all the pretty things I’ve gathered), notes I’ve taken, things I’ve written. Sometimes I do throw them away, when I feel overwhelmed, but still, the pile never grows smaller and I never learn.

Just so you know, these may not be their exact words,mainly because I didn’t write any of them down at the time and my memory is not what is used to be anymore. Deal with it.

“This is really not my aesthetic AT ALL!” 

“I am a fashion designer, not a tailor!” (dramatic hand gesture)

“It’s chic, fashionable, sophisticated but at the same casual!”

“This is what the client wanted but at the same time, it’s got a lot of me in it, you know?”

“You want sexy, not slutty.” /”That’s too matronly, you gotta sex her up!”

“I like the direction this is going.”

“I don’t do menswear.”

“I don’t do plus size.”

“I don’t do evening.”

“So Tim Gunn didn’t like my outfit…” (eye-roll)

“I don’t think Tim Gunn  really understood my point of view.”

“What does Tim Gunn know anyway?”

“I looked across the room and I did not like what I saw”

“This is who I am as a designer.”

“My outfit is perfect, no matter what the judges say.” 

Of course it is, honey.

• I’ve read 6 books over the course of four weeks (yay!), but I’m still miles away from achieving my goal of reading 50 books this year. Consequently, I changed my goal from 50 to 20 and no, that is not cheating.
• I am taking two online classes: Fantasy and science fiction on coursera.org  and Intro to statistics on udacity.com and they’re both super interesting, although the second one could have been  more challenging. I know it’s an introduction to statistics, but still, even my dormant brain can handle it.
• I finally finished a project that’s been in my head for months (“project” is an exceedingly pompous word, but doesn’t that make me sound all grown-up?)
• I was hoping this would be at least a five-item list
• It is now.

To be honest, I’m kind of getting tired of photographing my face (or back or hands – you get the point) so if I don’t find a model soon enough, I’m just going to limit myself to posting pictures of streets and buildings.

And now, because I’m such a tease, I am going to direct to my Behance page (what did I tell you? Grown -up!) where I published this project, cleverly titled “Black and white self-portraits”. And I hope that you will appreciate my photos. With your mouse. Thank you.

As you’ll probably realize soon enough, I’m currently obsessed with light leaks and since I don’t exactly have the possibility to experiment with film, I just played around in Photoshop. I like what came out, but these are probably the only photos of this kind you’ll see from me. Anyway. Enjoy these (many) pictures from the Romanian sea-side, more specifically Vama Veche, which was fun, fun, fun!

We really enjoyed ourselves and I have many stories to tell, starting with the horrible place we stayed at, which was actually so bad that it soon became funny – first night we crashed at some friends and that meant four girls crammed together in a 2/2 room and two tiny beds, fighting over the blankets in a desperate attempt to keep warm. In the second night we upgraded,however, getting a better room that was actually clean and warm,  so you could say it was all for the best.

Everything might seem sunny and warm in the photos, but trust me, if you’re going to the sea on the first of May, bring warm clothes! I, too, have been warned by people who had been through this before, but I never took them seriously. I mean, what do they know anyway, right? Wrong. I brought short skirts, flimsy dresses, high heels and basically all the things I’d wear during the summer except I failed to realize it wasn’t summer just yet. Mark my word – May is not summer.

We froze our asses off and there were very few ways to warm yourself: you could either dance till you dropped or join the nice, friendly people on the beach who started fires by burning benches stolen from near-by bars. Charming folks, though- they were always excited to have us there.

And then again, the Black Sea has never looked to beautiful as it did then.

I’m longing to go back.

I mean, sure, they don’t smell like heaven and you can’t feel the soft texture of the paper as you flip it or leave subtle messages on borrowed books, hoping that sometime, someone will read them and it will brighten their day…but they are awesome. Now why don’t you all join hands and sing an ode to technology while I tell you what caused this sudden change of heart.

The real great thing about Switzerland is the amount of free stuff you can get – beside all the free food samples, that is. Maybe I should start with the funny story in which my mother started searching in a seemingly abandoned box, got about five coat-hangers out of it and casually walked away as I watch completely horrified. Apparently, as she explained later, stores give out their old coat-hangers for anyone to have.  The Swiss also offer free books from time in time, if you are in the right place. Free books, if you can imagine. Free. No charge. Books. Mind-blowing.

But now to get to the point, the Swiss also lend digital books, and for 5 francs people like me get to experience the wonder of E-readers for two short weeks, after which the happy bubble bursts and you realize it was all a dream. Like that dream in which you suddenly have an incredibly cute puppy that you can train and pet and love…and then you wake up and he’s gone. Except in my case I could actually buy the puppy if it weren’t so damn expensive.

So anyway, I got this baby from the library and for a while it is all mine (yes, altruism has never been one of my strong points) and I am going to make the most of it. Since I’ve been very lazy lately as far as reading is concerned (shocking, I know – I love reading!), I managed to collect quite an impressive number of titles on my to-read list and I am now ready and excited to check some of them off. Hooray for books!

Two days from now we’ll be celebrating the International Work Day, which I thought all my life it’s just a Romanian thing, but according to the all-mighty Wiki, it’s not. Sometime in the 1880′s, after brutal manifestations (I suppose) it was decided that the work day was to be reduced to eight hour and oh, look, people celebrate the same thing in the States - Labor Day, only, well, in September. Communists also come in the picture somewhere along the lines, but just google it, it’s already too much history for me and what I wrote so far probably didn’t make much sense anyway.

But yes, that was funny for me, because it opens a whole new horizon:  it seems highly likely to me now  that it’s not just Romanians that take a day off work to celebrate work (because that makes total sense. Totally.) Do I have any Eastern European readers here? Can you spare some info about that?

The point is that I’m going with the crowd this time by which I mean, I am going to spend this day like most normal do – either making a barbecue on someone else’s lawn, or getting in the car and driving some place. This time the crowd I’m going with is thirsty for salt water and heading towards the seaside. And I am oh my gosh so excited! The lists were made, the bags are (over)packed and I’m now anxiously counting the seconds because in just a few hours – well, more that a few actually, six is not a small number – I will be on my way to fun-land. Or so I hope. Hope that it will be fun-land and not just a beach full of drunk people and litter. Which I know there will be too, but still, I expect more. And I’ll be bringing my camera, so brace yourselves, photos will be coming!

See you in a couple of days!

Do you get it it? It’s supposed to be deep. I’m thinking about doing a series.

PS: I updated my About page.

It’s also the first time I’m using Photoshop to create something from scratch. Of course, I did a pencil sketch first and used a reference photo, but the digital shading is completely new to me and I’m pretty proud of what came out. The problem is that I worked at a very small resolution and everything looks sort of weird and low quality-ish. Can it be fixed?

There is a lot more to be done, and maybe I will stick with the original idea, maybe I won’t, but hopefully the whole thing will be done before Friday, when I leave.

Oh wait, that’s two days. Well shit, now I have to choose between playing Assassin’s Creed or finishing this. Or perhaps doing something productive…?

I visited Ladenburg in November, last year, as part of a German course I was taking and even though the weather was shitty, I thought it was a charming little place. The city is located in Germany, in the Baden-Württemberg region, on the shore of the Neckar River. It’s also close to the two more important cities in the area – Heidelberg (which is beautiful!) and Mannheim (where I once got lost).

As I said, we had horrible weather when I was there – it was awfully cold, overcast, it even rained if I remember well. It was winter and Christmas was right around the corner, but the atmosphere felt nothing like it when we got off the train. Still, as we got closer to the town center, things started to warm up a bit. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Ladenburg is really nice,  but most importantly, has an impressive history, starting as a Celtic settlement, later to be turned into a Roman military unit and finally developing into a town about twice as its original size. The St. Gallus Kirche is now sitting on where a Roman basilica used to be, a basilica that was apparently three times bigger than the already huge church.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t know what is here to be seen. In winter, around Christmas, there’s a Weihnachtsmarkt – a market with everything from hats and hand crafted jewelry to different kinds of food. And Glühwein(…mulled wine?), too! Other than that, the internet also recommends the Lobdengau Museum, the Bishop’s Palace and the Chapel of St. Sebastian.

There is one thing I read and thought it was interesting. Apparently, in several German cities they have started to place some so called “stumble stones” - Stolpersteine. They are metal bricks put down on the pavement and they are supposed to commemorate individuals that were in one way or another victims of the Nazis. There are two such stones in Ladenburg, too (which I haven’t seen), placed in the memory of  a man and a woman that were deported and eventually killed.

My personal recommendation is however a museum. More precisely, das Automuseum Dr. Carl Benz, which can be found as of 2005 in the old factory where the C. Benz Söhne vehicles were manufactured. Also, you could visit the house of the  inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile, if you’re interested.

In 1904, Carl Benz moved to Ladenburg with his wife and child and two years later they founded a company with their own money, called C. Benz Sons. The cars gained popularity by constantly being present at races and probably by kicking everyone’s asses. Since they tried really hard to come up with efficient race cars, they eventually started to sell them too.

Also, his wife, Bertha Benz, seemed to have been a pretty awesome woman. After investing in her husband’s company and also giving him five kids, she decided that she was going to have more to say regarding the guy’s business. So after trying – and failing – to talk him into a more sensible plan of action, she just took matters into her own hands.

One sunny morning she got her two sons (I’m guessing Carl’s two most prized possessions), hopped in the car – remember,  that wasn’t something people typically did at that time – and off she went. To see her mother, she said. In reality she had just put every dude to shame by becoming the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance.

After driving for a little over 100 kilometers and marketing the car by scaring the shit of the people she met (which was her plan all along),  Bertha won herself the right to scream into her husband’s face “I told you so!”. After this funny event, not only had the vehicle gained a huge amount of publicity, but it was also considerably improved, growing to be a real financial and technical success.

As for the actual museum, all I can say is that you definitely won’t get bored, even if you aren’t a car enthusiast. There is plenty of information to read, early models of cars and bikes, race cars, old documents, all things car-related and a souvenir shop with things that one would in fact want to buy.

Wow, I really went overboard with the photos, huh? So anyway, that concludes our short visit. I’m not sure if you will find this useful, should you ever visit Ladenburg but I surely hope you enjoyed it!