To be honest, I'm quite a lazy person. If it weren't for other people, I'd completely forget to set some goals for the new year. Luckily there are always some lovely people online to remind me. This year I've teamed up with Shaima from The Mysterious Emirati: we're posting our goals and resolutions for 2017 together (but apart), so if you're done reading this post, head over to The Mysterious Emirati to check out hers...

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2016 isn't entirely over yet. There are still four days left in which an awful lot could happen. I would not be surprised to hear that some people are currently hiding under their duvet, waiting for those four days to pass. Everyone around me is telling everyone who will listen that 2016 was a terrible, no-good monstrosity of a year. Yet here I am, looking back on the past year thinking: That actually went pretty...

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A few weeks ago I suddenly found myself slaying the Instagram game. Now I used to think life was uninstagrammable, so I was pretty surprised when some of my less interesting pictures gathered dozens of likes within the hour. I was so happy. I thought I'd finally figured out how to do the Instagram thing. I was foolish. I did some stupid things. I was a complete Instagram idiot. It all began when I started...

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I believe in a thing called balance. If I blog about things I'm good at, I also blog about things I'm bad at. And so balance remains. Now a couple of weeks ago I posted about my favorite superheroes. To keep balance, today I'll tell you about, you guessed it, my least favorite superheroes. Let's get started, shall we? #4: Spider-Man Yeah, this'll probably come as a nasty surprise to some of you. I liked...

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Over the past few weeks I haven't been myself. Actually, that's not true. I've been a watered-down version of myself. I lost myself in my work. I started working at 8am and didn't stop until 9pm. The scary part is that I didn't even notice I was losing myself, not until I finally had time to sit down and write a blog post. Then I realized that Envy was... pretty much gone. I'm in my...

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Do you know that scene from The Big Bang Theory in which Raj tries to convince Sheldon not to come with him by very unconvincingly saying: 'I hate trains'? Well, that's me right now. I'd like to say that I'm one of the cool kids and don't care much for trains, but in fact I really really really like trains. Especially night trains. I think that's because I have this heavily romanticized idea of a...

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So right now I'm extremely busy. And what do I do when I'm extremely busy? I indulge in some escapism. Okay, actually I freak out, stress, work my ass off, cry because I'm exhausted, THEN go for the escapism. Now I'm currently right in the middle of one of the most busiest periods of my college life, so I'm doing the escapism thing. Usually I'd read a book, but my brain can't handle that many...

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When I was a bratty little 9th grader I thought I didn't have to pay attention to anything that was said in English class. I'd just returned from five weeks in the US, I spoke English with a perfect Californian accent, I knew all the words in our book, why did I even have to be there? This was probably the only time in my life when I was arrogant, but I passed every test...

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A few weeks ago I wrote this post about the struggles of sending snail mail. I wrote about not knowing what to write and where to get stamps. After the post had gone up I thought I´d covered the most difficult aspects of snail mail adventures. Then I found out there´s something even more difficult: Receiving snail mail. Story time! When I cam home from Russia, there was a note on my doormat with the...

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Not too long ago I visited Russia. I thought I was going to have the time of my life, but when I arrived reality kicked me in the face. Hard. Russia itself is nice.  Moscow is great. I'll write later on about its beauty and the things I did and learned there, but now I need to vent. You see, I didn't like most of Russia and most of Russia didn't like me. I quickly...

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Estonia, where do I start? It's the place where I ran head-first into a Medieval stone wall, where I slept in a hotel that had an athletics track in it's yard, where I saw two completely different sides of one and the same country. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just start at the beginning, shall we? I arrived in Estonia by bus. That's the great thing about the Baltics, it's easy to...

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I never put pictures of my face on the blog anymore. Even on my Instagram my face is almost painfully absent. It's not that I don't like my face. Wait, no. That's a complete lie. My face has given me too much grief since the start of my teenage years. So I neglected my face. Avoided looking at it, Pretended it wasn't there. I'm not like Areeba from Not Your Type Blog, I can't use...

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'Dad, we've got the Stitch room!' I said as I looked at the number on the keychain from the TIA Hotel in Riga, Latvia. 'The what?' 'The Stitch room, room 626.' My dad gave me a confused look. 'Experiment 626?' 'Oh. I get it.' My dad laughed, a little too late. The joke wasn't funny anymore. In fact, mentioning room 626 would never be funny to me again. Room 626 was, what a surprise, on...

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Dear Riga, I was born in a small town, eigh kilometers from Rotterdam. Under the smoke of Rotterdam, as we say here. As I grew up, people expected me to see Rotterdam as my city. Especially during the eternal "Rotterdam vs. Amsterdam" discussions, I was supposed to be all for that city. I guess I did start to like that concrete jungle after I went to college there. It's got a certain something, with all...

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Yes, I've been travelling. Yes, I'm going to post about it - a lot. You can't go to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia without writing tons of posts about it. First up: Lithuania. But will this post be like any of my other travel posts? No. Here's why: Lithuania is a funny place. It doesn't fit the mold. So let's shake it up, shall we? I'm going to start this post where I started my...

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I've been busy lately. First I went on vacation, then I started my job babysitting cats and then, finally, the Plympic Games started in Rio de Janeiro. I can barely describe how much I've been looking forward to these Olympics. I missed the 2012 Olympics in London because I was in Australia. I missed the 2008 Olympics in Beijing because I was in Costa Rica. Twice in a row I was literally on the other...

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This summer I travelled with my parents. Last summer I said I'd never do that again, but I'd forgotten the reasons why. So I joined my parents once again and went to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia. I shared a room with my parents in all those countries. But two hours into the first night of our trip, I remembered why I didn't want to travel with my parents anymore: they snore so loud it...

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When I was a kid I was obsessed with capturing memories from my travels. I'd write every little detail down, Nothing was too insignificant for my travel journals. At the same time I was also obsessed with making memories. Everything had to be looked at, tasted or experienced. Every second I spent writing felt like a wasted chance at adventure. On top of that I collected receipts and business cards of hotels we stayed in,...

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I like to put pen to paper. Not metaphorically speaking. I like to feel my pen slid across the paper. I like how my hands form squiggly lines into letter. I like how those letter form words, those words sentences. But I love how those sentences can build stories that make your blood chill. Horror has always fasciniated me. It's not easy to write. What's scary to me might not be scary to you. So...

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While you're reading this I'm somewhere in Russia, dragging my loyal camera companion Plum to all the pretty places, happily snapping away from what I hope is an original point of view. Photography is a new hobby of mine. My mom always wanted me to give it a shot, which I did... but then I thought everything I did was bad and ugly and uninstagrammable. A look at my old photo albums tells something different....

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On normal days my bag is full of books and notebooks for college. The books barely fit in there, but without them something just feels a little off. When I travel there is no need to take those books with me. I'm weird, but not that weird. When I travel the contents of my bag are completely different. I use a blue backpack when I travel. It's been to Peru, Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, Luxemburg...

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