Today I will take you back to Iran again...
... one sunny day of our stay in Kermanshah, we went out of town to visit a village in the mountains, around 1 1/2 hours north of Kermanshah. We spent the day on an apple farm, picking apples from the trees, eating apples and, mainly, enjoying the view :)
We had tea and a delicous lunch with salad, falafel and bread (oh my, I had the best falafel ever in Iran!) and we had potatoes that we put in the fire for some 30 minutes, until they were completly black. We just removed the burned skin and the inside was so super yummy!
I was feeding the little one underneath a walnut tree and we both slept there for a little bit, while the others were picking apples to take home with us - we took three boxes of apples with us and ate at least four of them every day of our stay. Their were the sweetest, most delicous apples I have ever tasted and eating them reminded me every day of this beautiful day. It seriously was such a perfect day and it felt so good to stay on this quite mountain for a few hours, enjoying the silence, the fresh air, the view and the company of good friends. After having spend a few days in the city of Kermanshah this day really was like a small vacation in our vacation :)
I am back in Germany since more than a week now but I actually miss Iran! I really hope that I will be able to go back there soon! Until then, I will share a few more posts from Iran in the coming weeks :)
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Sending much love!
Happy Wednesday!
Let me share a Fall look from last weekend with you. I paired these grey boyfriend jeans with my black cashmere sweater from Hess Natur, plus some jewellery from my friend Lea Marie Franck. I wore a longsleeve underneath the sweater to be able to go out without coat. Yeah I know, soooo many fashion bloggers are happy because they can wear their coats again, but I really like my sweaters... and when its too cold for sweaters I wear a cardigan on top and only if this is getting too cold for longsleeve plus sweater plus cardigan, then I get my coats out ;).
By the way, my scarf is from Pakistan. Its basically a Cashmere direct import ;) I got it from a good friend of mine who is living in Islamabad, Pakistan and who came to visit a few weeks back. The scarf is super soft and I love its light pink color.
How is your week going so far? I am currently alone with the little one who just got her first tooth! Yay! She starts eating now and its a lot of fun to watch her play with her food (she is playing more with it than she is actually eating but thats totally fine for me). I am busy packing and sorting out, since we are moving very soon. On Friday we will get the keys to our new apartment and we will paint it on the weekend and next week. I will share a few impressions with you sometime soon :)
Sending much love!
Wanna know an easy way to get plenty of vitamins in Fall?
In Summer its so easy to eat loads of fruits, because they are available everywhere and they are mostly much cheaper than in Fall and Winter. But when Summer comes to an end then very soon only apples, pears and plums are left (okay, this is exaggerated but you get the idea ;)) and most people actually eat fewer fruits and more unhealthy snacks as soon as it gets colder. One easy and fast way to get plenty of fruit, vitamins and color in your life if to drink high quality organic fruit juices - like this rainbow here :)
Voelkel is a brand that I know since childhood (ita actually exists since 1936). I always used to drink their organic juices as a child and I loved them. Since, the brand developped loads of new interesting products and I would like to share a few of them with you. One is the fair to go series with different super yummy and healthy juices.
I love these small delicacies with their rainbow colors, their cute labels, their all organic ingredients and their awesome taste. Plus they are really perfect to take on the go because of their small size. I tried six different kinds (there is a new one called superfoods that I would love to try but did not get the chance yet - have a look at it here) and my favorite is the one with guava and aloe, it is made from organic aloe vera and chokeberry and from Demeter
quality grapes and guava pulp and all of the ingredients come from controlled organic or biodynamic farming (plus it tastes like Summer at its best and you forget all about the grey clouds outside when drinking it!).
As some of you know, I get most of my vitamins through smoothies that I have everyday (by the way, I will share my favorite Fall and Winter smoothies with you very soon!) but when I am travelling I really enjoy good organic juices as an alternative to my smoothies. For those occasions the fair to go juices from Voelkel really are perfect. They fit in almost any pocket, do not weigh much and are fairly produced.
They are the perfect small breakfast or ideal snack in a handy 0.25 litre glass
bottle. This weekend my husband and I enjoyed some of them on our Saturday afternoon walk to the market when he had a break in the park to get some vitamin D (sunshine) :)
What I really like about Voelkel is that they are not only producing sustainable, organic products in reusable glass bottles but they do also care about others - they philosophy is all about responsibilty for nature and mankind. Please feel free to read more about this here (yes, its English ;)). On their website you can also have a look at the variety of juices and drinks they have. Maaaaybe I will also show you a few more of their products here on the blog, cause I love this family-owned company and I think its totally worth supporting it to the max :)
Have a great start in the new week everyone! And thank you so much for yor sweet comments on my Iran look :)!
Sending much love!
Let me share my Iran outfit with you...
... I was wearing this most of the time during our stay because I did not really have a variety of clothes. I bought one dress before we left but it was not really practical so I ended up wearing this yellow and blue outfit with the blouse/coat that I borrowed from my friend.
Before
going to Iran I thought that I have to cover myself much more and I was
afraid that I will not get my visa when the officers will see a single hair of mine on arrival. So I only brought wide pants with me and one huge
shirt dress (which is cute when worn with a belt but I left the belt at
home because I thought it would be way to sexy to wear it with a belt
;)). Well it turned out that rules are actually not that strict - its important to cover your behind and its important to have a scarf somewhere on your head. Thats it. Most of the women I saw wore skinny jeans with formfitting dresses on top. Plus they used loads of make up! Most of them were actually much more styled than the women here in Germany!
Of course you do also see loads of women covered completly in huge black clothes, but you mainly see old women doing this. I saw just a few young ones who were completly covered, whereas most of the younger once were very fashionable.
What I found intersting to hear is that Iran is one of the countries with the most plastic surgeries per person. I saw a lot of women with plasters on their noses and I found out that these women just got a new nose. We discussed why so many women make plastic surgery and we came out with two hypothesis: one is that because they cannot wear the clothes they want and because they have to cover their body, their face is even more important to them so they put more emphasis on a perfect face. The second is that the young people believe that they cannot get a job even though they study hard so they focus more on outer appearance than on anything intellectual (because so many of the well educated people in Iran are jobless). Maybe its also a mix of the two or maybe its something totally different :)
When I got to know new young people the first thing they did was showing me pictures of themselves in pretty dresses from weddings or other parties. To me this was somehow strange but also intersting, as it seemed like they really identify themselves to a large extent through their outer appearance. In Germany, quite in contrast, many young people identitfy themselves rather through their career/the internships they made/their grades at uni/their work experiences or even their salary (I do not say this is better in any sense - I have problems with both!)
As you may notice from what I wrote, my stay in Iran gave with loads of food for thought. I was and am thinking about many differences between my country and Iran, loads of things I liked much better there and some things I like much better here. I love it when I come back from a holiday and I look at my country and the society I live in, from a completly different angle (and after evey vacation from a different one).
I will leave you with this for today and I wish you a most wonderful weekend! Do you have any nice plans? Well if not, take your time to think about what you think you identify yourself through and share your thoughts with me - is it outer appearance? Or skills? Or intellect? Or love?
Sending you all much love! Happy weekend!
I am back on the blog...
... with a million new impressions, adventures, stories and pictures from an amazing country called IRAN!
I do not even know where to start because I am so overwhelmed with everything that happend in the past 14 days. I had the best time ever! I really had! Not only was I lucky enough to get to visit a beautiful country, get to know loads of incredibly nice people, taste the most amazing food and learn a lot about the Kurdish and Persian culture, but I was able to share all of this with my husband and my baby girl. This is what made the last two weeks not only unforgetably beautiful but rather 100% perfect.
I prepared a few posts about this amazing adventure and I will share loads of pictures and stories with you in the coming weeks (dont worry there will be other posts in between, so you will not get bored ;)). I want to start with a post about the place we visited first and where we stayed most of the time - the city Kermanshah in the West of Iran. Its close to the border to Iraq and its a mostly Kurdish city. We went there because I have two very dear friends living there (we got to know each other during my stay in the US back in 2013) and I wanted to visit them for a long time. They got married last month and invited us for the wedding but since it is very hot in September, I decided that its not good to go there for the wedding with our baby girl - so instead we decided to go and visit a month later. And this was now.
So here are some impressions from Kermanshah, Iran.
The first few pictures are from the area around Bisotun, right outside the city of Kermanshah. There are some ancient reliefs there in the mountains which are really beautiful.
These pictures here of this beautiful building are from the city center of Kermanshah. The building was build for people to mourn there and I found the architecture really impressive!
The Bazar of Kermanshah is huge and you can truely find everything there. It was a great experience to walk through the alleys at night. We bought plenty of mulberries, figs, dates and some spices there.
The next few picutres are from different neighboorhoods in Kermanshah, we went for loads of walks around the city and explored everything :)
The last few pictures are from Oveis, a place close to Kermanshah which is somehow holy. There is a kind of mausoleum on top of the mountain and many people make a pilgrimage to this place. We visited the holy grave but mainly enjoyed the amazing view from the top of the mountain :)
I know some of you have already seen some Iran pictures on my instagram so you may get an idea already of to what kind of places I will take you in the next few posts about Iran ;)
For today I leave you with these ones and I am very curious about what you are going to say about my vacation in Iran. I think that probably most of you have not been there and I think most of you would not actually consider the country as a place to go on vacation to - but I was and I still am, actually even more than before :)
Now, I am saying welcome back once again! Thanks for being here with me and thanks for your kind comments on my last post! You are great!
Sending much love!
... I am off on holiday!!!
Hooray! I will be back on October 20 with loads and loads of new posts from a very intersting, very different, very exciting country!
I am not yet telling you now where I am going ... just saying that I am going East, its warm there, its a whole different culture, I will not be able to wear the same clothes as I do here, and the food is amazing ;)
I am looking forward to see you all again on October 20 and while I am gone PLEASE make sure you vote for me at the Keimling Award: HERE ! Its only one click! THANK YOU!
Sending much love!
As you know from my last post, we went to an island for our anniversary...
... namely the island Amrum in the North Sea.
For our wedding day I wanted to wear something cute yet practical for a long walk around the beautiful island - so I chose some jeans and a blouse combined with my much loved poncho from Hess Natur which I got for my birthday last year. In the morning when it was still cold, I wore the poncho and later on when it got warmer, I was just perfect with the jeans and the blouse (plus the big Winter boots that kept my feet warm).
I was wearing the blouse as a dress back here but I actually think that I like it better worn as a blouse as I do here.Which one do you like better? And how do you like this look overall?
I actually don't know what is wrong with the jeans - when I got it back in 2013 it was fitting very well (see here) but now its so loose... I don't think that it is because I lost weight but I feel like those Levis jeans just go bigger and bigger over time. Did this ever happen to your Levis jeans too?
How is your week going so far? Mine is very exciting! Why? I will tell you soon ... ;)
Have a wonderful day!
Sending much love!
So for our first wedding anniversary we went to the island Amrum...
... Amrum is the North Sea and its part of the area of Germany called Nordfriesland. I have been there quite a few times as a child and I thought it was time to go back. When I was a child I was not yet able to actually see the beauty of the island - so this is something I catched up on now :)
We took the ship to go there (well, first we took the train to northern Germany and then we took the ship) and we had this perfect weather and enjoyed the sunshine and the calm sea.
When we arrived we checked in in our hotel (such a friendly place! In case you are interested it was the Hotel Anka) and after just a few moments we went out for a walk. When I arrive at a destination, no matter how tired I am, I want to leave the hotel right away and check out the area - can you relate to that :)?
So these are some pictures from our evening walk.
The next day (our wedding day) we had a really nice breakfast at the hotel and we then left for a five hours walk - the little one slept for three hours straight during our walk (it must be the very clean air that made her so tired) and we had a really wonderful time admiring the beautiful landscape.
Amrum is mainly made out of dunes as you can see on these pictures. There are also a few fields and a tiny little bit of forest but its mainly sand. Of course there is a huge beach too, but we actually did not spend too much time there since we found the dunes the most beautiful and also the most fun to walk in (its also tiring to walk in the sand when carrying the little one ;))
These really are a lot of pictures but I was'nt able to sort out more - I just love these different landscpaes and I really wanted to show all of this to you :)
I know some of you have already seen some similar pictures on instagram - but a few are not yet there ;)
Our first wedding anniversary really was PERFECT and I could not have wished for much more - except for better vegan food on the island. It was slightly difficult to find good food for us so I think next time we better get an apartment with a kitchen so that we can prepare our own things. The breakfast in the hotel was great but for cooked food it was difficult. The restaurants are mainly serving fish and if its not fish its meat. Anyway, that was the only thing I could complain about but somehow it was also nice to make picknicks on our hotel bed, with loads of fruits, vegetables and bread with dips :)
How was your first wedding anniversary? Or your first relationship anniversary? What did you do? I would love to know :)
Sending much love!
