“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

Bill Bryson

Tonight, as the wind picks up again in Edinburgh my head and heart are wander lusting – it’s always Italy they end up.

Image above from here.

I hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas, and that your respective Boxing Days are, like mine, meandering along on a placid sea of chocolates, films and yummy sandwiches filled with leftovers.  I’m eschewing the outdoors today in favour of all of those things plus plenty of crochet and an impressive volume of tea.  Just the way the day after Christmas should be, with not a huge red SALE sign in sight.

In between middle of the day naps and turkey-themed feasts, I’ve spent most of my holiday catching up with friends from school.  And as per normal, we spend a while telling each other our news before proceeding to drink lots of booze and have a jolly old time, party games and cheesy Christmas songs included.  Coming home for the festive season has come to feel like putting my ’real’ life on hold in order to be fifteen again: to be silly with people I’ve known forever and to forget all about my career, my electricity bills and my waistline for just a little while.  I’ve come to regard it as fuel for the coming year – who could possibly proceed to tackling 2012 without a sizeable chunk of quiet (and sometimes raucous and red wine-splattered) indulgence to keep the car running? 

Speaking of 2012, it is but a week away.  Usually I’m pretty big on New Year’s resolutions (as big as I am indifferent to Hogmanay, in fact).  But in light of the fact that my 2011 plans took a nosedive somewhere around May, I’ve decided not to bother making any promises in 2012.  Not so much because of fear of failure, but more because I’ve found over the course of this year that good things come about regardless of how much or how little planning I do in January.  This year I saw three new countries and seven new cities, I went travelling alone, I learned to crochet and I saw two of my favourite bands in concert.  I also finally ate at that Chinese I’ve been meaning to try out for years.  Twice.  I foresaw none of that good stuff happening way back on January 1st.  So with that in mind, here’s to a 2012 that’s free of pressure but choked to the brim with noisy, interesting, beautifully unexpected LIFE.  I can’t wait to see what it brings.

Image above from here.

Krakow, Prague and Berlin are each in their own right hands down awesome cities.  Krakow has an old worldly charm that I’ve rarely experienced and the best potato dumplings, Prague has the most beautiful, ornate buildings and quaint cobbled squares and Berlin is full of arty, bohemian-looking people wearing cool hats and going to poetry readings (I imagine).

And all three places live and breathe their history.

Krakow is only 40 miles from the ruins of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the biggest of the Nazi concentration camps.  And the city of Krakow itself has experienced its own share of brutality.  These chairs represent a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.  The Jewish quarter was first set up and then later ransacked by the Nazis in the early 40s.  The Jewish people were deported to concentration camps and the Nazis then robbed them of anything that was remotely valuable.  In the end, all that was left was the furniture.

Prague Christmas market (above).  They even had a donkey in a makeshift stable…

It wasn’t until I read (in the fabulous book I wrote about here) that 70% of what used to be Berlin was destroyed during WWII that I realised why the place looks so modern.  It had to start again.

It’s also a city that was divided by concrete for 28 years.  I still find it difficult to believe that this ugly barrier with its even uglier message came down only 22 years ago.  The regime and the brutality with which it was enforced reads like the stuff of medieval times.

On the less informative but perhaps more light hearted side, here are some of the other highlights of my trip:

• Taking a sleeper train.  This is not quite the romantic, trilby hats and neatly packed overnight cases fantasy realised that I had hoped for.  It’s better categorised, I think, as an absolutely hellish night’s sleep, followed by a day of feeling unwashed and knackered and drinking too much coffee to try and compensate.
• Taking a second train, during the daytime (much more palatable) and crocheting while looking out the window at Christmas card-style Czech villages.
• Eating so many potato dumplings in Krakow that I actually looked pregnant.  It’s probably just as well I was only there for three days…
• Going to the cinema in Berlin.  I love the experience of doing something completely normal in foreign surroundings.  I also love watching adverts in languages I don’t understand.
• Ordering something from a menu without knowing what it was.  It turned out to be a pig’s knee(!), with cabbage and mustard.  I nearly fainted when it arrived but it did actually taste pretty lovely.
• Drinking mulled wine and visiting Christmas markets every single day.  Mulled wine is definitely good for my soul.

This week it’s been back to work, doing holiday laundry and catching up on The Killing.  I’ve also picked up my Italian books again, after a six month long siesta.  This weekend I plan to make Christmas presents, drink more mulled wine with friends and begin my annual mince pie binge (at my peak I can go up to five a day…).

What’s going on in your world?

This week has been all about trying to stay warm in the face of increasingly chilly weather (bitter out there, innit?).  The cold snap and the bizarrely fierce winds have forced me off of my bike and back on to the bus so I’ve also been able to finish a couple of books.  I skipped my way through One Day by David Nicholls at the start of the week (I found this really rather corny if I’m honest, despite enjoying the film in the Summer), and I also finished The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton.  I won’t pretend that I understood the whole thing, but it was fun at the time…

The week has also seen me crocheting like a crazy person.  My boyfriend has taken to rolling his eyes and reaching for the nearest phone/computer/book whenever I mention the ‘C’ word, but I don’t care - I FREAKING LOVE CROCHETING!  I haven’t been this excited about a new hobby since I discovered bread making.  If anyone has ever tried, and failed (like me, several times) to knit, let me tell you now: try crochet instead!  It’s easy, it’s satisfying and you can produce just as much in the way of pretty woolly things with one hook as you could with two pins.  And it took me a total of two hours to learn, thanks due both to YouTube and my Mum.  My first project is a patchwork quilt, and so far I’ve finished around 25 of my planned 64 ‘patches’.  The best thing about creating individual squares is that I can carry my project around with me wherever I go: on the bus, in the coffee shop, on the train…yes, I’m that person.  I’m even taking a few balls of wool on holiday with me tomorrow.  Let’s face it, if the weather carries on down this track there will be no time to lose in getting another cosy wool blanket on my bed!

I also found time to fit in a film this week.  My Week With Marilyn was surprising affecting – has anyone else seen it?  It made me realise that excess amounts of fame have been burning holes in societies and individual levels of self-confidence (the levels of self-confidence of the stars themselves included) alike since way before the X Factor came along.  The most touching thing about the film for me was the way Michelle Williams brought out Monroe’s striking naivety.  I’ll admit to knowing precious little about the woman herself, but the film to me portrayed someone who had an almost non-existent grasp on the position she held and the power she was unconsciously wielding as a result.  Williams was fantastic.  And on a much more vacuous note, she looked pretty damned gorgeous in all those pencil skirts and skinny belts.

So now we find ourselves in December.  And I feel fully justified in talking about Christmas as a result.  Whether you hit the high street with the masses or if, like me, you give only one or two gifts and make as much as you can yourself, the season of giving is well and truly upon us.  So if, by chance, you missed my list of DIY gifts, find it here.  Let me know if you try anything and, more importantly, what the result is!

Tomorrow morning my boyfriend and I are off on our travels again.  This time, our destinations are Krakow, Prague and Berlin, all in one week, all on the cheap.  I’m hoping for glittering Winter sun, lots of cake and coffee (or kaffee und kuchen as my half-German other half reliably informs me) and maybe even some authentic festive markets.  Is my fledgling Polish up to the test?  Definitely, shamefully, not.  Let the frantic gesturing, raised eyebrows and manic smiling begin…

What have you been up to this week?

Image above from here.

Some weeks my highlights posts are harder to put together than others.  In fact, sometimes I completely forget what I actually did with my week let alone what was good about it. Then there are weeks like this one, when the highlights come flying in from all directions and I have a hard time choosing what merits a place on the list and what doesn’t (I realise I could just list everything, but really, too much talking about oneself is rarely a good thing):

• Films films glorious films.  I’m taking full advantage of my new-found cinematic freedom at the moment by gobbling up as many sittings as I can find the time for.  I saw Harry Potter Part 7 Mark II for the second time on Tuesday (a perfect slice of escapism for a drizzly August afternoon) and Horrible Bosses on Wednesday (watchable, but highly likely to induce spontaneous and prolonged bouts of cringeing.  Do not see this film on a first date).
• I also watched Fair Game this week, which made me really rather depressed about the state of the world.  Good film though, so a highlight nonetheless.
• Devouring Tina Fey’s book Bossypants in two days.  Read my review of it here.
• Cooking up several storms over the course of the week.  On Monday I made chicken adobo, the recipe for which I found on the fabulous Budget Bytes; on Tuesday I made carrot and coriander soup (using my home-grown coriander shoots – oh the self-sufficiency!) and on Wednesday I made chicken and mushroom risotto.  Delicious, and leftovers a-plenty.  Win.
• Finding THE jeans I’ve been waiting for my entire life in a charity shop on Friday.  Dark indigo denim, low rise and straight legged as opposed to skinny (my round-hipped, full-assed figure needs that extra width on the ankle to stop me looking like an upsidedown pyramid teetering on its point). Originally from Gap, but snapped up for a princely £6.  Huzzah!
• A late-evening walk along the Union Canal on Wednesday.  A quiet drink at the other end and a slow stroll back.
• Visiting the recently re-opened National Museum of Scotland on Friday.  Or to be more specific, visiting two rooms plus the coffee shop of the recently re-opened National Museum of Scotland (the place is HUGE).  All marvelous.
• Caravanning the weekend away with my boyfriend’s sister and her friends.  Eating lots of cheese (totally fell off the skin improvement wagon – will haul myself back on it this week), drinking lots of red wine and completing the infamous Elie chain walk in one piece despite being chronically underprepared in the footwear department.

So to this week!  I’m currently sans plans, but thinking I might try and sniff out some cheap/free Fringe tickets and see some comedy.  I’m also going to scour the charity shops for work attire, given that my new job starts exactly four weeks today (eep!).  What are you up to?

Image above from here.