Day 05: Top five places you’d like to live.

Finally I’m back, taking care of my 30 days challenge. So let’s talk cities and here are my top five:

• New York. Maybe it’s a little bit premature to put this city on top of my list, given that I’ve never been there and my first visit to this town is weeks away. But – I really, really, really believe that I will love it there, having spent nearly all of my life learning about this town in songs, books, movies and from people who’ve been there. In my mind, I’m stuck with a mixture of an Woody Allen/John Lennon/Sex and the City/Andy Warhol kind of place. I see it like old black and white pictures in shades of grey with a little bit of colouring here and there. It’s a romantic, wild, artistic, free and also dangerous place for me. And I can’t wait to see it.
• London. This was always my big love from my childhood on. All the music, books and art I grew up with evolved around this magic city and I feel so warm about this place. I’ve been to London several times now and it never disappointed me. I would love to live there, but I hardly think that would be affordable. But the dream stays and of course always the possibility to go there if I’m feeling too homesick.
• Stockholm. I’ve been to Stockholm with my dear partner in crime when we did our big Scandinavia round trip. We’ve seen lot’s of cities then, but I kind of liked it best, even though I felt really drained from our long journey and all the impressions. I get a really good feeling when I think about it and I hope we will go there soon again.
• Prague. This town is so near to Vienna and it’s almost a crime, that I didn’t go there earlier. Sebastian and I spent our holidays last spring there and we surely hoped for the best, everybody telling us what an amazing city this is for months. And I imagined that it would be nice there – but we both hadn’t been ready for this. Prague is absolutely breathtaking! I’ve seen some cities now but there surely isn’t one more beautiful. Everybody, please go there! Don’t miss that!!
• Vienna. And, last but not least, my beloved hometown. I’m really happy to live in this charming and lively city that has so much history and still keeps defining itself new over and over again. There are many lovely cities in this world, but I guess we can be very pleased to live here in the heart of Europe.

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Holidays – Part ONE.

Finally I’m back with the first patch of photos of our Germany/Prague-Holiday-Trip. I was quite busy during the vacation and made lots and lots of photos and also some drawings. First, a set of iPhone shots. My dear partner in crime and I had a fabulous time and enjoyed our trip very much… ahhh… we almost stayed in Prague… ;)

There are also some more on my Flickr account here. And there will be more soon – promise!

That’s the plan.

Okay, the idea so far: My lovely partner in crime and I are going on holiday! And we’re quite giddy about it, because it has been some time since our last real holiday trip. First some days in Germany to meet with my partners family and then we head down south again to visit the surely beautiful city of Prague.

I must admit, I don’t know much about Prague. Everyone says it’s beautiful. But strangely I don’t really have an idea about this old city. Of many other places, I’ve been before, I had a quite complete picture in my head. Like London for example with it’s many music-related sights or Amesterdam with it’s channels and flower markets. But Prague? Kafka comes to mind, Charles bridge and communism.

So the first thing to do was to buy Lonely Planet’s “Prague” edition and to find out some more. But even though I got a little better picture about the city it’s still like Prague’s metro plan in my head: A mix of street names, sights and some historical facts. For some time it felt lika a problem, that we don’t know as much about this city than about others we visited. But meanwhile I came to the conclusion, that this may be a great opportunity to discover it in a much more evenhanded way.

So, only two days of work and some time in Germany seperates us from our trip to Prague. And I set some goals for our trip:

• Visit as many places as possible in Prague.
• Keep a regular diary on this blog about our visit.
• Make lots and lots of photos with my beloved and sadly for a long time ignored (and absolutely NOT DIGITAL!) SLR camera and put them on this blog.
• And most important: Have a fabulous time!

So, you can be sure to hear much more real soon – until then: All the best, Mardou.