Category: Europe
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London Lovin’: Department of Coffee and Social Affairs
If you’re heading to Chancery Lane Station, you will find this neat little café hideout on Leather Lane, a short 5-minute walk from the subway station towards Holborn Viaduct. Department of Coffee and Social Affairs is one of London’s most talked-about cafés on Yelp, TripAdvisor and many travel tip sites, and indeed the place serves…
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Pure Waffle, Duke St London
As mentioned previously, I had major unresolved cravings for waffles. Whilst everyone else went shopping at SOHO, I slinked into the stylish, contemporary waffle parlour to have the Pecan & Butterscotch Waffle with Ice Cream for lunch. The store manager Andy was extremely friendly and chatted with me! He commented on the books I was…
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KULA Ice Cream Parlour & Coffee Bar
To satisfy the major cravings I had for waffles, I googled “Best Waffles in Central London”. This Swedish gem of a café turned up multiple times in the search engine and I decided to hunt it down! Jet lag woke me up at 5am hence I was ravenous! KULA opens at 8am. I took the…
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Coffee in a Victorian Lavatory
So, The Attendant is an abandoned underground toilet in London, refurnished into a café. Say what? I was skeptical about lingering lavatory smells but trust me, the café has been so thoroughly cleaned up, everyone’s literally eating off urinal walls. Pete Tomlinson and Ben Russel acquired the 1890′s victorian style London lavatory, and to capitalise upon…
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Lantana Café, London
A tangy, zesty slice of gluten-free lemon polenta later, we were outta the small takeouts-only café. Their Fitzrovia store has a dine-in area which was brimming with people at lunch-time. The smaller Lantana patisserie is well and aesthetically stocked: banana bread, blueberry muffins, double chocolate brownies, oaty nutty choc chip cookies, flourless almond cakes and a…
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Charles Dickens Coffee House, Covent Garden
Evening cuppa at Charles Dickens Coffee House! This was once the busy office where Dickens published his periodical All The Year Round from 1859 until his death in 1870. I sipped on weak herbal tea with milk and had a slice of cheesecake to calm a crazy stream of thoughts. Can’t even begin to count the reasons why…
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Tante T, Copenhagen
Tante T (otherwise known as THESALON at VIKTORIAGADE): I was really glad my colleagues agreed to come with me!! 5 of us ventured out on-foot, clad in thick winter armoury. We trekked through the blizzard with snow coming down horizontally, and smacking all over our faces. Thesalon’s storefront was a welcoming sight. On a good…
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Café Sommersko, Copenhagen
Highly recommended by the counter staff at Urban Outfitters, we decided to have lunch at Café Sommersko, just round the corner off the main street of Strøget. The lunch crowd had more or less dispersed by 3pm, which was the time our stomachs were growling as we trooped onto the café’s upper deck. Sommersko’s menu…
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I can Ice-Skate in my Backyard!
In the throes of deep winter, Copenhagen’s Nyhavn canal is frozen. I love you, pretty pretty snowflakes! xoxo, Viktoria Jean
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Bankeråt Cafè, Copenhagen
I was mad enough to fight the snowstorm in a bid to hunt down Bankeråt Cafè at Ahlefeldtsgade. And every damn effort was worth it! I fell right in love with this little dark room and its creepy ambience. There were taxidermied animals hanging all around, with decapitated doll head light fixtures and funkier window-ledge…
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La Galette, Copenhagen
If you love pancakes, and the French comic series Asterix, La Galette is the place for you! The place is a well-kept local secret as it is hidden from the sidewalk. Upon seeing the cardboard Asterix cut-out, you need to enter the gates into the yellow building and walk further in. The owners are French…
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The Living Room, Copenhagen
Cafè culture in Copenhagen is amaaaazing! Touched down in the morning at 6am, slept for 3hrs, until the silence of the hotel room made me so darn restless. So, I embarked on the list of coffee-places I wanted to visit! First stop: The Living Room @ Larsbjørnstræde. The street is lined with indie cafès, vintage…
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Cafè + Pizzeria Frankfurt
In a shop along the quiet streets of a village in Frankfurt: an old man works alone in a cafe pizzeria, serving up heavenly pasta dishes, coffees and pizzas. Andrey, Azri, Chloe and I were there on a busy afternoon, sharing a Quattro Formaggi (4-cheeses pizza), tagliatelle, potato ravioli and the works. The old man…
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Crudeness of Art
“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” – George Bernard Shaw On close inspection undepicted in the pictures, passers-by have scribbled crass comments below the masterpieces. Which I could not understand. Which drove me senseless. An approval of ribaldry? Or a subversion of the fact ordinary humans cannot accept the salacious…
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The Love Lockdown
Couples lock down their vows over the Eiserner Steg in Germany, which stands proud over River Main linking Frankfurt’s city centre to the district of Sachsenhausen. Another lover’s bridge marked with everlasting passion symbolized by the act of locking with a sense of resilient security and firm, unyielding permanence. The irony of these very metal…
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Globalization is…
…having Hong Kong crispy duck for supper, grilled Frankfurters on a bun for lunch, and Thai rice noodles (phad si eiw) with Tom Yam-based steamboat and crispy chicken green curry for dinner. All these along the same stretch of restaurants in a town village of Germany! Not to mention having our fair share of the…
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Micro-Chip, Macro Dreams
Could somebody invent a micro-chip for our brains, to programme us in such a way we can speak all the languages we will ever need? Frustrates me soooo so much that I can’t speak German, and I’m in Frankfurt where everybody rattles off in their native tongue and all I can mumble back are Guten…
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Love from Frankfurt
All these yummies and none for me! Speed-shopped at the nearest supermart and lost my way amidst the confusing roundabouts of Hamburger Allee. Friends, I hope you know how much you mean to me when you receive these! With love, from Frankfurt. xoxo, Viktoria Jean
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Breathing in Snowflakes
Messing around (when we could be snuggling indoors) moulding ugly snow-bunnies with near-frostbitten fingers. Subzero but not too cold – we were having too much fun to care much about freezing our asses off. Took these shots right before we paid to hide from the frosty winds in the safety of a museum cathedral, feigning…
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Christmas at the Kremlin
Christmas was lovely in Moscow, a truly white experience! Sheer beauty of the Kremlin (fortress) never fails to give me the chills. The best part, we inadvertently extended festive season. Aren’t international flights kinda like time-travel? 12 hours ago it was Christmas Eve morning in Moscow as we boarded the 12-hour flight to Houston. Into…
Viktoria Jean 