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the books of 2016
last year was the first year i actually frickin’ completed my good reads challenge! two months early, too! i am not so much for quantity rather than quality and i love reading long books and loads of non-fiction which are hard to get through as quickly as fiction is. so i am pretty pleased, here. also, i love reading the internet. as aziz ansari famously said, “i read the internet so much i feel like i’m on page a million of the worst book ever”. but winter is my cozy book reading time, so i’m hoping to put a big dent in this year’s challenge in the upcoming months. here’s the…
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indian summer
babí léto. altweibersommer. (both names relating to old people!) whatever you want to call it, we are experiencing one heck of an indian summer in central europe. it is now the perfect temperature for things like hiking! it occurred to me last week that i was not in a rut, per se, but forgetting that i live in europe and how much there is to explore around here. i promptly planned two local trips to celebrate st. wenceslaus day holidays that grace the end of september here in czechland. the first was finally climbing klet’ hill (last time, we took the chair-lift!) and hiking down into krumlov for some folklore festivities. what…
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thirty by thirty: my oslo stopover
thirty countries by thirty. i suppose it’s a silly distinction, and not one that i actually achieved, having gone to my thirtieth country, norway, at about three months past my thirtieth birthday. so the term “thirty during thirty” is reallymore accurate. (prepositions are so pesky, aren’t they?) this is one of the things that brought me to norway, not to mention that i’ve been hoping to go there for awhile and it is the last of my ancestral homelands to be checked off the list. the other major reason is that it cost the same to obtain a ticket with a stop in norway (if not cheaper) as it did to fly directly…
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the most unexpected place
it was may 2012, just over four years ago now, and we were getting ready to plunk down the money for a one way plane ticket to adventure. we were going to be flying out of toronto, simply because it was close enough to michigan to drive to and we both wanted to see more of eastern canada. destination? the place that was cheapest to fly to from there. i remember when alex told me, “so, it really looks like it’s going to be glasgow.” glasgow? scotland? i didn’t know much about scotland at the time, but those tickets were a bargain ($486 each from airtransat, if i recall), so…
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So, You’re Going to Prague? (A Mini-Guide of my Favorites)
prague is now europe’s fifth most visited city as of 2016, surpassed by only london, paris, istanbul, and rome. so chances are, if you haven’t already been, you might be planning on going to prague soon, especially since summer’s coming up. i get a few emails and comments about what to do in prague, and man, that’s a hard question to answer in an email, let alone a comment! so! consider this post my e-mail to you about my favorite things and places to visit in the city. this is by no means an exhaustive guide (hah) but rather just my favorite places that i’ve been to loads of times and like…
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kitchens around the world
(add your kitchen to the list! more info at the end of the post) it’s been a quiet, sunny, winter week here. so uneventful that i was scrolling through photos i took last year and couldn’t help but notice how many photos i took of kitchens i stayed in. the thing that fascinated me the most about spending time in someone’s house is their kitchen, especially if they are from a different country than me. like most people, i only knew the kitchen in the house where i was raised and there, we do things a certain way. so it’s super interesting to see what others’ kitchens look like and…
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the books of 2015
i read eighteen books in 2015, but it still wasn’t good enough to complete my goodreads goal of twenty books. i was on pace most of the year, but the end of the year really snuck up on me and even with reading obsessively the last few days of the year, i couldn’t pull it off. however, third time’s a charm, the twenty books goal is happening in 2016. i want to cite the excuse that “i was busy”, but it’s true that i did read a lot…. of internet and blogs! i’m hoping to shift that focus more towards books over internet this year. as aziz ansari once said,…
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a year of travels: 2015
oh man, you guys, this year. it was one of the best. although i managed to pack a ton of travels in the second half of 2015, the first half was alllll about that local travel while saving up my korunas to come back to the states for the wedding. i am feeling just so grateful with the travel opportunities that have popped up and looking forward to what might come in the new year! but first, let’s take a look at 2015 as it was… not much happened in january after the aftermath of our our austrian christmas, but we managed to make a few day trips and a…
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how to enjoy versailles like royalty
i’m not a palace person. i’d much rather see how the peasantry or the middle-class live. real stuff, not rich peoples’ houses. but after urging from my friend monica (you need to go!) i figured on this, my third time in paris, i was ready to see the grandiose palaces of versailles. i decided to watch sofia coppola’s marie antoinette, which i had been meaning to see forever, and i fell in love. it quickly moved up the ranks to one of my favorite films that i know i can watch again and again. initially, the movie was panned for having too many costumes and not enough substance, but i…
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my favorite things
“raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittensbright copper kettles and warm woollen mittensbrown paper packages tied up with stringsthese are a few of my favorite things” a fun assortment of things that make cynthia tick… or at least that light up my day. funnily enough, most of these are in some way related to travel. of course. nudelboxes in berlin doner kebaps, currywurst, and really legit fallafels from that place in neukölln are great, but i have been and will continue to be all about: the nudelbox. asian noodles. with vegetables. in a convenient, carry-out box. sometimes you can find nudelboxes with tofu, like from this place on skalitzerstrasse near schlesisches…
