In Germany you apply for a job with a picture

And since I am part German, here is Ben in a suit. My TicTac white teeth really match with my white in shape, yet not button down collar...would you hire me? I most certainly would! Right now I am really swamped with loads and loads of work. Final exams are coming up and tomorrow I have my second presentation for this term. Next week is another one, which seems to be tough, but we are a great team and things will work out just fine! In the meantime I am also working on the topic guide for my dissertation as well as some reports that have to be handed in within the next couple of days. This is really studying! Anyway, I managed to make room (or actually just took the time) for the job-hunt, which seems to drive everyone in school bananas at the moment. But I have a lot of pictures named me_in_suit.jpg or something like that, as well as an updated CV and I am designing cover letters for interesting and challenging work places. Sound good huh? Other than that I am looking forward to the summer and life out there. Realizing that I am about to write my last university exam, seeing everyone applying for jobs, marrying, giving birth or buying houses, fills me with excitement and happiness. Because I am ready to take the next steps...of course one step at the time!

Astrid in London

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I have managed to update my Blog, but you know how it is...
So meanwhile I had some visitors from Germany here. Jan and Mert came from Cologne for one weekend and then there was Daniel from Cologne as well. He was here with his Girlfriend. But while she wanted to see the Phantom of the Opera, he decided to meet me and we went to the Hayward Gallery to see the Dan Flavin Installations, which I enjoyed a lot. Back then I didn't really take any pictures, but this time I did. Astrid came from Bonn for the weekend and here is what we did:
Day one was at Brick Lane and the Old Spitalfields Market.
Astrid's plan was to buy some presents for some upcoming birthdays and other occasions...There was some nice stuff and it was hard to convince her of not buying too many things for herself (well that was what she asked me to do in the first place)
Later that day we went to the British Museum. For some reason we did get to the Museum pretty late and some wings already closed upon our arrival. Anyway, we saw what people come to see at the British Museum: The Rosetta Stone (and of course the Toilets and the coffee place). But what is the Rosetta Stone? Well, it is a stone with writing on it in two languages. These two languages are Egyptian and Greek, and three scripts have been used, i.e. hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. But why is it in three different scripts you might ask yourself. The Rosetta Stone was written in three different scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt..."The more you know"
You can see me trying to steel the Rosetta Stone on the third picture in the museum.















Day two was when we went first went to Battersea Park with Alex. It was extremely sunny and everybody cheered up. If you take a close look I think you can see a rainbow making his way from behind these two happy faces!
So here we are at the Battersea Park. After that we went to the Tate Britain on the other side of the river. Unfortunately they closed 15 minutes after we got there. But from our British Museum experience Astrid and me were very familiar with the shooing out of the gallery by a huge number of employees. But take a look at the park it was really beautiful!
























This is already day three. Astrid, Alex and me went to the Columbia Flower Market. It was very colourful and extremely packed. If you want to buy flowers on a Sunday you should definitely come here! Variety is great and prices are unbeatably low. If you are not into shopping for flowers you may enjoy all these little boutiques and art galleries situated along and around the market. You might also just buy a loaf of crusty dark rye bread...almost like Germany!

































At this point Astrid is already heading back home. We had such a great time! Whatever is not on the pictures was great too: Extended breakfast sessions, great dinner at home with some friends, Camden Market and so on, and so on...

On the last two pictures you can see unattended luggage in the tube and us pretty blurred due to the enormous speed of the London Underground, just as they claim: Nothing beats the tube!

British Museum

Ok ok here is the story. Max told me he read about this "must-be-amazing" exhibition called Dragon & Dog in the British Museum. This was one of the many things to do or see during the past weeks here in London, while everything was about China. Well I agreed to go and thought it is an opportunity to finally see the British Museum as well. Up on arrival we had to ask for this special exhibition and the girl at the counter seemed a bit irritated, but led us into The Great Court, which you can see on the smaller pictures that I uploaded here. It is really impressive! Anyway, when we finally got to that special exhibition we found that it was not what we expected... a few drawing tables, crayons, markers and wax crayons together with some black and white colour-them-yourself copies of Dogs, Dragons and all the other zodiac signs they have in China...and on top: it was for kids and the supervising girl laughed at us when she understood that we actually came for that one. After colouring our zodics we took a walk through the other exhibition halls, which was more motivating than what we came for in the first place.





















Here you see some kids at the children's activity in a Museum and on the last picture you see more of China in London. This picture was taken somewhere in Zone 3 and they still participated!

Things to do in London in one single day...

OK, ok China is in London now and therefore many events and exhibitions from, around and about China are available to the public at the moment and most are for free, which is great for us students here.
We started our day by going to The Three Emperors exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. It is a really great exhibition and I remembered most of the stuff from my classes at the University of Cologne and reading Jonathan D. Spence "The Search for Modern China", gosh I loved that book! Anyway after room three of 157 we were all a little bit exhausted and overwhelmed by all the information given on details regarding the palace culture and so forth. On the following pictures you see us after we saw the whole lot of it in front of the Royal Academy of Arts. It was the three of us Kuki, Max and me. (Please keep scrolling and reading...)
After the Royal Academy of Arts we were really hungry and actually we sort of got lost on our way to The Red Mansion Foundation. Suddenly we were and Hanover Square and discovered this health conscious Japanese fast food restaurant, targeting most of the busy office crowd in that area. Food is good and the prices are reasonable.



While searching The Red Mansion, where they were supposed to have some Chinese pop art on display we crossed the Burberry Passage and took a look at the Liberty department store, which is said to be nicer than Harrods...hard to believe since it looks like these half-timbered constructions in the South of Germany.
Liberty is just across the Apple store on Regent street. We went there as well since we were in the neighbourhood. I wanted to check out the new Intel inside Mac laptops, but they only had them on photographs...

























































At this point we did some serious walking and were all grumpy and exhausted. But suddenly we reached Selfriges department store.They were also taking part in that China in London theme so they had some of their shop windows decorated by Chinese artists. Pretty colourful.
At Selfriges we got some Italian ice cream, which was pretty delicious for London and very common in Germany or Italy itself. We passed a beautiful building, which contains according to the sign The Wallace Collection (supposed to be the largest private art collection of some region...maybe the whole world?)


















Unfortunately we could not really appreciate what was on display there...too much pomp and kitsch.
All three of us where happy to see the "OUT" sign soon after entering and we were still trying to find The Red Mansion Foundation, we are just way too much of Londoners so that we would never ask for directions or take a look at our A to Z guides.

Still on our way we entered St. James Church at the Spanish Place and got a quick impression of Roman Catholicism in London.
Finally we arrived at The Red Mansion Foundation and we saw some paintings by Feng Zhengjie. Below you may see a sample of one of his squinting women. The other sample is a photograph taken by Cui Xiuwen. Originally we wanted to go to the British Museum as well, there was supposed to be something called Dog and Dragon some artsy fartsy stuff about Chinese zodiac signs... It was too late for that, but we had a chance to see the beautiful Chinese lights around Oxford Circus.

Happy Birthday to me...suddenly brunch

Waking up is hard to do...this is how Paul and me look in the morning after an eventful weekend. We are getting started for my Birthday brunch with the Young German Society London.


Thanks to Paul, Alex, Kuki, Kaya and some of Santa's little helpers, we were able to create some dishes from scratch just in time before the packs got here. I am so happy that you came and I am so grateful for all the help! Guys, you are great!






So much good food!
















Here you see my friends. I guess everyone was happy that it was all about eating and food and eating and food, well and eating...and food!!!



















And me unwrapping some gifts. Got some really good stuff!!! But I don't share my goodies.



It was an extremely long brunch. The last hardcore people only left because some of us went to see a movie around 8 pm.


I had a blast, thanks for coming!