Whenever someone has asked me: "How are you? What´s up with you?" over the past week my answer has been consistently the same: "Nothing." and it was glorious. I don´t think I have been this relaxed since October and so content to have absolutely nothing on my agenda, no plans, no to dos. And compared to just a few months ago I am now able to fully enjoy it, I am capable of shutting up that little voice inside of my head, that tells me that I am not doing anything, that I am lazy.
It obviously still came up, but for maybe the first time in my life I was able to say: "I literally don´t have to do anything", turned around in bed and continued to sleep. To be fair I have not done much, but sleep and watch Netflix for a majority of the past two weeks. I have slept at least nine if not ten hours a day, I finished Ru Paul´s Dragrace Allstars, Yummy Mummies and Stranger Things and just enjoyed life. While I love setting goals for myself and love pushing myself to be the best version of myself I consciously decided to not set any goals for July. It is my last month before I start working full-time and I wanted to completely relax, outside of any expectations (especially my own) or track records. Instead I fully allowed myself to do things I enjoy, eat food I love and be with people, who make me happy. And even without that pressure I still went to the gym and did Yoga and enjoyed it even more. Putting pressure on myself is one of my biggest struggles and to see, that I still take care of myself and how incredibly good it felt to just let go for a few days was wonderful.
I spent a week at my mum´s and one at my boyfriend´s, I went to Amsterdam to see my former roomie and am just now en route to Berlin to meet up with some friends before flying to Porto for a week of bliss on Sunday. But for the first time in a long time I can let go of the stress of being on the road so much and just enjoy the moment. I feel like I have found some sort of peace just within myself, that travels with me. To say that is one of the greatest successes I have had so far this year is an understatement, it may be one of my greatest achievements in my life in general. I am so excited to start my new job, to meet new people, learn new things and to be able to do so fully relaxed and eager. I hope you all are able to enjoy your summer in the same way, to live each day fully and even if you have stress to find those moments of full relaxation within you.


Bought: An intense amount of accessories in Amsterdam and still beyond in love with them.

Finished: Homo Deus, which sadly was not as good as I hope it would be

Cried: Over the finale of Stranger Things. And while I loved this season and adore all the actors I am not really sure if I am happy, they decided to do another season

Travelled: To Amsterdam for a weekend to eat great food, drink too much wine, dance to Indie music with a room of 19 year olds and catch up with an old friend

Packed: For two weeks on the road.

Wondered: If there is an amount of sleep that will actually be enough and not make me want to take yet another nap in the afternoon.

We are a little more than halfway through this year and with vacation season coming up and most of us having a little more time for good books while we are at the beach, in flight or just on our own balcony I thought I would round-up my favourite reads so far. My goal is to read one book per week and while I am a little behind on that at the moment, I have been really enjoying so many of the books I read so far and hope to catch up a little on my reading game once I head to Portugal next week. Especially on vacation I am usually always nose-deep in a book. I used to fill almost my entire luggage with books as a child and would spend every free second reading, going through ten books in a two-week vacation easily. So maybe if you are like me and you are currently wondering which books you should pack, so here are the books I enjoyed reading the most this year. You can always check my Goodreads account for other recommendations and keep up with my reading challenge or start your own.

Summer is a funny time of the year. It is supposed to be completely light-hearted, made up of long days by the lake or pool or the sea followed by barbecues with friends, lots of drinks outside and dancing the night away until dawn. However for many of us, summer comes with its unique set of pressures and anxieties. The idea of a bikini or summer body can be found absolutely everywhere these days, there´s bikini body diets, workouts and detoxes all over glossy magazines, social media and TV channels. There is a clear and precise idea of which bodies should be allowed to be seen and shown in summer and which ones are shameful and deserve only to be hidden away. When we think of bikini bodies many of us share a very similar idea: that of a skinny, toned body fitting into a size small at most.


I personally have wasted an intense amount of summers and hot days hidden away inside, instead of in a bikini, precisely, because I felt I did not fit into these clear standards and measurements. During my teenage years, when my body changed from very flat-chested and skinny 14-year old to relatively curvy 16-year old I was called fat on the daily. There was a group of guys in my class, who made fun of the way I looked and they made sure I felt ugly and unworthy every day. Being fat became the worst thing I could possibly be. It became the reason I was bullied in school and why going to school was hell to me every day. So I learned that being fat was something that deserved to be shamed and laughed at and used against me, because it was inherently bad to be fat. And I deeply felt like it was ultimately my fault that I was fat, that I was simply too greedy, too lazy, too undisciplined to be skinny and that because I was not able to loose weight, that I deserved to be made fun of by others. This ideas was not only ingrained into my by the idiot boys in my class, but by the magazines I read and the shows I watched, in which diets were advertised and the popular kids were always skinny, long-legged white girls. I am no longer in high school and I no longer get called names for how my body looks, but deep down inside of me, many of these ideas persist and have a weird power over how I think and behave.

I am aware that this comes from someone, who fits into a size medium, who works out and eats healthy and has visible abs. I fulfill many of the ideals sold to us and I am aware of my skinny privilege, of how ridiculous it may sound to many that I used to feel so insecure and hateful about my body.  But the idea that our bodies are somehow wrong or false the way they are and that they are in constant and dire need of improvement, the idea that there is something inherently wrong with anybody, who is not a size 36 or who has no extra fat on their body is still promoted all across Instagram and magazines on the daily and ingrained into almost every little girl and boy out there. I can´t count how many fad diets I tried, how many times 16 year old me cried because of the way I looked or how many times I decided not to wear shorts or a dress or a bikini. Our society (despite the very honourable efforts of many) still values skinny bodies more than fat ones. And the idea, that if we are not skinny or don´t have a giant ass, tiny waist and huge tits it is our fault for lacking discipline, for not being mindful enough, for being too lazy is sold to us in a million if not billion dollar industry. That is just our lack of discipline or willingness to have the right body type. That if we just tried a little harder, worked out more and ate less we can easily achieve the ideal. It is simply our own fault, that we are too fat.

This narrative is made even worse by fitness influencers and diet gurus selling easy fixes. While we may have learned to distrust huge companies (and many of us still don´t manage to do that and still happily purchase Skinny Teas and juice cleanses), we trust the influencers we follow. We feel like they are more honest, more real and that if we just do as they do we can achieve the same results. It is almost the same as fake before and after photos, just worse because these are actual people, which we like to believe in so much more. We trust them, we follow their daily lives. And yet an intense amount of these people restrict food, work out excessively and possibly even suffer from eating disorders. Yet worse: they make money of catering to your insecurities.

With the entire society, with social media stars and huge companies selling us the idea, that we are not good enough, that we are only worthy if we look a certain way, that we need to hide away and body that does not fulfill an intense set of ideals what can we do? We can try to realise that these ideas are lies, that have been fed to us from the youngest possible age. That these lies are fed to us constantly to make us feel less than, to make us feel ashamed, to make us feel worthless so that we are willing to buy products to stop us from feeling this way, so that we are constantly occupied with something as trivial as our weight, our looks, to make money from our insecurities and self hatred. And once you can begin to understand this, you can slowly and carefully begin to work on loving yourself. Just as you are. To allow yourself to be okay with who and what you are. A little more every day.


It would be a massive lie to tell you I am happy with how my body looks. I am not. I am not sure I will ever be. Despite my best efforts, despite logically being aware that the body that was sold to me as ideal and the only one worth loving, is unattainable, I still feel like it is my personal fault, that is is because of my lack of persistence and discipline, that I do not look like the girls on cover pages or on Instagram. I would be lying to you if I would not tell you that I feel horrible when I see the number on the scale go up. I have worked out more this year than ever before. I am coming increasingly closer to be able to open a bag of chips and close it again. I am more aware of my unhealthy eating patterns, of how I am using food to cope with emotions. I am more happy to wear a bikini and tight clothes today than ever before. I am working against the idea that I am not enough, that I am less than because I do not fit into a size zero every single day. But it´s still hard for me. I still feel like I may never truly be happy if I am not skinny, whatever that means.

I may not love my body every single day. But I am not willing to leave the fucktards, who bullied me in high school or the dumb bitches on Instagram or a million dollar company selling tea, that makes you shit yourself dictate how I live my life. I am no longer willing to starve myself and over exercise for six months so that the three weeks, the weather is actually nice in Germany I can look acceptable. I am no longer willing to binge in secret while eating salad in public, to miss out on birthday dinners or cakes at the office or a chocolate bar while I am on the go just to fit a standard, that is simply bullshit.

I eat relatively healthy, but I try to do it because I feel better when I eat more nutrient dense food than chips and candy. But I also work on no longer demonising foods. On no longer looking at food as black and white, but simply as something that I enjoy and that helps me live my daily life. I try to exercise, because I largely feel better, because I feel stronger and I don´t longer have back pain, because Yoga grounds me and running is fun. And I have given up on weighing myself. Because last week I felt absolutely worthless when the number had gone up, despite people telling me I look thinner and my clothes fitting better and changed measurements I am so attached to the number on the scale for my worth, that I can´t look at it logically. I am pretty sure it will be a life-long battle and an uphill one as well, because we live in a society, that constantly tells us how we should look and how wrong it is to look completely different from that ideal.

I can´t tell you how to truly love your body, because I am not there yet. But I can tell you that it is bullshit to waste summer or days by the lake or getting a tan or enjoying the sun, because of how you look and how others made you feel about your body. Our bodies love us so fucking much. They carry us everyday, they fight against infections, heal our bruises, shed old cells and keep us breathing happy and alive. Why can´t we value them for that? Why can´t we stop beating them up for doing what makes most sense biologically, for storing a little extra fat to make it through winters and especially for women to produce babies, to make it through times when we are sick and through periods. And I feel like we should value them for this and be kind to them for the few months a year where it is warmer. I hope you rock a bikini this summer baby no matter how you look. I hope you eat loads of icecream and barbecue food and you go back for seconds, because it is damn good. I hope you have a happy, light, brilliant summer at whatever size you are. And I do truly hope you get to do that for the rest of your life. Because it truly is too short to skip out on dessert or going skinny dipping, because of some godamn dumb ideal.

I am terrible at goodbyes. Which is quite ironic, because for the last seven years of my life I have been saying goodbye constantly. To places I lived, to friends I made, to my family, to new countries.  I have been saying goodbye (and luckily hello again) to my boyfriend almost every weekend for the past four years. I am ever-moving despite the fact that I get choked up at every goodbye. I have cried after goodbyes in airplanes and trains and cars. I had a lot of practise and have still not gotten  any better at it.
Today´s goodbye is a big one. I am saying goodbye to my first big girl office job, to the first job that allowed me to finance my life with something I absolutely love, my first chance to work as a journalist. I am also saying goodbye to Cologne, a city that has welcomed me so incredibly warmly and that has been nothing but lovely over the past year and a half. And I am saying goodbye to the most amazing team of colleagues: diverse, fun, caring. Working for this radio station has been an absolute dream of mine, the internship alone was a wonderful opportunity and to be able to work here and deal with exactly the topics I am passionate about with a great team of people was almost too good to be true.
I had never guessed I would like Cologne as much. I had never imagined I would live and work here for a while in radio nontheless. And I have been quite melancholic this week to leave here. I am thrilled for my new job, it truly is the opportunity of my dreams and I am thrilled to be so much closer to home again and yet I am sad to leave. I will miss biking to work through the park. I will miss my walks in the city forest. I will miss lunch breaks with my colleagues in town. The little pastry the French café across the street gives you with your coffee. The view of the cathedral. How warm and open everyone here is.
My job at COSMO (not Cosmopolitan) has allowed me to come to work everyday and feel fulfilled. To be completely content with what I do for the first time in my life. I am so lucky to work in a field I enjoy, to have found that so early in my life and to actually make living from it and I am grateful for it everyday. And the first place I got to do that will forever be special to me. So maybe that is why I am so terrible at goodbyes: because actually I never say goodbye, just see you soon.


Packed: three months of clothes in one (in numbers 1) luggage

Read: Finished book two of the Neapolitan Saga and moved on to Homo Deus

Worked out: with a resistance band and wanted to let you know, that I am now accepting donations for the funeral of my butt

Signed: THE CONTRACT FOR MY FREAKING DREAM JOB

Talked: About journalism for the first time on my Instagram and really enjoyed it - and so did you

Ate: Almost exclusively cherries and strawberries.

After 2355 kilometers along the coast we ended our roadtrip in Cairns. As many we were mainly heading up here for the Great Barrier Reef and had an absolutely amazing time here. Cairns is much smaller than I expected it to be and if you want to do some shopping for your trip, you may want to get that out of your system before you are in Cairns. In many ways Cairns itself is not that interesting, it is so incredibly hot and so humid and there is not too much to do in the city, but the surroundings of Cairns are just absolutely incredible and gorgeous, there is so much lush, wild nature; the oldest rainforest in the world the Daintree Rainforest is a mere hour and a half a way, the Great Barrier Reef is just in reach and waterfalls surround Cairns. We maybe could have done with one less day in Cairns and one more day in Daintree, but maybe you can learn from our mistakes.

From Rainbow Beach it was only a short eleven hours or about a thousand kilometers to Airlie Beach and that´s where we headed - though not in one go. We stopped in Tin Can Bay to feed some dolphins, Seventeen Seventy and Carmila Beach (which was not as idyllic as it sounds - safe to say: Croc country starts here), but mostly it was a whole lotta driving through sugar cane fields. We had heard lots of good about Airlie, but sadly were quite disappointed. To be honest one day here would have been plenty and the city was extremely centered around drinking. Not terrible, but not really what we were after. Most people here are waiting for their boats to go on their Whitsundays cruise and since these trips can get quite boozy it felt like people were practicing. There are some nice shops and a lagoon, where you can chill and soak up some sun but again - I feel like that can all be done in a day.

While travelling with my friend we had booked two three-day trips. During the roadtrip through New South Wales and Victories with my boyfriend almost everything was accessible by yourself (or at least the stops we chose), but Queensland is slightly more touristy and some of the biggest tourist attractions are not really DIY stops. We got an amazing deal to do a three day tour to Fraser Island and three days of sailing in the Whitsundays for 700 Dollars or 440 Europs. This is actually an amazing deal since usually one of these tours alon can cost 300 Euros. We booked through Peter Pans Adventure Travel. They operate all throughout Australia and offer a bunch of different tours, bus tickets and all that jazz. We were happy with both our tours, but especially for sailing the Whitsundays there is such a variety, that I am not sure if I would have gone through Peter Pans if I would not have gotten this deal. I personally would make sure to sign up to newsletters for a bunch of different companies and compare their prices and offers well in advance of your trip.