Author: fraumorena

Winter blues

Published by fraumorena

The wide mountain scenery is spreading out its gentle green hills and brown woods before my eyes. The cloud-covered heaven rarely reveals some rays of sunshine. But the birds in my mothers garden doesn’t seem to care about this uncomfortable cold weather at all. I had come here in the hope of seeing the landscape covered in glittering snow but like most times around christmas there is no snow at all. Nevertheless I’m enjoying my little end-of-the-year-retreat. Over the years it had become my personal ritual to spend a week at my mum’s place on the countryside before starting into a new year. Often the time together didn’t turned out to be as peaceful and relaxed as I had hoped it to be like and in many years I packed my backs earlier than planned and was happy to be back in Cologne, the city, my own place. But this year we somehow managed to pull ourself together and so I can enjoy the time here and even find some time to finally finish some …

A Letter to Helsinki

Published by fraumorena

Dear Helsinki, visiting you made me thoughtful. You surprised me with your Street Art District, you frightened me with your massive buildings in Katajanokka and you touched my heart with your peculiar language. All these long words and names that I was unable to keep in mind and every time Aleksi* asked me where I’d spent the day I had to describe the place because I had already forgotten its name again. The only Finnish words I could remember were «Kiitos» (Thank you) and «Moi» (Hello) – they were short enough. 😉 *Aleksi was my wonderful Airbnb host – I will tell you more about him below. The trip was very different from what I had expected. I wanted to visited the «Helsinki Design Week» but then everything turned out differently: I arrived with stomach ache and a general feeling of illness which forced me to slow down and listen to my body carefully. Instead of entering the fray I tried to avoid crowded places. I walked along Helsinki’s lakes and sea-coast ate a lot …

Summer Melodies

Published by fraumorena

I’m bitten by the travel bug again. It happened last weekend when I was driving with my mom southwards Germany to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin in Worms. Yes there is a German city called Worms – funny, isn’t it 😀 The trip reminded me of a road trip through the French island of Corsica that I did in 2014 together with my friend Elena. I wrote about it on my old travel blog (still need to transfer all the articles on this blog – but unfortunately most of them are written in German so I have to translate them first). So last weekend I had to think a lot about traveling, about the places I’ve visited so far and about the places I still want to see on this beautiful world. 🙂 And there are a lot of places that I want to see! This is why I decided to create the map below. The blue markers represent the places I’ve already seen and the yellow stars are the places that I want …

Spring Melodies

Published by fraumorena

Time flies! Spring brings along a lot of changes. There is an growth on different levels of my life. The design agency I work for (Philipp Seine Helden – click to see our new website designed by me! ;)) is growing – not only the team is getting bigger but we’re also gaining two (!) more floors and our own photo studio! 🙂 Furthermore I’m extending my personal space and will move into a bigger apartment (same house, one floor higher – what an easy move this will be! 😀). And finally after a little (unfamiliar) kind of travel-depression (maybe caused by a travel-overdose aka my big Asia trip last year) I have new travel plans for this year! 🙂 I’ll spend one week in Finland’s capital Helsinki early in September to visit Helsinki Design Week. And I’m also having in mind to visit the documenta in Athens (this year for the first time Kassel has a sideshow in the Greek capital!).

Kuala Lumpur and the Batu Caves

Published by fraumorena

When I woke up the first morning in Kuala Lumpur there was a heavy thunderstorm passing by and I could hear an alarm bell from the inside of the hostel. I quickly jumped into my pants and opened the door of our female dorm. The hostel’s courtyard, a wonderful open-air common area, was flooded and the staff was trying to keep the water from entering the kitchen. I went back into my room to take a look out of the window – the streets were flooded too and the cars were driving through brown masses of water. Welcome to Asia, I thought, this is what monsoon season looks like. Downstairs in the kitchen area I met Rodrigo – a Brazilian photo- and videographer with fascinating blue-green eyes. It was just after I left KL that I realised what a talented man I had met. Equipped with different cameras and even a drone he creates stunning pictures and videos from around the globe. 🙂 For example this one: «Created with footage shot in 8 countries in …

Winter Melodies

Published by fraumorena

In September when I was just back from my Asia trip my head was so full of thoughts about this world, about the differences of culture and religion and the general way of life. The journey had deeply impressed me. In the first weeks after the trip I talked with a lot of friends about what I had experienced and I was absolutely willing to write down all these thoughts also on this blog. Ideally to create a dialogue with others. But it was like there were just too many impressions and I had no idea where to start. It might have been consequentially to just write about the different places I had visited chronologically but somehow it felt wrong to start with Singapore. Because looking back on the journey as a whole Singapore was not the city that stirred me up. In Singapore I felt very safe and sheltered – not just because I had good friends arround but also because of the city itself which was probably the most «Western» city on my …

Malacca – a multicultural seaport with a rich history

Published by fraumorena

The air was still full of haze when the bus to Malacca entered the Malaysian state. I had never heard the word «haze» before and when I experienced it for the first time it kind of shocked me. It’s an air pollution affecting several countries in Southeast Asia caused by forest fires resulting from illegal slash-and-burn practices, principally on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, which then spread quickly in the dry season (source). Depending on the wind direction Singapore and Malaysia are affected very badly. And this was what I experienced on my last day in Singapore and on the first days in Malaysia. It showed me how strongly connected everything is – when stupid people in Indonesia burn wood illegally so many other people have to suffer from this (not to mention the nature itself!). Next stop: Malaysia But back to my journey. After staying in Singapore for one week I took the bus to Malacca – the oldest Malaysian city in the Straits of Malacca. All times the seaport has played …

Summer Melodies

Published by fraumorena

When summer showed its warmest and most friendly side in Germany I was far far away… in South East Asia. For four weeks I traveled from Singapore along the west coast of Malaysia (Melacca, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Langkawi) to Bangkok. For me it was the first time that I left the European Continent and yes it was a kind of culture shock. 😉 I never experienced such a warm and humid weather before and I didn’t expected Malaysia to be such a strange place for a woman traveling alone (Georgetown was the big exception!). But I met a lot of wonderful souls on my way along the Strait of Melacca – especially a lot of other brave female solo travelers… as if we had to accomplish the mission to defy the male-dominated world of Malaysia! 🙂 Back in Germany my head is still full of impressions and my camera is full of wonderful pictures and videos and I will try to transform the thoughts and images into a lot of inspiring blog posts within the …

nippes wilhelmplatz

The beauty of Cologne (Part 1: Nippes)

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(English text below) Der Geruch von verbranntem Holz liegt in der Luft und erinnert mich an die Eifel, an den Holzofen meiner Großmutter, der im Winter immer noch zum Heizen der Küche benutzt wird und als zweiter Herd dient. Ich kann förmlich das Knacken der glühenden Holzscheite hören. Mit dem Rad fahre ich durch die Hartwichstraße, vorbei an einem kleinen Spielplatz und an mehreren urig aussehenden Kölschen Kneipen. Es fühlt sich an,

Spring Melodies

Published by fraumorena

It was a bit quiet here for a while. Sorry for that! It’s like my blog was hibernating while I was extremely busy doing nice graphic design stuff at work 😉 Since I have a fulltime job as a Graphic Designer it’s sometimes not so easy to keep on writing my blog on a regular basis. Moreover, spring has reached Cologne, the days are getting longer and there were even some sunny and warm days in the last month so I prefered to spend my free time outdoor and not in front of the computer. But still I want to show you some «Heimat»-impressions as promised!