Change is in the Air

Hello strangers! Blogging has certainly taken a back seat this year, but that's not to say that life hasn't been interesting. In fact, these first few months of 2016 have been incredibly busy and exciting. As I mentioned in my last post, change is very definitely in the air and I'm really looking forward to sharing these changes with you - they're almost ready so watch this space! You'll soon understand where all my blogging time has been going recently!

In the mean time, it seems like the only time I get to blog these days is when I'm in another country! I've just finished off a work trip in Singapore and I must say, it's great to be home! I don't think I've had a chilled weekend at home since we got back from holidays in January - it seems like every weekend we've had exciting, fun things to do (work travel, weddings, the Grape Escape, road trips and showing foreigners around Cape Town). It's all been a lot of fun but after almost 3 months of non-stop busyness, the introvert in me is crying out for a few days where I don't have to see anyone (bar those closest to me), make polite conversation or plan anything. Once I've done that I'm sure I'll start to feel slightly more normal again!

With all this travelling I've been doing, I thought I'd share a few of my favourite things about travelling:

• Sunrise or sunset from the air.
• The "stars" in the Emirates overnight flights.
• Being exposed to new people and new cultures.
• And getting exposed to new ways of looking at the world and seeing how people from other countries solve problems differently.
• Getting to see (and photograph) fun new things.

Here is a sneak peak of some of the pictures from my Singapore trip - keep an eye out for the full range of them coming soon.

Sunset from the air.

Singapore trip - Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

Singapore trip - Bright bridges at night.

The Reality of Work Travel

Reflection of cars in the building across from my hotel.
I thought this pertinent since we had a +- 1 hour commute from out hotel to the pant every day.
And the same on our way back.

So, you've been working for a while and you find out that you're going to need to do some travelling for work. You find out you're going to an awesome location and start getting exited, imagining sunning yourself on the beach after work or walking along snow-brushed cobblestone streets admiring the architecture and having time to sightsee. Your friends are all jealous and wish that they could come along in your suitcase to have fun with you.

This, my friends is a myth, reserved for holiday travel and is very definitely not what work travel is all about. I've been incredibly lucky to travel to some amazing places in the last little while for work and so I thought I'd share my experiences of what work travel is really all about - it's fun as long as your expectations are not the same as that of holiday travel!

• The probability of early mornings and late nights is high, especially if you're not the only one staying at the hotel.

• You're going to spend 70-90% of your time inside. Most likely the same office.

• You're going to spend 60-80% of your time in that same office, with the same people.

• You're going to eat a lot of restaurant food, which is delicious, but you will grow to miss a simple home-cooked meal.

• If you have people hosting you, they'll be able to advise you on some typical meals and drinks of the area - so you'll get to taste the "real" food of the place that you're visiting and not some tourist equivalent.

• If you're lucky, you will be able to squeeze in some sight-seeing between travelling to and from the office - an hour here and there to catch the main tourist attractions of the area, squished in between leaving the office and going out to dinner. 

• Most of your touristy photos will be from those squeezed-in-sightseeing-tours.

• If you're an introvert like me, you're going to get home and go into hibernation-mode and not want to socialise with anyone other than the people you live with for a few days.

• If you're working in a place that doesn't speak your language, you'll be excited to get back home to hear people speaking in your home language(s).

• You're going to, most probably, get to interact and chat with colleagues/clients that you've talked to over the phone a lot - so you will finally be able to put a face to a voice and name!

• Most of your pictures with colleagues will show you either in the office working, or at a restaurant eating.

• You'll get a chance to build relationships, make new friends and get to know people outside the office. It will be fun, just a different type of fun to holiday fun!

This is me, on the only completely sunny day we had in Rio.
Luckily, it also happened to be a Saturday - so this is me,
doing some fun touristy things in Rio.

Germany in Pictures

Wow, I think it's been almost a whole month since my last post. Not for want of trying, I have a few posts in draft that I've been trying to finish, as well as trying to get through a bunch of photo's that I've taken and want to edit a bit (to add a bit of polish) before posting!

Anyway, here is a second round of the rest of my Germany photos, now that I've finally found an evening and finished editing them! To round the rest of my trip up in a nutshell - I had a busy week with our client, first giving some training and then testing the software in preparation for using the it in the "real world". After finishing up on Friday, I caught a train to visit my friend in Regensburg. My 5 hour train ride turned into a 7 hour ride due to delays along the way (where is that German precision when you need it?!) but eventually I got there and it was lovely to be in a smaller, student town.

Even though it was early Saturday morning when I got to Regensburg, there were still a lot of people out, walking along the cobblestone streets all kitted out in the lederhosen and dirndls! Some of the highlights of my weekend were walking around the city and playing tourist, going up to the tops of churches to get views of the city and going to the dult (like a mini Oktoberfest) where I got to meet a bunch of Kim's work colleagues, who were a melting pot of languages and cultures and all very friendly.

I spent my last day and a bit in Munich. By this time, the weather had turned bad and I spent the day walking the mizzly streets, trying to find my way to Marienplatz. I'm happy to say that I was in time to see the Glockenspiel play from a crowded doorway where people were trying to get out of the rain.

I have got so many good memories tucked away, but I think, for this post, I'm going to let my pictures do the rest of the talking for my second post on Germany.

Germany Trip: Cologne

Hi everyone, I'm sorry I've been so quiet lately! As you may know, I recently got back from a work trip to Germany and so I thought I would share a few of my pics and experiences in a few posts, starting off with my trip there and my weekend in Cologne.

I left work at lunch time of Friday afternoon and after a quick stop at home to drop some things off and meet Frosty, I got dropped at the airport a little earlier than I had expected. But that's fine by me, since I much prefer arriving somewhere early as opposed to screeching in at the last minute. It gave me a chance to get all checked in and, since I really did have quite a bit of time to spare, I decided to use the chance to get a haircut! There's nothing like a haircut to make you feel better and a few days before my hair had reached that I-need-to-get-cut-yesterday phase, so it was a great way to pass the time!

Ready to fly after a new haircut.

A quick fight later and I had landed in Joburg with a few more hours to kill. This time I found myself a quick snack and then took a browse around Exclusive Books. I had been looking for a good book to read for ages and when I caught sight of Sheryl Sandburg's book, Lean In, I knew that that was the book that I would be taking along with me. I think the fact that I had completed more than half the book before I had landed in Cologne is indicative of how good a read this book is - I'll hopefully be sharing a bit more about my thoughts on the book later, as it deserves a post all of it's own.

I sat next to a lovely lady on my way there and she was the perfect seat mate - friendly and chatty for a little while and then quiet when it was time to be quiet. For a while after take off the weather was quite stormy and lightning-y and not particularly nice and I thought I'd try to photograph lightning - in between black screens of pictures that didn't catch any lightning, I caught one or two pics where the lightning is catching the clouds which I'm pretty excited about! This one below is probably my favourite one and with a bit of editing, it's come out really nicely - don't you think?

Lightning and clouds from a plane - I was contemplating whether I should go through the effort of
taking my camera out to try and get some pics of the lightning and I'm really chuffed that, in the end,
I decided to get my camera out!

My investment in one of those awesome neck pillows also really helped and I think I got about 4 hours or solid sleep in, which is a record for me as I don't usually sleep comfortably on a plane! We arrived in Munich in the early hours of Saturday morning and I loved seeing how green and "farmy" the countryside around Munich was, as we were descending to land. I had a quick layover in Munich and then an hour flight to get to Cologne, which had a more "foresty" feel to it when we were flying in.

One of the things that first struck me about Germany is that it's a really beautiful country and it immediately appealed to me for a reason I can't quite pinpoint. 

One of the best things about being able to travel is meeting up with friends who come from, or who have moved to, different parts of the world. When I went to Italy I was able to meet up with my "Italian sister" which was a really special time. This time I was able to meet up with a friend from varsity who had moved to Germany a few months before. Kim and I both used this opportunity to see a bit of Germany, she got to come and explore a bit of Cologne with me over the first weekend I was there. 

German countryside.

Kim and I - great to catch up with friends in foreign cities!

We spent two happy days exploring Cologne. 

The Kölner Dom (aka Cologne Cathedral) is one of Germany's biggest tourist attractions and it really is an amazing sight! I had the most incredible view of the Dom from my hotel room and waking up and going to sleep with the Dom as a view was an incredibly special thing! Inside they have some beautiful stained glass windows, some of them older and some slightly newer. Kim and I both really enjoyed the window that was made up of hundreds of identically sized squares of different coloured glass, that are meant to represent pixels. This, of course, appealed to the engineer in both Kim and me!

Inside the Kölner Dom - beautiful arches.

There were beautiful stained glass windows everywhere.

Inside the Kölner Dom - modern stained glass windows that look like pixels. 

I always love seeing the beautiful candles that get lit within churches and the Dom was no different.

After walking across a bridge filled with Love Locks, we decided on a whim to try and get to the top of a building that had a stream of people walking around it. We managed to find the building and 28 stories higher up, we got to the top of a cylindrical building and had a wonderful panoramic view of Cologne. Even though it had started to rain by this stage, it was lovely to see 

Strolling along the Rhine in Köln.

Love Locks in Köln.

In France, they apparently removed 45 tons worth of Love Locks from a bridge
where people followed a similar concept - the weight of the locks hadn't
been factored in to the design of the bridge and they were starting to affect
the structural integrity of the bridge!

View of the Dom from 28 stories up.

Getting creative with rain.

When we got back to the hotel on the first evening, after stopping at the shops to get a bite for dinner, we set up a picnic inside our hotel room and had a really great time taking pictures of the most breathtaking sunset. It just kept getting better and better!

Reflections on a roof top.

View of Köln from a distance - you can see the Dom on the right.

Kim at sunset.

Getting creative with framing my pictures.

Me and my reflection taken by Kim.
Thanks Kimi! 

This sunset just kept getting better and better!

One of the highlights of the weekend was a visit to the Lindt Chocolate Museum on the Sunday! One thing that was really great about both the Museum and the Dom was that they had information available in English! It made a huge difference being able to read the pamphlets and information boards in English (and gave me a chance to brush up on my German, with an easy translation of English right next to it!). I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is "so, did you get free chocolate at the museum?" the answer to which is "YES!". The museum really was fascinating and covered a huge variety of subjects from chocolate packaging and marketing to the process of obtaining cocoa beans to making chocolate (complete with machines) to packing chocolate and finally, the history of chocolate. Oh, and did I mention they also have a small hot-house where they grow actual cocoa trees?! AND we got to see first hand how they make those hollow figurines. All in all, a very worthy visit!

As a final activity on Sunday afternoon, Kim and I met up with one of her classmates who was studying relatively close by, which was also great. Even though I had only spent two days in Germany, hearing a South African accent in amongst the chatter of people was a very welcome thing indeed!

Kim outside the Lindt Chocolate Museum in Köln.

Me outside the Lindt Chocolate Museum.

To make the hollow figurines, chocolate is put into moulds and the
moulds are then put into these heads. The actual heads rotate in a circle
and then so does the entire 'X' shape, ensuring that the chocolate is
distributed evenly while it is setting. In the 'olden days' the chocolate figures
were put into metal moulds, but plastic is much cheaper and easier to recycle!