Hiatus

Hi,

It's been a while since my last post and the while will continue. I've loved having this public diary of my life, especially last year, but now it's time for other projects. If this picks up again, it'll be much different. More reflective and discursive perhaps.

I've just returned from Mongolia, and you can see some pictures of that below. Now, I'm thinking about plans to trek through Georgia and Azerbaijan next year after graduation, and after that to return to Iceland -  hopefully for good. 

Lots of love,
Fiona.

/52/ A cup o’ kindness

That’s it for 2013 then, I guess.

I lived in three different places (1 2 3) in three different countries. I flew spontanteously to Parma with just a change of clothes, a camera and a toothbrush. I turned 21. I wrote roughly 46,000 words in 23 essays (the 24th would have been semantics, but I guess I never wrote it). I went temporarily insane from stress and realised it was time to tone it down.

I trekked through fields full of cows in my festival gear, trying to find a shop that sold milk for my tent-side cuppa, and realised the absurdity of 21st century living. I tracked down a dead poet in the Alps. I went for a night-time dip in Swiss lake and then ate a defrosted, uncooked pizza with one of my best friends in the world. I saw Europe’s biggest waterfall. I petted a goat.

I moved to Berlin and found it challenging. I plodded through autumnal Oslo. I got my first taste of Poland and liked it. I faced Germany’s dark history and responded with many words, even though I really know what to say… I sang karaoke in a gay bar. I started to feel at home in Berlin.

I went home to Bavaria. I went home to the UK. I went ice skating. I had a heart-to-heart with a painting of Mr Darcy in the women’s loos of my favourite pub back home. I had another heart-to-heart with a dear friend on an Oxfordshire bus. I had a third heart-to-heart in a cozy Oxford coffee shop with snowflakes whirling by. Consider my heart replenished.

 

And 2013 ended much like it began, in a house full of friends with a belly full of food and happy. 

I wrote about my year 52 times here – it wasn’t always easy, and I flagged at the end. Considerably. The date tag on this might read December, but as I write this it’s almost the following June. Nevertheless, the task is done. 22,000 words dissecting, documenting and reflecting on 2013. The verdict? It was good, as years go. One of the best I’ve had, in fact.

I’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet – for auld lang syne!

/49/ Oh, brother!

My trip to Regensburg got me thinking.

 

Do you ever look around and get startled by how grown-up people have become – and maybe even feel like you’ve been left behind? A lot of my friends back home are either in their final year of university, diligently scratching essay after essay onto paper and cramming three years of lurning into their skulls. And others have even graduated, moved in with their significant others, and found a job. All while I’m sashaying about in Berlin with well over a year of university left to go. I can’t help but recall the lines from Dr Seuss’ flawless Oh, the Places You’ll Go!:

You’ll get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You’ll be left in a Lurch.

In the poem, this “Lurch” goes on to become a “Slump” (which is really just Seussian for “depression”); but for me, it’s really more of a chilled-out Slouch. Because it’s not a bad feeling actually – there’s something delightfully satisfying about being able to laugh and say “Adulthood? Oh, that’s a while away yet.” And I have a Plan anyway, so I’m not trembling in fear of some undetermined future. I’m patiently waiting for it, and trying to take things easy while I do.

 

But when your little brother, whom you used to scare by threatening to tickle him until he cried and who you would play Pokemon with on long car journeys, moves out from home, works a full-time job and has a real and proper girlfriend, it can seem like time has crept up on you. An BAM - you’re in that future which, back when you were fourteen and skiving Chemistry class, you used to wonder would ever come.

 

Not that he’s really any more grown up than I am. And not that it’s a competition – it’s just one of those “oh” moments. And luckily we get on really quite well. Niall (rhymes with “meal” not “mile”) is doing a year at the theatre in Regensburg, which is a perfect little Bavarian town. There are the quintessential alleys and stone bridges and medieval archways, back-street cafes and cozy dens of eateries, and church spires towering over cobble-stoned market places.

 
  

I also have a thing for cathedrals – the architecture blows me away again and again. Since I read Pillars of the Earth I haven’t looked at them the same again. In my opinion, cathedrals are basically Europe’s pyramids (she says, having never been to Egypt). And Regensburg’s Gothic Dom St. Peter isn’t a half bad example. Click through to see more pictures of the cathedral.

   

During my visit, Niall and I hit Christmas Markets, I saw him in a play (Robin Hood for kiddywinks – very fun!), and then I met an awful lot of his friends. Awful in the best way – it’s good to see him happy and with so many people surrounding him. Awwww. All this squishy sibling affection is getting, like, mega gross.

“Another picture?” he groaned. I cackled, as I often do, and ignored him, as I often do.

Best Sister Ever, obviously.

All this brings me right back around to Dr Seuss:

[…] when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.

Right now, I feel far freer than I would if I had a flat and a boyfriend and a job and a reason to stay in one place. It’s not my long-term plan (that definitely does involve a little pride upon the shelf / and four stone walls around me); but for now I wouldn’t have it any other way. Being the chief executive officer of my own life suits me down to the ground.

I’ll fill this formless in-between time with trips to visit those friends who now actually own couches - because every student nomad needs a place to sleep before the next adventure begins!

/33/ Lac Léman

The water of Lake Geneva (pardon me, Lac Léman) is clear, calm and cool – and dipping your feet in is exactly the right thing to wrap up a week of early mornings, long office days, and sweaty uphill struggles. That actually makes it sound a lot worse than it is – in fact, my first week in Switzerland actually ran like clockwork (pun intended). The early mornings aren't actually that early, unless you (like me) consider 7.30 AM to be an ungodly hour. It would be fine if I could just get to bed before midnight, but I don’t think Being Erica (whose trailer doesn't do it justice at all) or The Newsroom (two words: Aaron Sorkin) plan on letting me do that any time soon.

At my internship, the work itself is exactly my kind of thing (editing articles and designing a layout on InDesign) but there’s not enough of it to fill the day, so for the last hour or so, I find myself browsing through the news, budgeting my weekly spending, catching up on Linguistics reading I should have done a year ago, and researching Masters degrees – all while intermittently checking Outlook in the vain hope that someone has replied to my e-mails. After work I cycle home 10.5 km to the tune of a 170m increase in altitude. My borrowed bike is electric, which is a godsend on the days that I just don’t wanna, but on the days where I want to push myself and do it sans battery, I become very quickly aware of how heavy electric bikes are.

So when, on Sunday morning, my hosts, V (who is back from holiday, and with whom I get on with very well) and the aforementioned W, suggested a trip to the beach, I was in the car faster than you can say “relax”. I decided not to wear my swimsuit, mainly because I knew we weren’t going for very long, but also so I knew I wouldn’t be tempted to hop in the water and abandon my book. I’m currently reading Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I have been “currently reading” it for four months. I love what Mark Twain has to say about German and someone told me this was the "ultimate" American novel... but it’s not as good as I’d anticipated. Yet. I hold out hope.

I lay in the Sun with my Kindle and contemplated Switzerland. [A/N: I felt this a little more strongly when I wrote it than I do now, a week and a half later, but in essence it is the same.]

This is an odd place. It’s pristine and affluent, but has a seriously poor reputation regarding immigrants. I feel a little uncomfortable here, like everything imperfect is to be scoured off the surface. Then, it’s multilingual and multicultural, yes, but oddly so: the German, French and Italian regions are divided not only geographically, but also culturally, linguistically and – what seems most interesting of all to me – intentionally. None of the French-Swiss people I have met have any interest in learning German, never mind learning about the German-Swiss people, region or culture. As for Italian, the only indication that this is a quatro-lingual country is to be found the backs of cereal boxes and shampoo bottles. You can forget Romansh.

Finally, I became quickly aware of the fact that despite being surrounded by Europe, European politics and current affairs are hardly discussed - not surprisingly, really, considering Switzerland is known for neutrality - and when they are it is with the tone of a father tutting about his children playing. The country and its inhabitants feel very remote somehow, despite being renowned for hosting dozens of international organizations. The IUCN is just the start, with WWF literally just down the street, and the UN, the WHO, the WTO, the Red Cross and CERN headquartered not much further away. Acronyms abound, as do good intentions and undoubtedly good actions too, but it really feels like a nation playing God to the rest of the world – or rather, playing Matron.

Of course, I’ve only been here a week, and I’m sure any Swiss person will valiantly refute my observations, but I can’t help but feel that there is nothing but trees and dirt in the forest, nothing but blood and bone in the people, and nothing but clear, cool water in the lake. It's not unpleasant at all (quite the opposite in fact), but as Gertrude Stein once said so eloquently, “There is no there there” - or if there is, I fail to see it.   

/28/ - Switzerland

I have some exciting news: a couple of weeks ago, I went to an interview in College for an internship, and I got it! The internship is at an organization called the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is wonderful since I’ve long been a bit of an eco-warrior – albeit, quite a low-key one – and I hope I’ll learn lots more about the environmental issues facing us as a species and a planet. Self-appointed stewards of the Earth’s resources that we are, it’s vital that we treat the delicate balance of human and natural life with the same respect and attention that we give to the financial market, and geopolitical conflict. Lecture over, I’m thrilled!

I’ll be based in the Marine and Polar Programme in Switzerland! On Saturday the 10^th of August, I’m leaving for beautiful, sunny Geneva. For four weeks, I’ll be lodging in a pretty Swiss village, cycling to work and hopefully travelling around the country on weekends. I’ve already got a shortlist of things I want to see, one of which is a spectacular Baroque Library. And remember how I mentioned that Shawnee and I were planning a little trip in September? She’ll be flying out to join me the day after my internship ends, and we’ll travel around Switzerland for a week, seeing mountains and lakes, eating chocolate and cheese, and generally chilling out in the cleanest, safest, and best organized country in (possibly) the world.

/27/ New Glasses

Not much new this week, except that I have three new pairs of glasses! I’ve had this old plum-coloured pair for a few years, and as they were starting to lose their appeal (and some paint), I decided it was time for a change. I scored three new pairs of sexy specs.

The first pair is by Karen Millen and is a twist on your standard hipster frames. I didn’t think I would find any thick, dark, wide glasses that would look good on me, but this pair, thanks to the grey-mottled animal print of the plastic frames, actually kind of works. I think these are a bit more casual, and less sexy, but I think they’re playful and student-y so it’s all fine by me.

Feel free to follow me on instagram.

Secondly, I got a sweet pair in a similar shape to my old ones, with thin gold frames around the lenses and pretty arms which are partly tortoiseshell, and partly a colourful, chevron-y geometric pattern that reminds me a lot of Missoni. Even the buckle-esque detailing where the lenses meets the arms caught my eye. I think of these as my “mullet”: business in the front, with the sleek, simple, unobtrusive lenses; and part in the back, with gold, colour, pattern and tortoiseshell.

Please excuse crappy phone photos:

The third and final pair is a pair of sunglasses. I have a pair of Ray-Bans which I love. They look cool, they look good, and they were free – no kidding, I found them on the street in Iceland and nabbed them straight away. However, truth be told, I’ve hardly ever worn them because they’re not prescription and contact lenses don’t really agree with me… So with a heavy heart, I’m tucking them away and replacing them with this pair of similar sunnies. I think they look great, and you have no idea how wonderful it is to finally be able to comfortably see in the summer!

Also, spoiler, I got my hair cut!

 

So there you go, my little makeover.