a (not so) typical work day...

Hey guys!

I'm back!

The Vienna Book fair is over which means that I have my life back. In the past few weeks I stayed late at work, came home, ate, took a shower, went to bed, got back up, went to work, stayed late, came home, ate, took a shower, went to bed and so on. So there was no time for blogging.

On Friday, I had to walk around in Vienna to visit different venues and prepare them for readings, that took always place in the evenings. It was a beautiful and sunny day, quite warm for November and it was really nice to escape the office and have a stroll through beautiful Vienna. I want to take you with me on that walk. So let's go, through the inner district of this wonderful city!

I started with walking down the "Herrengasse", a shopping street where I never shop, as it's the home of all the luxury brands. Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and similar. As I never spend much money on clothes (rather use the amount on books and yarn - you get much more for the same price!) this aren't shops where I will ever set foot in. But it's nice to look at the windows and ask myself who in the world would spend hundreds of Euros on clothes that look like they are second hand. And in very bad condition!

I walked past the Michaelerkirche. It's one of many beautiful churches in Vienna. The Vienna National Library has an Archive inside this building and I remember having a Seminar right under this dome when I was still studying German Literature.

Just right around the corner, you get the beautiful view of the Hofburg, where the National Library is situated and which is the former imperial palace of Vienna. Those two buildings in the background are the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Art History. The two buildings stand opposite each other and are identically built. Right in the middle is now one of the most beautiful christmas markets in Vienna. Though there are dozens of them taking place all over town right now.

I then had a stroll through the Volksgarten, a small park. During the warmer seasons, it smells really intense of roses. That is because there are hundred of different roses planted all over this park. I used to spend my breaks here when I was back at university, as it is just right around the corner of the campus.

And then I arrived at the Rathaus, the town hall of Vienna. I was there to watch over an award ceremony which I organized the last couple of weeks. Did you know that I used to work in a library in that building right before I stepped on a plane to Bangkok and travelled the world for the next four month? I have beautiful memories of those five working months there. Such a historical and wonderful building.

This is the room where the award ceremony took place. The town hall has hidden rooms like this all through the building. Beautiful, isn't it?

I wandered back to the office after that, spend the day on the telephone and then walked back to the town hall. The same route, but now in the evening, when it was already dark and the town as already lit up.

I was at a reading that evening which I had to supervise. Very interesting, it was bilingual, the author was from Romania and read in her mother tongue and of course we had a translator. It was really funny, though the book isn't about a funny topic of all. Those are the moments where I really love my job. Unfortunately, things like that mostly happen during the week of the Vienna book fair, when everyone is exhausted and worked out already. 

There is another christmas market right in front of the town house. I had some time before my train went back home, so I strolled through the stalls, breathed in the wonderful christmassy smell of baked goods, sweets, chocolate, sausages, glühwein (mulled wine) and everything else that belongs to a market like this. And I really looked forward to a calm and nice and relaxing christmas time.

If you've read until the end: Thank you for your patience.
Have a happy weekend.

holiday post

Hello peeps!

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be offline for the holidays. Just half a workday and then I'm off with my man to visit his family in Salzburg. And then the last rehearsals. And then our play. 7 times!! So there won't be time for blogging.

I hope you all have a wonderful christmas. Enjoy the time with your beloved ones and I wish you all a happy new year 2015! Read you next year.

And because a post is always nicer with a picture: Here is one of the sunrise that I saw on my way to the train station this morning.

xoxo Emma!

come take a walk with me

As you probably know by now, I work in Vienna but I don't live there. I live about 40 minute drive away, in a small town in the very flat very beautiful east of Austria. So I commute to work by train every day, which isn't really bad, once you get used to it, because it gives me plenty of reading time. Well, not plenty, as there is no such thing as enough time for reading, but it gives me more time as I did have when I commuted by car. 

Anyway. We had our Christmas party last week. It was very simple and laid back. There are just 15 people in my office and we all went to have dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in the city centre of Vienna. Because my last train went at 9 and we just met at 7, I decided to stay at a friend. She has her home just a 20 minute walk away from the city centre. 

So I walked there after our christmas party and walked back to work the next day. And now you probably get the title of the post. 

I took some photos when I walked around in the evening of the beautiful christmas lights that are hanging everywhere in the first district of Vienna and I took even more photos when I went to work early in the morning, wandering along the Danube river, watching the sun rising. 

Now I'm not really a city girl, I prefer the countryside over living in a big city with way too many people crammed in way to little space, but I have to admit, Vienna got me this time. But enough talk from myself. I rather let the pictures speak. And I know the quality of the photos isn't the best, but I just snapped them on my phone as I didn't really plan to see all those beautiful things. So please enjoy them, even if they are a little blurry.

Let's start our walk from my office. This is the street that I walk to and from the tube station everyday. I love, how the light just hangs there. 

I pass the back of St.Stephens Cathedral. There's a little Christmas market right now. I'm going to visit it tomorrow with some friends. 

This is my favourite. It's the "Rotenturmstraße" which means something like "red tower street"! Hence the massive overflow of red. 

These actually dim and light up from time to time. I actually had to wait a while for them to be bright enough to take a picture! 

And that's the famous "Graben"! It's a popular shopping area, if you have the necessary money to go shopping at Gucci and Prada. 

 

And last but not least - St.Stephen's Cathedral. Beautiful, isn't it? 

But let's fast forward. I had my Christmas party, I went to sleep, I got up again and made my way back to work. No need for morw words here! 

Hope you enjoyed my massive photo overload. I love the last one, where the sunlight reflects on the roof of the cathedral. 

Wish you happy pre-Christmas days! Do you have all your presents, yet? I got the present thing covered but am more nervous about our production this year. Just 11 more days until the premiere! Wish me luck! 

handmade: Advent wreath

Hello lovely ladies and thanks for the nice comments about the christmas stall! 

The first weekend has been a success. At least that's what I'm told. As this stall is my man's project I'm actually not really involved with it. I just provided the decoration! ;) 

While he stood in the booth in the cold, I spend the weekend at home with my parents. Only 25 days until the premiere of our play this year!!! That's really soon! So we had two rehearsals on the weekend. Other than practicing my role as an arrogant carreer-driven fashion journalist (this is the opposite of me in SO many ways but that's what makes it all the more fun!) I used the time with my mum to make an advent wreath.

I always helped my mum making it and when I moved in with my man more than one year ago, I started to make my own. So this is the second wreath that I made all by myself and all for myself. It's now standing on the kitchen table, taking up the little space we have and making my home more christmassy and cosy.

I really love it, it makes me happy, everytime I look at it! 

Other than that I enjoy my evenings at home. The man works in the christmas stall so when I come home from work the appartment is empty. And can I be honest? I LOVE IT! Of course I miss my man and yes, I am happy to see him when he gets home, but I really cherish those two or three hours that I have every evening to myself! I come home and usually enjoy a long shower before I cuddle up on the couch with a crochet wip (currently the top for my mom. I REALLY need to finish that!), a cup of tea and some chocolate and watch ALL seasons of the Gilmore Girls again. I really love that series. My man isn't really a fan and IF he watches them he wants to watch in German as his english isn't that good. And I hate to watch the translated version. So I can watch it the way I want it, without anyone nagging next to me. Got to enjoy the little things in life! 

it's finished!

Yesterday, my man and me made the final decorations at his Christmas stall. Now all the crocheted snowflakes and the origami stars are put into place and will hopefully sell like mad to raise money for the Austrian Parkinson society! I think it looks really pretty. It puts me in a festive mood! 

Happy first advent weekend, everyone!

Christmas preparation

Ho ho ho, lovely readers.

Just one more month until Christmas! Time flies, actually, doesn't it? It has gotten quite calm around here, as I had a lot of work to do at my work. I had really long hours every day and wasn't really keen on sitting in front of the computer in the evenings when I've already been sitting in front of the screen for the last 10 hours at work.
But now everything is back to normal. The book fair is over. It was really great, to get a look behind the scene of such a fair. It's amazing how much work goes into organizing it. We have just two women at my company who are doing this. But they did an amazing job, it was the most successful Vienna book fair in its entire 7 year history and while I spend my days there, I just thought over and over again: what a great way, to earn a living! 

Now that I don't come home totally exhausted late in the evening, I also managed to get some things done! First of all, I started running again. I was really sloppy with it in the last few weeks. But now I'm back on track. Though I feel a little cold coming up on me, so again I have to take a step back. But I'm feeling better now and will hopefully be able to have my two weekly runs this week.

We started rehearsals for our amateur acting season. The premier will be on the 27th of December and we just received our final text this weekend. So in the next few weeks there will be a lot of rehearsals (we can only do those on weekends) and lots of text-learning. But it really is a very funny and great play and I'm SO looking forward to all those rehearsals as they always mean a lot of fun and laughter! 

And I managed to get some crafty stuff done as well! 
My man will have a christmas stall in December. I wont be there, as I have my normal 40 hour work, but I did some crochet and origami stuff for him. It will be a beautiful decoration for the stall (I will show you a picture, once it's done) and we also plan to sell the things. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get as much done as I wanted to. But I made a lot of crocheted snowflakes. I really like those! I made them just in plain white, but I also played with some colors. Red, purple, blue, green...everything that can be seen as "traditional" christmas colors.

these are my snowflakes - before and after blocking

And I made tons of origami stars for him. A while ago, I bought some beautiful Origami paper, but didn't exactly know what to make out of them. When I was searching for some inspiration on Pinterest I came across these lovely stars. They're fairly easy to make and I think they look really nice. You could make a garland out of it (that's what I plan to do for my home), or put them onto christmas cards, decorate your gifts with it, hang them on your christmas tree...there are endless possibilities! 

I wonder if the principle of the thousand origami cranes also works with stars??

I honestly have no idea, if anyone will actually buy any of this stuff. But I plan to donate everything I make from selling it to the Austrian Parkinson society. A member of my family was diagnosed with it this year and I think that people are more likely to buy something if they know that the profits of it will be donated for a good cause! 

These are all the handmae christmassy things that I made so far. A rather small list. I hope to get some more done in the next few weeks as I actually wanted to give my family handmade gifts this year. REALLY need to focus on that, there isn't that much time left. We'll see if my plan works out or if I'm going to get in a shopping panic shortly before christmas to get all my gifts in time! ;-)

What about you? Do you buy your gifts or do you make them yourselves? And If you give handmade things: what are you making for your beloved ones? I really need some inspiration! 

Have a nice week, everyone! 

getting ready for Christmas

Wow. It's October, the weather is finally getting a little nicer and warmer again (we had 25 degrees yesterday. twenty-five!) and what did I do in this fine weather? Right, I came home from work, turned my laptop on and started to browse for patterns for crocheted snowflakes. Of course.

See, I will have the opportunity to sell some of my stuff at a christmas stall - without having to stand there everyday! I just have to make it and another person will sell it for my. Quite nice, isn't it? But the stall will open up in December and I just heard about it yesterday. So I racked my brain and hundreds of blogs for ideas and started to try out some stuff.

The crocheted owl keyring is my favorite, unfortunately it takes ages to make. The pattern isn't as easy as it looks. And I suck at sewing on the eyes. So I glued them. Pretty sad, actually. But no one will know. Hopefully.

The second is my first crocheted snowflake and I LOVE IT! It will look great hanging from the branch of a christmas tree and I bought tons of glitter (yay, glitter, one of the things that I love most about christmas time - that there is so much glitter!!) to sprinkle over them. AND they're pretty quick and easy to make. It took me about 15 minutes and I will get faster once I've memorised the pattern, which shouldn't take long as it's not that complicated.

And the last one should be a bauble. It turned out a little small and not as round as I had expected it but I will probably make more of them as they're also quick and easy and I think that they look very nice. And there are tons of possibilities with colors and different yarns.

BUT for now I stop making those christmas things. I bought a pattern. The very first pattern that I bought but I've been toying around with the idea of buying it for a while now! For some time I drool over the images of lalylala and the gorgeous amigurumi figures she makes. So when there was a sale at dawanda (which is something like the german etsy) I decided to buy three of her patterns. I chose Paul the toadstool, Lupo the lamb and Dirk the dragon. I will start with Paul.

And so I'm off to my local yarn store to buy all the supplies that I need for Paul. I probably won't sell him because I find him so cute that I will keep him. Or rather give it to my man as he demanded that he wants to have that lovely little mushroom. Do you understand now why I marry this guy? 


P.S.: The owl design is from here, the snowflake is from here and the bauble I found here.