Since I made it there, I can make it anywhere

Overlooking Manhattan for the last time

Goodbye New York! Two years ago I came to the Big Apple from a small town looking for bigger things, exiting a protected phase in my life... and I found the most fantastic place to live in the world! A lover of art, music, fashion and languages I fell hard for the city's crazy diversity and never wanted to leave. I feel like the day was quickly approaching when I had to board the airplane for Germany. I'm not sure if anyone can understand all of the feelings I'm having at this stage. For me this blog has become a resource to tap into for my own memories of experiences, love and laughter I shared with my friends in New York City. I fondly recall the moment I came to Manhattan.
Nevertheless my visa expired and I flew back to Germany two days ago, boohoo - back to my family and friends, back to my home country. Let me tell you, it was one of the hardest moments I ever had to go through in my life, leaving my boyfriend and all the other people I love behind plus leaving the most marvelous city on earth! Now that I am back I feel like a stranger - an adventurous, outgoing, curious, thrill-seeking young girl misplaced in a quiet, harmonic village where shops close at 8pm and the Chief of Police knows everyone by name. However, I will hopefully move to Berlin soon and also keep posting pictures of New York. Adjusting was only simplified by my wonderful sisters and my best friend Yasemin who spent more than one and a half years with me in New York. I'm pretty sure though that my "new life" will get back to normal soon and be as exciting as it was in the Big Apple - so stay tuned!

Winter Wonderland Germany

A magical City, New York, where Marvels unfold

Before I have to leave this fantastic city that draws millions of people every single day, I got to enjoy my 'annual Christmas store window walk' a couple weeks ago - strolling up Fifth Avenue, Broadway and Madison Avenue for hours doing nothing but taking pictures of all the marvelous Christmas decorations illuminating the city for weeks (the department stores and boutiques always dress up in their holiday best) - a true window wonderland!
This year Bergdorf was my favorite again, this time embracing the ultra glamorous and theatrical '20s - excelling themselves every single year in creativity and grandiosity - but also Ralph Lauren offered some surprisingly stunning windows, placing the mannequins in a beautiful winter landscape. Macy's put on a show entitled "The Magic of Christmas", an homage to New York's holiday traditions like ice skating in Central Park or Radio City Music Hall's Rockettes. Even the Lord and Taylor store front took my breath by displaying the celebration of Christmas in different countries in every single window (Hello Germany!). Furthermore Barneys offered a great adventure for Disney fans - screens featuring the story of a size-zero Minnie Mouse and her friends starring in a French fashionshow, the "Electric Holiday", including fashion icons like Sarah Jessica Parker and Naomi Campbell. The only store windows that disappointed me this year were Tiffany & Co. (usually one of my favorites) and Saks on Fifth which brought to life the children's book "The Snowflake and the Yeti".
Check out last year's windows here (click this).
I hope you admire these sparkling marvels, an explosion of amazingly dressed up dolls, feathers, sequins, diamonds, glamorous figures and christmas lights as much as I did!

Lord and Taylor's German Lebkuchenhaus

Japanese pond at Lord and Taylor

Bergdorf at its best

Mosaic made up of millions of feathers!

Art Deco at Bergdorf Goodman

Harry Winston storefront

Ralph Lauren's winter wonderland

Minnie in action at Barneys

From Art to Storms and War

Hey guys, as always I apologize for being quite aloof lately but we have to face it... I have only eight days left in this wonderful city called New York before I have to go home - back to Germany. It is an inexpressibly terrible feeling to leave my second home, NYC, where I have lived, laughed and cried the last two years. Once I am in Germany I will keep on posting pictures of my experiences in New York for a while though, just because I still have a lot of photos of my USA adventures left.
As you can imagine it is a crazily busy time for me - I am trying hard to fit everything I have accumulated over the last two years into three suitcases, I am meeting up with friends to say goodbye and want to spend as much time as possible with my boyfriend, who will unfortunately have to stay in New York (I am definitely not judging him for preferring the Big Apple over Germany).
However, I am still trying to catch up on all my missed posts, I think by now I am down to only posting once a week (I promise more posts will come up once I settled down in my home country).
So today you get to see some pictures of things going on in my life lately - including painting sessions with my boyfriend, dinner at this amazingly cool Brooklyn restaurant called Surf Bar (yes, that is sand on the floor, you know, for the true beach feeling), some shots of Manhattan post-Sandy (isn't it incredible seeing no one walking the New Yorker streets?), a beautiful breath-taking sunset over the Manhattan skyline (shot from my home) and tons of snow a couple days later. I also took a trip to Boston where I had a fantastic time, furthermore we celebrated Thanksgiving of course, and last but not least I watched Angelina Jolie's directing debut "In the Land of Blood and Honey", a very recommendable, educating and emotionally intense movie about the love between a man and a woman of different ethnic backgrounds whose love is destroyed by the conflict causing the Bosnian War in the 1990′s - watch it!

Sandy aftermath

dashing through the snow

the wonderful city of Boston

Angelina in action

Last two pictures via collider.com

Swagga like Us

If you follow the latest fashion trends (which the majority of you does) you have most likely heard of  the "SWAG style" - the amazingly cool, laid-back, extraordinary mix of Sexy With A bit of Gangster!
The look is mostly defined by cool hats, bold jewelry, extravagant combinations of clothes, popping colors, eccentric sneakers, extreme low cut denim, statement shirts, unusual make up and of course hot looking chicks and guys. Some fashionable people might see it as an excuse used by thugs and hipsters to justify their unique style and messed up color matching they wear. I personally adore this look, I wish I was a little bit cooler aka "gangsta", you know - walking in a swaying motion, wearing those crappy hats sideways, partying hard every single night and wearing my pants half way down - but I am just an ordinary girl, boohoo!
But what does SWAG exactly mean?
Let me quote one of my good friends who defines swag as follows: "I think swag is the expression of the 'inner you' through your external appearance. Some people dress because it looks good on them or it's expensive or because others do it... that's style. Swag (for me at least) is the ability to express who you are through your clothes and your appearance. If you are a lazy person and you go clubbing and people still perceive you as a lazy person because you're wearing a simple black v-neck half destroyed t-shirt but you look better in it than some guy in suit or shirt, then you got swag. For me: swag is not a lifestyle... your lifestyle has swag."
Nowadays you can literally use this word in any way you want: 'I just fell down, lol, SWAG.' 'I live in swagtown' 'Hey guys, just woke up, SWAG.' 'That movie was so SWAG.' 'I just finished brushing my teeth, SWAG.' 'Turn my SWAG on' 'Lol, I got kicked out of class, SWAG.' - what a 'SWAGNIFICENT' overused word!
You see, SWAG is not only a look, it also defines a lifestyle! Listening to ultra tight rap, hanging out with the most beautiful and cool people in town, driving the car of your dreams, bottle poppin and doing the Dougie at the hottest clubs, getting a tattoo (or 5, or 10) - I guess you can say this lifestyle has swag. So today you get to see exactly ten things that add a little swagga to my life.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

 All pictures taken by me except for the first pic (via supersayinswag)