London Calling - The Cumberbitch Dress

In the beginning, there was a First-World-Problem

and a piece of fabric from the Lapjesmarkt.

Fortunately, the internet is a seemingly bottomless resource for free sewing patterns, and while looking for more vintage fashion patterns in the style of the dresses in Masters of Sex (as I wrote earlier - my new addiction, thanks to my friend Rebecca), I found this awesome blog with lots of free 30s-50s inspired sewing patterns. Among them was a this cute 1950s inspired cocktail dress that was a perfect fit for the coupon of fabric I had picked up on the fabric market some weeks ago.

The pattern itself was around 1 size too large for me, this time I adjusted the size directly on the cut fabric pieces (I like to live dangerously!), which worked out quite well, although I feel that I could have taken it in a little more. The pattern is very well explained with an A4 page of instructions. Almost too much for my taste, since I daresay I know my stuff and I'm too impatient to read longer texts, but it will probably be a great help for less proficient (and less impatient) seamstresses.

Please note the pattern matching in the front and in the back - the zipper in the back spoiled my efforts a little, but if you don't look too closely it's okay I guess.

Overall cost: 1€ for the fabric, 2€ for the zipper.

In the end, things worked out a little differently than planned: We arrived in London on saturday morning and were greeted by sunshine and warm weather, so we spent the afternoon in Camden town, which was rather busy, given that it was holiday season and a weekend.

Mad Tea party in Camden

Camden Lock

 Canals, boats, biertje - we instantly felt at home. Shopping on the famous Camden Market however wasnt much fun, the exchange rate for the British Pound isn't exactly favourable at the moment. Towards the evening, we met up with our friends and then went for dinner somewhere near our hotel. Followed by another beer, in a pub nearby. Once we had settled down with our drinks at a table, who walks in? 

None other than Benedict Cumberbatch.

I'm proud, we girls were well-behaved and did not jump into full fangirl-mode, let the guy have his after-show pint and just found it incredibly cool to breathe the same air ;) After all, we would see him on stage on Monday evening.

One of the few sunny spells - Walkie-Talkie, Tower Bridge and The Shard

The rest of our stay in London was completely rainy, so we spent most of the time in Museums. I went to see the Shoes - Pleasure and Pain Exhibition in the V&A and now would like a copy of the high-heeled victorian leather boots they had on display *sigh* We also went to the Science Museum (always worth a visit, even if its just for seeing Charles Babbage's brain floating in a jar) and to the Tate Modern.

No pictures allowed inside :(

Mandatory book haul at Waterstones Piccadilly Circus

All in all I have to say, living in Amsterdam really spoils other cities for you. London seemed dirty, loud and noisy in comparison, and not exactly pretty either, with its inhomogeneous architecture (Old church next to steel-and-glass-skyscraper next to ugly 1960s concrete block...) and so much traffic. My last visits to London always gave me this adrenaline rush of finally being in a metropolis again, but now that I'm living in the prettiest capital of them all, I just don't feel it anymore.

And to conclude this post: Hamlet was simply divine! Probably my favorite theatre moment so far: the whole cast was amazing (after all, the Royal Shakespeare Company should know their stuff), the stage design placed the story in a hauntingly beautiful castle, and even the Shakespeare-novice and theatre-agnostic in our midst was well-entertained. I have to admit, I cannot really judge the quality of the production itself, since it has been more than 10 years since I thoroughly read Hamlet, but that may be for the better (I tend to over-criticize).

Super-bad interval selfie with champagne!

Grocery shopping!

Probably my favourite experience when going to another country (or even, region!) is going grocery shopping - being a foodie, trying new food is one of my main motivations for travelling and what better place to get an impression of what locals are eating than in a local supermarket or on the market?

The most common supermarket here is the dutch chain Albert Heijn - nearly everywhere in Amsterdam there's an AH within short walking distance (but then again nearly everything in AMS is within walking distance..). Lidl, Aldi, and some other chains exist as well, but apparently they don't stand a chance against AH ;)

In the welcome session at VU I was already introduced to Hagelslag: basically, Hagelslag consists of chocolate sprinkles that are commonly eaten on buttered bread. Hagelslag is typically made of chocolate, ranging from white or milky until dark chocolate, but comes in all sorts of other flavors and colours as well: fruity and colourful! I haven't tried it yet myself: surprisingly enough, as fond as I am of chocolate in all forms, I can't bring myself to combine chocolate with savory food like bread. However, it might be a good present for all those Nutella-junkies back home.

Huge shelf in the small Coop next door

Something else that dutch people seem to love: Licorice! Now, this is something that I can relate to! I knew that scandinavians tend to love licorice, but didn't know that this applies to dutchies as well.
Just for comparison: I had a hard time locating Pasta in the supermarket, which occupied only about a third of the space that was given to licorice or hagelslag.

Another huge shelf!

Ok, and then of course there's cheese. You can find cheese stores all over the city (although I think some of them are mostly for tourists, you can usually tell from the prices..) and they seem to have nearly everything in cheese you've ever heard of. I don't think I've seen Blue Stilton anywhere in Germany, and they had several loafs of it in the store! My taste in cheese is not as exotic though, so I just bought some young Gouda with cumin in it, yum!

What probably surprised me most, however, was the huge choice of ready-made meals available here. Back home in Germany, frozen pizza, cup noodles and maybe some ready-made salads are all you can find, but here microwave meals contain lots of fresh veggies, come in all shapes and sizes (family-sized!) and cover most popular cuisines (dutch, italian, indian, asian,...).

Ubiquitous Maggi...

Logical consequence: microwaves in the supermarket

In order to provide only the best entertainment to my dearest readers I have selflessly made myself available as a test subject and purchased, analysed, prepared and eaten two of these instant meals:

Candidate 1:
A luxury version of cup noodles, peanut noodle soup. Price: around 3€. Fresh vegetables, chicken, noodles, peanut sauce. Just add boiling water and stir thoroughly. Fast, uncomplicated, delicious, good value for money. Will buy again!

Candidate 2:
Tandoori chicken with veggies and rice. Price: around 5€. Unlike the microwave meals I've had so far, there's no need to prick the package with a fork, it had a built-in valve. 6 minutes in the microwave and I had a steaming pseudo-indian meal that was quite okay in taste, but still tasted like microwave food and could have used some more spices. But then again you don't get proper takeout here for 5€ and for not having to do anything it was quite okay I guess.