Procrastination.

Just because.

I would rather watch this 10 times than start writing my essay.

Ughgh!!!!!!!!!!

Catch up! {picture time}

Going through my phone and finding all these pictures I think I never shared- reason enough to post them!

After Halloween I flew to London to celebrate Georgie's 21st birthday- meeting up with these girls is the best thing: It's like we have never been apart. We are all shit at keeping in touch and have such different lives but that is not important. Spooning in our hotel bed, being the loudest in the pub, running around barefoot in Piccadilly Circus- I just love these girls to death ♥

Going to the cinema with all the girls to watch Don Jon | beautiful Greyfriar's Kirkyard | Julia and I shooting a promo film in a posh hotel | Oktoberfest | me being obsessed with Tom Hiddleston's dance videos | our amazing dead body outline for the Halloween party | my new amazing friend fom Texas

Me and my flatmates performing Hugh Grant's dance from Love Actually | a night out with the girls



Christmas party! I wish we had a picture of everyone in their christmas jumpers, it was just too good |  My super amazing hair style, done by Mona  ♥ | Party after party: Second party of the night with some other friends

You're a lizard, Harry!

picture by Julia

After the horrifying 9h bus ride and my terrifying visa interview (they also told me that I am not allowed to get a US work visa in the next two years and even though this is not such a big deal, I am seriously annoyed by it. Telling me I can't get one just makes me want one!) we did some shopping on Oxford Street and then went to Leavesden, where the Harry Potter Studios are located. I've wanted to go ever since it opened and it has been everything I imagined. Some props and sets I have seen before on an exhibition in New York but the studio tour is just so much more. It is definitely worth the 29 quid!
You are allowed to take as many pictures as you want and we did take so many, but I don't wanna spoil everything. So I will just show a few pictures here. If you wanna see more, go to Julia's blog and read her post about it!

The gift shop is masssssive and of course expensive, but I am a big sucker for those things so I couldn't resist. However, I just stuck to a copy of the second book (I am re reading all the books in English at the moment and I love this edition) and Bertie Botts beans in every flavor for my flatmates (they are gone already, it's just so much fun). If I had all the money in the world, I would probably buy a Gryffindor scarf, a million chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts beans, a wand and some of the very expensive but amazing jewellery. Oh well...

What British people say...

 I have read this little chart a while ago on Jo's blog and was amazed at the accurracy of this!

It is a bit scary that I do use some of the phrases as well, sort of well aware what I actually mean. I don't know why I use it, I guess because it's sort of smooth to say.
What can I say- faked politeness just comes natural. 

This week...

...is going to be so exciting!

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For my exchange semester in Texas I need another (my third one now) J1 visa, so I have to go down to London for another interview (as if they didn't already have my fingerprints). Julia is going with me and after the interview we are going to the Harry Potter Studios in Leavesden- I AM SO EXCITED!!!!

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Then on Wednesday we are going to watch both the first and the new second Hunger Games film in the cinema- this calls for loads of popcorn!

And on Friday some of my friends are having a Christmas party (yes, ridiculously early)- so it's all gonna be Christmas jumpers and nommy food. Yay!

Why my Iphone is gone/ yay new phone!

For only a year I have had my Iphone and ever since the IOS 7 update, it has been getting slooower and slower. It doesn't help that every 2 months my memory is full because I have taken way too many pictures. I dont wanna back them up and then let them be forgotten in the depths of my laptop. I think those recent developments were just the tip of the iceberg- I was swearing at my phone every day for the past weeks and it got to the point where I just wanted a new one. A phone that suits me better, and also a properly unlocked phone that I can take to Texas with me.
After some research I found the lovely Sony Xperia T, the lovely James Bond phone (he apparently uses it in Skyfall). I sold my Iphone and sent it off to its new mommy after my new phone got delivered yesterday and I never looked back.

I am totally in love with it and how much Android lets me personalise my phone (which was the main reason why I didn't like the Iphone anymore, btw). Also I can put in a 16GB memory card, so yay for that! The only bummer about getting rid of my Iphone is that I now have quite a few Iphone cases- Mona already sneaked some of them, but it makes me sad- I wish I could just use them for my new phone. Ughgshsg, but because I can't do that:

A little bit of Ebay inspiration for my new collection:

all from Ebay, here x

How to piss off a Brit

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Oh yess... pissing off people is quite easy here, especially if you don't know the cultural do's and don'ts.
 So here you go, a list on how to piss off British people.

• Ignore the difference between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland 

Depending on the sensitiveness, it might just be enough to call a Scottish person British. Or worse, European! I find this topic especially annoying. Whenever I get into this with a British person and they ask me in return "wouldn't you find it annoying if they called you european instead of german?"-  ummm NO? They need to get over this identity crisis for goodness sake, it is a pain in the bum.

• Jump queues

This is really easy to do. I have done it many of times, by accident of course. Everyone loves queuing here, doesn't matter where. I recall a situation where we were waiting in a sort of lobby of a cinema because it wasn't open yet. The lobby had a roof and it was nasty outside, so everyone was just huddling in, mostly in the corners (because you know, you don't just stand in the middle of the lobby by yourself). And then people started randomly queuing all the way on to the street, instead of just coming in to the middle of the lobby. This only got funnier when they started complaining that people weren't queuing smart enough and wasting too much space. Oh the joy of telling them that no one is actually in line!

• Don't offer your seat to an elderly person in the bus

This is probably the same in every country, but there are a lot (!) of old people on the busses here. Everyone jumps up when an old person comes in, it is so weird to watch. 

• Don't say sorry or excuse me when you go past someone in the supermarket

This bugs me sometimes, just because it is so silly when you say sorry to someone because you are grabbing something from the shelf in front of them. You basically apologize for everything you go in the supermarket. That's why I like shopping in empty stores. In Germany, no one cares (which I do find rude by now, this is how weird I got!)

• Admit that you don't like the Queen

Weird one. I find the Queen weird in the way that everyone is so smitten by her and I just think she comes across like an old grumpy lady. But that's my lesson learned, do not say that out loud.

Have you seen...?

 'Have you seen' is probably the most asked question in our flat.Have you seen that cat with tights video, have you seen that new Jimmy Kimmel video, have you seen that new trailer- we are embarrassingly in synch in terms of the YouTube videos we watch on a daily basis. Yes, I said it.

It is really hard for people to come over and take part in our weird conversations and inside jokes, believe me. We are a big bunch of weirdos.

So anyways-

a couple of 'have you seen' for you guys!

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that Mona and I re-enacted this on our way home tonight.

Thinking about the future {what happens after graduation}

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I think a little introduction is necessary so everyone has the right picture.
Scottish Bachelor degrees are for some reason 4 years long. You can "stop" after 3 years and receive an ordinary Bachelor degree or you do the full four years and then get an Honours degree. The Honours degree has different classes, so you get a grade showing how amazing you were (or not).

Right now I am in my third year. We do two simple semester, no trimesters or anything like that, so there is the winter semester (Sept - Dec) and the spring one (Jan - May). My spring semester is going to be my exchange semester in Texas, so my third year is split. The first half here in Edinburgh is almost over and it scares me loads. Today in two months I will be in Texas.

Anyway, that is not what I wanted to talk about.
In my mind I often jump in time to the start of fourth year. And then thinking of how fast everything will go. Settling in, accepting that this is your last year. Then it's Christmas. New semester, which is the last semester. Writing your dissertation.
All of a sudden it will be May 2015 and we will graduate.
A day I look forward to because we get to wear these cool outfits with the hat and everything.
But what happens after that?

This semester I am taking a module this year where we talk about businesses and creativity, becoming an entrepreneur and all those things. For some reason this is not really a third year module, so 99% of the course are fourth year people. Therefore, we seem to talk a lot about their possibilities after graduating.
It is comforting to see that a lot of them don't have a clue what to do either.

Every so often I have this splash of inspiration, maybe when watching a film, hearing someone speak about their future, talking about all these different options that we have. I could do soo many things with my degree it is ridiculous. For me that also means I could just end up doing nothing special.
Sometimes I think I want to work within film production, or a TV series, then I want to be a freelancer somehow, or a social media marketing adviser, then I want to do marketing, and sometimes I want to have my own business.
It annoys me so so so much, because it would be so much easier if I had a specific goal that I could work towards. But no.
I am still at the point that I was at three years ago. I want to have a cool job. One that makes me happy.
I don't want to be the next Steven Spielberg.

I love studying, I love listening to my teacher talk about film, having discussions about all sorts of things related to the film business. I don't want this to end!
So doing a Masters maybe. But that's expensive.
Or actually finding a good graduate job. But that's hard.
& where do I even want to live?
Ughhsghs

Scottish Weddings

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Oh Scottish Weddings. Sadly I have never been but I really want to go to one, one day. In the beginning I never realised how traditional they can be and how they have all those little quirks. Take the dancing for example. They do ceilidhs.

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I love dancing like this, it is so much fun and creates this feeling of belonging- what's more perfect than that for a wedding party?
Oh and with that goes the band. Bagpipes, harps, violins... aaah I love it.

Then the food.
Haggis, smoked salmon, hot apple cider, whisky, trifle, scones.. mh mh mh!!!


And the venues.
Scotland has a lot of castles (duuh), which are commonly used as wedding venues. Or anywhere in Scotland really makes a great wedding location. It all looks amazingly romantic and old.

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I just love this- I just wish Scotland's weather was more appropriate for outdoor weddings.

Scotland on Screen {part 2: Glasgow}

So here we go, part 2.
This time: Glasgow.
In the last couple of years there have been quite a few production in the city, even Hollywood one's.

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Not Another Happy Ending (2013) was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival and even though it felt really special to be among the first to watch it, I didn't like it that much. It was very clichee, very predictable. However, it looked beautiful and Glasgow makes a great setting for this film.

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Now on to another kind of film. This picture shows Glasgow, however completely americanised: Different street signs, cars on the opposite site of the road and yellow cabs. It is a scene out of World War Z, which was partly filmed in Glasgow but is supposed to be in Philadelphia.
Strange, if you ask me.

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Cloud Atlas is slightly different. It uses Glasgow as a location and dresses it up as San Francisco and London, but it also shows Edinburgh, as you can see in this pretty picture.

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This is such an absurd and funny Scottish film: The Angel's Share.
Typically the angel's share is the bit of the whiskey that evaporates during the aging process, but here it is a film by Ken Loach that takes place in Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Highlands. Despite the crazy mission they go on during the film, it feels properly Scottish with their accents, outfits and whatnot.

Halloween- our photo booth

I love photo booths (who doesn't?). So when we have parties, all I really want is a photo booth. Because I think it brings people together and is such a fun activity and definitely makes a party fun.

All we do really is put up a sheet in front of Mona's warderobe (it's massive), set up a tripod with my camera in front of it, put in the right settings and off we go.
It is a sort of annoying work to turn them into these nice photo strips but so worth it- and I love that we are doing something special here.

   

This was just a tiny selection of the pictures, I think I did around 30 of these strips but this would definitely be too much for this blog.

And to wrap all of this up, here my absolute favorite picture of the night:

The Joker pushing Alice in to Narnia.

A tiny sneak peak

 

Here you go people (aka Anna & Steffi), our Lion Witch Wardrobe costume (in the wrong order)-

I got back from London tonight, as I flew down to celebrate one of my friend's birthday with her. I feel like so much went on in these last four days it is ridiculous and could have happened over a whole week. But no, I had to go on a 9am flight right after our Halloween party. 

Let me tell you, that was a horrible idea.

But for now I just want to sleep, and then get back to normal. And be a little sad that Halloween is already over.