Good start into 2009

Will be posting the pics I took on New Year’s Eve (including a couple of nice firework shots, thank you, new camera) at some point, but for now I’ve decided to give Project 365 another try, after failing in 2007. So here are my two photos for the first two days of 2009:

Jan 1: The meeting point of Switzerland, Germany and France at the Rhine in Basel, with Sibylle, Marc & Dani.
Project 365: Jan 1 (Basel)

Jan 2: Wintery Zurich, shopping with my dad.
Project 365: Jan 2 (Zürich)

Edit: You can follow my Project 365 photos here.


Happy New Year!

Off to celebrate in Basel with friends – looking very much forward to the fireworks over the Rhine and am hoping to be able to take some photos with my new camera.

I actually wanted to get the earlier bus, but then I discovered Friendfeed, a nifty little tool to keep track of my various online activities (this blog, my travel log, Twitter, Flickr, LibraryThing, etc.) and got side-tracked… 🙂

It’s now the main part of the main page, but the direct page is here. As always you can find RSS feeds etc. on my Get connected page.

Wishing all of you a great start into 2009! 2008, for me, was awesome (best year of my life, seriously!) and I hope 2009 will be a good one, too…


Holidays and new flat

A family Christmas... A family Christmas...

On Flickr you can find the photos I took with my brandnew camera (a Panasonic TZ5 Lumix) over the holidays with my family and at the flat I’ll be moving into in February. Only one room (+ kitchen and shower), but absolutely lovely. I got the contract in the mail today and am quite excited!

My new place


Merry Christmas!

Hope all of you are celebrating in the way you want to and with people you love!

As a little gift, here’s the soundtrack to ‘Love Actually’: www.sendspace.com/file/i8su7j (.zip, 77mb)

Btw, Coldplay are offering a remix of ‘Viva la Vida’ on their website. Here’s a mirror: www.sendspace.com/file/if0qw1




Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

Found today on a writing community I belong to:

30 essentials for writing, by Jack Kerouac

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

I’ve never actually read Kerouac, but this makes me want to.


Snowed in!




Snowed in!

Originally uploaded by evamaria_n

It’s still snowing – so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was greeted by this view from my window this morning… But hey, it’s still OCTOBER, so yes I find the fact that there’s a little kid in a huge snow suit playing outside right now quite out of the ordinary. 🙂


First snow of the year

The office was freezing today, and outside wasn’t any better. Winter has come early – or maybe that’s normal for Zurich. Still, I was really surprised when not only were there snowflakes mixed into the rain, but there was actually snow on the ground when I was on the bus back home…

First snow of the year


New job! Hence, no time for proper post.

Seriously, I will stop being utterly exhausted (more emotionally than physically – it’s all very exciting) one of these days, but for now you’ll have to make do with the text message updates… Sorry. 🙂

But I definitely had time to pre-order the new Fall Out Boy album – especially after the concert last week (photos will be posted at some point) I’m all about them these days. *g*