"What's been going on" randomness

Heya folks! So I haven't been blogging for a while again, which, as it seems will happen every once in a while. I am getting used to it, and I am not bothered by it anymore. I write when I have the time and that is it. I still wish I could write every (other) day though, I like blogging. But you can't have it all, and lately I have been very busy with some stuff that makes me happy, which is good as well. :)

My first "real" job is great and it is keeping me busy enough. It is a lot of work, but the pay is fair and on time. In the end of June I spent my first week on holidays and finally arranged with a good friend of mine to go to Paris. Now, for years I though Paris was a totally overrated city. I am not a romantic person and all everybody ever speaks of about Paris is what a romantic city it is. Luckily for me there is a lot more to Paris and I am forever in love with it. I spent one whole day at Louvre, one whole day at Versailles and their gardens with singing fountains. Plus Montmartre stole my heart. A week in Paris is not enough, I am definitively returning there.

Church of Sacre Coeur and the crowd infront of it.

I love these Metro stops, they look like something Tim Burton designed for one of his movies.

View of Grand canal and gardens of Versailles

I also went to Bourjois store in Paris. Yes they have a whole store there!! I loved it. I was a very good girl and I held back, I actually bought only three things - a bronzer for contouring, make up remover and tweezers to put false lashes on.

Tweezers are missing because I have no idea where they are at this point of the chaotic state of my stuff. See below.

Another thing that was a lovely surprise was a package of 6 Essie nail polishes Slovene L'Oreal sent to me. I remember in the beginning of my nail polish obsession I wasn't a fan of Essie nail polish, but in all these years the brand grew on me. I am currently wearing a combo of Watermelon and Cute as a button and I love it. Plus I was really surprised to see that Essie changed their brush when I wasn't looking!

On top of that we also started to renovate the house. It meant painting the walls, changing the rooms and buying new furniture. I thought it will be done in two weeks tops ... I was so wrong. It is taking now over a month, ATM my boyfriend is still finishing up two small closets we bought the last time and I still want some shelves done in my room as well. This has taken so much more of my time than I ever expected it, and I still haven't finished with moving all my things inside.

My very new and very big closet.

Another thing that is taking a whole lot of my free time is the one I love - dancing. I am a part of a project we have been working on for almost a year now and I cannot say much about it at this point but when I will be able to, I will post it on the blog immediately. 

I can't wait to show you the new Essies and some other things i have planned. Until then, enjoy the Summer days, don't forget that pale is the new tan and wear lots of crazy colours on your nails!

~ Ulmiel

Road trip moments: Lichtenfels, Germany

Hello my dear people! How are you, what's new? It's been a while! (Btw, thanks, Sabbatha, for the comment on my lack of post, it made me laugh. :D) So yeah, I guess you can tell from the title I was away for a few days because I was abroad. I was so busy days before the trip I didn't even had the time to let you know. Since my last posts on road trips were very well accepted, I decided I'll do another one with Lichtenfels. I didn't plan on doing it until I saw just how unbelievably cute and lovely the town is. So the pictures are made with my BF's phone, I didn't take mine. It's a great phone with a great camera, but alas not so great photographer. :P It was my first time of taking the pictures with it, I had to learn fast. ;) 

So yeah, let's start at the beginning. We travelled to Germany for one reason only: music! Lichtenfels is the town where the metal festival called Ragnarök occurs and I couldn't wait to get there. The listed bands were awesome and it's been a while since I've been to a festival. Around 8 hours drive on Thursday passed rather quickly, on very good but very boring highways of Germany. What surprised me the most on the way there was the fact we need to pay 41 euros just to pass Austria! Holy crap is that a lot of money for just going through the country (there and back again, of course)! But we noticed a couple of awesome castles and I'm hoping I'll convince my darling to go on a road trip to visit them, our northern neighbours have some really gorgeous castles hiding there. :) 

We got there late in the evening, set up a tent (I know, it's a tad bit cold for camping, but we brought a lot of blankets etc. so it was all good!) and awaited Friday when the festival officially started. In the morning we went to the town, since I was curious about how it looked like (and I really need coffee in the morning) and I was immensely surprised by how lovely it is. We went for a longer walk before we sat down for my cup of coffee every day, so here are some photos I took in those two days. I left them fairly large too.

 The main square, my first sight of the town. Love!

 I love how this building looks like.

I don't know the English word for these kind of baskets, but this one is the largest of its kind in the world, or so the writing below says. :) I love the idea, the stone baskets we usually have are so ugly. 

 I wanted to show how the green bracelet for the festival goes well with my polish of choice for this trip, but it looks too dark on this photo. It's Illamasqua Rampage, and here's a better photo of it.

The bald spots were not visible to the naked eye. It's the jelliness of Rampage that makes photos like this. This is one gorgeous, gorgeous polish. And it's awesome enough for me to wear it for days.

 Another basket! Like I said, I love the idea.

 The pretty flowers in the basket. :)

 Remember my fascination with old or carved doors from my road trip to Slovakia?

 This tree is gorgeous. It doesn't look awesome enough on the photo, IRL it was magnificent, even naked, I can't imagine how awesome it is with leaves.

This was some sort of a fountain. Water fell on the steps and so for quite a few meters, it ended somewhere near that car, with a large circle basin. What I loved about it was the sound of water, as I sat in that coffeehouse you see on the photo. :) I couldn't make too many pictures or pictures over the water, I think my BF was nervous enough just with me standing so closely to the water with his phone in my hands. FYI: I'm a clumsy person. ;)

The people of Lichtenfels are extremely nice and willing to help, we haven't had one bad experience. The coffeehouse even made an ice cream flavour for Ragnarök only, with the taste of mead, of course. :D It was good too! The prices are decent and all in all it's a very nice surprise that i loved the town so much, since it wasn't even the purpose of our travel. 

The festival itself was amazing. Really amazing, so much better than I expected. The pace and hall are awesome, we found some Slovene people there too, so it was a total party, the prices of drinks were really decent ... I can't complain about a thing, even the design of the logo and everything is right after my taste. And I finally got my Summoning hoodie, the one I wanted to steal from my BF for so long, Minas Morgul hoodie. For a very decent price too. I was so happy. The bands were incredible too. Some really awesome concerts. My neck hurts even to this day, haha.

The festival officially ended on Sunday. Right after we packed our stuff and drove out of the festival area it started to rain. We got really lucky with the weather. It stopped raining on Thursday and started again on Sunday. Maybe Thor made a deal with the weather to give us a break or something. :D So we returned to Slovenia on Sunday evening. I was so tired I couldn't do a thing for two days, so here I am, typing this on Tuesday. :) I hope you liked the post, I'll be glad to read your comments on it too. :) 

And what were you up to on this weekend? :)

Thank you for reading!

Road trip moments: a little bit of Czech Rep., tea and Call to Arms

Heya people! It's still all about travelling! I was planning to write one more post on my road trip in November and here it finally is.

First an awesome coffee, I forgot to show you in Žilina post! Yum, coffee, it was so good!

The candy was good too. But coffee was better.

So in my last entry we left Žilina, Strečno Castle and Slovakia and went to visit their neighbours, Czech Republic. Ah, Češka ... I love that country. This time we stayed only a little bit and planned only to spoil ourselves in the wonderful spa of Savannah hotel. O-M-G! Savannah is an amazing hotel. They spoil you SO much, the rooms are amazing, the staff is amazing, the food is amazing, everything is so good! It's the hotel I'd gladly pay full price for, even if we didn't have the certificate. I totally recommend it, you won't be sorry. It's basically on the border with Austria, you get the feeling it's made just for Austrians, to go spoil themselves abroad. Next to it is a giant complex of stores of basically everything, from food to jewellery. We went only to one, there were just too many of them and we didn't want to lose time there. But Savannah is amazing for relaxation, really. We spend the day like kings, by luck we had the pool for ourselves, and very few people were at sauna, and the day ended with the most amazing dinner. After few days of hectic travelling that felt really good. 

The washbowl in the bathroom. Doesn't it look awesome? Marble mani in these colours would be neat. ;)

We visited Znojmo the next day, for a short while, we didn't have much time anymore. We went to Albert, one of the bigger stores there, for Czech beer and Krivoklatska mead, because they simply rock. And something else. Tea!! Loads of tea! For some odd reason we don't have the choice of tea they have in Slovakia or Czech republic. It sucks, because I LOVE tea and so I piled it throughout entire travelling. This is what I brought home. 

Tea!! They're really good too!

And so we went to Austria, Vienna, where *the* concert of this travel occurred, Saxon on a tour with Anvil, I couldn't wait to see them! Although at first I wanted to go for Anvil, after a few weeks I couldn't wait for Saxon too, their music is fantastic, not to mention their energy on stage is simply ... beyond awesome. Really, to this day only Primordial could mesmerise me so much as Saxon did. Awesome, awesome concert! And don't get me wrong, Anvil were really great too, I just regreted their very short set list, they skipped some great songs.

BTW, if you're in Vienna, I recommend hotel roomz. Cheap for Vienna and very nice! We had like 10 min walk to the concert place, great location, it's rather close to the city centre too.

So yeah ... the concert was so amazing, we came to hotel, almost missed the check-out in the morning (we're the definition of  a not-morning person, especially after a concert the night before) and headed for Slovenia. 

It was beyond awesome, seriously. I'm in a better mood if i just think about that trip. I have the best boyfriend in the world, have I ever mentioned that? Thanks for everything, dearest. :*

Any thoughts on this entry or on road trip in general, any favourites, any places/hotels you saw differently if/when you visited them? 

Thank you for reading!

Road trip moments: Strečno castle, Slovakia

Hey people! It was a gorgeous day here in Ljubljana! I went on foot wherever I could and then even went jogging, it was so awesome. Right now I'm hungry as hell and have to work on a paper, but I still owe you a few road trip moments that I'd love to share with you!

We left Spiš Castle rather late, being so impressed with it, and were rushing to Žilina, a town close to the Slovak border with Czech Republic, where our first concert on this trip occurred. Honestly, it was more of my BF's interest than mine, 4 local (3 Slovak & 1 Czech) metal bands, I didn't know any of them, but the ticket was cheap and well, I don't say no to a good night out.

The hotel Grand in Žilina was so-so. Very cheap equipment, better said - very old and it showed. A lot. But the restaurant next to it was awesome. Seriously awesome, one of the best Caesar salad I ever had and the coffee was amazing! It's an open restaurant/bar, it's not hotel-only, so I really recommend it. 

But I'm skipping things, let's start with our arrival to Žilina, being very late for the concert that started at 6 p.m. already (4 bands and all). When we realised we'll have to walk around 20 minutes just to the place where they were playing I totally saw us missing half of the concert. Since there was one band that my boyfriend wanted to see particularly, that wasn't the best position for us. In the end we missed one band, and luckily it wasn't the most wanted one. I must say the band itself REALLY surprised me, it was fantastic! They don't even have a web page or a CD out yet, but the concert was freaking awesome. Plus the beer was 1 € only, ah, the good old low prices that are no where to find in Slovenia anymore. :)

Žilina wasn't interesting for us just because of the concert, it was also interesting because of the Strečno castle, Slovaks call it Strečniansky hrad, that is located nearby Žilina. Again info on the net told me the thing closes up at 4 p.m. and that there are no guided tours in November. As we came there, we saw naturally there are guided tours but that we missed them. Figures. Then again, they were in Slovak language, as far as I could figure, but we could at least go inside the castle with a guide. Luckily, the castle itself was beautiful on the outside too. Pictures!

 IMHO this view alone was worth the walk up hill.

 The path to the castle is gorgeous. 

 The view from the castle hill.

A poor picture of otherwise awesome scene. This is where you have to park your car and then walk up to the castle, off the road it looks kinda like this. 

Strečno castle is beautiful. Really, I want to go there again and take the tour too. Slovakia, like Czech Republic has a lot of castle, that's why I'm probably a fan of both forever. :) 

I have one more post prepared. From Žilina and Strečno castle we went to the Slovak neighbours, Czech, very close to their border with Austria, where *the* concert happened. :)

Hope you liked the entry, thank you for reading and commenting!

Road trip moments: Spiš Castle, Slovakia

Hey guys! Thank you for your response to the giveaway, I'm really really happy you like it. :) Someone asked me what the green base for Waking up in Vegas is on that picture - it's Essie School of Hard Rocks, here's my post on it. :)

Today I continue with my road trip moments. We left Košice and continued up to the northern Slovakia for this beauty. I think we planned the whole trip around it at the back of our minds. Spiš castle, or as Slovacs call it Spišský hrad. I've already shown you castles on my blog and so regular readers already know how much I adore castles, as long as they don't look too modern or baroque. They are my great love, if I get the chance to visit one, you can be sure you'll meet me there. I'm lucky enough to live in a country full of castles, I even camped for a week at one once (still remaining one of my all time favourite castles in the world, Rihemberk castle near Branik or Ajdovščina if that makes it easier for orientation) ... in short, castles are my thing. 

Spiš castle is ... unbelievable. It was really foggy that day and so we were worried a bit how everything will turn out and when will we actually spot it. The thing is, you don't really get it how huge this monster is until you actually see it with your own eyes. Monster is a pet name and I mean it as a compliment. The castle is enormous, it's like the mother of all castles. It's also a part of UNESCO heritage, I'm glad about that, since that usually means someone will keep an eye on it.

We were visiting it off main season and they warned us in the email (they do reply, thumbs up!) that in case of snow and ice the castle will be closed and that there are no guided tours in November. So I held my fingers crossed the weather will endure and it did. Mind you, it was cold as hell, but dry. We understood the moment we started walking up to the castle why they close everything when there's snow. Don't even try to reach it with ice and snow on the land, you'll break your leg, seriously. 

When you come in a very sweet lady welcomes you - we spoke in German, in general I think Slovak people find it easier to communicate in German. A pleasant surprise: we got the mic guide for entire castle (they have it in English and German). The guide itself is very well made. It explains the history of every point/part of castle you visit and there is usually an extra explanation or story/legend with pushing the red button, if you want to hear more about anything. Yay! I LOVE to hear more about what I see, so we gladly took the mic and went discovering. 

Again, some pictures, I held back, trust me. Maybe you should enlarge them, they look really tiny as I type the entry.

 This is how it looks from far away. Really far away. The picture is not blurry, it's really foggy. ;)

You can see by the main tower we're getting closer to the castle hill here and yet we're still not under the castle. It's already so huge I cannot capture it entirely. 

 A picture shot from the battlement, one of the crenel anyway. You could see entire village from the hill. Or we could, if the fog would rise. 

 The orange signs were the guide stops. :) 

 I found the location of this cannon very amusing. You bearly notice it, we stood on that spot for a couple of minutes before I looked right and noticed it. It seemed to me like it was trying to fit in the wall like "just standing here, minding my own business, lalala". Eh, I'm weird sometimes.

 The really REALLY narrow staircase up the tower. 

Two pictures from the top of the tower. On the second you can catch a glimpse of the forest near the castle (on the other side of the parking place), it was SO gorgeous, covered with rime and with  the autumn colours still peeking through the whitness. 

 Another one from the crenel ... yeah, I liked the photo idea. ;)

My mani, with the part of the castle in the background. I thought Misa Toxic Seduction rocks hard enough to visit the coolest castle in Slovakia. :) The reflection on my nails is so clear I can see us in my nails, lol. 

The whole tour lasted for about an hour and a half, with us stopping quite a lot to enjoy the view and the castle itself. I love the microphone guides since they allow you to discover the place at your own speed. The castle wasn't too crowded, which was a major plus too. And the entrance fee is stinkingly cheap, we payed 5 € for both of us (again me with the student discount), but maybe it gets higher in the season (May-October, if I'm not mistaken). The only thing I regreted was that the souvenir shop was closed. I really wanted to buy something about the castle. Bummer. Well, it's an excuse to go there again! Quite close to Spiš castle is also Drevenik with stone caves and awesome flora, and we'd love to see that sometimes in the Spring. Why not stop again at Spiš castle then too? ;)

Any castle lovers out there? Do recommend them, the more the better! All I can say is, if you're in Slovakia, make plans for Spiš castle too. You won't regret it.

Thank you for reading! 

Road trip moments: Košice, Slovakia

Hey darlings. How are you doing? It was a beautiful sunny day here in Slovenia. And I slept through half of it, I went to bed really really late yesterday. Oh well. I hate being cold too. Our house just doesn't seem to warm up at all. Let's continue with some cool things from my road trip that I wanted to show you. 

After Hungary we went to Slovakia/Slovaška, and I was most excited about our visit to Košice. Košice are the second largest city of Slovakia and I am completely in love with them. Such a lovely city, with a very pleasant atmosphere. Since we didn't have whole lot of time, my two major things to visit in Košice were the St. Elizabeth Cathedral (I'm a HUGE fan of gothic cathedrals) and the Mikluš prison museum, where you are able to see how Košice looked like in the Middle Ages and how the prison of that time looked like. I'm a huge fan of Middle Ages too, plus the criminal-law sanctions of any time in the history, so it was a major win for me. 

We arrived as planned in our lovely hotel, Bankov. The whole experience of the hotel would be perfect, if there wasn't for the unpleasant waiters. I'm sorry, I hate unpleasant waiters, they can really ruin your dinner. It's not my fault she didn't speak a word of English nor German and didn't even try to communicate with us with Slovak language, and she should treat us just like the rest of the guests. That aside, the food was to die for, and the rest of the staff really nice. 

It was quite surprising to see how rarely we found someone who spoke English in Slovakia even on major tourist points. But most of the time they tried their best to communicate with us, which is a major plus. We quickly realized we can understand each other if only we spoke a bit slower than usual - Slovak language is very close to all the other slavic languages, for me it was a cool mixture of Slovene and any language of Southern Balkan (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian) that I also understand, so it wasn't really a problem, as long as we gave each other a minute. 

Btw, a cool little trifle. We call our country Slovenija (it's pronounced the same as Slovenia, as long as you pronounce the "e" as in "love" not as "ee" in "deep") and the adjective of the word is "slovensko". The slovak word for Slovakia is "slovensko" and they call Slovenia "slovinsko". :) It's quite obvious we're all Slavonic brethren.

I'll show you a lot of photos in this one, it's going to be a long post, I hope you'll enjoy it, but I want to emphasize one thing. I'm not a professional photographer. Moreover, I think i'm somewhere in between of a bad and average amateur. I don't see the lights or the angles. I like a thing, I press the button, end of story. So don't think these will rock your world, for that google the things and you'll get a lot of professional photos. Or even better, visit them. It's the best way to see them anyway.

The cute little doggy statue at the entrance door of our hotel (that actually has a function, as one of you lovely readers pointed out :D)

When we got to the centre of Košice it was already getting dark. BTW, for those who will drive there with a car - their parking is really well organized and cheap. But do pay for it, they will check regularly for the tickets and will bust your ass. I don't see the point of cheating since the parking is so cheap, but we saw people do it anyway.

The main street called Hlavná ulica was easy to find and is quite recognizable with the little stream down the middle of the street. I fell in love with the whole look immediately. Wide, spacious street, cool buildings all around, not too many people. We went immediately to the St. Elizabeth Cathedral, since I read on the internet it closes up earlier than the Mikluš museum. Sadly, it is partially under construction and we couldn't see any sign of tours or anything going on. So we just checked it out all around. 

The magnificence that is St. Elizabeth Cathedral. The Slovak call it Dóm svätej Alžbety (we'd say Katedrala svete Elizabete) and it's a total must-see. My pictures don't do it justice at all. It's gorgeous with all the gothic details. The pictures on the first day aren't so nice, my camera doesn't work well in the dark, these were taken the next morning.

 I love the spikes everywhere and the tall pointy windows!!

 Upper and below pictures show my love for these kind of doors. Why are our modern doors so ugly? I want such details on my doors too! 

I greatly enjoyed walking around the cathedral and seeing the park and the chapel near it, even in the evening. Then we went to the Mikluš museum or Miklušova väznica, wanting to get there in time, according to the opening hours I found on the internet. And it was already closed. We missed it for about 45 minutes. I seriously advise you to write them an email next time, I'm writing here now and officially: they are opened from 9h to 16h (last entrance), but write them an email just in case. 

The problem my BF now had all of the sudden was me being in a seriously bad mood. You don't want me in my bad mood. Seriously, just turn around and walk away. I hated myself for it, because I know how annoying I am when moody and I wanted to turn it off but couldn't, I wanted to see the Mikluš museum and I knew the next day we're already heading for the castles and we will not be able to pull this off. I was in such a bad mood I didn't even want to go shoe shopping (as he tried to suggest to cheer me up). That's usually quite alarming. Of course after some time he did something incredibly cute as he usually does and I started laughing like crazy and so my bad mood passed. I really love him for that. We walked through entire Košice, going through the park and later on stopping at a cool bar that played Iron Maiden so loud we could hear it on the street. FTW! The beer was good and so was the cappuccino and so the day ended well. Btw, another thing I noticed. Punk isn't dead. It just moved to Košice! It was surprising how many punks are in Košice, I guess it's the main subculture there, or so it seemed. 

The next day we got up a little late, our travelling already showing on our energy and we started discussing how hectic the day would be if we wanted to catch two castles that both closed at 15 o'clock and a concert that started at 18 o'clock, all being a few hours drive from Košice. We decided to stay in Košice, visit the Mikluš museum and skip a castle, so we'd have more time on the other castle and be on time in Žilina (where the concert happened). I was actually quite happy I was able to see Košice in the daylight and visit the museum so it was a good plan. :) Few pictures from the museum, where all was awesome after a few complications in the beginning.

 The executer's swords. They chopped heads with these! Ugh!

 As for doors, so for the keys. Can we please bring back the beautiful large, carved keys they used to have? Why the modern ugliness?

 Upper and picture below show the prisoners were hardly comfortable. Middle Ages really excelled at torture.

The only picture I'm showing from the basement, so-called "interrogation room", for I do not know how sensitive your are about these things. Basically a torture room, with a gloomy feeling as you walk down the wonky stairs and a presentation of one of the torture devices with the wax dolls. Middle Ages really didn't care about resocialization, no sir. Still, a totally interesting insight. You can probably get a pretty good idea what these spikes below were for. 

It was an awesome tour, really. We had the mic with english guide for every room in the museum and the tour lasted for almost an hour and a half. The entrance fee is also stinkingly cheap (3€ for both of us, I had student discount), so I really do recommend the visit, if you're into this sort of things. There is also a good video and an awesome model about and of the middle-age Košice, but I've already posted way too many pictures. 

It turned out to be an awesome idea to stay and Košice are now one of my favourite places in Europe. I have to visit them again, really. After Košice we went to the Spiš Castle, but that beauty deserves an entire post for itself.

Tell me, please, do you find these kind of posts interesting? Are they too long? Any comment on the city itself? :)

Thank you for reading!