Keep Portland Weird

It’s time to face it. I have been denying it for much too long. I’ve been hiding behind frilly dresses, high heels, living in Rotterdam and having a ton of beauty products.

But the truth is my beauty products are vegan and organic, I live in a squatting home in Rotterdam, I buy mostly vintage clothing and even the metal I listen to is pagan metal.

I’ve been thinking of raising some chickens, riding horses bareback and becoming an organic farmer.

Hi, my name’s Lotte – and I’m a hippy

The next logical step, obviously, is to move to Portland.

This picture was taken by -Dons
You can find out more about the Portland Pony Project right here

This picture was taken by David Mark Erickson

This is Sam Adams, Portland's mayor
what a babe - look at that proud jaw 

 Now, I must admit, I have never been to Portland. All I know about it is from Portlandia, or the time I was vegan and saw it as Heaven on Earth. I will be visiting the beautiful weird city in June. I will be able to share much more with you then. For now I'll just leave you with some Wonderful Weirdness that makes this city pretty awesome.

This picture was taken by Dan Haneckow
It's Le Happy. Are you hungry for some delish' crepes? Go here! It's at 1011 NW 16th Avenue

MRS.FRENCH took this picture of Saint Cupcake
It's at 407 nw 17th ave @ flanders
Just one look at the menu made me drool

This picture was taken by Todd Mecklem
It's Powell's City of Books! This is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. You can find it at 1005 W Burnside 

And in case you're not convinced that this city might be one of the most awesome places on Earth, I'll leave you with some Portlandia. If you are from Portland, you might be offended by these. But, honestly, dear Portlandians, that makes you even more like the people portrayed on Portlandia.

I found this picture at Marta Writes

Some links for more Portland love:

SoupCycle - a company that delivers hearty organic soups by bicycle

Portland Places - a blog by Abby tells you about where to go in Portland

Portland Events, Music, Art, Entertainment, Sustainability - PDXPipeline

The I heart Portland group on Flickr

My year in pictures and words

It's the end of the year already, so we thought it would be nice to make a year post. This was my year in pictures and words! I hope everyone had a great year, will have an awesome new years eve and an even better new year!

Where I went:

Berlin; Medebach-Titmaringhausen (Germany); Brugge; Antwerpen; Maastricht.

I need to travel so much more, next year I really want to leave Europe again!

Things I did:

Set up this blog with Lotte and Angelika; Having a job interview at L’Officiel; Listen to all the albums in the RYM top 100 of all time; Tried to read Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust in one week (and failed); Make quizzes with my friends for each other about our own area of expertise; Playing Buzz with Lotte and Ewout; Helping my mom move out of my parents house after they got divorced; Getting photoshop lesions from Lotte; Going to Paranormal Activity 2 on Halloween with my boyfriend and being really scared all night; Bought really fancy champagne for new years; Going out with Lotte and Angelika for our blog and talking to strange people (which is pretty scary for me!); Got back into fashion, started following all kinds of blogs and buying way too much clothing; Making an inspiration lookbook filled with pictures from magazines.

Most played albums:
She and Him – Volume One; Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago; Bowerbirds – Hymns for a Dark Horse; Coconut Records – Nighttiming; The Talles Man on Earth – Shallow Grave; Glee soundtrack (all of them!); Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – From Below; Jenny Lewios and the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat; Charlotte Gainsbourgh – IRM; God help the Girl – ST; Jens Lekman – When I said I wanted to be your dog

TV/Films/Books:
Glee; Twin Peaks; Dr. Who; Community; Smallville; Gossip Girl; Supernatural; Project Runway; How I met your Mother; Chuck; Bored to death; True Blood; The Big Bang theory; Battlestar Galactica
Sunset Blvd.; North by Northwest; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Exit Through the Gift shop; Stalker; Metropolis (with live music!); Fantastic Mr. Fox; Kick-Ass; Primer; Mary and Max; Where the Wild things are; Moon; Let the right one in (Swedish version)
Scott Pilgrim series; Catcher in the Rye; The Corrections; Watchmen; The Magicians, Shades of Grey; Dance, dance, dance.

Best purchases + gifts: 
Leather satchel from India that my sister bought me; Sewing machine from my parents, I finally learned how to make my own things!; Tim Burton Coffee Table book from my parents; my lace-up boots; Oh Comely magazine from Lotte; All of the other magazines I bought myself. Inspiration is priceless!; My long leather skirt.

Style obsessions and influences:
Bow ties; pleated skirts; oxford shoes (still can’t find the pair I want); lace-up boots; Big wooly jumpers and vests; Monki; Satchels; Peter Pan collars; Alexa Chung; Twin Peaks; Smallville, Rachel Berry, Velvet ribbons

Best things I did for myself: 

Stop worrying about lots of things; not finish my thesis and taking some time off ; Expanding my writing to non-fiction; Dying my hair with henna instead of hair dye. It feels so much nicer right now!

Things for 2011: 

Quitting my job and start writing for money; finishing my thesis; Starting my Master; Turning this blog into a tangible magazine; Traveling, reading and writing more and having even more fun!

Back from Berlin

Finally my Berlin post! I got home on Sunday, but I was just too tired from having a four hour train delay and Christmas dinner that night. Yesterday night was spent watching Dr. Who and finishing Twin Peaks, which was totally worth not writing a post (especially the Dr. Who Christmas special, it was amazing!) I was not sure what to write about my trip, because it wasn’t very fashionable or innovating. We did nice touristy things like visiting the East Side Gallery, Checkpoint Charlie and Weihnachtsmärkte. Germany apparently really loves Christmas, because there were so many markets and lights everywhere that even I kind of got enough of the holiday. But besides all this, I had a lot of fun and saw some cool things! We went to a place called Hackesche Höfe which was originally a Jewish part of town. In the second World War the entire area was damaged. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall the building was returned to its rightful owners, who turned it into a cultural community. Now it’s a marketplace for designers, artists and other creative people. There are restaurants, movie theaters and concert halls. Right now it is one of the most expensive places in Berlin, because of its booming culture and influence on the city, which I thought was pretty cool! They had some nice stores, but I mostly liked the aesthetic of the place. It’s divided in small ‘hofjes’ (there isn’t really a great English translation, but you could call it a sort of patio) surrounded by trees and nice front walls. I took most of my pictures with Lotte’s analogue camera, so I don’t have that much to show yet, but just to give you an impression:

Near to this was the magazinestore I posted about earlier Do you read me?! and all I can say was that it was great! There were so many magazines and the owner had a really cute dog! I decided to buy some German magazines, because they were the cheapest and I can’t get them at home. I bought Sleek, Zoo Magazine and Indie. They are all partly in German, which is sort of a problem. I only know a small bit of German, so I might just skip over those parts and look at all the pretty pictures. 

One of the funniest things we did was look for the grave of Hegel, a philosopher I just don’t seem to get (I had to retake a test on his book Elements of the Philosophy of Right 5 times). He was buried on a small cemetery near the magazine shop. It was a very snowy place and we looked all over for the grave but couldn’t find it! When we finally looked at the map, counted the graves and finally found him, we took so many pictures of us next to his stone, it got kind of hilarious and creepy at the same time.

I love taking pictures of cemeteries!

We also saw the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin play at the Philharmonie. It was my first classical performance and I was really impressed. They played an amazing organ symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns with this tiny Asian girl on a double bass and another small girl on the organ. I was surprised the organ was played by someone so small and adorable, because it produced a wall of sound.

I also found a new cute cultural thing called Unser Sandmännchen. It’s an East German children’s series, with the cutest main character! They had a set of small magnets with images from the show, but I didn’t buy it which I now regret. Next time I’m back in Berlin, I’ll buy them for sure!

I hope everyone had a very nice Christmas, I had a great time. If you haven’t seen Dr. Who or don’t even know it, I strongly urge you to start watching. I’ll soon post something about bowties and unlikely style icons and this last episode of Dr. Who made me love them even more. Ok,  I’ll stop praising the show now… but it’s just so good! Go watch it!

Is he dreamy with that bowtie or what?

Magazine Eye Candy

I'm packing my bags for Berlin as I write this, so all you'll get from me this week is this tiny post. I was browsing for some cool stores to visit during my stay and I found this amazing magazine store called Do you read me?!
It's a magazine store in Berlin (almost next my hotel!) with massive amounts of german and foreign magazines. If you look at the pictures you'll just see neat black walls, filled with pretty covers. I'm already planning on spending all my money in this store, buying every magazine I can't find in Holland.
I'll post some more eye candy from the store and when I get back I'll post some things about my trip!