Category: Traveling

Berlin is burning, part 1

Anna-Maria20 Comments

I’ve promised to blog about my Berlin trip for ages now but going through over 300 photographs is not that easy, especially when you want to pick up the ones that best describe this amazing city. I’ve tried to collect here some of my favorite places to visit, hopefully you will find them useful and interesting.

My absolute favorite area was the rough East side: the art galleries, beautiful yet decadent buildings, street art and all the amazing boutiques made me instantly fall in love with Berlin. It’s no wonder that only a few days after our trip, I found myself booking flights to go over there for the New Year celebration.








The last time I was in Berlin was almost 15 years ago, and a lot has changed since. I have always been interested in the history of Berlin and we were lucky because we happened to arrive there during a very historical weekend; thousands of Berliners were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the “Mauerfall”, the fall of the wall that once separated the East and West. There were lots of open air expos with street art and pictures, and even though I’m not German, it was a very emotional experience being in the middle of it all.



Naturally, visiting tourist attractions was part of our agenda. I highly recommend the Bauhaus museum where you can see the famous German architecture and design work, Checkpoint Charlie where East meets West, the grey and massive Alexanderplatz, and the East Side Gallery featuring art on the Berlin wall. I also heard that the DDR museum is pretty interesting, though we didn’t have the time to visit it last time but will definitely check it out next time.



The fastest and the cheapest way to move around the city is to take the metro (U-bahn). Berlin is one of the safest cities in central Europe, so moving around day or night time was never a dubious. Taxis were also fairly cheap and are probably the best way to get to the airport if you are carrying heavy luggage.


More about Berlin in the next post, stay tuned!

In this little coastal town, you can go around and around

Anna-Maria12 Comments
Greetings from Hamina, a little Finnish coastal town near the Russian border. I had a great time there visiting my aunt (who is also a talented painter btw), eating the best strawberry pastries ever, spotting the Moomin troll in Tove Jansson’s painting, greeting some drunken old sailors, and getting familiar with the history of this very beautiful Russian influenced town. It’s like a little secret place that not so many people know about; even the main road signs don’t point there, just to St. Petersburg. Strange but true. I also had my first encounter with a ghost whilst visiting this old smith’s house (the building behind me in the first picture), and I wasn’t even scared which is even stranger. Must visit this magnificent place again next summer!


Top: MTWTFSS
Zipper vest: Two percent 2%
Harem pants: Zara
Wedge shoes: Vagabond
Studded bag: Zara

Tomorrow I’m gonna host a little competition for all my readers, so stay tuned!

In the country

Anna-Maria10 Comments
I feel like I’ve fallen out of the whole blogosphere by dissapearing to the Finnish Lapland for the past five days. Spending some time at my family’s summer cottage in Lapland was truly a relaxing experience: I went fishing, picking blueberries and cloudberries, running into the lake from the sauna, met up with my relatives and just laid in the hammock watching the clouds go by. I guess my inner country girl needs to be released once in a year but as for the rest of the 360 days, I’m a city girl dyed-in-the-wool.


Dress shirt: MTWTFSS
Rubber boots: Kontio

Barcelona, part 2

Anna-Maria12 Comments
Before I visited Barcelona, I had this idea of it as being Europe’s southern mecca of fashion. However, my knowledge of Spanish fashion was basically limited to international chains such as Zara, Mango and Custo Barcelona. Those stores are very much present in Spain but there is much more bubbling under the surface.
Barcelona offers fashion that is suitable for every wallet. There are the pricey high end stores alongside with the cheaper chain stores and smaller independent boutiques. I have to confess that I mainly shopped at Zara just because the local style was a bit too bohemian for my minimalistic taste. Ok, the Zara prices being about 1/3 less than in Finland affected my decisions, too. From the chain stores I really fell in love with the accessory department of Üterque, and from the local designers Lurdes Bergada & Syngman Cucala were closest to my heart with their dark tones and strange cuts. I also advice checking out the Finnish born designer Cecilia Sörensen’s boutique Still Light and a little shoe store called Le Shoe which sells designer shoes with discount prices. From the malls I mainly recommend Boulevard Rosa; others were a bit too mainstream for my taste. Other than that, my tip is just to wonder around the streets in different parts of the city ie. Gràcia, El Born and El Raval; that’s the best way to find hidden treasures of Barcelona.
Barcelonian street style was rather relaxed: lots of harem pants, wedge sandals, cotton and other lightweight material dresses were seen on the streets. The weather affects a lot; it’s quite hot during the summer, so you will want to wear something comfortable and light. I chose to wear mainly shorts, lose shirts and sandals, as you might notice from the pictures.
Overall I recommend shopping in Barcelona, especially if you are a girl.

Top: MTWTFSS
Shorts: Zara
Studded bag: Zara
Mom jeans: Second hand
Shoes: MTWTFSS

A special thanks to all the lovely readers who shared with me with their best Barca tips. Especially this map created by Anu (sorry only in Finnish) was excellent!