Brussels Fun: Mini Europe

We've recently been to Brussels (by recently I mean well over a month ago now) for a weekend and had a great time. You can see another one of our little holiday videos here, if watching grainy footage of other people's fun is your kind of thing. One of the highlights of the trip was going to Mini Europe, which aims to represent every EU member state in model form.

I've been previously but this was Liz's first opportunity to go on a tour of Europe without having to walk more than half a mile. She was pretty bowled over by the whole thing, I think. The interactive exhibits (watch the video for some examples), the plethora of amazing photo opportunities, not to mention the very friendly EU turtle mascot guy all contributed to a super fun morning. Here's some photos!

We'd definitely recommend going if you happen to find yourselves in Brussels. It's a little bit pricey and you'll probably think 'surely a badly dated miniature representation of Europe isn't worth that much' but you'd be wrong. And when you do go, make sure you have your photo taken with the mascot and buy it in key ring form. And then send us a photo of it.

Valletta Shop Fronts

It's been about two months since we went on our holidays in Malta and I'm finally getting around to posting these photos of shop fronts, mainly in Valletta. There were loads more that haven't made the cut! Let us know which ones are your favourites, please. I like Azzopardi Bros, Video Wave and Sporting Clive the best.

Malta

Hello! We've recently been on holiday to Malta and thought you might like to hear all about it. Malta is a bit weird in that it is full of British people, they drive on the left and the plugs are the same. It's like a hotter version of England. We did venture out and see some very nice things, though, and rather than have me try and describe all of them, here's a video we made.

 

Happy New Winderm-year!

Hello! Happy new year and all that. It's been a while since we posted anything, but one of our new years resolutions for 2014 is to post on here more often. So here we are posting about what a lovely time we had when we went to Windermere at the weekend.

We thought we'd take advantage of the fact that the Lake District would be relatively quiet at this time of the year and hopped on a train to Windermere. We stayed at a hotel called the Wild Boar, which has its own smoke house. We both enjoy eating anything that's been smoked so it seemed like the place for us. Anyway, smoked food aside, we did loads of nice things like: walk, talk, eat, look at Beatrix Potter stuff, walk, get on a chain ferry (The best kind of ferry) and stuff like that.

Here's a video that I recorded with my Digital Harinezumi camera that I got off Liz for Christmas. It records silent video footage with a kind of vaguely super 8 style aesthetic. Or something like that. The song playing while you watch thrilling footage of us doing things in the Lake District is Young Explorer by the Middle Ones. It's the song we named our zine/blog/corporate brand after! The Middle Ones have a split release with Best Friends Forever coming out soon and you should buy it. Okay, play the film!

And in case the moving images weren't enough, here's a collage of still photos from our little trip that I put together on Photoshop with my new found Photoshop skills.

To summarise, Windermere is very nice. It was mainly cold and dry and then cold and wet, but that's okay. What's your favourite place to visit for a weekend? Let us know!

S + L

Brrrrlin

At some point in the future we will probably make a zine about Berlin and how great it is. Until then, you will have to make do with this hastily put together blog post, complete with photos ripped from our Instagram. Nice one!

Firstly, we got back from Berlin about three weeks ago, so apologies if you have been on tenterhooks waiting for a blow-by-blow account of what we got up to. Here's some quick highlights for you! We stayed at an amazing place in the Neukölln area of the city. It's called Huettenpalast and is, basically, a big room full of vintage caravans and little cabins. We stayed in the Alter Palast, which means Old Palace if you're talking in German. Apparently. Here's a photo of it:

We did loads of touristy things, like hanging out with giant statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, casting our eye over Soviet architecture, eating amazing Currywurst, devouring traditional German stodge, cycling around the park and getting told off for asking for too many postage stamps in a souvenir shop.

We went to R.S.V.P, which is an amazing little stationery shop just outside the city centre. We went to the Museum of Things, which was pretty great. Row after row of cabinets of collections of everyday objects that, for some reason, was absolutely fascinating. If only we'd know about it when we were putting together the Collecting issue of the zine!

We'd read, in various places, about Spree Park, an abandoned theme park on the edge of the city. You can sometimes go on guided tours there, but sadly there weren't any running while we were in town. Some people off of the internet suggest climbing over the fence so that you can get a closer look, but we decided against that. We like the idea of urban exploration, but the prospect of being chased by German police/German Shepherd dogs/German security wasn't one we were particularly keen on. Instead we had a walk around the perimeter, where we got a fairly good view.

We did loads of other stuff that we will probably document in the zine when we get around to making it. You should definitely go to Berlin if you get the chance!

While we have your attention, we will be at the Victoria Baths Zine Fair on Sunday May 5th, so come and have a look at our stall! We're sharing with the supremely talented Stef Bradley again, so bring loads of cash. We're launching the new issue of our zine on Sunday too, which is all about food. Ace. Also, remember to come to the Internet Forever + Her Parents gig we're putting on at the end of May. It will be fun.

See yer!

S