Huge Christmas Celebration - Blind Cow

This week was totally amazing! Next to some last exams before the holidays me and six friends from the focussubject music went to a really cool restaurant together! It's called "BlindeKuh" which is translated to blind cow. One cool thing about this restaurant is that you are served by blind people and blind people cook the food you eat. But the amazing part is that you yourself are in an extremely dark environment. You literally don't see a thing for the whole time you eat dinner!
It's cool because your other senses, for instance tasting and hearing, are extra observant and the food tastes a lot more intense than usual. A really fun and tasty way to experience how it would be if you were not able to see, I can totally recommend it!

Every year there is a huge Christmas celebration at our school. Since it once was a monastery (quite some years in the past) there is still a very big church on the school-grounds. There we sang with the big choir, some small choirs including the teachers choir. Of course the school orchestra played as well. All together it was a lot if fun! You can see some video footage Here.

In addition to singing in the choir I also ran around with my camera all the time. Nearly every time you heard the wood creaked it was probably me on the entablature ^^
But I got some cool shots:

The Teachers-Choir

I also had another concert this week with the SiSoKo. It's the singers-songwiters concert at our school where I accompany some singers on the piano. It wasn't so much fun this time because I was really ill on Thursday and my nose was running all the time..

With my parents I went once again to a very cool winter market in Zürich. It's called Heiliger BimBam and it's very alternative and hipster. I like!
We had a lot of fun and I even met some vendors from last years market!

New Store Decoration - Christmas Market - Frosty Cold Pictures

For every season my parents decorate the vitrine of my dad's store. Now there's a really cool winter theme with miniature figures on a tree out of branches with wonderful lights! It looks amazing, that's why I took a cool picture of it :D

(By the way, the lights flying away was made by taking a long-exposure and zooming out ;)

On Friday I went to a really nice market in the old town of Baden with my parents. The cool thing about it was that many ateliers and shops had their doors open and you could take a look around and talk to the owners.

On the street we met two teachers of my school and they told us that there's a really nice meet-up where immigrants cook, with a self made carousel, a warm fire and nice music; of course we wanted to go there! The food was really nice!

Later that evening I went to see the new Star Wars Rouge One which is a great movie and I really recommend it to you ;)

It also got very cold in the last days and every day there's a lot of frost on the plants, but unfortunately no snow yet.. But I took some pictures of the frost (:

Late-Night-Lightpainting in school

On Thursday me and my friend went late at night to our school. One reason was to see four friends play a concert at an event (where we got free dessert afterwards!). Unfortunately they did not play as much as planned because another music group took so much time to perform their stuff.

Afterwards me and Olivia went to the huge curtilage of our school to take some pictures with the light-painting technique. It's a photography technique where you have a very long shutter speed and one light source which you then move to create lines! It was really cool to make and so much fun :D

Funky concert, lovely Christmas market and an awesome theatre!

A week ago me and my friends from Funky Donkey performed at our school for a charity project. I helped all afternoon to prepare everything for the band, carry the drumset and base amp over to the cafeteria and in the evening everything was set and we were ready to go! First the group that organised the whole event had a little presentation about their project. They donated the collected money to the Philippines and made a charity concert!
Before we preformed there was also a Klezmer group, some dancers and a singer preforming. We also played with a Latin music workshop from our school which was great!
But take a look ;)



Winter has arrived and it got very cold outside. Which means I'd prefer to stay indoors in the warmth, but with some exceptions. Mainly if there is an event happening in our region. So today there was a winter market where all products were produced by physically or mentally disabled people and all the profit went to the organisations that help them. It's a very unique market where there are many different stands with various cool things they sell!

Yesterday evening I also went to a very cool theatre called Mummenschanz in Zürich with my parents and my cousin and his girlfriend.
It is such an unique concept of theatre and you should totally look it up or click on this Link! We've enjoyed it a lot :)

Here are also some more pictures from the concert:

An amazing concert at my school and a new piano!

This Friday two very cool things happened. First of all I finally made an arrangement with a transport company to pick up the piano, which my grandparents wanted to give to me (since nobody used it at their house), and bring it to my place. Now I've set it up with two microphones so that I can put on some effects too. It's so nice to finally have a real piano at home!

On Friday evening I also went to a concert by W:KK, a group that arranges concerts in Wettingen every year. There was a famous viola da gamba player who performed some classical pieces which was lovely and a guy playing the bandoneon who was amazing!
They both played really nice and it was a joyful evening :)

Matura Presentations

Around this time every year there are Matura presentations at our school. To complete the four years of school everyone needs to make a project with lots of writing and a presentation in the end. The cool thing about it is that the project can be about everything you want, from music to biology or making jams or brewing beer (yeah that was a project a couple years ago!)
I'm due to make a project next year but I was able to see some presentations my friends made. One of them was about the liberty of press and Turkey which was really interesting! And later in the evening I went to see a friend of mine who makes live-visualisations for music which was a phenomenal presentation! It was astounding what he was able to make by himself: a program that could analyse any music in real-time and then produce a 3d generated video to that beat. He also combined this with a motion tracking so if it would be used at a concert the people attending could interact with the video.
Here's the Link to his youtube channel :)

Ibrahim Maalouf @JazznoJazz

This Thursday me and my parents went to Zürich to go to the JazznoJazz Festival. It's a huge annual Jazz (and no-Jazz) concert week where a lot of world famous musicians perform. I wanted to go and see Jacob Collier again on Wednesday but unfortunately he was ill and had to go back to the UK to recover.
But I also went to see Ibrahim Maalouf, a french-libanesian composer and Fusion Jazz musician who plays the trumpet and flügelhorn. His "speciality" is that he often plays quarter notes which makes his music very unique!
It was a very lively concert! Everyone was singing, clapping to the rhythm and dancing; so much fun!

Picture from JazzNoJazz

I had a lovely week with lots of sunshine. And the park of our school turned very autumny :D

Photography project with a Syrian friend

This Saturday I met with three of my friends to go to Zürich to work on a project for our school. It's the third time we've met with our friend from Syria who is a photographer. We travel with him to different places in Switzerland to take some pictures of his opinion on our society and of the people living here. Later on we give him the opportunity to present his pictures in a sponsored exhibition and we analyse them and present his view on our culture.
Today worked out really well! We walked around a lot and he took loads of pictures :)

Back home baking!

This week I was back home from England again. Me and my mum took a plane which was obviously delayed again and came home late on Monday.
During the week I did a lot of music again, mostly alone though because most of my friends were still on holidays. I also baked some lovely cakes, one of them a Sachertorte which took quite some time to make!

Yesterday evening I met with some friends to play some board games. It was so much fun and something I didn't do in a very long time!

London once more!

Since I left England after my ten month exchange I missed the UK so much! All the people and also London.
I've spent nearly every second weekend in London meeting up with friends and exploring all the nice its of this cool city!
So now I had the chance to go back to this cool place again for a week!

First, after arriving in Luton on Monday, I went back to Huntingdon to see my hostfamily. It was so nice to see them again and spend some time with them! We cooked dinner together, talked a lot, I played with their new very cute puppy and of course we watched the Bakeoff!
I also met with my friend John who visited me once in Switzerland, with whom I ate lunch and took a lovely walk. And I also saw my neighbours again which was so cool! We had so much to talk about!

On Thursday I went to London again. We've booked an Airbnb apartment with my mum and I went to get the keys at eleven in the morning. Then I was to meet my mum at Luton airport and I wanted to pick her up because the trip from Luton to Pancras can be quite complicated if you've never done it before (I even had problems on Monday and I've been there a couple times..!)
Well.. The fight had a two hour delay and I first walked to the airport from the train station (which usually you're not meant to o: )  and then watched a movie..

On Friday my hostpartents came to London to visit us and we had a lovely lunch at the Dishoom. Later we walked quite a way and visited the British Library.

Saturday two friends who are on a four week exchange in the UK came to London so we could spend some time together.
We walked all the way from Victoria to the Southbank so they could see Westminster and the London Eye :)
In the evening, after dinner, I went to do some Lightpainting with my mum. It's a photography technique, for those who don't know, it's when you paint with some source of light in a long exposure shot so the camera captures every light that enters the camera and you can create forms and lines and capture movement.

This morning me and my mum finally had the time to sleep a litte longer than usual. We ate a lovely breakfast, went to Spitalfields Market, bought some weird paintings and clothes and then visited the Pavillon at the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The weather was so nice all morning and early afternoon, but then suddenly it started raining (so very British ^^)
The Serpentine pavillon was really worth a visit! It's such a cool building!

It was such a cool time here in London!