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, brochures of places we visited and lots of boarding passes and train tickets. My travel journals became chaotic and too time-consuming. I stopped writing them, but soon discovered that my trips weren't the same without a travel journal. Shortly before I went to Berlin, I decided to start a new journal. It became a mix of a bullet journal, art journal and travel journal. A Travel Journal 2.0 you could say. Let me show you.


My travel journal actually has the word travel on the front. It's a hard-cover journal so it won't die when it's on a bumpy plane/train/car ride. It was far from cheap, but my internship gave me giftcards for Christmas, so I used those to buy it. It's got a lot of information about the world's countries, their languages and currencies, but my favorite pages are the ones on which you can mark which countries you 've visited.

 Now on to the pages I've filled on my recent trips to Berlin and Ljubljana. At first I wanted to do this on a day-to-day basis, but I quickly realized that wasn't going to work. My travel journal now gives an overview of my time in those cities.

I usually start out with one big page to show where I went. I try to make it as original as possible with as many elements from that country as well. This is not the best example, but the other pages are still works in progress.
On the next pages I usually write some important information: where am I going, where will I be staying, how will I get there. Then I start writing about the things I've done and the places I've visited. The next part is my favorite: I always illustrate these pages.

Finally I use all the stuff I hoard on my trip and turn them into collages. They're usually about food. They're messy and uncoordinated and I'm not really sure what I actually want them to look like, but they're fun to experiment with. Sometimes I also write some things about what I liked best. Most of the time I draw something too. Like a penguin, cause penguins are awesome.

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 usually I write happy endings and positive characters. But sometimes I feel the need to write something else. Sometimes I write horror. Most people are shocked to hear that. When they find out that I like to write, they think that a sweet little girl like me would only write innocent chicklit.
One of my teachers found out this is not the case the hard way. The look on her face after she read one of my stories was undescribable. She was shocked. It brought a smile to my face. That's what horror stories are supposed to do: scare others shitless.
For the past couple of weeks I've been writing. Bits and pieces. It hadn't come together yet, but the outline for four short stories is there. Turning it into an anthology is my goal. Because I'm tired of writing sappy heroes and happy endings. I need to see something raw come out of my pen now.

We all have a little bit of darkness inside of us. Call it evilness if you want. Some people keep it quiet and small by watching horror movies or reading creepypasta's. They keep it inside and hide it. I let my darkness out through my words, I show it to the whole world by turning the nasty thoughts into gruesome stories.
The question is: would you like to read them?

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. Some of the pictures I took years ago will always be among my favorites. There's a story behind all of them. I want to share those here today.

This was the first picture people ever complimented me on. Yes, those people were all related to me, but when jaws drop you may expect the compliments to be genuine.
I was fourteen years old when I took this picture. It was a lucky shot, a quick snap made while hiking in Mount Shasta National Park in California. I had no idea it had turned out like this until I saw it on my laptop screen back home. It was just one lucky shot, but it was the lucky shot I needed to get interested in photography (even though I never would have admitted that back then).

In 2012 I'd decided photography wasn't for me. After that one lucky shot in California in 2010 I hadn't taken a single pretty picture. Then I went to Australia, which was great and beautiful. But I didn't want to come home with the cliche clicks that everyone has.
One day we went out to see Uluru at sunrise. Everyone stood in exactly the same spot to take the exact same picture of Uluru. I turned away from the masses and chose something else as the center of attention for my picture: the rising sun. It was too bright for a direct click, so I used a nearby shrub as a filter. The result was red as the desert around me, pretty in an unconventional way. I was so proud of finding a new point of view in an overly photographed place. I ran to my mom to show her the picture. When I returned, people were standing in line for my spot to take the exact same picture of the rising sun that I was so proud of, To this day the memory still makes me laugh.

Photography was my thing when I came home from Australia. I still had a lot to learn about it back then. This picture is the perfect example: it was the first time I managed to capture a building in a more or less interesting way, with almost no people in the picture. I say 'almost', because there's exactly one head visible in the lower left corner. That day I learnt the importance of timing and yelling at your friends who are standing in your shot. The picture will always be close to my heart though: every morning when I woke up in Rome, this building was the first thing I saw from my window.
The summer of 2014 was the summer I took pictures of everything that moved, everything that didn't move and everything inbetween while I was at it. I'd never expected to take this shot though. You need luck for it. Not luck to click at this exact moment, but luck to find yourself in such a situation. High up in the Andes in Peru, in the middle of nowhere, it sometimes happens that your bus has to stop at random for a heard of llamas, vicuñas and sheep. It doesn't happen often, but the photographer in me cried with excitement when it happened.

I don't know where to start with this one. I stumbled across a perfect composition (quite literally, because I was trying to run to the other side of the road with crutches). It was one of my first pictures taken with Plum. He captured the colorful, creative and also historical Berlin that I wanted to show the world.

There are a few more of these, pictures that I love but for the way they look and the story they tell. Make sure to follow me on Instagram to see them all. I promise to share all my Russian pictures soon.

Stay Awesome!

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 and the UK. I bought it eight years ago and it's been my loyal companion ever since. During my trip it's home to these things.

The most important thing in my bag is my camera. I call him Plum. I could've called him Carl, but Kanra's camera is called Carl already so it would only lead to confusion.
Plum is a Sony Cybershot Something Something and has a lot of megapixels. I'm terrible at remembering technical facts, but I know the most important thing: Plum takes amazing pictures - if I don't forget to take the lense cap off...


Also important: snacks. Liquorice, peppermint and Mentos are musts on my trips. These all last about five days, but that's not really a problem. After five days I just switch to whatever kind of local sweets I can get my hands on. In fact, I enjoy those even more.

I'm candy Wolverine

 Then there's some important stuff: way too many tissues (my mom is a firm believer that one can never have too many tissues) and my sunglasses. Sunglasses probably don't sound very essential to everyone out there, but I wear glasses and without them I am half-blind. Because of this I also have perscription sunglasses, which are not exactly cheap. I need to keep them close at all times.

On to the fun stuff: my travel journal! Something cool happened? Time to write it down! Something weird happened? Draw it! Boring day? Look back on the illustrations I made and stories I wrote on earlier trips!
I mostly use pencils and fineliners to write in my travel journal. The fineliners also have to be here to color some countries on a certain tote bag.

After Plum, these things are the most important ones in my backpack. The thing on the left is a gigantic plastic envelope. I'm a hoarder: receipts, brochures, business cards, everything I can get my hands on during my travels has to come home with me for art or travel journal pages.
The big notebook is for stories that could maybe turn into novels if I had more time to write. The little one if my new blogging notebook. I write all my blogposts by hand first, so I'm using about four blogging notebooks a year. This is my latest asset. I like it because it has ice cream on the cover and come on, who doesn't like ice cream?

That's what's in my travel bag. What's in yours?

Stay Awesome!

First of all: Yay, I turned 20 today!
Second: Oh no, I turned 20 today...
There you have it already: I can't go an hour without contradicting myself...


When I was in 6th grade my teacher used to call me a walking encyclopedia. It wasn't meant as a comment though. In college some people think of me as a walking dictionary. I see myself as a walking contradiction.
I think turning 20 has made me think even more about who am I and what I want to do with this life I've got. It's confusing, because part of me just wants to settle down, have a steady job and a nice little family. Five seconds after thinking about that I see a travel blog and I'll be all like: I need to get over to that place right now!
Part of me wants to become a teacher, because it's a steady job. Then there's this part of me that just can't stop thinking about becoming a writer, or an artist, or a full-time blogger. Not a steady job at all, but so much more fun.
There's even a part of me that wants to give up on my dreams. But there's also a much bigger part of me that says I can't give up now. I've come this far, giving up would be a waste of time and an insult to myself.

I don't know what it is about my birthday that makes me think about myself this way. It's probably the pressure of turning 20 and not having anything figured out. All I know is that I like to learn languages and get to know more about different cultures, which only makes the contradictions within me bigger. Yeah, I'm that white kid who obsesses over every culture except her own. Again, there's a part of me that wants me to stop being so overly interested in other cultures, a different part of me is just passionate about it.

There are always two parts of me when it comes to the things I want and like. Right now, there's a part of me that tells me to stop writing because I'm rambling. There's also a part of me that wants me to keep writing because I need to get it out of my system. The contradictions confuse me, but I can't help myself.
There's a part of me that wants to stop the contradictions. Then there's that part of me that shrugs and thinks: I've lived with it for 20, it shouldn't be a problem.
I think I'll listen to that part of me. The part that's not exactly the voice of reason, the part that wants to do crazy things and that still believes I can change the world. Yeah, I think I'll do with that for the next 20 years.

Stay Awesome!

PS. Have some digital birthday cake and celebrate my birthday with me :)

Another day, another shooting in the USA. I know, I know. I'm usually not this serious. But bear with me guys, because these things need to be said. It's like we can't go a single day without seeing a (usually black) person get shot, oftne by the police. Many people are outraged and have taken to Twitter. Every other day a new hashtag related to this topic is trending. Even though I usually stay far away from discussing this topic, I'm going to do it today. Not by tweeting. I agree that we need t pay more attention to these matters, yet I won't tweet about this. I have too much to say for a 140 characters' tweet. Let me say those things here.


You won't see me tweet how bad I feel about a shooting in the USA for the same reason that I don't tweet #RIP when a famous person dies: I do not know enough about the circumstances, neither am I close enough to this person to send a truly sincere tweet.
Let's just take a look at the average police shooting: do we know exactly what happened? More or less. There are always a lot of things we don't know: why was this person stopped by the police? How did tthey respond to this? How did the police respond to their response? Was there any reason to pull a gun in the first place? About a week after the shooting we will know these things. But in the moment when Twitter explodes, we don't know all the facts and without all the facts I can't share an objective opinion. For example: a while ago a black man was shot by the police in the Netherlands. People shouted that the police was racist, but as it turned out, the man wanted to commit suicide this way. He'd forced the police into shooting him. I was glad I hadn't tweeted the minute I heard about this case. I want to know the facts before I shout my opinion from the digital rooftops. As long as I haven't seen the big picture, I won't tweet about it.

Black lives matter. I don't understand how anyone can think differently. I certainly don't understand why western countries think they have the right to meddle with other countries affairs' when they can't resolve their own problems with racism. We should be in a situation where all life is equally important.

Hold your horses, all you Social Justice Warriors out there! Let me explain.
Up until a week ago, I hadn't heard of this hashtag. Since it's only a hashtag and there's no room for explanations in a tweet, the hashtag is open to interpretation. I interpreted it this way: no matter what your skin color is, your life is valuable and should be respected by everyone, no matter what their skin color is. To me, this meant that we are in a situation where black lives sadly have less worth to some people than white lives. To me, this meant we need to find a way to make it clear that all lives are important, regardless of the package it comes in. To me, this was a hashtag that asked us to look at the injustice of the situation towards black people, find a way to fix it and get closer to equality, to a situation where a black life matters the way it's supposed to matter. I interpreted as: all lives matter, so why does this black life matter less to some people? It's a question of interpretation. Then I found out that this was not what the hashtag meant...
People abuse this message I had in mind and turn it into a way of saying: "Stop nagging, others get shot too." It stands for a completely different message than the one I believe in, the one I saw in it. People interpret it differently than I do. It leads to miscommunication and anger. The message I had in mind apparently fits #BlackLivesMatter better, though #AllLivesMatter sounded more logical to spread a message of equality, at least in my opinion. I will never use the latter hashtag. In fact, I want to use neither of these hashtags now. I just want to show you my point of view: it doesn't matter to me which color you skin has; black, brown, yellow, white, if you wanna dye yourself green or purple, fine by me. That shouldn't matter. Your life is valuable and precious and you deserve to live it in peace with the same chances and challenges as everybody else on this planet, regardless of your skin color.

I won't use hashtags when sharing my opinion on these matters, I won't retweet things to make my point. I'll make it by being kind to whoever crosses my path. I hope you do the same.

Stay Awesome!

In the busy weeks just before my summer vacation started, I did what I do best: I wasted my time reading Buzzfeed articles. It was my way of learning to cope with the fact that I'll never be a Buzzfeed writer. And as usual with Buzzfeed, I came across articles I didn't agree with. I came across articles I absolutely loved. But there was one article where I drew a line and said: "No. Just no. This needs to be rewritten. I am rewriting this Buzzfeed article right now!"
As you can tell I didn't rewrite it 'right now', partly because I was busy, mostly because I was lazy. But now I'm here and it's time to rewrite the article "The 24 Stages Of Going For A Run". I'm a runner. I have been a runner for the past twelve years. I will be a runner for many more years. I am very unfamiliar with theses "stages", which seem to be thoughts in my opinion. I don't have the thoughts listed in this article though. These are the thoughts I actually have while running.


1. I don't want to.
I should go for a run today... but I don't wnat to. I could pretend I have an injury. Didn't I just feel something in my leg? Never mind, that was just an itch.
Also can't pretend I don't know where my shoes are, they're on my feet. Hmmm... Maybe I should just go.

2. I'll just go for a short run. But I'll run extra fast.
Running 5k takes too long. I'll do 3k today. Then 5k next time. But I'll have to run extra fast today to make up for those 2k I won't do. A super fast short run should equal a slow long run, shouldn't it? Does that make sense? It does sound logical to me. I'm gonna go for it.

3. I'm so fast! So fast!
Look at me go! I'm so fast! I'm almost flying! Why am I not doing this professionally? I could take on those super fast African athletes right now. That would be awesome. Maybe I should go to track meetings again.

So fast!

4. That was too fast.
Too fast. Need air! Why did I think I could keep running at that pace for so long? What was I thinking?!

5. I'm so slow! So slow!
Maybe I can run a little slower. Wait, not this slow! Bad legs, I said slow, not snail's pace! Go faster! Normal pace! This is embarrassing...

6. What was it like to breathe like a normal person?
Back in the day, before I went on a run, I could breathe through my nose. Pure fresh air whenever I needed it. I was so good at breathing normally. Those were the days, I'm telling you. Those were the days...

7. This is not fun. Not at all.
Why am I doing this again? I could have been home, blogging or reading my book. Sounds nice. Sounds better than this.

8. Almost there. Let's go a little faster.
Okay Envy, only a couple of hundred meters now. Quit the snail's pace, force those legs to go faster. I don't care that you're tired, I don't care that your muscles ache and I certainly do not care that you don't feel like going faster anymore. You can cry and complain when you're home. You're going to run your ass off, understood?

9. I'm so mediocre! So mediocre!
You know, there are ten-year-olds who can run this fast. On the other hand, there are also lots of people who run a whole lot slower than me. I never win a race, but I never lose one either. Long live my mediocrity!

10. Thank god that's over...
Finally! I need to sit down. I need something to drink. I need a shower. Oh my god that was difficut. At least I can breathe again. Air, that's some good stuff. My god...

Note: Thought 1 and 2 are optional. Repeat thought 3 to 10 every other day on your runs.
If you wonder if running's really worth it after reading my thoughts, let me tell you this: you won't believe how fast I am when I have to get my laptop to join a Twitter chat!

Stay Awesome!

Everything is #goals these days. There's squad goals, relationship goals, house goals, friendship goals... It's getting a little out of hand, because even my college has started obsessing over goals. For my last essay of sophomore year I had to write about my goals in life and how I'm going to achieve them. As I sat down on my bed with my laptop I thought this would be easy. Three hours later, however, I was still staring at a blank screen. My mind was even blanker. Where had my goals gone? After another half hour, I gave up and sent my friends an emergency text: "What are my GOALS??!"


The page would have remained very blank if an awesome blog buddy named Kanra hadn't helped me out. She sent me a list of things that could be my goals:

• Write a book
• Become a professional Youtuber/blogger
• Meet Superwoman
• Go to NYC

I quickly copied the list onto my essay that still didn't look like much of an essay. Kanra had pushed me in the right direction, but now I had to turn it into a story. Of course I didn't do that right away. I took a necessary cookie break. Then a necessary YouTube break. Then it was time to procrastinate. But that was okay, because I knew what my goals were now.
After the cookies had been eaten, the videos had been watched and the procrastination had taken over way too much of my time, I sat down again and shared my goals the way bloggers usually do: by listing them like this:
Again I stared at my screen for a long time. Even though I'd written the sappy stuff my college likes, I hadn't written anything about college. I hadn't written anything 'realistic'. I knew my essay wouldn't get a good grade if I handed it in like this. I deleted all my goals, both the ones Kanra had sent me and the ones I'd added to it. I replaced them with this: "I want to become independent."

I scored 80% on the essay assignment, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I really wanted to share my goals, but college doesn't allow the kind of dreaming that I love so much. They want me to focus on my education, becoming a teacher should be my sole purpose in life. I don't want that. I have different dreams. I felt the need to share those goals of mine, the ones deemed unrealistic and crazy. The ones I'll work for day and night if I have to. So here goes nothing. Here are the things I want more than anything in the world:

• I want to become a successful author. There are thousands of stories buzzing through my brain. I want to tell them, I want people to read them. I want to give people who are in a difficult situation that relief of losing yourself in a fantasy world. I want to share my stories. I'm already doing that on my blog, but I'm hoping to do that in more ways soon enough.
• Speaking of my blog, I am hoping to grow my audience to 150 followers before 2017 comes around. My longterm goal is to be able to make a little money advertising for other bloggers in my sidebar and on other platforms.
• I am going to travel this world. It's not a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'. There's much more to see than the inside of a classroom, there's much more to do in life that teach children how to say "Do you speak English?" in German. There's a whole wide world out there that I want to see rather today than tomorrow.
• I'd like to meet Superwoman and the other insanely creative internet geniuses of my generation. They inspire me to become a better person and creator every day. If it wasn't for them, I would've quit blogging and given up on my dreams a long time ago.
• But most important of all: I want to find out what makes me happy in this life and find a way to make a living doing that. I do know that becoming a successful author is difficult, but it's not impossible. Until I write my masterpiece I'll have to make money some other way. I know I love working with languages, so maybe I can find a job as a translator. I think I should do something I'm passionate about. Sadly, teaching is not one of those things.

This is what I want to do for real. For that, I do need to become independent. But not in the way college would like to see me become independent: graduate, get a job, live a boring life and die. I was never cut out for that lifestyle. Call me crazy, but I'm going out to chase my dreams. They're a lot more exciting than that lame old thing you call realism. One day I want to be that person who's seen and done it all, who didn't let anyone stop her. That's what I call #goals.

Stay Awesome!