Coat – H&M, Top – Amber Sakai, Jeans – Henry Holland x Debenhams, Shoes – Friis & Company (via Zalando), Camerabag – Stylesscrapbook x Kipling, Leather Jacket –  Day Birger et Mikkelsen, Navy blazer- Uniqlo

Shelving Disneyland and Paris for now – and I’m aware this shelf is still full with unfulfilled promises of Part Two‘s of supposedly fantastical adventures (i.e Azerbaijan and Kew Gardens), but I suppose now they will have to get cozy on the IKEA Billys until I run out of topics to entertain my guests (you) and then soon enough I’ll start pulling out photo-albums and first-editions from the bookshelf at an attempt to impress. I kind of wish I have a fancy chandelier instead.

Ironically, I’d mentioned that Berlin to me was like Disneyland when I was a teenager – a faraway land where all dreams come true… or in other words anywhere but home where curfew is 10pm, parties start at 11 and mother leaves 12 missed calls while you’re dancing. A faraway land with lots of light and a vibrant music culture, preferably. So when I landed in Berlin courtesy of Zalando I was hit by excitement, nostalgia and a tinge of giddiness, but shock to the system, too. I was quickly realizing I’d actually grown out of popular music (is Katy Perry still kissing girls?) and was finding all the graffiti more disconcerting than amusing – probably sharing inner-boiling sentiments of an old German lady living on the second floor of a freshly graffiti-ed compound. But as Carrie and I lost ourselves on an expedition to find the Brandenburg gate for touring’s sake we kept running into unexpected, awesome nooks that diverted us even further off the beaten track. It takes a while to understand, that you need to stop comparing the city to Paris or London at some point and from then on it becomes a completely new experience. The grunge and the architectural disorderliness are simply products of the rich history of Berlin, as if it’s all embedded in the buildings and streets, now how charismatic is that.

Thank you Zalando for having us and Carrie for the shots of moi.

Jacket – H&M, Dress – ASOS, Shoes – Zara, Bag – c/o0 Chanel

I promise I will one day sit down and tell you what exactly I do for a living, I’ll even tell you how much I fail at taxes, but for now I’m just going to put it out there that I don’t professionally loiter in different cities for the sake of this blog. The life that fills the gaps between are just so uneventful… yeah, you don’t want to know. Right now I’m off to do a whole lot of Disneylanding courtesy of Vienna International, so I leave you with a few snaps from last night when we were taken into Paris and treated with a dinner at Lido cabaret (i.e a whole lot of jiggling boobies) (more than amusing after a few glasses of bubbly) and then a night-drive around the city. I must say this a gababillian times, but every.single.time I fall in love with Paris afresh.

I’m wearing: Trench coat – Uniqlo, Black leather jacket – Day Birger et Mikkelsen, Jeans – Zara, Boots – Friis & Company, Camerabag – Stylescrapbook x Kipling, Bag – Coach, Top – YesStyle, Earphones – Urbanears

Guten tag meine Kindereggs! …I just offended somebody’s grandma, didn’t I? I’m thinking I can take this post down two different paths – either one that involves a lot of 9th grade German-class related stories (i.e Ich bin ein Toilettenpapier, bitte? BITTE!? Translation: May I please go to the toilet and avoid answering whatever question you just threw at me) or I can be an adult and tell you how I’ve had the lovely opportunity to visit Berlin. Second option it is, but not because I’d like to be serious for a change, I think I just used all the German I know in the above example…
Growing up, Berlin to me was Disneyland, Hogwarts, and Never-neverland where the lights were multi-neon and the long-haired rollerbladers at the banks of the Seine were the emperors of dance. This is the time when MTV actually played music videos and teenage emotions oscillated with weekly charts and highly coveted ringtones, only purchasable through mobile phones that only kids with Nokia parents owned. The ‘internet’ was but a series of muffled bleeps from the Forbidden Box and I was a 13 year old kid living in Warsaw, alienated by the locals and wanting to ring the Y2K at a music festival in Berlin. So it was with glee that I accepted to fly to see the launch of Zalando’s new collection, if only to have a proper taste of the brand but also to finally attempt at experiencing the teenage dream never fulfilled. Here’s part one – snippets of arrival with travel-buddy Carrie and the evening of the collection launch. More of the city to come in Part Two!

Thank you Zalando for having us and Carrie for the shots of moi. 

With the internet growing so fast and with more and more delicious little corners popping up wherein I can deposit a little bit of myself, I’d like to announce – while aware of how much it sounds like the story of a certain dark lord (that particular one with no nose) – that you can now also find me on Pinterest!
Perhaps later in life I’ll be pursuing a more reputable vocation and during the mandatory background-check all these horcruxes (Facebook, Twitter, Formspring and the like) will do nothing but work against me… or for me? I shall now go litter my Facebook with adopt-a-panda campaign messages and delete all chesticular duck-face snaps… boy this will take forever.

J Hair, 54 Warren St, London

If you feel like you need me to explain why my hair looks like sushi rolls at one point, let me just tell you none of that was actually planned. I mean, I didn’t wake up with a massive hangover in a random salon chair receiving a haircut while missing a kidney, I just didn’t see the 3-hour PERM happening when I decided on a whim at stupid-o’clock the night before that I was going to hack my hair off. I’m pretty sure if you look up ‘whim’ in the dictionary there’s a picture of a girl with a bob-cut or a massive face tattoo, in fact there’s probably an illustration of me blissfully buying 20 bags of assorted peanuts in Tesco on a whim, and because they were on 2-for-1 sale. (Hubby and I are preparing a zombie apocalypse with our hoarding) I digress. I asked the lovely Mrs Jakki, the founder of J Hair, if she can make me look like that girl in the phone and when she said easy peasy I honestly expected a simple snip-snap 30-minute haircut. She then proceeded to slashing my ponytail in one move while I was distracted taking a call, and of course I looked up and peed a little. She tidied it around here and there, and when it started to take shape I started asking Kit what she wants to eat after this… until an evil-looking cart full of candy-coloured rollers were pulled out and next thing I know chemicals were being squirted on my head.
Three hours later, Kit and I both a little dead from looking at sushi-hair yet faraway from real food, the rolls were taken out and I peed again at the sight of taut little curls. (Yes, yes, lots of peeing) Jakki quickly went about explaining how she’d given me a digital-perm to give natural bounce to an otherwise flat hairstyle, and for the next few minutes saw her blow-dry out the ramen-noodles into exactly what I wanted in the first place. Except of course, I absolutely adored the curls once it stopped looking like wet seaweed. So there you have it, the rant behind my two-for-one haircut!

This is probably the reason why I insist on J Hair, not just because they obviously know how to handle heavy Asian hair, but it’s clear that they want customers to be happy past the first day out of that salon chair. Don’t get me wrong, Jakki did ask if I wanted a digital-perm and I said yes, she didn’t just sneaky-Korean-tiger-mum me into a perm, but clearly it was a great call on her behalf despite it not being the most convenient method and weeks after the cut I’m still making out with the hawt girl in the bathroom mirror.

Thank you Kit for enduring the longest hair-thing of our lives and snapping the process. Thank you J Hair for the wondertastic ‘do!