Home Away from Home

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to enlist a former (Austrian) team-mate for events in Sofia and show him all my favourite spots in the city. While Sofia is not known for its architectural beauty and definitely not a city American or Asian tourists typically include in their "Europe in a week" itineraries, I have mentioned before that I really like it and feel a bit at home there. On my 15 or so visits so far, I've never stayed longer than 3 nights in a row and usually stick to the same areas, but still discover something new every time and am falling more and more in love by the warm-hearted people I meet. Luckily, my colleague liked it too. He better did as I am feeling quite protective about "my" Sofia.
I am off to California this Sunday and the whole of April will be an action-packed month of short and long-haul flights. Singapore, anyone? I'll try and post as much as I can, but don't get your hopes up too high...

Before and After: Here we go again

Last Fri-So I was away on a skitrip in Schladming/Styria with (most of) the peeps from the Vienna office. It was great fun, both the skiing and the après part, and for the first 2 days, we had t-shirt weather and glorious sunshine. View from the balcony of our accommodation on Friday morning...

...and then again on Sunday morning. Ooops!

This is the typical phenomenon of "Don't-be-fooled-weather" that occurs in Austria pretty much every spring and autumn. Usually in March or April when everybody has put away the woollen stuff and boots and some really ambitious people have also changed the tyres of their cars as well it snows and you need to put on the heating once more and again in September or October when people have put away their sleeveless tops and bikinis, it gets super hot again. I don't mind too much as I feel we didn't even have a "proper" winter this year, but I am definitely looking forward to warmer temperatures and summer in Vienna. Even though the city is very beautiful in winter with all the Christmas markets and decorations I love it best during the long summer days and it's still hot and sunny when I get out of work. Bliss.

Offline in Off-Season

Last weekend I was in Venice, redeeming a Christmas gift from my Mum. The weather was as nice as it was in Paris the previous weekend and so the "programme" was equally chilled. On top of that, I was offline for 48 hours as I decided it was really ridiculous to pay for the hotel WiFi (even if it was only EUR 5/day) since I was not there on a business trip and all I would have done was post pictures on Instagram or catch up on Bloglovin. Did not hurt me and the world did not stop spinning. I probably gained 15 valuable minutes a day I otherwise would have lost for checking my phone.

 I resisted most of retail's temptations...

 ...took a walk by the beach at Lido

 ...liked the lavishly decorated and conveniently located hotel just as much as my Mum had who had stayed there last summer when she was there for the Biennale.

I made my first visit to the island of Burano and much preferred it to Murano, where I have been many times.

 We also took every opportunity to soak up some rays of sunshine.

 I still have not ridden in a gondola and still find that they look morbid and coffin-like...

Much as I love living in Austria, it IS a pity that we are a land-locked country and those Habsburg emperors did a bad job at defending our access to the sea. Oh, well, as long as Venice is only approximately 4 hours from Klagenfurt by car, let's not dwell on this flaw in our topographical portfolio...

1+1=1

I have told you about my Mum's various upcycling projects before. When you  have someone like that in your family or circle of friends, you constantly have this nagging feeling (well, if you are me, anyway) that you should do something like that yourself. I have plenty of ideas and just as many half-finished projects lying around the house. When, on a recent visit to KLU, my Mum asked me if I cared for a few old jumpers or she could make something out of them, I grabbed 2 Benetton jummpers I hadn't worn in quite some time and immediately had an idea. I had been lusting after jumpers with a heart-shape on the front for quite some time, but either didn't really like the ones I saw (some with sequins that were too bimbo-ish) or found them too expensive. This is the little DIY-project I embarked on and that took me all of 30 mins. The raw material, if you so wish:

I cut off one sleeve from the green jumper and with the aid of a paper template cut out a heart shape:

I then sewed it onto the purple jumper with a zig-zag stitch and also added some green "cuffs" to the arms. The rest of the green jumper I'll give to my Mum for a project of hers:

I ironed it to flatten everything down and this is what it looks like on me.

I'm really pleased with the outcome and love these two colours together.

Predictable

I visited the Empress in Paris this past weekend and the first question everybody asked me was not "Did you have a great time/good weather?" or some such but "Did you do a lot of shopping?" I guess I am a bit predictable in that regard, ahem. As a matter of fact, the weather was so lovely (short-sleeves-weather on Sunday) that we spent most of our time sitting outside cafés, eating ice-cream and taking it easy. We saw two exhibitions, one on Condé Nast fashion photography (excellent!) and one in a tiny museum on "Barbie Retro Chic" (my choice and quite cute):

 Drink of our choice:

 One of the few shops I wanted to pop into was the Diptyque store (a sight in itself) where I bought two candles, one of them limited edition:

We were not quite the only ones who thought it was a great idea to sit in the park:

On Sunday, we did a boat tour on the Seine to further work on our tan and learn that most buildings had been burned down at one time (how can stones burn, by the way?).

A French relative of Godzilla posing on the banks of the river with a certain famous tower in the background:

Casual footwear to reflect our casual mood...

This weekend I'm in Venice and hoping for great weather and lots of Vaporetto rides!

The Most-Worn Item in my Wardrobe

Those of you who follow me on Instagram (@wastingmytalent) or occasionally take a look at the IG widget in the sidebar will notice that I take picture of my outfits of the day more or less daily. It also serves as a handy visual diary of good combinations and reminder of things I should wear more often. Naturally new favourites (like my green poodle jumper) and bags are in more frequent rotation compared to other things in my huge collection of...everything, basically. My most-worn item of clothing, however, is a belt. It's not even a pretty one, either:

I ordered it from La Redoute, back in the days when they had an Austrian domain. It's buckle is now a weird blend of silver and brass and the insides of the leather are blue from bleeding denim dyes. I love it so much as it is just the perfect length, softness of material and also fits really snugly without protruding too much if your top covers it (some belts make you look as if you had a hump or bulge of fat underneath your jumper). The silver colour also goes with pretty much anything and I wish I had ordered 2 or more to have a backup when this one ultimately becomes too grubby looking to wear out in the open.

It's not that I don't have other any belts, just FYI: 

The silver belt (I think it was max. €20) is worn 90% of the time I wear a belt and therefore is definitely the most-worn items in my wardrobe. What is yours?