Within one month I visited Chennai (Madras), Hyderabad, Bangalore, Hampi, Pondicherry, Mamallapuram, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Fatehpur Sikri, Goa and Mumbai (Bombay). The new camera I bought was kinda broken, so many pictures came out blurred. That sucks a lot, especially the ones I wanted to make prints of are unusable. But some images are still okay. Let's sum it up:



This is my sister


This is where she lived in approx. 2.5m²


At her place, there was only Indian food... but it was yummy


We traveled by train a lot... most of the time we got on the train in the evening and woke up in another city about ten hours later.


It wasn't very spacious though!


We've seen great sites


And we've been to temples with the locals


We've been invited to tea with an Indian family too!


Many locals treated us like celebrities and wanted photos with us


I got some Henna


And wore salwar kameezes by the end of the trip. So much better in this climate than western clothing.


This was our roomiest hostel room (never undress outside of the mosquito net!)


This is what the better toilets looked like

Some more impressions:



It was a great experience!

The day after tomorrow I'll be sitting in a plane to Mumbai... that's so strange. I won't have warm showers or hygienic toilets for a month. And no chocolate! AARRRGHHH
I went to the town today to buy the unsexiest bathing suit I could find because I only have sexy bikinis I won't be allowed to wear there according to my sister's experiences, I'll be getting enough stares for my mozarella skin. Ahh, I better call it ivory skin. Sounds much better. Or cameo skin maybe.

I decided not to take a fancy camera with me because I'll be travelling and sleeping in state trains a lot, sandwiched between the locals. So my backpack has to be as light and worthless as possible. It's a great chance to prove that equipment doesn't matter...
I got the Canon IXUS 860 IS (in the US it's called 870 IS, I think), which is a little 8MP point&shoot camera. Any opinions on that one? It's too late to exchange it, so only good opinions please

Thank you all a lot for your support. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to reply to all comments in time, the main reason is that I'm a disorganized bitch and the second reason is that my message centre is crooked up somehow and new messages aren't showing anymore (I'll try to fix that as soon as I'm back). I stopped thanking everyone for faves months ago, sometimes I feel bad about it, but I just don't have the time and energy to do that anymore. So here's a big THANK YOU to everyone who supports me, I really appreciate it and you guys make my life more worthwhile

I hope I won't get bitten by a rabid monkey or a malaria-carrying moskito, or stabbed by a christian-hating fanatic, or robbed or poisoned or anything else, so we'll see each other in a month





_{=seattleslough has donated a year of subscription for me! Yay! How can I deserve that? Please show him some love}

I went with my pristine EOS 5D to local resellers and they want to give me €700-900 for it. WTF?!?

If you ever wanted to see a picture of me dressing up like a porcelain doll, here's your chance: [link]

The German National Academic Foundation thinks that I'm highly gifted and granted me a scholarship (yay!). Which basically means that I'll continue working hard for Uni.

I've had a photoshoot with *CathleenParagon but can't 100% decide which pictures to upload. Coming soon. (And my subscription is running out...again.)

I'm going to India for three weeks! In February-March. Travel tips anyone?

One strange thing

Today I met one of those persons that are very hard to find. They give you a feeling as if you found a lost sibling of some sort. It was a young man I met on the train home. We shared a cabin, started a conversation and talked for two hours nonstop, about science, languages, philosophy and art and about our life as University students. Our words were like sparks that lightened the night of insignificance. I haven't had such a great conversation for a long time. I felt that we would be very close friends if we only had any official connection, like common friends, work or uni. But we were just two people who shared a train cabin.

Then we arrived at his stop (Fröndenberg) and he got off the train. Gone. Now I don't even know his name. I could hope we'd meet again in a funny coincidence, but life isn't a Hollywood movie.

Isn't that strange... How people can find and lose each other just like that. And on the other hand I don't feel a close connection to my fellow students I meet and work with every day. How can I not miss any of my fellow students who are always nice and everything? And how can I miss a person I met for two hours and who I'll never meet again so badly?



Another strange thing

I'm home at my mom's house after being away for a long time and everything seems like I've never moved out. We've been ice-skating on the creaking and cracking village lake, eating cake, decorating the christmas tree. And my inspiration is back. It seems like what killed my inspiration is Düsseldorf, where I live a happy but meaningless little life with nice but meaningless friends. In one and a half weeks, I have to return there.



The last thing

In a few hours we'll celebrate christmas (in Germany it's on the 24th) and there'll be some drama because my dad doesn't want to come over and my sister will be disgruntled because of that and yell at me for various reasons. I'm looking forward to the 27th when I'll hopefully be able to see my dear friends I've been missing so much.

I hope you'll all have a wonderful christmas.

That's right. Why? Because I'm hardly ever using it since I started becoming a boring, hard-working elite student. No time for creativity anymore. But hey, I'm the best student of the whole University, with no less than 1.0 in every exam (pretty unreal... but it doesn't really cheer me up though). My parents are happy, I think, because I did the right thing and didn't waste my capability.

What's more, I don't have any friends here who'd model for me in a fruitful kind of way (probably because they're all uncreative elite students too). They're only like "Hey, take a nice application photo for me please, I don't wanna pay a studio photographer" and like "I've changed my mind, I need professional looking photos after all". And not like "Hey, let's go to the abandoned fields today and take some photos of how I'm swinging an iron chain". I'm missing it. Seems like the summer is over.

Do you have any suggestions where I could sell it better than on ebay? And how much could I possibly get for it? It's a hardly-ever-used Canon EOS 5D. Buying price was something around 3'500 € and the warranty is still valid.

After all, it's just a thing without a soul. I think.


... and no, I'm not leaving dA. I still have my cheaper old camera, so I can still take photos. And don't ask me not to sell it please, I've made my decision.

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A feature of my recent favourites. The first ones to give some useful advise on this selling thing will be featured too.



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