Zalando Competition!

I know I said I'd post about my Erasmus adventures this week, but I happened to come across this Zalando competition last night and I decided I'd give it a shot. I wouldn't normally do something like this, but as I'm currently embarking on a mission to give my wardrobe a complete makeover and fill it with autumn/winter clothes, it seemed like it could be useful as well obviously wanting to get my greedy little hands on £3600 worth of clothes! Thanks Zalando! Anyway, here's what I put together:







The dream shoes to end all dream shoes. 

I originally intended to include them in the outfit below, but I realised they didn't go with any of the stuff on the site that I liked or actually even anything I already own. The fact that I'd be well over 6 feet tall in these shoes, would probably look like Bambi on ice trying to walk in them and would tower over my dinky boyfriend is irrelevant! They're in no way practical or within my price range, but I have been known to sit and lust after them for hours on end. One day I will have them! I WILL!

Vero Moda Jana Jacket (£32), Dior Rouge Lipstick (£25.95), Espirit Ankle Boots La petite Francaise dress (£69.50), DAY Birger et Mikkelsen Day Day Wool Hat (£104.95), Burt's Bees Hand Care (£10.95) and Therapeutic Bath Crystals (£11.95), Nina Ricci PAUL & VIRGINIE bra (£104.95) and knickers (£54.95), Royal RepubliQ Conductor Ticket Small Laptop Bag (£140)

As you've undoubtedly noticed, I'm no fashion blogger and I'm a bit crap at putting these sorts of collages together, so apologies for how amateur this looks. I wouldn't normally wear something like this outfit, but after spending a year in Germany I've become noticeably more conservative with what I wear and I've finally begun to realise the importance of dressing to suit my figure instead of blindly following whatever the High Street tells me is fashionable. In other words I've grown up and it's only taken me twenty one years to realise that I can actually think for myself and don't look good in crop tops.

I fell in love with the dress as soon as I saw it and I'll probably order it for myself once my student loan comes in. It'll be perfect for wearing to uni with the boots I selected and a pair of wooly grey tights, but my main reason for picking it was because if an impromptu visit to the SU arose (as it often does) I could just throw on a pair of heels and black tights without fearing that I look rammy. Bit disappointed with the necklace selection on the site if I'm being honest as I think it'd look really nice with some throat candy, but never mind! I don't know if I'd wear the blazer with it because I can't really tell from the pictures if they'd go together, but it's pretty and I've been after a nice blazer anyway.

On to the accessories... I'd quite like a glamorous laptop case for uni, but I've never been able to justify paying for one when I have a fully functioning one already (albeit very black and bland). This one really appealed to me because it looks a lot like a handbag and I could probably just whack in my essentials and use it for that purpose too. The lipstick I chose because although I'd never spend that much money on make-up for myself (especially not a lipstick!), it's a gorgeous colour and I've been really loving pink lipsticks lately. This one is a little bolder than what I'm used to and so would probably be better saved for one of the aforementioned spontaneous cocktail outings! The same goes for Burt's Bees really - I love the products, but they're just too pricey for me usually. I'm already excited about the cold dark nights so I can spend hours and hours in a warm bubbly bath pampering myself without feeling guilty! And the underwear? Well, every girl needs a set of impractical, sexy underwear. If I'm wearing pretty underwear I'll feel good about myself all day! Not overlynsure about paying over £160 for a set of underwear, but a girl can dream!

I hope you enjoyed the selection and my explanations weren't too rambly; I have the tendancy to write far too much so I do apologise. You can enter for yourself using this link, the competition ends on the 30th September. Best of luck!



Sarah
xx

Food baby.

I'm back from Germany for good now. It still hasn't hit home that I live in Britain again now, and it feels very strange knowing that I have no plans to go back in the near future. At the moment I'm snuggled up on the sofa feeling very full after a big plate of sausage & mash AND a pub lunch and catching up on all of my usual reads before hitting the town with my friends tonight. Come to think of it, it was probably wise to eat so much - wouldn't want to be drinking all that gin on an empty stomach!

I'll return to posting about my Erasmus adventure this week and put up some pictures from the last week I spent there with my brother. Hope you're all having a lovely Bank Holiday weekend!

Erasmus year reflections, Teil 1.5: Dresden!

I'm back in the UK at the minute, and I have been since the early hours of Thursday morning. It's been amazing being at home with my family and friends and definitely worth the hideous twelve hour journey and terrible flight with Easy Jet, but I feel like I've not had a minute to myself trying to squeeze in seeing everyone. I'm going back to Germany tomorrow morning (at 4am, boooo!) but only for one week (sob!) before I move back to the UK for good. I'm taking my brother with me though so that should be nice. We're hoping to visit Nuremberg, Bamberg, Munich and Legoland whilst we're there but I have so much to sort out that it might be a little difficult to squeeze everything in. One thing I'm very excited about is the prospect of flying with a swanky airline. Well, Lufthansa is certainly swanky by my standards. Very much looking forward to the free hot snack and drink! I'm not really sure where I'm going with this or what point I was trying to make, so I'll continue with a little bit about my favourite-city-ever, DRESDEN!

September 2010: Dresden

I say September, because that was the first time I visited the city but I actually went loads during my first semester at Bayreuth, because of where my boyfriend was living. I fell in love from the first time we went, and I didn't even fall out of love with it when we were wandering round the packed Christmas Markets in the -17 degree weather trying to eat chocolate covered fruit that had just frozen over. I think I'd like to live and work in the city someday but we'll see how things go. The photos were uploaded in a strange order so they're not chronological, but I can't be bothered to rearrange them at the moment!

My birthday is on St. David's Day and, being Welsh, I was delighted to find that it was being celebrated in my favourite cafe England, England. Sadly we didn't discover the cafe until quite late in the year so we only got to visit a few times, but the place was decorated like a nanna's house (this is 100% a good thing!) and had a selection of British newspapers and books which provided a very welcome relief to all the German that we'd been surrounded with. After a beautiful British cuppa and cheddar cheese on toast (almost impossible to come by in Germany) we spent almost an hour looking round the cafe's little shop full of British delights like sweeties and Marmite. I desperately regret not buying the English Rose handcream they were selling as it was gorgeous, but I didn't quite have enough pennies on me. I could write about the cafe for hours - it's my absolute favourite place to go in Dresden and I'd go back to the city just to visit again.

I'm not normally one to be too taken with architecture, but the architecture in Dresden blew me away. So stunning! It's strange to think that the city was completely flattened during the Second World War.

You can't visit Germany without trying Currywurst and Pommes. So good!

I took this on the day we left for good. Tom was moving to be with me in Bayreuth and we were about the catch our train when I snapped this from the S-Bahn. It's by no means a good picture but it's one of my favourites as it was so beautiful that that was the last thing my eyes saw of Dresden. Pretty fitting too, but now I'm just getting cheesy!

Tea and Welsh cakes at England, England! :D

I thought I had more photos of Dresden and it made me quite sad that these were the only decent(ish) few because we spent so much time there. Again the photos don't do the city's beauty, amazing shops or amazing nightlife any justice and I can only urge you to go and try it for yourself. Forget Berlin and Munich, Dresden is the place to be!

Wish me a safe flight, and I'll be back next week with a post about Berlin so keep an eye out! Bis bald :)

Erasmus year reflections, Teil 1: Meissen.

I may not meet many of the requirements for Best Language Student the World Has Ever Seen, but I can certainly put a big tick in the Wanderlust box. I'm currently swimming around in the dregs of my Erasmus year in Germany and my biggest regret is that I didn't travel anywhere near as much as I'd have liked to (and that my German is still pretty shocking, but I can deal with that). I don't quite know how I managed to pilfer away almost £4000 of free money on top of my full student loan, but I did! Tom had a bit of a rough year on his placement and it ended up costing him almost a grand just to escape from that so that didn't help too much, but the main reason was probably that I just can't keep my hands to myself every time I visit H&M. Anyway, I digress. To help me get back into the swing of blogging (and not feel too depressed that the amazing experience is over) I've decided to compile a little account of all the places I have managed to visit during my Erasmus year. I'll post a little bit about each city in every post and try and include as many photos as I can! Sorry they're so tragic, my little point and shoot does get a 10/10 for effort...

September 2010: Meißen

This was always going to be the one with the most pictures seeing as it was the first place in Germany I saw in the light of day after I landed in Berlin. Tom had already been living there for a week when I joined him and he did a placement out there until March. To say it was turbulent would probably be something of an understatement. You see, Meissen is in Saxony and is a part of the former DDR and you can really tell. The city is gorgeous, but there isn't a great deal to do unless you want to take an hour train journey to Dresden (costing 11€ return) and very few young people because the economy has struggled to keep up with the former West Germany since the reunification. So he was stuck there internet-and-friend-less after I left in October. It was a damn struggle to keep our relationship going during that time, but Meissen is still the place I'm fondest of.

Luckily it was still summer whilst I was there and we were new to the city and also the country so it was nice to be able to spend the days exploring and practising the language. The cultural difference did shock me a little. I'm fully aware that British girls tend to leave little to the imagination when dressing, but vest tops or skirts without tights were a total no-go if you didn't want disapproving stares and overt gossiping. I'm very used to blending in in Britain, but everything about me seemed to scream 'foreigner' and the attention made me feel a little uncomfortable. Still, it was nice to be able to throw on my scruffiest clothes for an amble to the Eiscafe without being judged too severely.

We ate far too much ice cream whilst we were there. Eiscafes are such a big part of German culture and even now, eleven months later the novelty still hasn't worn off. We did take it a little too far though, nomming our way through a beaker of icecream every single day when we really should have just been eating a scoop. Not good for my bank balance or my waistline! But in a city famous for its porcelain, vineyards and notorious flooding, there wasn't a great deal else to do. Many evenings strolling up Albrechtsburg (shown in the photos) ensured that all the icecream didn't make me too much of a podge!

I had a brilliant time during my stay, but sadly this doesn't seem to have translated too well in my writing. But I honestly didn't do a great deal, it was just a nice little break spent with my boyfriend after a summer apart. It was also the perfect end to the summer before having to get used to the university routine again and I think I saw the most drastic improvement in my German in those four short weeks than in the ten months I lived in Bayreuth as a student. My writing skills still leave a lot to be desired and I'm actually a little bit sad that I can't do such a beautiful city the justice it deserves. If you ever find yourself anywhere near Dresden, Meissen is well worth a day trip!

I do hope my account of my time in Meissen wasn't too dull. I'll make a post about Dresden next time and my tales will hopefully be a little more animating!

Bis bald!

Oliva.

I can't quite believe I've found time to blog tonight as I have so much to do. I've yet to finish my Italian homework, my German homework and finish drying my washing. I had an English assignment due in today which I didn't realise until I got into class. I'm an awful student and I really ought to utilise my homework planner. Instead I'm sitting at my desk, enjoying the drizzly weather (a welcome break from the stifling thirty degree heat we've been experiencing all week), drinking a latte macchiato and marvelling over how smooth my skin is.

Admittedly the heat has probably contributed to it too, but I've been using Oliva pure olive oil soap and even after two days of using it I can already tell that it is a welcome addition to my bathroom cabinet. My nan always had beautiful clear skin and swore by a skincare routine of just soap and water but I worried this might dry out my skin. The only time my skin has felt this smooth is after using a good facial scrub, but that obviously isn't an every day solution. I'll probably use it instead of my usual shower gel next time I'm in the shower too. I'll forever swear by Nivea moisturiser too, bringing my total skincare costs to around the £3 mark. Just goes to show that you don't have to spend lots of money to have lovely skin, but I'll continue to eye up various Burt's Bees gift sets...