“The Importance of Being Irish”

When I arrived in Dublin five weeks ago I didn’t know I would fall in love just days later. Sometimes I was walking around for several hours, eyes wide open, eager to see all the 111 places mentioned in the travel guide my father gave me for Christmas, afraid to miss something. On other days, I spent my time in cafés because I felt the atmosphere and the people would bring me closer to this city than trudging round all the sights.

By the way: being a bit ‘Dublin-experienced’ by now, I can recommend Simon’s Place at George’s Street Arcade for coffee and cake. The best sandwiches, you’ll get at Avoca. And for a beautiful dinner go to Wuff at Smithfield.

I will miss all this when I hid back home. I will miss constantly speaking English. I will miss my Airbnbs and Maddy, the cleverest dog there is. I will miss Hodges Figgis, the greatest bookstore ever. I will miss the Gaelic announcement in the Luas “Sráid na Mainistreach“ at my final stop. But most of all I will miss working at Hot Press Magazine and its lovely people, some of whom became good friends in a short time.

I dedicate this blog to the love for #Dublin, to #Gilmore Girls, to #travelling, to #food, to #literature and to #acting. And to Peter and Paul who encouraged me to start blogging.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

The store was full of things to look at. All along one side of it were shelves full of colored prints and calicos. There were beautiful pinks and blues and reds and browns and purples. On the floor along the sides of the plank counters there were kegs of nails, and kegs of round, gray shot, and there were big wooden pails full of candy. There were sacks of salt, and sacks of store sugar. In the middle of the store was a plow made of shiny wood, with a glittering bright plowshare, and there were steel ax heads, and hammer heads, and saws, and all kinds of knives—hunting knives and skinning knives and butcher knives and jack-knives. There were big boots and little boots, big shoes and little shoes. Laura could have looked for weeks and not seen all the things that were in that store. She had not known there were so many things in the world.

Little House in the Big Woods

I’ve always loved February best of all the winter months. Likely because of his 28 days clearly marking him as an underdog next to December and January with their show-off 31 days. I’ve always had a thing for underdogs. Considering this, I also love the promise of the infamous February 29 every couple of years. Also in February winter is slowly coming to an end. There are days heavy on sunshine. But also some that call for a long bath or a quiet day in bed with a hot water bottle, reading and drinking steaming cups of tea.

Also in February there usually would be cake. Lots and lots of cake, with each of my parents’ and my stepdad’s birthdays coming up. And another person has her birthday. A person long gone whom I’ve never met in real life but who is dear to my heart nonetheless and has been for most of my life as far as I can remember. I can tell you, it was quite easy to decide which book I would re-read this month.

Happy Birthday, Laura Ingalls Wilder

On February 7, I celebrated Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 155^th birthday with a self-made nut corner and the first fifty or so pages of Little House in the Big Woods. I’ve already read this book about five times, so it might as well be the second-most-read book I own, following my favourite one in the series, The Long Winter, which I used to read once a year.

A small part of my Laura-collection.

And yes, in case you were wondering, it all started with the 70s TV show starring Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon. My Mum used to watch it when she was younger, and I with her as I was growing up. I loved the show with all my heart and even more for the fact that my Mum named me after Laura. A decision, I’ll be eternally thankful for! (Shout out to my Mum. Actually, if it hadn’t been for her there might not be an article.)

Today I know I wasn’t the only Laura named after Laura Ingalls Wilder. In fact, a lot of Little House fans named their girls Laura and Mary. But when I was a kid it felt really special that I was sharing my name with her. Well, I guess, it still feels like that to some extent. A big wish on my bucket list therefore is and has been for a long time a Laura Ingalls Wilder-tour around the United States. To start off in Wisconsin, visit the dug out in Walnut Grove, Charles’ house in De Smet and the Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri where Laura grew old with her husband Almanzo. I’m definitely going to do this in the next couple of years with my cousin. If Covid-19 will let us. And I promise, I’ll keep you guys updated.

Pioneer Life vs. nowadays

What is it that I love about Laura and the Little House books? When I think back I remember that even as a little girl reading those books for the first time I loved the concept of people being happy and thankful for what little they have, even if they are forced to fight for it almost every day of their lives. I know that the books and the TV show are heavily moralized and that the Ingalls’ might not have faced all this hardship without ever breaking down or struggling to trust in God.

But even so, they were living their life having so much less than most people (in the western world) nowadays and still managed to be happier. It is a lesson everybody of us should learn. Still, I catch myself choosing the easy way all the time and living this life with its pleasantries, forgetting their true cost and how many people all over the world have suffered so that I could purchase something I don’t really need. Do I want people to go back to a way of life 155 years ago? No. But I want us to not constantly work against nature. I want us to be less wasteful, to actually be thankful for the things we have and to not forget the people who are suffering everyday to make our way of life possible.

Little House in the Big Woods might not be the best example of the hardship Laura and her family were facing in the 1870s till 1890s. The loss of their harvest time and time again, sickness, Laura’s older sister Mary going blind, her baby brother dying or the endlessly seeming winter in De Smet that almost starved the family to death. But what this first book (side note: historically, Little House on the Prairie should have been the first book, but somehow I still read them in the order they were published with Little House in the Big Woods being the first one) beautifully shows is how happy and content you can be as long as you have a loving family, a snug little house that keeps the cold out and enough food to put on the table.

Funnily, a lot of the book consists of different ways to prepare food – honey, maple syrup, ham and cheese –, but also of the stories Pa is telling after supper at the end of a long day of work or him playing the fiddle. Reading about a world that is entirely different from life in the 21^st century has taught me a lot growing up. I must have been eight years old, not much older than Laura who celebrates her sixth birthday in the first book, and I already knew that you need rennet from a calves’ stomach to make cheese, that in order to get maple syrup a maple tree is tapped by drilling holes in their trunks and that a panther’s cry sounds like a woman’s.

Nowadays, the Little House books strike a nerve with me: the wish for a more modest life without having people around me who are constantly complaining (yep, me included). Complaining about too much work, complaining about the weather being too cold or too hot, complaining about Covid-19 taking our freedom away. When most of us are still leading a f****** privileged life. I’ve had this wish for a more modest life even while growing up, so I gave my Mum Laura Ingalls-inspired presents to Christmas, which were mostly something I had stitched together myself. Later on, I decided I wanted to learn sewing properly, which I’m currently working on. I have tried a couple of recipes from my Little House cookbook, started to plant some vegetables on the windowsill and let myself get inspired to work on some DIY projects.

But of course, I will never live my 21^st-century life as the Ingalls’ family did 155 years ago. Nor would I want to. I’m not idealizing this life, the hardship, the position of women in this time. But I will continue to read every word Laura Ingalls Wilder has written and that has been written about her. This woman who feels closer to me than many of the “real” people I stumble across in my everyday life. And I will continue to let myself get inspired by her. As a human being on this planet, as a woman, as a writer, a daughter, sister, girlfriend and friend. And I will keep her memory alive as long as I live. Laura Ingalls Wilder – you’re an inspiration. And a dear friend. Happy Birthday. Rest in Peace.

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

For the longest time, I couldn’t remember much about Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908). At least when it comes to the plot. I actually had some vivid images of my childhood bedroom each time I looked at it standing in my bookshelf: the blue tapestry, the dark blue covers I was tucked into with all its yellow moons and white sheep. My huge chunk of a bed which would creak with every motion, even if I did no more than reach for my favourite cuddly toy – the infamous red doll-like little guy I’ve had with me ever since I was born that was named most creatively “poppet” and can play this old German lullaby “Sleep, dear child, sleep”. And of course, I could remember the wet facecloth and the hot water bottle on my ear. Why? Because I had the most terrible ear-infections when I was small.

…when I was young, my father would stay up late and read to me. He was addicted to the written word. I would fall asleep listening to the sound of his voice.

Drew Barrymore as Danielle in Ever After

Most of the times it hurt so bad that I couldn’t sleep, so I would get up way past my bedtime, toddle into the living-room and get my parents to magically make my pain disappear. They were good like that, blowing at abrasions until the pain seemed to fly away. Not with the earaches though. So they had to try something different. It was around that time that they started to read The Wind in the Willows to me. I was too small to understand all the words and grasp the story but I remember them showing me pictures from the book and I would fall asleep listening to the sound of my Dad’s voice.

Taking a chance

Anyway, all I remembered about the book until recently was that there was a mole called Mole, a rat named Rat and a toad named Toad. And that they all liked each other and hung around at each other’s places. Not much to go by but I still loved my copy for the memories I associated with it. And was afraid they wouldn’t mean as much after re-reading it. So the book stayed in my bookshelf for most of my life, only to be taken out and put into a packing case every time I moved. Until 2021, at the age of 25, when I finally decided to take a chance and read it again.

And what did I find between its pages? I mean other than a beautifully written children’s tale of friendship, loyalty and praise of the simple things in life? A whole set of memories I didn’t know I had. There was the inscription of my grandparents who had given me The Wind in the Willows and its sequel The Willows in Winter by William Horwood as a gift when I was a baby. My first books ever! “We wish you a lot of pleasant hours in the land of reading-adventures.” There were scenes, pictures in the book that I recognized from my childhood like a whisper from the past, feelings of comfort and safety and passages I could hear read in my father’s voice. And in my boyfriend’s who I had asked to read me the first chapter when I was feeling sick a couple of weeks before.

And what an extraordinary children’s story it is: Mole leaving his tiny home under the earth to live with Rat, paddling, having picknicks and idly spending their evenings with friends, their adventure in the Wild Wood where they stay with Badger who does not appreciate visits, the arrogant Toad who makes car driving his new hobby, getting himself in trouble again and again despite his friends trying to take care of him and the grand finale when they are fighting the weasels and stoats from the Wild Wood together which have taken over Toad Hall.

“Dulce Domum”

To me, what makes these animals special is how human they are. I’m pretty sure I could describe most people I know by comparing them to one or two of them. Me, I am definitely Mole – loyal, honest, trying to act courageous even when you don’t feel like it and with a hint of naivety. In one chapter, “Dulce Domum” (which means “Sweet Home”) Mole revisits his home after having stayed with Rat for a couple of months:

It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in fullest flood.

Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that day when he first found the river! And now it was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in. Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him.

Not only does Grahame capture the sense of home beautifully but he also struck a nerve with me. I had just given up my own little home of seven years to move into a bigger apartment with my boyfriend. A change that was good, important and that I had looked forward to but that also made me realize how much this small shabby place which had given me independence, responsibilities and my very first fridge meant to me. Reading the feelings that I couldn’t describe in a book that had set on my shelf for a quarter of a century felt like a strange coincidence, nearly as if I was meant to read those words at this very moment in time when I needed them most. “Dolce Domum” will therefore always be my most cherished and most read chapter in The Wind in the Willows.

While I can see myself in Mole (he even inspired me to have a spring cleaning), others might share characteristics with the romantic Rat who simply loves his quiet and idyllic life close to the river, or maybe the wise Badger who prefers to live alone in the woods and only shows up when he wishes for company. And then there’s Toad, selfish, hedonistic and boastful but maybe the most fun character, with a development that is in for a surprise. A special nod also goes to my favourite guest star, Sea Rat, whose adventurous life travelling the world will always be my ideal. Maybe one day I’m courageous enough to live it.

For the longest time, I was afraid of what I might lose when re-reading the book, that the new memories I make might overwrite the old ones which had become special to me those past 25 years. Instead, re-reading this book was like a trip to the past that made me realize where my love for books might have started. If I ever have kids of my own, I will read this book to them every time they are feeling sick. Isn’t that how traditions are born?

New Year, New Challenges

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

My first week this year is not very unlike from last year’s. Again, I have come up with a list of resolutions and try to stick to it as much as I possibly can. And again, I know I’ll probably lose most of my newly gained applaudable character traits by the beginning of next month.

Anyway, I won’t give up without fighting and sharing my resolutions with you might just give me the little bit of extra motivation I need to stick to them.

I believe new year’s resolutions should help you and make you feel good about yourself. Therefore, don’t simply write everything down that has bugged you these past months,  but choose resolutions that you can also realize easily with just a little bit of discipline and extra effort. At the same time, this means that you don’t put yourself under pressure or be too harsh if things don’t work out exactly the way you planned. Allow yourself to make mistakes.

Please, let me present my NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS 2020:

1. Sustainability: Live as zero waste as possible. / Only buy fruits and vegetables in organic grocery stores. / Try to save as much food as possible. / Only travel by plane if there’s no other option.

Although I try to live as sustainable as possible, there was a number of times last year when I went for packaging simply because it was the easy choice. There were times when I decided on eating out knowing that I had food in the fridge which – as a result – might go bad. I was responsible for five return flights, four of them I took myself. “That’s Whataboutism,” some of you might say and you’re right. I know that I’m only human and I’m allowed to make mistakes. And I know that I made a lot of good decisions as well. But there’s always room for improvement 😉

2. Education: Read at least 60 books. / Watch the daily news to stay updated on world events and politics.

Although I study literary studies, nowadays I don’t read as much for pleasure as I used to do. With college reading lists and long working days, watching Netflix (from now on only a single episode a day!) often seemed so much easier. The pile of unread books in my apartment is unbelievably high (#3 on my bucket list – Buy a book after running out of books – might be the least likely to happen of them all). And I won’t even start on the gaps in my political knowledge…

3. Career: Write something (anything creative) for at least half an hour a day. / Don’t procrastinate.

Similar to my former reading habit, I don’t write as much fiction as I used to. Hope this will change in 2020.

4. Social Life: Be a better friend.

There are a lot of reasons why I want to be a better friend this year. 2019 saw me directing a play, working three different jobs, taking classes and spending the evenings with my boyfriend. This didn’t leave much time for my friends and I simply hoped they would understand. Some of them did, some of them didn’t and they were right not to. When my sister got pissed at me for never texting her back, when my cousin told me she was sad because I was never free to meet up, when one of my closest friends didn’t tell me about her new relationship and my best friend said she wouldn’t have called me when she needed somebody to talk, I was hurt. I was hurt and I felt wronged and I thought that I had had good reason not to be around. At first. Later I realized that I used to be a friend you could rely on and in 2019, I was not.

5. Health: Do some sports.

Well, I won’t comment on this one. Just do some sports, girl. And climbing stairs doesn’t count!

6. Home: Get rid of everything you don’t need. / Only buy things you need.

At the end of last year, I tried to get rid of a lot of stuff in a short time. I started by throwing out one piece at the first day, two at the second, three at the third, until day 25. It did work out to some extent (my boyfriend would disagree!) and I feel my apartment is much more comfortable now. The problem is, that – unlike many other people trying to declutter their lives – I hate to throw things away. Producing garbage simply clashes with my idea of sustainability. That’s why a lot of the items I wanted to get rid of went into a box under my bed instead where they are still sitting waiting for me to either sell them (looking forward to all the flea markets in summer) or find somebody to give them to. I hope 2020 will be the year!

 

 

Why I Don’t Want to Eat Like a Gilmore

Pizza, Burger, Chinese Take-away, Donuts, Muffins, Pancakes, Pop-Tarts, Ice Cream… If I had to choose the one thing that baffles me most about the girls, it’d be the amount of fast food they stuff into themselves without gaining any weight. I remember this one weekend with my Dad years ago – I guess, I must have been 12 or 13 – when we couldn’t decide on what food we’d get. My sister wanted a McDonald’s hamburger (gross, I know), I was craving for this one particular Chinese curry dish and my Dad thought about getting Pizza. In the end, he was driving to three different places getting three different kinds of food. One of my favourite Dad-weekend memories and a true Gilmore Girls-moment.

As a big fan of Kristi Carlson’s Eat Like a Gilmore and her follow-up Daily Cravings (though by now I cook my own veganized versions of her recipes), I started to ask myself:

Would it be great to actually eat like a Gilmore?

For many reasons my answer to this question is no. Yes, I’d love to be able to eat four Thanksgiving dinners and snack some rolls on the way home. I’d love to order tons of Chinese food and try a little bit of everything. And I’d love to check out all the hot delivery guys in town by ordering from 10 different places at once.

But there is one thing that simply drives me crazy and that is the amount of food and packaging they’re throwing away. Surely, it’s only a show, but isn’t Gilmore Girls working as a mirror of the modern American society? And even worse: hasn’t it become a role model to millions of fans, to people just like me who have been growing up watching the show?

By presenting its main characters as inconsiderate consumers and contrasting them with crazy health fanatics such as Mrs. Kim and Michel, the show runners imply that wilful waste is chic. While Mrs. Kim confronts her daughter Lane with an excessive use of tofu, Michel is even counting the blueberries in his morning pancakes. Add in Coach Bennet, the only vegan in the show, who is – to say it frankly – pretty scary. Luke’s healthy lifestyle becomes inauthentic by the simple fact that he’s selling dishes he’d never touch himself. Sookie, at the same time, does not want to ‘waste’ her talent on vegetarians.

Lorelai and Rory are wasteful, not only with food, but also in their consumption of fast fashion, the countless take-away cups containing their beloved coffee or Rory’s vast number of trips between London and New England without ever considering her carbon dioxide footprint, to only mention a few.

RORY: This is just wrong!
LORELAI: What?
RORY: You washing two socks!
LORELAI: They were dirty.
RORY: That’s wasteful.
LORELAI: I really wanted to wear them tonight.
RORY: They are your dancing Santa Claus socks. You’re not gonna wear them for another ten months.

Don’t get me wrong: I love love love Gilmore Girls and I’m still binge-watching the show. However, sometimes when you grow up you begin to question even the things you love.  And just as I realised that Lorelai’s and Rory’s social behaviour isn’t flawless making it easier for me to like characters such as Dean, Christopher or Richard and Emily, it seemed necessary to question their consumer behaviour. (By the way, which single mother could afford eating out three times a day?)

We constantly want more from life and while I agree that we should constantly strive for happiness, freedom and love, I believe we have to stop trying to compensate our dissatisfaction with consumption or put love and status on a level with materialism. Emily, for example, goes shopping when she is discontent with her marriage while Logan expresses his love for Rory by buying her a £32,000 bag (unpopular opinion: a really ugly bag).

Gilmore Girls is a beautiful show with amiable characters and a lovely story, but why is there no American show with normal ecoconscious characters? Why do the Coach Bennets and Phoebes of today’s modern TV shows also have to be weird or eccentric, even childish? Why does it have to be cool and funny to go on a quest for the best burger in New York as Marshall did in How I met your mother, ignoring the fact that firstly, they’re wasting food animals had suffered and died for and secondly, that Marshall is supposed to be fighting for the environment.

Well, Marshall, start by consuming less meat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Omnia Paratus!

The beginning of a new year is always an interesting time for me. It kinda feels like buying a new notebook with all these beautiful untouched pages and all you can think about is not messing it up. You’re using a special pen, you’re trying to write as neatly as possible, even though you already know that this new notebook is not at all unlike the ones before and will also be chaotic within a blink of the eye.

And that’s exactly what happens at the beginning of every year. I try to be more tidy, more punctual, more friendly. I start watching the news every night, try to read more and eat healthier. I want to write more letters, work on my novel and publish at least one blog post a week.

I don’t know why I always think I’d become a better person just because of a new year starting. Shouldn’t we constantly work on ourselves instead of giving up halfway through the year and postponing the “being-a-better-version-of-myself” to the following year?

I guess, working on myself was also the initial idea behind the bucket list I published in August 2018. Since then I went to a Kodaline concert (#12), I’ve visited the Harry Potter Studios in London (#27), I’ve kissed a frog prince (#41) and fell in love (#42). I didn’t plan any of these things. Well, of course, I booked my concert ticket and the flight to London, but both times it happened rather spontaneously, and I definitely didn’t plan to fall in love.

“I’ve got about the next two and a half hours planned, and then there’s just darkness and possibly some dragons.” – Rory Gilmore

And that’s when I realised that the most wonderful things happen when you don’t expect them at all (something I should’ve learned in my four years of playing improv). We can’t plan to be a better version of ourselves. We can just constantly try and stop feeling bad if it’s not always working out!

Wow, it’s gonna be just like “Lady and the Tramp”

Bella notte, a small Italian restaurant, a wine bottle candle stick and the best spaghetti in town – that is what comes to my mind when I think of Spaghetti & Meatballs. And as you would expect from an almost perfect show such as Gilmore Girls, of course there’s a reference to this very iconic Lady and the Tramp-scene during Rory’s and Dean’s three-month anniversary in Season 1’s “Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers”:

Wow, it’s gonna be just like “Lady and the Tramp”. You’ll share a plate of spaghetti, but it’ll just be one long strand, but you won’t realise it until you accidentally meet in the middle. And then, he’ll push a meatball towards you with his nose, and you’ll push it back with your nose, and then you’ll bring the meatball home and you’ll save it in the refrigerator for years and …

Of course, there’s also that moment in Season 7 when Emily is actually serving the dish and accidentally turning a quite normal conversation about celebrity hair colours into an argument:

LORELAI: How can you possibly say she looked better with the dark hair?
RORY: She did, the blonde just seemed like she was trying to be her sister.
LORELAI: The dark hair makes it look like she’s trying not to look like her, plus she does not have the nose for dark hair.
RORY: What does that mean?
LORELAI: Dark hair is like a giant light-up arrow pointing to what is wrong with you. Blond hair, it all sort of blends in in a haze of beige.
RORY: Nuts, you’re nuts.
LORELAI: You’re double nuts!
EMILY: All right, that’s it. No more spaghetti and meatballs. Musepa, come get these plates.
LORELAI: Mom!
EMILY: Every time we have spaghetti and meatballs, you fight.

Anyway, my best friend’s birthday was coming up and I was flipping through some cookbooks for inspirations. You should know I’m one of these crazy people who prefer experience gifts to material purchases, mainly because I believe, it’s more meaningful but also because we all have too much stuff anyway.

Well, I was flipping through Eat Like a Gilmore and all of a sudden there was this fantastic idea in my head, and I decided to throw him a Disney-themed motto night. With 16 square meters living space and a student income there was, of course, no way it would be as perfect as Lorelai’s fake Asia vacation or Rory’s Logan-farewell/Pre-London-party, but with self-made Disney decorations à la Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Peter Pan and The Princess and the Frog, and myself dressed as Mary Poppins (I had used the outfit before for our graduation motto week “Children’s heroes”) it still promised to be a great night. I borrowed a plaid tablecloth from my grandma, lit up some candles and was quite surprised by the atmosphere I had created.

The recipe is quite time-consuming but not hard to prepare and it’s definitely worth the effort (even though you have to gut sausages instead of simply using minced meat). As a student, I have to admit, pasta is one of my three basics – coffee, pasta and cookies (yep, quoted Gilmore Girls again) – mostly in combination with tomatoes and cheese, maybe a bit of zucchini and mushrooms, or sometimes a little more fancy with salmon or prawns, so it was great to try a dish that was different and definitely more special from what I would usually have. For dessert there was Chocolate Fondue with pink and white Marshmallow mice & we ended up… no, not fighting (!!!)… watching Zootopia.

All in all, a perfect evening (which would probably make a pretty good date, too 😉) at home with a 5-stars recipe!

 

 

We Have Buried the Putrid Corpse of Liberty!

#26 Be a Bridesmaid

Rory: Oh, I printed up some sample invitations for you. I made them on my computer.
Lorelai: Aww.
Rory: All you have to do is pick out a quote for the front page, and I’ll print them up.
Lorelai: Okay. Um “What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.” Ugh.
Rory: Sinclair Lewis.
Lorelai: Sinclair Sappy Lewis.
Rory: Fine, next.
Lorelai: “And all went merry as a marriage bell. But hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell!” What is it with poetry?
Rory: Lord Byron.
Lorelai: Byron and Lewis, together again.
Rory: Okay, last one.
Lorelai: “We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.” Perfect!
Rory: Mussolini it is.

There are girls who have been dreaming about their wedding for most of their lives. They have an image of what they’re going to wear. They know which music they’re going to play when walking the aisle, who they would invite and which cake they’re going to serve.

I’ve never been one of these girls. I’ve never passed a bridal boutique and imagined myself wearing one of the dresses (reason for #39 on my bucket list). I’m not getting excited before a royal wedding. I don’t enjoy watching TV shows such as Married at First Sight or Say Yes to the Dress (apart from that one time when I was channel surfing with my roommate & we realised Emmet Kirwan was the narrator of Don’t Tell the Bride).

I’m not saying I don’t like weddings at all. I just can’t remember a time in my life when I seriously dreamed of getting married. Like every girl, of course I used to have a back-up-husband-to-be during my teens & several celebrities I wouldn’t mind calling husband. 😉

Actually, you could have probably described me as kind of cynical, until, about 1 year ago, one of my best friends, Ronja, got engaged to her long-time boyfriend, Michael.

Ronja and me are pretty similar and very different at the same time. We met at an improv festival when I – a secret fan of her music – overheard her talking about an upcoming song release. It took another year before we became friends, at the final party of that same festival. And of course, like every good girl-friendship, it all started with a guy… She knows about every crush I had in the last three years, my secret fears, my worst styling choices, my positive and negative characteristics, and why moving to Dublin became my #1.

Anyway, one of my Lanes was getting married, and – knowing her – it promised to be perfect!

From time to time, I was really sorry I lived in Dublin and couldn’t really be part of the organisation. Yes, I was with her buying the dress. Yes, I came to Germany for the bachelorette party. And of course, I flew over for the wedding. But apart from that I was just another one of her 1,468 Instagram followers waiting for daily updates, because we were just too busy to call each other or even chat on a regular basis. 😅

Believe it or not, she still chose me as one of her bridesmaids ❤️ (yes! That’s #26 on my bucket list)!

I won’t describe the wedding itself in many words. It might sound crazy, but I think some things are just too precious for simple words. I may be able to recount it one day in a different genre – something fictional like a novel that leaves room for interpretation and a chance to catch some of the atmosphere.

I’ll just tell you that she looked gorgeous, that almost everybody was moved to tears, and that it felt like a dream – even more after I came back to the location the next day and found it lifeless and cold without the decorations (reminder to reread this scene from Percival).

Thanks Ronja, for giving me a wedding to dream about! I’m honoured to be your bridesmaid, and part of your life. Love you! ❤️❤️❤️

 

The Answer is 42

Rereading my blog, I realised it wasn’t my smartest move to write a post called ‘The Sweetness of Doing Nothing’ before disappearing for almost three months.

Well, too late to worry about that now …

Of course, I wasn’t exactly doing nothing… But five Hot Press issues, four visitors, three festivals, two apartments and one week in Germany later, it’s more important than ever to concentrate on my writing again.

From time to time, I remembered how much I loved writing just for fun and without a work context. I remembered it every time somebody was asking me about my novel. I remembered it seeing one of my colleagues filling his notebook during his lunch breaks. I remembered it watching Anne with an E. And I remembered it last Sunday listening to David Keenan at the All Together Now Hot Press speakeasy stage.

And here I am, a 22-year-old wannabe writer who hasn’t looked at her own works in at least seven weeks. AFTER Neil Gaiman told me the trick in becoming a published author was to finish a work first. I really took his advice serious. For a week or two. I’m so sorry, Neil! Apparently, focus isn’t my biggest strength at the moment.

To change that I came up with a bucket list of 42 things. Initially, this had been my friend’s idea over 3 years ago, but the old list is a bit out of date.

These 42 things can be anything, from small things like reading a certain novel to big things like travelling around the world. Writing this, I have to accept that in this world of unlimited possibilities, my own existence is small and limited. So I may be never able to speak fluent Chinese or live in space – but that’s okay.  As long as I have a few things to focus on, and always remember that life is too short to not to do what I want.

1. Move to Dublin.
2. Swim with a dolphin.
3. Buy a book after running out of books.
4. Visit my friend in Cape Town.
5. Write a novel.
6. Publish a novel.
7. See the penguins in Alaska.
8. Eat lobster.
9. Learn fluent Danish.
10. Read ‘War and Peace’.
11. See the Northern Lights.
12. Go to a Kodaline concert.
13. Make a difference in someone’s life.
14. Direct a play.
15. Ride on a camel.
16. Meet my favourite author.
17. Travel to the Warner Bros. Studios in LA.
18. Learn how to sew.
19. Eat at Patrick Guilbaud’s.
20. Go to the airport & decide spontaneously where to go.
21. Finish the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge.
22. Go to a casino.
23. Watch a film at ‘The Stella’.
24. See ‘Hamilton’ at the Broadway.
25. Go snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef.
26. Be a bridesmaid.
27. Visit the Harry Potter Studios in London.
28. See the Bangles perform.
29. Sleep on a boat.
30. Rub Theodore Dwight Woolsey’s toe at Yale.
31. Be independent (more or less) from material possessions.
32. Travel to Iceland.
33. See a Shakespearean play at ‘The Globe’.
34. Read a novel in French.
35. Visit Juliet’s balcony in Verona.
36. Travel around the world with a backpack.
37. Follow the footsteps of Laura Ingalls Wilder in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri and beyond.
38. Have coffee with Lily James.
39. Try on a wedding dress.
40. Get a tattoo.
41. Kiss a prince (or a frog).
42. Fall in love.

With two things already done this year, I think I’m on track!

What’s on your bucket list? Comment below!

Thanks a million!

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

You’re the kind of person who appreciates a quiet night at home with a good book? I definitely am. From time to time it’s nice being all by yourself for a change, talking to nobody but the checkout guy at Lidl (who unfortunately doesn’t bear any resemblance to Dean), watching Netflix, eating junk food, sleeping, … A whole weekend, however, would usually drive me mad. So after two days of basically doing nothing, I have to admit I am kind of surprised that I am still doing pretty good! Somehow I managed not to feel alone at all – and, more important, not to constantly feel bad about the fact that I didn’t spend my time more carefully (Dolce Far Niente! as the Italians would say). Doing some research on my next article for example or going on that trip to Galway that I’ve been planning for weeks or finally buying a bridesmaid dress for my friend’s wedding in August…

There’s always something to do, but don’t you ever get tired of doing stuff? I certainly do… And if this is what makes me happy right now – eating pie taking turns at watching ’13 Reasons Why’ and ‘A Year in the Life’ – then so be it!

Besides, life is way too much about trying to create meaning instead of just living. It’s all about putting things straight, about striving for more in this confusing world, about dealing with all these overwhelming human emotions. I believe that’s the reason why we constantly remodel our homes and create new spaces for our junk – so that there’s at least one thing in our lives we are in control of. Truth is, we never really are in control of things. And I don’t want to rearrange anymore. I just want to get rid of things I don’t need. Hi minimalists out there! I think I have your attention now.

These past few weeks I did a great deal of decluttering, moving not once, not twice, but three times altogether! Have I mentioned we were moving offices as well? After dealing with 24 years of stuff that had to be trashed, recycled, sorted and packed up in boxes you can imagine that the less-is-more concept kind of grew on me.

Yesterday, however, I spent two hours looking for Lorelai’s “Everyone Loves an Irish Girl” T-shirt from 4/1, trying to find a way to deliver it to Europe, although I knew light green isn’t necessarily the ideal colour for me. Normally, I’m wearing darker colours like bottle-green, ruby and ocean blue. Goes better with my hair and my skin. Anyway, when I finally gave it up, it was not because I couldn’t order it. It was for the sake of Emily Gilmore. Remember after Richard has died, Emily reads Marie Kondō’s ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ and suddenly wants to get rid of everything she owns.

You know Marie Kondō? […] People swear by her. She says you have to take everything you own out and put it in piles on the ground. Then you pick up each possession, and you hold it. If it brings you joy, you keep it. And if it doesn’t, out it goes.

This concept might seem radical; for Emily, however, who has just lost the love of her life, it makes perfect sense. Like Emily, we know that the junk we own cannot bring us true happiness. So, why are we surrounding ourselves with all these things? Maybe because we’re trying to hide the fact that there’s something else we’re missing? Doesn’t that mean the first step to find out what we’re missing is to declutter our lives?

By the way, this doesn’t mean I want to get rid of all my stuff or that I will spend all my future weekends all by myself. I just think we shouldn’t constantly strive for more. Sometimes we should just be happy spending a weekend at home watching Netflix and eating pie.

…

Well…

Maybe I should get that T-shirt after all…

In Defence of Rory Gilmore

Once in a while every girl dreams of living the life of their favourite TV character. Being invited to one of Blair Waldorf’s sleepover parties, attending a ball with Lady Mary or strolling through the Enchanted Forest with Emma, Regina and Snow… I must admit, from time to time even a serious conversation with Charles Ingalls seemed tempting to me, for as far as I know he’s the only human being that can solve every single problem mankind has ever faced. (Fun fact: I was named after Laura Ingalls Wilder, cause ‘Little House on the Prairie’ was my Mum’s favourite show when she was younger.)

“A dream is a wish your heart makes…” But most of the time these wishes remain unfulfilled, and you’re left alone with the cold reality that desperately needs a repaint à la ‘Pushing Daisies’. In my case, however, things are slightly different.

In Secondary School a friend of mine used to compare me with Rory, and although I always felt flattered I couldn’t really agree with her. Rory was drop-dead beautiful, smart, kind, modest and loved by everybody and I was … well, definitely not ugly, stupid, mean, arrogant or hated, but eh well… HUMAN. Still, Rory was everything I always wanted to be, and sometimes I wonder how different my life would have been without her as a role model.  Would I have chosen journalism, for example? I don’t know.

However, as the years went by, and I was watching Gilmore Girls over and over and over again, I couldn’t help but notice some of the similarities myself. Of course, I loved books, films and coffee, but had Emily and Richard always been that much like my grandparents? Did my father serve Amy Sherman-Palladino as a model for Christopher? Why did I never see the striking resemblance between Luke and my stepfather? And how on earth could it take 10 years for me to realize that Rory’s birthday was October 8, just like mine? Even the boys I liked were similar to Dean and Jess (although I’m still waiting for the rich guy to show up). And yes, my gay best friend’s name is Mich(a)el! All this can be seen as coincidences or maybe it’s just me desperately wanting to be a Gilmore Girl. I don’t know.

Growing up, I started to see Rory’s imperfections, and at least since the revival the tone has changed entirely. Rory is no longer the perfect daughter, girlfriend and granddaughter. People started calling her selfish, spoiled, unlikable, dependent on the people around her. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this extract from an online article on AYITL.

“A seminal show for many women growing up, the series seemed blind to how terribly entitled and overprivileged Rory Gilmore is and always has been. And then the reboot did what the original never explicitly did: highlighted Rory’s immature relationship with her privilege and essentially made her the most unlikable character on the show.”

Speaking for myself, Rory is still my role model. Yes, she’s made some bad decisions. And yes, she’s not perfect. But honestly, who is? I intend to learn from her mistakes without making the same ones! And in the meantime, I’m going to start Gilmore Girls all over again.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mums out there!

Thanks Mum, for being the Lorelai to my Rory!

“You are my guidepost for everything!”