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Bara Prasilova originally from Prague (Czech Republic) is an accomplished artist and talented photographer; she took the prize for Photographer of the Year at the Czech Grand Design Awards 2009.
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Bara wearing the Aftermath Destroyed Dress. Photo : Bara Prasilova

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Being the stylist, hairdresser and make up artist for her own photo shoots, her universe is made up of image, shade and light. Her photos illustrate daily life whilst transporting us into the fairy tale world of magical dreams.
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In collaboration with Quiksilver Women, Bara is touring her photo exhibition in Quiksilver Women stores across Europe between June and December 2010. Following the success of her exhibition during the Tony Hawk Show in Paris, Bara this year uses her experience to capture the essence and personalities of other Quiksilver Women Ambassadors.
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For this shoot in Prague, she was accompanied by Ela, Julie Boulanger, Leddra Chapman and Mahara McKay. The photographs reveal the Fall/Winter 2010 collection in an urban universe, yet with even more rock’n’roll. Thanks to her imagery, she helps us discover the artistic and creative portraits reflecting the universe of these women.
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Check out the exhibition in your nearest store
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- Quiksilver Store, Central Bordeaux: 8-17 June
- Quiksilver Store, Paris Rivoli: 22-27 June
- Quiksilver Store, Hossegor: 3-14 July
- Quiksilver Headquarters, Saint Jean de Luz: 20-27 July
- Quiksilver Store, Marseille Saint Ferreol: 3-12 August
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- Quiksilver Boardrider, Valencia: 19-27 August
- Styling Women, Bilbao: 2-10 September
- Pukas, San Sebastian: 16-24 September
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- Quiksilver Boardrider, Prague: 28 August-4 October
- Designblock 10: 5-10 October
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- Quiksilver Boardrider, Brighton : 19-22 October
- Mary Mary, Loughborough: 28 October- 4 November
- Quiksilver Boardrider, Carmathen: 20-26 November
- Altered Ego, Market Harborough: 2-10 December
- Quiksilver Store, London Regents Street: 17-23 December

Leddra wearing the White noise Cropped Pullover. Photo : Bara Prasilova

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It’s not that I don’t like kids. But they can be terribly annoying. Loud and hyperactive, for example. Cheeky and impertinent. Especially in public places such as stores or trains or tramways. Basically places in which you want to get from A to B the fastest possible without having your way made any longer by some yelling and jumping little scamp that most likely stinks of poop and has slaver on his shirt. As I said, it’s not that I don’t like kids. But they can be annoying to a point at which you wish to tell them that adults are taller and stronger for a reason…
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I mean I would never become violent against a kid, heaven forbid, but the other day I almost ended up yelling back at such a yelling and jumping little kind. He was in the kiosk where I was intensively scanning different magazines and was in urgent need of some quiet time. The kid was with his mom that had just refused to buy him an ice cream, which turned out to be a terrible mistake as the little rascal immediately started jumping and yelling as if he had just gotten into a training camp for fans of the World Cup in South Africa. And although I internally promised him that I would invest all my savings and bribe the FIFA so Switzerland would win (which I think was a very generous gesture considering I’m not even into soccer), he wouldn’t stop with his choruses. It took another apparent 15 minutes (in fact, it was probably not anymore than 3…) of premature World Cup celebrations until his mom finally gave in and let him grab the ice cream. Hallelujah!
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I know every kid has to go through the ice cream/mom fight. It’s probably part of our education such as brushing teeth. It helps us develop a personality, to be a man and such… I assume 3.5-year-olds have to scream explicitly for ice cream or any other imaginable candy every once in a while to train their vocal chords properly. I don’t doubt that. But is it really asked too much if I suggest these little scamps develop their vocals in the privacy of their parents’ home instead of living it out in public? I mean don’t they freaking have a sense of shame anyways?
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It was this question that made me eventually reconsider my aversion to 3.5-year-old monkeys. As much as I namely dislike their jumping and yelling in public, as much do I adore them for their capability to live exactly what they feel. How often would I want to jump and yell in stores myself to express my anger? Or how often would I like to start dancing on trains only to show how happy I am? Or sing loudly to my iPod or maybe hug a random person or cry just because I feel like it… In the end, however, it’s always my sense of shame that keeps me reserved in my expressions and all I have left to wish for is to be a little scamp myself again that jumps and yells in public and doesn’t care.
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I don’t know if the world would be a better place if we hadn’t our senses of shame, but I feel it might be more amusing. And only if it is for this fact, we should start being a little crazier about things – dance on trains, sing to iPods or scream whenever we feel like it. If my wallet turns out to contain not enough coins for this vanilla flavoured ice cream on a warm day this June, I will yell and jump as the little stinky scamp did until the lady in the kiosk gives it to me for free… Yup, I will!
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Ela wearing the Karma Pant, the academy tank, the arena vest and the kid in her… Scream for ice cream!
Photo : Timo Jarvinen

I like to think of myself as a good girl. Not perfect or absolutely unblemished, but good. Everybody’s darling. A big-hearted young female you simply got to like. One that doesn’t break hearts, or let people down, and doesn’t do things that jar with the general understanding of a good human being. Yes, when I think of myself I like to focus on the good qualities and prefer to ignore the bad ones.

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Don’t ask me why I do this exactly. I’m convinced a character is something that is assembled from both good and bad experiences over the years. And looking back on the short record of my life, I will even admit that I’ve probably learned more from my bad girl than my good girl moments. For some reason, these have formed me more. They are the ones that are mostly responsible for what I am today. So why in the world would I want to suppress them so greatly and only focus on my history as a good girl when describing myself?

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Don’t get me wrong. I mean, true, I might have stolen my sister’s chocolate Easter bunnies when we were kids and I think I once peed in a pool when I was twelve - an age when I would have been perfectly aware of my body’s urge to urinate. I’m definitely not Mother Theresa, but I’m not a bad girl either. And therefore, until recently, I’ve never forgot to tell myself that and I successfully believe it, too.

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Well, I must have thought about it too much as my bad past (that doubtlessly exists) for some reason recently decided to haunt me in my dreams. Somehow, three broken hearts (two belonging to really good male friends, one to an unholy affaire) that all go on me, managed to team up in my subconscious and torture me throughout a long night of awful screaming and terrible perspiring. They provided the living proof that my bad girl track record might still comprise a little more than just a stolen chocolate Easter bunny and a pee in a pool, and I couldn’t just let it pass by me.

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When I told my girlfriends about it, they admitted they knew what I was talking about. They also liked to think of themselves as good girls, successfully suppressing their bad past and focusing on the good. Although it made me feel better to know I wasn’t the only one polishing up their history, I could still not understand why we do this.

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Until this morning that is, when I shared a train compartment with a grandmother and her granddaughter. The grandmother was telling her granddaughter some story from her past, which immediately transported me back to my own childhood with my Grandma and her vivid anecdotes. What I never questioned until today is why all of my Grandma’s stories were always so amazingly romantic and so painfully ideal that even a high-gloss Photoshopped billboard would have turned green with envy. Was it really possible my Grandma had been this good as a girl?

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I still don’t doubt she was, hey, she’s my Grandma. But I must admit that I’ve started asking myself if she, too, might have found a way to suppress the bad and focus on the good, just as my girlfriends and I are doing today. And honestly, if my Grandma did so, I wouldn’t blame her. How drab would my childhood have been without all my Grandma’s good girl stories? So, if for nothing else, we owe it to our granddaughters to suppress the bad and keep telling ourselves that we are good girls, even if we sometimes slip up.

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Ela

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Bad girl or good girl? Ela in the Riverside Top and the Sunside Denim Short (photo: Timo Jarvinen).

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A couple of years ago I ended up on a flight with Bill Kaulitz, the lead singer of the German teeny band ‘Tokio Hotel’. He is known to get thirteen-year-old girls with very bright eye shadow screaming as if there was no tomorrow. Bill Kaulitz is today what Back Street Boys’ Nick Carter used to be back in the day. The only difference: Bill looks more like Ozzy Osbourne and Marylin Manson combined than the perfect son in law, which means he needs to make up for the lack of his look with something else. At the time I was on this flight, Bill wasn’t even that big a deal: Tokio Hotel had just released their first album and girls had only started to fall like dominos. But Bill already acted as if he knew under aged femals would through their underwear at him like unpredictable maniacs some day. And although he looked painfully ridiculous with his shiny Mohawk and massive sunglasses (which I still believe were fake D&G’s), I couldn’t help being impressed by his attitude. He made people on the plane turn heads and stare at him, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t only because some wondered if he was a kindergarten kid forced to wear Tommi Lee’s wardrobe. Despite not having much respect for Bill’s music skills, he did blow my mind by showing me that no matter how ridiculously miss-dressed and weird looking you are, as long as your attitude fits, you can pull it off.

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Cleaning pools? It's all about the attitude... Ela in the Bombay Beach Romper. (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

I myself must say that I hate to be under or overdressed. I like to combine my cloth to form total trash to tomboy chic to elegant, depending on what the day might bring. Reproach me for not having my own unique style, but I just love the whole range of fashion on offer out there and hate to limit myself to a particular type of wardrobe. This quirk combined with my spontaneity has got me into fancy cocktail parties in laced leather boots, to super hip DJ gigs in worn out running shoes or to barbecues by the lake in spangled platforms. If I bump into people in town asking me spontaneously to go somewhere, I usually can’t just bail out… no matter what I’m wearing. In short: I have a tendency to end up as a visual bull in a china shop or a china doll in a bull shed. And since I don’t like feeling misplaced, I’ve had to develop my own attitude strategies over the years to cope with it. Let’s call it the Kaulitz fraud. It’s pretty simple as I basically just put on the look the situation would ask for no matter what I’m wearing… Arrogant grin in laced leather boots at the fancy cocktail party for example, or red cheek mountain girl smile in the spangled platforms at the barbecue by the lake…

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Up until now, I must say that these strategies have worked pretty well for me and since people tend to spend money on any kind of workshop these days, I recently started wondering if I could get rich by offering attitude seminars to others. A friend of mine became my first test person when she received a last minute invite to a job interview the other day. The fact that her make-up and her outfit weren’t perfectly suitable for a job interview made her terribly nervous. But she didn’t have time to get changed or re-do her make-up, which provided me with the perfect opportunity to give her a crash course in my attitude workshop and introduce her to the Kaulitz fraud…

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Whether it was my advice or not, my friend got the job, and I got a super ugly kids t-shirt saying ‘Miss Attitude’ on it in reward. The t-shirt is yellow, glittering and just so terribly hideous that it doesn’t even deserve a place in my amazingly exquisite wardrobe, but as I said, it’s not about the clothing; it’s all about the attitude… Did I mention my friend wants me to wear glittery yellow to my next five-course dinner party? The Kaulitz fraud might be facing its first serious endurance test…

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Ela

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Meet Miss Attitude!

February was an enormously busy month for me; I was on a staycation. I hardly ever made it to bed before midnight, I slept in pretty much everyday and successfully procrastinated the few things that stood on my to-do list throughout the whole month. As I said… enormously busy. I mean seriously, did you know how time consuming procrastinating is? Especially after the invention of Facebook. That thing is to procrastinating what the board is to surfing – the tool to perform your hobby, the key to enjoy your leisure time activity. Not that I know too much about surfing, but I assume dropping into a wave over and over again gives you the same feeling of addiction as cyber-stalking your Facebook friends over and over again does. Then, right before you pick up the work you intended to do the sunset makes you realise you’ve just procrastinated yet another day away…

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Ela wearing the Karma Skinny Pant, the Arena Sweater Vest and the Academy Tank. We like it! (Photo: Timo Jarvinen)

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The lazy boredom of February had me perform procrastination by going through the photo albums of people I don’t even know. But this didn’t even matter, as I find it simply mind blowing and highly entertaining to see what people post on Facebook these days – photos of their childhood when they had the chickenpox for example. Chickenpox! You can be the Kate Moss of babies, and chickenpox still manages to make you look disgusting. Why would I want to photo proof to the world how disgusting I was as a baby? Or then there are these husbands who use their smart phones to post photos of their wives ten seconds after they gave birth. I would straight up ask for a divorce if I was them! Why should the world need to know how pale you look after ten hours of labour?

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What I found on Facebook while procrastinating my way through February made me feel vicariously embarrassed for others and I was convinced Facebook finally needed to launch a dislike-button in order to save people from their own awkwardness. I was sure this dislike-button was the only way to make certain users reconsider their posts, but then, after I reflected on it again, I eventually took sides against it. How drastic would the consequences of this dislike-button possibly be? People would definitely start hating. It would be some sort of revival of public outlawing, the tool to communal flouting, the condemnation of all chickenpox loving dads and moms in labour…

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Flouting can doubtlessly be fun at times, but honestly, I don’t know if I could personally deal with people disliking my posts. I have this one Facebook photo album for example, in which I only put pictures I consider enormously funny. I love this album. I sometimes catch myself going through it and peeing my pants laughing at my own captions… Call me morbidly narcissistic, or hopelessly pathetic, it’s probably what I am. But I don’t have spare money to spend on psychiatric sessions or self-help groups and this album makes me feel good about myself just as chickenpox and delivery room photos encourage others. So why should I let anyone kill my dreams by disliking my photo album and letting me know that I am most likely the only person on this planet that thought those captions were funny? The truth hurts and it’s sometimes unnecessary for it to be said. This is why I plead against dislike-buttons and ask you to use the like-buttons more often. I would even say they might go down in history as the antidepressant of the 21^st century… And you know what? I personally like this idea!

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Ela

Ela wearing the Evershlott Tank and the Box Springs harem pant (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

I don’t know too much about the feelings of weekdays but did you ever ask yourself about Mondays’ emotional equilibrium? Only think of how many people curse them for their existence each time they pop up on the calendar. It must be at least two-thirds of the world population which currently amounts in about 4.5 billion human beings. What if Mondays can hear us curse them? How low could their self-esteem possibly be? I mean, 4.5 billions curses a week? Gosh! Mondays must be survivors… Don’t get me wrong. I don’t come to their defence. I’m a weekend person, and I certainly dislike Mondays for ending my most favourite time of the week. But at the same time, I have always had this soft spot for discriminated fringe groups, and this is why I recently started to worry about Mondays and wondered if there was anything at least slightly positive we could get out of them. They could simply not just be doomed to be cursed, right?

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It was during a chat with a friend when it became clear to me what positive side Mondays might come along with. My friend had just been dumped by his girlfriend for the umpteenth time and he yet again wanted her back. They lived one of these on-and-off-relationships that everyone in a circle of friends secretly wishes to be over. So when he told me over dinner that he and his ex-girl might get back together, I reacted with as much excitement as a sated dog would to the tofu steak on my plate. I advised my friend to give it more time, wait until he was able to see things more clearly for once, understand that their constant break-ups were probably for a reason and that they most likely didn’t belong together… I thought I sounded smart but what I said was obviously not what my friend wanted to hear. He looked at me completely devastated, called my advice ‘bullshit’, told me that he couldn’t stand this crap about time would heal wounds and that he no longer wanted to talk to me about this… Although I respected his wish and changed the subject, I couldn’t help being bothered by his harsh reaction. Was it possible that I (and everyone with mutual convictions) could just be wrong? Could time actually heal wounds or was it really just an awfully overrated verbal tranquillizer that only existed in the dreams of creators of painfully romantic Hollywood movies?

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Well, I reflected about this long and intensively and I have to stick to the ‘no’. There was this one thing life and especially being single had taught me and this was that the passage of time would make us see more clearly and make wounds eventually heal. I mean, how many times did I already purportedly have a crush on a guy knowing for sure this oh-so amazing person was my designated one? And how many times did these oh-so heart-breaking crushes turn out to be a total disaster, or – if only I let time pass by – mutate into something more serious no matter how hopeless they seemed in the beginning? Yes, wasn’t it only a few Mondays ago that a wound was still bleeding and today, some nth Monday later, not even its scar is  visible anymore? Time does heal wounds, and if for for nothing else, Mondays are here to remind us of this reliably and punctually every week again.

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Up from now, I hope to make some Mondays a little brighter with my new column ‘Mondays matter’ (each 1st Monday of the month) on blog.quiksilver-women.com. Let it remind you monthly that any unanswered crush, nasty break-up or any other conceivable affaire de coeur may come and go, but Mondays will stay.

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Because Mondays do matter!

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Ela

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No need to look back, another Monday will come eventually... (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

Gimme white Christmas, but please no questions about New Year's Eve... Ela in the Midnight Rider Coat.

I have this thing for Christmas. I simply love it. And when I say «love», I include any possible emotion this word generally comes along with. It’s painful, joyful and breathtaking at once. I long for it bitterly all year, thinking of it delights my heart and experiencing it brings peace to my mind and the most content smile to my face. Now that it’s over I wish Santa had granted my request for a time machine so I could fast-forward the days to experience the tree staring and gift opening traditions of Christmas Eve again right away. Instead, Santa’s unreliability in gift delivery forces me yet another year to face an «Eve» that I dislike as much as I adore the Christmas one.

I am speaking of New Year’s «Eve», a commonly celebrated and highly esteemed holiday whose right to exist I strongly question. Don’t get me wrong I generally support social get-togethers that come with good food, bottles of champagne and a day off to recover from the firewater’s consequences. But as far as New Year’s Eve is concerned, I simply don’t get the point. I mean how absurd is the idea of choosing one day in an interval of 365 and force each and everyone to turn nuts and party as if there was no tomorrow? Who exactly did choose the date anyways? And why in this world did they think that by pure chance, 6.9 milliards would feel like turning nuts and partying as if there was no tomorrow? You are right. If I dislike New Year’s that much I should just stay home, read a few pages of a dull and cheesy Nicholas Sparks novel and dive into Neverland before the machinery of clocks in the central European time zone make the last two digits of 2009 switch. Well, easier said than done as the requests of social responsibility and communal obligation that come with New Year’s are damn hard to meet stuck all alone in ones room.

It all begins with this one question. And what are your plans for New Year’s Eve? Honestly, how many times have you been asked this recently? Well, to me, people started dropping these words about three weeks ago and they haven’t stopped yet. It might have been acceptable to answer with «I don’t know» three weeks ago, but the closer time proceeded towards the 31^st the reactions on my answer became more and more indigenous at the corner of rolling eyes street and fake compassion road. People made it clear: It is intolerable and pitiable to not have plans for New Years’ and I should better find a way to turn nuts and party as if there was no tomorrow quickly in order to not be considered a socially isolated failure.

To be honest, I still haven’t figured out the details for the big night. As much as I would like to claim that I don’t care the idea of ending up in bed with dull and cheesy Nicholas Sparks scares me. And this awfully frequent asked question shows me that I might not be the only one with mixed feelings towards this oh so happy Holiday. There is something that makes us terribly worrying about it, and I for my case have to admit that it is the fear of having to spend it all alone… Bang! There you go with my confession, world!

So in case you do feel the same, I suggest we exclude this devil of a question from our end of year small talk repertoire and start approaching these New Year’s Eves as we approach any given weekday. And now tell me, why in this world should we have plans for a given weekday’s Eve three goddamn weeks in advance?

Happy New Year to all of you!

Ela

Ela clear-sighted in the Yesterday Jacket and the Encore Dress... (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

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There is this one thing running particularly wrong in my life. Or to be more exact, it runs wrong about every other day. One could even claim that the only thing right and reliable about it is that it practically does run wrong every other day. It’s not a lot, but it is something, and probably what we have to be satisfied with in time of financial crisis and swine flu…

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Well, this thing is also known as a public clock at which I bike by every day to University. A public clock running wrong might be a low-key affair in other countries, but it is kind of a big deal in Switzerland. I mean, it’s Switzerland, the country that pretty much invented the tick and the tack that make clocks all around the world go. Time and punctuality is technically paragraphed in the Swiss constitution. Swiss mums feed their babies with it. And Swiss teachers, bosses or any other person in authority have a legal right to put a headlock on anyone that doesn’t fully meet the requirements of time and punctuality… In short, Swiss clocks do simply not just run wrong. And if they still do, they mess up Swiss people’s life like this particular one messed up mine.

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As there was a time in this clock’s life when the hands were according to their big boss in Greenwich, England, I almost fell off my bike the first time they weren’t. The clock ran about 30 minutes fast, which would have meant a 30 minutes delay for class for me, which again made me almost experience a minor heart attack. Such a reaction on being late might sound rather ‘petit bourgeois’ in your ears, but considering the Swiss breakfast and punishing standards it should no longer be surprising… So blame it on my education, but I knew no other option than to declare war on this piece of public nuisance.

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Up from then, I punished the clock with my cold shoulder, and I was almost overconfident of my victory a few days later (the clock slowly but surely began to be on time more often), when the clock’s final attack eventually forced me to my knees. It happened to run wrong on a day on which things in my life weren’t running quite right either, and that was what made the scales suddenly fell from my eyes… What if this clock ran wrong to teach me something? What if it had a message for me? Yes, what if this ugly and wrong running piece was nothing but the faster ticking reflection of my life and only ran wrong to teach me that things in my life did just as its fingers? Maybe run wrong on some days but still run right the next?

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Well, not that things were really all that simple in life, but how much easier are wrong running times to stand when we know that we just have to be patient for a day or two until they would be right again? So even if this clock is nothing more than what it really is (namely a simple, ugly and wrong running piece) it at least had the power to remind me illustratively that declaring war on wrong running things is a simple waste of time (especially in a clock’s case…). Sometimes things obviously have to go wrong to teach us right.

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Now go find your own wrong running clock and appreciate it!

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Ela

...after the scales fell from her eyes. (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

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Wants the good old postcard days back: Ela in the QSW Privilege Plaid coat (photo: creagerphoto.com)

I experienced a premiere the other day. It was the first time of my life that I decided to break off the relation to someone completely. I actually never thought much of such unconditional acts. I always hated those typical girlie fights back in high school when best girlfriends wouldn’t talk to each for a defined period of time for some stupid reason like ‘she copied my hairstyle’ or whatever. I thought it was useless and I could never understand how people could draw such lines under relationships that had meant the world to them just before… Not until the other day exactly, when I saw myself forced to make a cut and send the chosen someone packing combined with the urgent request to never return.

Of course it was not just someone… How less of a young woman’s life would my life be if the designated person wouldn’t have been a guy that I had declared as the ‘possible one’ to my girlfriends before? I’m not an expert in such questions but I assume this comes naturally with the whole break-off-touch-deal. You need to care for a person pretty badly to be at the same time bothered badly enough to give marching orders… So without getting into details among the reason of my particular break-off-touch-story, all that needs to be said is that I got let down literally all along the line, and I felt I had no other option than to completely ban this guy from my life.

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Well, easier said than done. First of all, it took me a while to convince myself that this preposterous act had nothing to do with me being preposterous, but much more with this guy being the reason why ‘preposterous’ as a word was actually invented. Once I had myself at this point, the ‘second of all’ began to torture me… Now did you know what a time-consuming and complex undertaking it was to break off contact with someone in time of modern technology? It was not like back in the good old days when our mummies could take their leather-wrapped address books and erase an entry that they once had written with great foresight in pencil and that consisted of a phone number and a mailbox address only. No, what I faced was

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an entry in my cell-phone for his private cell, his business cell, his private landline and his office number

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an entry in my laptop address book for his private e-mail, his business e-mail, his mailbox address and instant messaging contacts

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an enty in my scratch book that compiled again his cell phone number, this time with some sort of heart shape around it (luckily (or pathetically) painted in pencil…)

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and then of course a Facebook friendship I needed to cancel, a Skype contact I had to block, a Twitter feed I no longer wanted to follow and so on and so forth… All in all, it took me approximately half a day to erase any possible traces this guy had left in my life. It was exhausting. And honestly, if I had known before that this was what it takes to ban someone from my life, I would probably have found a way to live with the entry of ‘Mister Preposterous’ in all my face- and address books…

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However, once the mission was accomplished, it felt amazingly relieving to no longer see this unholy name in all my possible contact archives. As pathetic it might be breaking off a relation seems like the best choice every once in a while. And in order to keep myself this option open in a less stressful way in the future, the next guy I possibly have a crush on can have my landline and my mailbox address. And if he wants to get in touch with me, he can send me postcards. Basta. I want the good old days back… Now.

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Ela (call it nostalgia…)

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Fall-feeling: Ela reading postcards in the QSW Privilege Plaid coat (photo: creagerphoto.com)

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‘Tapetenwechsel’ is a very used up expression in German to say the least. Literally translated, it means something like ‘change of wallpaper’ (whereas by wallpaper I mean the good old analogue flowery wallpaper that our grannies used for their walls in the 70ies). In the general sense, ‘change of scene’ fits the meaning of it the most. People would use it if ever they don’t have a better advice to give when somebody is generally fed up with life. Now when I was about to leave for a trip to Scandinavia, ‘Tapetenwechsel’ for some reason became the most common word for my friends to end their good-bye speeches with…
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I’m not a big fan of used up expressions and so little do I appreciate if they are dropped to advice me. So before my trip, my beloved ones made me consequently see red by mentioning ‘Tapetenwechsel’ over and over again. Well, I have to admit that all the rage wasn’t for nothing. I had been a generally annoyed yet desperate fellow. My brain was on an unsatisfying round trip through a desert of inspiration without an oasis for miles around, all that made me wake up in the mornings was a term paper I hadn’t much more left for than a great bouquet of swearwords, and as if this wouldn’t have been enough, another arduous boy story cast long and senseless shadows on my existence as a life-loving young lady. As a result of all this, my moaning had been tiring me so intensely that I could hardly stand myself. The closer time proceeded to the departure of my trip, the more convinced I got myself that a ‘Tapetenwechsel’ was maybe really just what I needed.
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On the day of the take-off, I staggered to the airport around 4.30 am as frustrated as one can get after having experienced a pre-holiday day between endless to-do-lists, unpacked bags, a great ache in ones skull (I had failed to drown my sorrows in drink the evening before) and a sleepless night of the kind that makes setting alarms useless. I wasn’t in the mood to wake up and least of all to travel the world. By the time I arrived at the gate, the sun was about to rise and I decided to at least get hold of a pole position to that spectacle. Well believe it or not, when the first ray of yellow sunlight floated Zurich’s airport, I was in all probability the only one that still sat in the shade. I had chosen my seat in the only effort to get some badly needed energy from the raising sun, but to make matters worse, I had somehow managed to sit down in the exact angle of one of the very few window bars the huge glass façade of the gate contained… This could maybe have devastated me totally at some other time, but in this very moment, the shadow of the bar on my forehead felt so ridiculously ironic that I could no longer pity myself and had to burst out laughing instead.
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Well, the combination of not taking myself so serious anymore and a breath-taking departure over sleepy Zurich partly covered with residues of fog yet to be dispelled by the soft light of the morning sun is what finally made something in me click. A Tsunami of inspiration floated my mind out of the blue and all my sorrows that had been torturing me with dreadful lifelessness were gone. My brain was back, operating at full speed, finally gaining the satisfaction that it had been missing out on for so long. My ‘Tapetenwechsel’ was fulfilled.
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As much as used up expressions might make me want to puke, if this was really what ‘change of scene’ – or if so ‘Tapetenwechsel’ – was all about, then they score at least for once. Now if ever you are fed up with life, stop pitying yourselves for a moment, go to the local furniture shop and get new wallpaper, too. A couple of new roses on your wall and you will smile again!
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Ela (newly wallpapered)

The combination of not taking myself so serious anymore and a breath-taking departure...