Author: adastra

10 January 2022

The Firs

The streets are littered with the corpses of the firs. These proud, defenseless creatures are subject to a gruesome ritual that repeats every year when the days grow shortest. They are brutally severed from their nourishing roots, disconnected from their homeland and their families. Then, as death slowly creeps up on them, they are abducted and put into the residence of their worst enemy, the human. In a ritual manner, the human decorates the dying fir with shiny trinkets for its own amusement, all while the fir is slowly and painfully decaying, its body dehydrating a bit more every day. […]

15 November 2021

Uppsala, revisiting Stockholm and a Comic Con

It’s been many, many years since my first and only visit to Stockholm so far. I took the opportunity to visit it again by combining a trip to Sweden with a trip to Denmark to visit my partner and meet some of his friends at a yearly meetup they have. The first part of the journey was all on my own though, and I figured that if I visit Stockholm, I might as well also visit Uppsala, where I’ve never been before. On the day of my flight, I landed very late at 23:30, and then took a train to […]

31 December 2019

2019 and other numbers

We’re heading straight into the roaring twenties. Time to take a look back at the past year, and since my life in fully quantified, I’m just gonna list some numbers. 🏃‍♀️ 550 km: The distance I ran this year. I spent 79h 35m running this year over 115 runs. I only started running in 2018, so 2019 was my first ‘full’ year of running. I’m pretty happy with this development and I feel that running is great for my body and my mind. 🚲 2,084.4 km: The distance I spent riding my bicycle. I spent 150h 20m on my bike […]

22 July 2019

East Germany and Revisiting Prague

During my time at design high school, I went to Prague on a class trip – twice, because back then I was in my wild youth phase and I spend more time partying than studying, hence I had to repeat a grade. Back then, Prague was an amazing experience. The city had such a cool vibe, probably what people in the 90s meant when they said “Bohemian”. It is Bohemia after all. In mid-July 2019, I wanted to revisit Prague, combining it with a trip to East Germany and Berlin. So I flew to Prague. After arriving, I went straight out […]

21 September 2018

Frequently Asked Questions about changing my first name

Why do you want to be called [new name]? It’s my second name and my now preferred name. I’ve been using it abroad for many years (since my first name is unpronounceable for many non-Germans), and the longer I used it, the more it became my preferred name. Since I have hated my first name all my life, I’ve now reached a point where I would like to get rid of it and be addressed by my second name. Why do you hate your first name (old name)? I have hated my first name ever since I became consciously aware […]

31 March 2018

Y: The Last Man

I was very excited when I heard about the graphic novel Y: The Last Man – a dystopian world in which all men but one mysteriously die? But I was hugely disappointed, as this isn’t the feminist utopia I was looking for. It’s anything but, and the fact that this title was written by a man should have warned me. It’s very obviously a title written by men for men, as it’s pretty much every man’s fantasy to have a world of women at his disposal, isn’t it? Well, the comic cleverly tries to avoid such implications by making Yorick, […]

19 March 2018

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Whenever I make my chocolate cookies, I get a lot of requests for the recipe. A long time ago, this was a recipe that I got from the internet. But I’ve adjusted it so much that it really has nothing to do with that recipe anymore. So here it is! The Ingredients 250 g butter (unsalted), at room temperature 240 g dark brown sugar (the choice of sugar really affects the cookies – the softer, the better; I recommend Dark Brown Muscovado) 2 medium or large eggs 500 g flour (regular white flour) 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 teaspoon baking powder […]