2 DAYS, MANY PICTURES

PINCH ME – I MUST BE DREAMING!

On Sunday evening, I have finally arrived in New York City, but I still can’t believe that I will actually be living here for half a year! It simply feels like being on vacation.

But let’s start from the beginning:

The night before leaving Germany, I didn’t get much sleep. It was the birthday of a friend of mine and I hadn’t finished packing before. So when I walked downstairs to the bus stop at 8:30 in the morning, I was excited and tired at the same time. Unfortunately the journey took longer than expected due to a snow storm in Iceland (“A snow storm in Iceland??? How does this affect a flight to New York?”, you might wonder… Well, I took a cheap flight with a budget airline from Iceland, resulting in a layover in Reykjavík. So a snow storm in Iceland in fact had a huge influence on my schedule, as it delayed every single of their flights that day), but after 19 exhausting hours of travelling, I could finally sit down on my very own comfortable bed in New York City and relax.

The next two days I still had free time, as my internship starts on March 1st. I used this time to do some sightseeing: I’ve been to the Central Park, visited the 9/11 Memorial, the Freedom Tower and the Oculus station, watched the Statue of Liberty from the Battery Park, walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, strolled over Times Square and along the High Line Park. Meanwhile I saw starchitecture from Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster and Sanaa, but also so many more beautiful buildings.

So these two days I essentially did the “basic-tourist-program”, including having my camera out, snapping every single thing, and keeping my head up towards the sky(scrapers) the whole time. But from time to time I had a silly smile one my face when that one thought stroke me again, and I had to tell myself once more, what I still can’t believe: “You will be LIVING here!” (Maybe, I am over-dramatizing this, but I have always been a fan of NYC, but had never been here. So this is actually a huge thing to me.)

Today I have also passed by the office where I will be working the next couple of months and I met my colleagues and my boss. They are super-kind and I am looking forward to joining them tomorrow.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK!

Although some minor things (like receiving the visa, finding a place to live, etc.) are still to be sorted out, I can happily announce where my journey will continue: In no other city than NEW YORK (…city)!

Whereas my first internship search was driven by two motivations – I wanted to start off in a renowned office and at the same time in a rather beautiful or interesting city in Europe – this time I had one explicit goal: I wanted to spend my North America – internship in NYC! Not only because visiting this amazing city has been on my bucket list for a very long time, but also because New York takes a leading innovational role in the American architecture scene with several world-renowned offices being located there. I am glad that it finally worked out.

Though it would have been awesome to work with one of these world-renowned firms, I am also looking forward to collaborating with Architecture Work Office for six months. They are a small studio founded in 2012, which has completed several interior projects and participates in interesting competitions. Coming from a well established firm, I am sure it will be very exciting for me to experience how a small office is working on getting their share.

I am already counting the days… See you in Big Apple!

I took this new chapter of the journey as an occasion to reorganize this blog: Now there is a NAVIGATION page, where you can sort the articles by location. Also I made the ABOUT section more understandable and added a FIND ME page.

CHICAGO – PICTURES OF DAY 3

CHICAGO – PICTURES OF DAY 2

MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS!

It’s mid-January already, which means that several weeks have passed since my internship in Finland has terminated just before Christmas. Still in this blog-entry I want to focus on my last weeks in Helsinki, and later I will add another one about how this journey will continue.

Christmas in Chicago

ALA Architects has the awesome tradition to take their whole team on a christmas-excursion every December. This time, they chose no other city than Chicago for this and we interns were lucky to be invited too!

DAY 1:

We arrived around noon and had the rest of the day for us. We enjoyed the fantastic sunset-view from the John-Hancock-Center and had a nice evening walk.

pictures of day 1

DAY 2:

The day started early and we had a full program ahead: A walking tour around the city with over 50 sights to visit, including Mies’ Lake Shore Drive Apartments, the Poetry Foundation, the Cloud Gate and Gehry’s pavilion next to it, the Aqua Tower, the Art Institute of Chicago by Renzo Piano and so much more. In between the group separated several times, people got lost constantly and were found again later. Arriving at the Willis Tower as final stop, we were all exhausted, but happy.

pictures of day 2

DAY 3:

This day a bus helped us rest our feet. We visited the legendary Farnsworth House and theIllinois Institute of Technology with buildings from Mies van der Rohe as well as Rem Koolhaas. In the evening we had a delicious christmas dinner and afterwards went for a beer with the whole crew.

pictures of day 3

DAY 4:

Before heading home, we had free-time in the morning of the last day, which I used to shop some presents and send postcards. It started snowing, which perfectly added the christmas atmosphere to the trip.

 

Christmas in Helsinki

Christmas-time in Helsinki was very busy for me. We worked on a competition for a sports complex and I believe that we ended up with a quite interesting concept. But as competitions always are, we didn’t really have much free-time. I even had a friend visiting me, but could rarely see her. My last day in the office was the day of turning in the competition. We managed to get it printed and sent in the last second. Two days later I had to leave Helsinki already.

 

Christmas in Germany

I hope you all had nice holidays! I spent Christmas, New Year and my birthday with my family and friends back in Germany, where I currently still am. But soon the journey will continue…

IT’S BEEN 3 MONTHS…

I can hardly believe it! I arrived here the 8th of August, so by today 3 months passed by already… 3 MONTHS! Last Friday would have been my last workday, but I am lucky that I got offered to stay until Christmas, which I will do.

(Once again) it’s been quite a while since my last post on here, so I guess it’s time for a little update (Hopefully I will find the time to add photos to some of the stories soon):

I got visited!

It was a pleasure for me (and this might have been the main reason for the long posting-drought) that some of my friends and my family decided to visit me. We had great times together and I think I am officialy a Helsinki sightseeing-expert now. I still love this city and I highly recommend a visit here!

I lived the “Finnish Dream”!

I don’t know if it is the Finn’s dream, but it’s definitely the dream that everybody has about Finland: For a weekend a friend and I rented a tiny timber cabin right next to the Baltic Sea! We enjoyed our personal sauna heated by a fire that we made on our own, jumped into the freezing cold water together, roasted salmon on a barbecue enjoying the sunset, kayaked to an island and had a biking trip… Do I need to say anthing more?

I went hiking!

In Finnish there actually is a word for the period in which the leaves turn red: “Ruska” (and No! That is not just called fall! Fall is a season, ruska is a period in nature… Look it up!). Obviously this time is most-enjoyable in the forest. And this is why a couple of colleagues and I went hiking together to the “Nuuksio National Park” close to Helsinki – beautiful!

I’ve been to more saunas!

Additional to the personal one in the cabin, I’ve been to another public one. Still I feel like I hardly partake in this part of the finnish culture… Which is a pity, especially because – unlike my expectations – I really enjoy going to a sauna. I need to do it more often!

Seasons have changed… aka: THERE IS SNOW!

Whereas ruska hardly had started while I wrote the last article here, overwhelmingly fast we already moved on to winter. And by winter I mean real, serious winter! With sub-zero temperatures and snow – lots and lots of snow that actually stays! Not that this would stop any Finn from biking to work or from running outside…

 

Hopefully not another season will change before I write my next article here. And – as the end of this experience quickly comes closer – I wish that by that time I will already have a closer idea about where I will continue my journey. Till then and “Moi Moi”!