Seasons in the sun

I know it's been a while since my last post and the reason for this is that I've been to busy with enjoing my last weeks in London. But I'll try to give you a summary what's happened since Edinburgh.
First of all, I have to mention that the weather since then has been great. It's warm, the sun is shining and except for 1 or 2 days when there were short showers, it hasn't been raining.
Since the Easter weekend the time has been flying by. In the days after my trip I had two visitors. My dear friends, Judith and Nora came over and we had a great time. We did some sightseeing, went shopping on the markets and simply enjoyed the city.
Of course we also explored the nightlife. We went to a pub called O'Neills which is one of my favorite places to go out here. On Thursday and Friday night they have live music and if you arrive before 9pm you don't have to pay any cover fee. The pub is quite large and is spread over three floors. Usually there are unknown bands playing who cover popular hits ranging from indie & rock to pop tunes. This band in particular was very good. They played so many good songs and we shaked and sang along.
Though we had fun at night, we always had trouble getting back home. Seems like the night busses didn't like us. On an night my jeans which caught fire were an obstacle. Well fire is a small exageration, they were glowing a litlle bit. still didn't know how it started, but i freaked when i saw it. luckily Nora saved me :) However, we made it home alright and had a good laugh out of it.

In the following week I was busy at work with two trade fairs. There was the natural products fair which I just visited. There were quite interesting products and especially the beauty products were quite nice. And then I worked at the London book fair. Since I was at the Austrian stand which wasn't highly frequented it wasn't too exciting. But I had enough time to look around and I got two books for free.

Greenwhich - in the center of time and space

Apart from working I was busy with seeing and doing all the things I had planned to do before I have to leave London and enjoying the city.
I was quite often in the various parks, where the atmosphere is great when the weather is nice. I picknicked there or just sat in the grass and read (by the way, right now I'm reading "high fidelity" by Nick Hornby and I can highly recommend it.) I went to Greenwhich and Canary Wharf, which is the business district and financial center.

picknick in Hyde Park
Canary Wharf -where u almost "feel" the money

Puuh, what else did I do ....
I went out for drinks and to the movies. I saw "The Lives of Ohters - Das Leben der Anderen" which won the Oscar for best foreign movie and I was impressed. Like all the others who saw it, I loved it. So if you haven't done so, go to the cinema and watch it.


On Thursday we had an event in the Austrian Embassy (impressive building) an then on Friday it was already time to say goodbye to my coworkers. I really had a good time working in the Austrian Trade Commission, even tough the work wasn't always challenging, it was interesting and the people there are great.


Current music: Foy Vance - "Homebird"

Highlands

Happy belated Easter everyone! The good thing about working in London in April is that you get to enjoy two public holidays. Since the Brits don't have as many official holidays as Austrians, they move the few holidays they have to Mondays or other business days so that they have a long weekend. And for easter we didn't only get Monday off but also had a public holiday on the Friday before the weekend. Most people use this prolonged weekend to visit family in other parts of the UK or make trips somewhere or, in case they are from out of London, to visit the capital ... I wasn't an exception.
Ines and I went to Edingburgh from Friday to Monday. We wanted to see other parts of the UK and since the Scottish capital is only one flight hour away and we managed to get a pretty cheap flight with easyjet, we booked the trip.


And ex post I can truly say it was worth going there and we had a great time. Edinburgh is a nice town which has a bit of a medieval appearance. The weather was great and we spent the whole Saturday with sightseeing and walking around the city enjoying the sun.

people in kilts and sounds of bagpipes can be found all over the city
we weren't able to solve the mystery whether they wear sthg under their kilts :-)

Naturally we also went to look for the famous monster in Loch Ness and made a trip to the scottish Highlands. Unfortunately, we didn't see Nessie - who is in any case femal I'm convinced :) - but had a nice tour to the Northern part of Scotland and saw a couple of Lochs. Loch Ness does more or less look like an ordinary lake in the mountains, but it was great to see it anyway.

Loch Ness ... just for the reocrd this is me and not Nessie ;-)

well it's not the real one but better than nothing

We stayed at a cheap hostel which smelled funny but was located right in the center of the city on the royal mile. I wouldn't stay there for a longer time but it was just fine for our short trip.
I could tell you now about all the buildings and sights we saw, but I rather post some pics:

the Royal Mile

the parliament, amzing architectural work

current music: Jamie Lidell - Multiply

Big Spender

Time is flying by and I've only got 3 and a half weeks left here in London. The first month really went by very quickly and the only upside of that is that it's payday at the start of each month! And the money was more then welcome. Not only is London a rather expensive place to be, it's also so easy, too easy, to spend money on different things. I was able to abstain from buying to many things at the beginning but I couldn't resist anymore :) And there are tons of stuff which I'd like to buy and tons which I already bought ;) There are so many stores here which don't exist in Vienna which makes it much more attractive to buy clothes here and there are many shops which sell nice and cheap things; and all the markets ... I think I could just go shopping every day (and I must admit I actually do so nearly every day). So I am glad that my friends are coming to visit me next week, not only since I'll see them again and we will have a blast, but also because I can give them some things to take home for me, because there is no way that I can fit everything in my suitcase :-)

what the floor of my room looks like right now -
remainders of my shopping tours of the last week

However clothes and shoes aren't the only thing I spend money on, there is so much stuff to do in London that is worth the money. Concerts, plays and so on. Last week Ines and I went to see the musical Chicago, which was great! Really good singers and dancers. We bought our tickets at the discount ticket booth, so we didn't have to pay the full amount. A couple of weeks ago we also saw the Blue Man Group because we got cheap tickets and well ... I wasn't impressed. Sure it's nice, entertaining and somewhat funny, but there is no connection between the different scenes, they are just randomly strung together. I wouldn't say at all that it's fantastic or a must- see. Or maybe I just didn't get it.

We've also been to the cinema twice. We saw "Music and Lyrics", a must-see for all Hugh Grant fans and people who liked films like "Bridge Jones" or "Love Actually", and it's so funny. I almost was rolling on the floor with laughter during the opening sequence.
The other film we saw was "Days of Glory" which was amazing. It's a movie about the way soldiers from former French colonies in Africa were treated in the French army in the second world war and it's very emotional and thought-provoking. When I walked out of the cinema after the movie I was once more amazed how much statutory injustice still exists in so-called developed countries.