On Tuesday, 18 August, I officially launched my T-Shirt design storefront on Teespring and on Redbubble on 23 August. The designs go on more than just T-Shirts (sweaters, cups, etc.), but it’s just easier to call it that. The application I put in to sell merchandise on Amazon is pending, but I’m hoping to share good news soon.
Starting this business endeavor is very Enneagram 7 of me – looking for new adventures in every corner. I work full-time, there are my children’s books, and I have my blog. I dabble in the children’s books on and off mainly because I grow tired of doing similar illustrations over and over again. Writing the stories is way easier for me to do, as I have a few written down on paper already. It’s mainly doing the graphics that I struggle with. It’s coming along though – I only have about 20 more pages to do for my next one. I haven’t been the most consistent in my blog either. I mainly write post about travel adventures and made up super hero stories that are in my head, but I struggle with just sitting down and typing them up because I want to start doing other things. I do use it though – I’m blogging on it now, after all.
So, what makes this endeavor different? I think it’s the consistency. I’m always doodling and sketching random ideas that come to mind. I even design them on the computer just for the fun of it. When making shirts, for the most part designing one shirt is its own project, and I love to move onto new projects. That’s what will make this a little different for me because it’s something I do consistently already. If people buy it, great, if not then I’ll keep on designing and putting up new shirts. I know it doesn’t sound like something difficult to explain, but I struggle putting things into words, so I hope I expressed this clearly.
Just to be clear, I haven’t given up on my children’s books or my blog – I’m posting this to my blog now and I’ve been slowly making progress on my illustrations. I’m no permanent quitter!
We all have roles in different lanes. Some people protest and some educate others. Some people ensure that those out there protesting are fed and kept out of jail and other make art. Whatever your role is, do it passionately.
For this particular series, I’ve created three graphics which were turned into t-shirts by my brother, www.clothingcounts.com.
This was by far the most fun trip we’ve been on while living
in Europe. If you’re looking for adventure, laughs, and beautiful scenery, this
is a must do.
Over Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Thu –Mon), we went to Wildkogel Arena, a ski resort in Neukirchen am Großvenediger, Austria. This was our biggest travel group yet, going with 10 people, and luckily a trip where the more the merrier. We flew out of Manchester around noon, had a layover in Frankfurt, and arrived at Salzburg Airport shortly after 1700. The resort was an hour forty five minutes away, so we rented two cars (you could catch a shuttle to the resort, but it was €40 per person each way). We stayed at the Wildkogel Resorts – DAS Bramberg which had a spa, indoor pool, plenty of restaurants, was right in front of the lift, and was extremely nice. When we arrived, I struggled a bit because I don’t speak German and I didn’t know where to meet the receptionist since the check-in area was closed. It took about 30 minutes, but we eventually made it inside our 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath apartment. Overall, the apartment and car cost us about €280 per person which I consider a pretty sweet deal.
David the Snowman
Sled Rentals
Group Sledding Photo
We always cute
can’t catch me
The resort
During the trip we actually didn’t ski, but
instead went tobogganing down the
world’s longest floodlit toboggan run! It was 8.5 miles long and took about 45-60
minutes to complete. I think I completed my fastest run in about 35 minutes
when I leaned all the way back on my sled, left everyone, and didn’t stop at a
beer garden.. Did you catch that? Beer gardens on the track! We also went on a Friday,
so we got to experience nighttime tobogganing. More on that later. If you go on
Tuesday or Friday, the lift runs until 1830 and you have until 2200 to get down
the mountain.
Friday morning we ate breakfast at a restaurant in the resort which I wouldn’t recommend, although I would suggest eating at them for lunch and/or dinner. It was €13 for a breakfast buffet, but the options were extremely limited and we were better off making our own breakfast (which we did for the rest of the trip). Afterwards, we picked up our €8 sled rentals which we reserved, but I don’t think was necessary, and bought our €32 day pass lift tickets. The lift took about 7 minutes to get 2100 meters above sea level, and the views from it were amazing. The sky was beautifully blue and the air was cold and crisp. You could see the snow covering the mountains and houses and the sunlight reflecting ever so brightly off of it. When we got off the lift, you could tell everyone was really nervous. We took some pictures, got to the edge of the mountain and basically dropped. You could go ridiculously fast on the sleds and had to be careful on the turns because you could literally end up falling off the side of a mountain. Luckily for us, no one tumbled down the side.
WOoOsh!
Tubing is hard
Dodged me!
Chillin at the beer garden
Mountain High Beautiful View
There were two beer gardens on the run, one
about 5 minutes in, and another about half way down. All 10 of us met at the halfway
mark, coming in at various times, and exchanged funny stories about getting
there. Some sleds left their owners, some riders crashed into walls or each
other, and some had no issues at all (points to self). The real fun came during
the second half of the run because the slopes increased and you picked up some
real speed. You know it’s about to get crazy when you see a sign reminding you
to “slow down,” though no one paid that any attention. We did the trail another
three times during the day, stopping to get lunch and run to the store before
the night time run.
I thought we were nervous before, but when
we were going up in the dark, our lift was completely silent. It was actually
quite terrifying to go down at night! The trail was all ice by that time, so
you went even faster than before and stopping became more difficult. We all hit
some pretty deep bumps that hurled us off the sleds, but no one was severely
injured. It was wild, but one heck of an experience. If you decide to go,
definitely give the nighttime run a go if you’re up for a challenge.
The next day everyone woke up all kinds of
sore. Back, abs, legs, arms – you name it, it was sore. I guess that means we
had a really great workout! We cooked up some breakfast, threw on our snow
clothes, and decided that we would go snow
tubing. It was about a 5 minute drive from the resort which was perfect.
Luckily I stopped in the visitor center and picked up a map because it wasn’t
on google maps. We got a group discount from €4 an hour
down to €3 for tubing. Unfortunately there was no “lift” for us to take, so we
had to walk it up the hill after going down every time, but it was still
amazing! We tried all kinds of combos: one by one, two by two, all 10 of us at
once, and we had a blast. It snowed while we were out there so we had the
perfect snow for a snowball fight. We tired out pretty quickly and made “David”
the snowman. He got destroyed by snowballs and someone tackling him.
Sunday was our chill day. We wanted to go to the spa, but it turns out it was closed on Sunday. Also found out it required you to be naked, but I saw people have towels on so that would have been fine (for me anyways). Some went swimming in the indoor pool and others went for a walk. Afterwards we met up at the resort’s pizzeria which had some BOMB pizza. Who know Austrian’s could make a bangin’ pizza.
During the down time we played quite a bit of
games. I brought with me Weird Things Humans Search For, Dos (the next Uno),
Phase 10, and just a regular pack of playing cards. I introduced the group
(some already heard of it or played) to a game called Mafia. Everyone is dealt
a card and you have to figure out who is in the mafia and get rid of them
before all of you are killed. There’s a narrator who makes up stories about
each death and everyone seemed to really enjoy that game. We played it for
HOURS. It’s a really good game to play with a lot of people because you can
have one of five roles, work in teams, and come up with pretty clever stories. I’m
really glad everyone had a great time.
#LessonsLearned – If you’re traveling in a large group, have
a plan for dividing up food and stuff. For future trips, downloaded the app
splitwise. Everyone in the party puts in what they pay for and it’ll separate
who owes who and take care of that. I hate when people don’t contribute but
take just as much as if they did.
Wow. I can’t believe the last time I wrote a blog entry was
in August. So much travel has happened since then, but I was in a sort of
depression so I really didn’t feel like doing much reading, writing, drawing, or
illustrating. Gian and I made a vision board this year, and one of the things I
put on there is to utilize my blog again, so I better get at least one entry in
during January! I’m going to cheat by making this a separate post too.
Last year we traveled to quite a few countries. I haven’t
blogged about them all, and I really need to get back to it. I’ll finish the
four country tour sooner or later…But until then, enjoy! Here’s where we traveled
to in 2019:
Italy (should I include the Vatican since it’s
its own country?)
Vatican City (yes, I will)
Portugal
Wales (more than once)
Malta
Switzerland
France
Ireland
Northern Ireland
Germany (A few times actually)
Czech Republic
Hungary
Poland
Netherlands
England
United States
I blogged about one of those places last year. Eek. Oh well,
stay tuned!
We started off our Eastern European tour in Berlin, Germany. Berlin is the most
historic, yet artsy city I’ve ever been to.
I had recently traveled to Berlin on a conference for work, so I did a
few more things than the rest of the group. We were in Berlin from 3-5 July
which worked well for us, but there’s so much art and history in the city, you
could easily spend an entire week there.
As I mentioned in the last blog post, we flew out of Manchester airport to Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF) at 1145 and landed at 1440. We took a train and a trolley to get to the hotel, and thankfully a person was at the train station letting everyone know to go on a different train than the one google told us to take. I’m not sure if some of the platforms were broken and that screwed up google, but she got us (and everyone else) on the right train. The trolley was from the center of town and we were only on it for about 15 minutes. A seven minute walk later and we were at the hotel, Hotel Transit Loft. It sounds like it was far, but it really wasn’t. The hotel kind of reminded me of a hostel more than a hotel. We had our own room and bathroom and all, but the vibe like a hostel. Breakfast was included in our stay, which is always a plus, and it was full of teenagers and young adults. We dropped our stuff off in the room and headed out.
Cool cats standing
Group photo
Pretty cool train station
Bradenburg Gate
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Like I said, the hotel wasn’t too far from the center of town. We decide to walk to Fernsehturm
(Berlin’s TV Tower), a little over a mile away, and it only took us 30 minutes
to get there. We stopped at Momotaro
Tavern, a Japanese burger restaurant that I ate at when I first went to
Berlin. I got the chicken teriyaki and I couldn’t believe how amazing it was. I
love chicken teriyaki and this one tasted ridiculously good. Actually,
everyone’s dish tasted really good and there were no complaints at all.
After eating, we strolled around the center getting a closer look at the Fernsehturm (I actually went inside and to the top floor the first time I went), marveled at some statues and monuments, searched for souvenirs (we didn’t find any because the shops were closing by that time), and just enjoyed the 80 degree weather we don’t get too often in England. We ended up at a waffle shop, Waffel oder Becher, which is right next to the Berlin Dungeon where we ate dessert. Surprisingly, it took us less time to get back to the Hotel, but that time it felt like forever because we were so tired!
Where Hitler’s bunker was
Image where they wanted everyone to look “happy”
Berlin Wall
Bus driving by
Checkpoint Charlie
Gendarmenmarkt
Gendarmenmarkt
The 4th of July was the day we started all of our
festivities. After fighting off a school of kids and eating an included
breakfast, we took an Uber to the Bradenburg Gate, the meeting point of the SANDEMANs
NEW Europe – Berlin free walking tour.
If you ever go to a large popular city, inside or outside of Europe, make sure
you check to see if there is a free walking tour. The tour guides really only make money by you
tipping, and you decide how much you want to tip. I check how much other tours
of the city are and give around that price. They know their stuff and keep it
very entertaining!
After leaving the Bradenburg Gate we discussed much of
Berlin’s history. I’m not a big history person, but the tour guide was very
knowledgeable and kept us all entertained. The first major stop on the tour was
to the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.” It is a beautiful and mysterious piece in the
middle of the city that imposes a place of remembrance and warning. You could
easily and unintentionally get lost wandering through the 2711 concrete slabs.
It is believed that this was purposely done to show you a person could be gone
in the blink of an eye. We walked some
distance and stood on top of the filled in bunker where Hitler committed
suicide. It’s crazy how it’s just right out in the open (well, I guess it is?),
but you could walk or drive by, never knowing. The next big stop was to the
Topography of Terror (or Kreuzberg..not entirely sure). We were only here for a
few minutes because it was the stop before getting drinks and a snack, but
essentially it’s an outdoor but sort of indoor history museum. We saw the
exhibition trench at the site and saw what remained of the Berlin Wall. We
enjoyed our well needed break because after walking and standing for two hours your
legs are kind of dead. I got some currywurst and it was much better than the
currywurst I had in Nuremberg at the Christmas market.
Bebelplatz?
Bebelplatz
Book Burning Memorial
Saw a pride flag
Berlin’s Bear
TV Tower
After our snack, we walked over to Checkpoint Charlie in the
former American sector. Two points about Checkpoint Charlie. 1. It’s really not
that exciting. It’s a tiny area with a man on a sign who actually isn’t
“Charlie.” Charlie just means checkpoint C. 2. It was super American in that
area. There were tons of fast food joints that I haven’t seen or been to in
quite some time! The most intriguing part about Checkpoint Charlie was that we
had someone in our group actually use
the gate to enter East Berlin when the wall was up. He informed us how much of
a different time it was and how even though it was horrible for those living in
Berlin, the guards were very casual towards the visitors.
Honestly, at this point in the tour I started to check out.
It was really good and informative, but my brain started to hurt ha! We went
through the Gendarmenmarkt, a beautiful square in the city. The final part of
the tour was viewing the Book Burning Memorial at Bebelplatz. It’s a glass
plate on the ground, but below it there is an underground room with empty
bookshelves called “The Sunken Library.” According to visitberlin.de “The
memorial shows what is missing…What was lost and burnt were the books by those
who the Nazis ostracised and persecuted, who had to leave the country and whose
stories were no longer allowed to be told. Symbolically, the underground
bookshelves have space for around 20,000 books, as a reminder of the 20,000
books that went up in flames here on 10 May 1933 at the behest of the Nazis.”
After the tour, we graciously tipped the guide, and took off
for the Berlin Dungeon, a reenactment of Berlin’s darkest history. I actually
did this experience the first time I came to Berlin, but wanted everyone else
to jump and be as spooked as I was. Unfortunately, the actors weren’t as into
it as when I went the first time, but it was still entertaining. I found out
that they have them in several cities, so I’m looking forward to trying them
elsewhere. There’s one in York so that may have to be the next stop!
Hipster Area
Hipster Area Enterance
Street Art
Megs and Street Art
Holes in the Wall
Famous Graffiti in Berlin
Graffiti woman
We then started to walk to the East Berlin Gallery. We walked along the river for as long as we could, but were hungry, so we stopped to get some grub. We stopped at the same location I stopped at when I was on the conference. There were several little shops/bars and it was a very hipster-like environment. We paid too much for tacos, enjoyed some cheap beer, and set on to the gallery. Of course the street art was extremely beautiful. Each piece told its own story: some dark, others hopeful; some about love, pieces on politics. We stayed here for quite some time admiring all of the artwork. It’s amazing how many stories are told down this mile long walk. We ate dinner at this hole in the wall schnitzel place under a bridge next to a cool looking train station. It tasted good, and it was cheap so I was happy. Shortly after we went to a mall and were so tired we had to Uber home (would have been over an hour walk!).
The next day, we said our farewells to Berlin. We headed to
the train before noon to grab some lunch for the ride. It’s a good thing we got
there early because the train station was huge! We struggled finding out which
was actually our platform, but we eventually made it. We decided to ride first
class for each train ride because we’d be on them for so long. I thought that
meant the company would check our tickets, it would be nice, quiet, and
enjoyable but I was quickly put in place. We got on the train and some young
adults were in our seats. I told them those were our seats and one of them
questioned if we had all four of them… Why?. We sat down and they moved to
the isle. I was super disappointed because there were so many of them just
lying around in the first class isles. They made it hard to get to the
bathroom, and one guy even complained that I should use a different bathroom
because they had to keep moving for people. Dude, if you knew you were going to
be on a 4.5 hour train, you should have booked a seat. It was annoying, but at
least we had comfortable seats and air condition. We arrived in Prague just
after 1745 where our next adventure began.
We had a lovely experience when traveling to four cities/countries in Eastern Europe: Berlin, Germany; Prague, Czech Republic; Krakow, Poland; and Budapest, Hungary. Each place was extraordinary and beautiful, full of culture yet charming, and both historic and modern at the same time.
Because the trip was so long and jam packed, I’m going to
have to break it into different posts on each city/country. They will probably be
a little longer than my usual posts, but filled with tons of memories. As for
this post, it’ll be a nice introduction to what’s to come and the planning that
went into it.
I started planning this trip around February or so, and I’m glad I started early because it took so much effort to put together. I used the website www.gadventures.com for the skeleton of our journey. This website is really amazing…for single travelers, but when you’re in a group and you’re sharing rooms and getting group discounts, it’s just cheaper (but way more work) to do it yourself.
The trip was from 3-12 July, the flights and trains were all extremely reasonable, kids were in school so it wasn’t overly crowded, and the weather was perfect nearly every day. Our first flight was to Berlin at 1145 and it was a little under 2 hours. We stayed until the 5th, caught a 4.5 hour first class train to Prague, and arrived around 1730. On the 8th we set off to Krakow on our longest day journey. The train was a little under 4 hours and then we immediately got on a bus for another 2.5 hours. We paid extra and got this business class as well. If you’re doing a trip like this, I would highly recommend it since you’ll be stationary for so long. We stayed two full days in Krakow and took an overnight train to Budapest. If you’ve never taken an overnight bunker train before, I’d suggest you not! More into it when I post about Budapest, but it was quite an interesting ride. We ended up having a long delay causing us to arrive around 1030 instead of the intended 0830 (which really messed up our schedule!). Because of a schedule oversight, we only stayed in Budapest for a night, but it was still a lovely time in a beautiful city.
In my next post, I’ll go into detail about how our time was
in Berlin. I’ve been to the city before (in May), so I may add pieces of what I
did the first time as well.
I have some more mermaid pictures! I may have one more, but I’m unsure right now. I skipped quite a few while I was on my conference in Berlin, and I don’t know if I’ll make them up. Either way, enjoy!
Nurse Joy!
Did this on the plane to Paris. I thought it came out really nice.
This is the only one that i used a dropshadow
How do you draw a mermaid in flight? Jumping, I suppose.
