Tag: old

Sindelfingen’s Unexpected Medieval Centre

We were looking for the museum and rathaus (same building), standing on a street surrounded by concrete brutalist architecture of the square boxes variety. The city centre was very “modern” in the sense that it looked to all be built after the 1940s. Concrete – with bits of pebble stuck to it – seemed to be the last word in architecture. What did we expect from the town whose only claim to fame is that, being quite close to Stuttgart, it’s within driving distance of the Porsche Museum? I’d seen a list on some trip advising website (I forget the name) of “5 things to do in Sindelfingen.” By comparison, there were over 300 things to do in York, where I live, and I regularly can’t find anything to do here.

The concrete architecture.
The concrete architecture.

Why were we even here? After the hectic drive to Salzburg and the overstimulation from everything that amazing place had to offer, and a complete repeat of hectic drive and overstim combo courtesy of Rome, we had decided to find a town that had absolutely nothing of interest – but still had a hotel with a swimming pool. We’d both felt that, on our honeymoon, we hadn’t spent enough time in our swimwear. The next three days was supposed to fix that.

Sindelfingen had been our destination because we were looking for somewhere with no big tourism distractions. Somewhere where we didn’t feel bad for staying in. Where we didn’t feel compelled to get out and look around and take photos.

I think I have more photos of Sindelfingen than I do of Salzburg. It was awesome; a complete hidden find.

So, the morning after our first night in the delightful Hotel Berlin, another nod to “modern” (1950s) architecture, with genuine 1950s decor such as a wall to wall mirror with teak fitted nightstands, we had gone out in search of some of the things to do in Sindelfingen, mostly because it was ironic, in the unique sense of the word that brings humour to an otherwise dull situation.

The Hotel Berlin in Sindelfingen
The Hotel Berlin in Sindelfingen.  That’s my car camper!!!

The things to do in Sindelfingen had included: The “friendship fountain,” made with articulated creatures; the rathaus, the Porsche Museum, the Mercedes Factory (both of which are in Stuttgart), Breuningerland, the shopping centre, the museum, and a zebra crossing (zebrastreifen). We found the Friendship Fountain pretty much straight away.

This is the "Friendship Fountain" in Sindelfingen
This is the “Friendship Fountain” in Sindelfingen

The fountain was awesome and had these tiny little articulated (jointed) models around it:

A wolf, one of the articulated models that were part of the Friendship Fountain.
A wolf, one of the articulated models that were part of the Friendship Fountain.
A two headed dragon
A two headed dragon

Next, we looked for the Rathaus. It turned out to be tourist information, but we went in anyway and talked to the lady behind the counter, I asked “Wahre ist der Altes Rathaus, bitte?” and she gave me a very lengthy answer, and I don’t know if she even realised I didn’t actually speak German, we had a good long conversation, albeit a little one-sided. I did know what she roughly said – this was the rathaus, the internet kept getting it confused with the museum, the museum was in the old town and then something about opening hours. We thanked her and left. I would have liked to get a photo of one of the things in the gift shop – Monopoly: Sindelfingen Edition, but I didn’t want to offend the information lady and didn’t know how to ask in German.  The third thing to do was to see the museum. We wandered off in search of it, the picture on the internet had been spectacular and I wanted to see the building – timber framed, late medieval, couldn’t wait.

We got a bit lost at this point. Basically I saw a timber framed building and thought “that must be the museum!” and walked towards it. Then we saw this:

timber framed Sindelfingen haus

Mind. Blown.

So it turns out that Sindelfingen has this huge old town full of timber framed houses and they’re all really really pretty and you can walk around them and imagine you live there.

We wasted about an hour doing this. Not one singe mention of this on the internet on the trip advice website we’d looked at when we were in Rome deciding where to go next. Apparently Sindelfingeners think the town’s zebra crossing is of more interest.  We didn’t find the zebrastreifen though so who knows maybe it’s really special.

sindelfingen timber framed houses

As we were about to give up on the museum, we rounded a corner and saw a building with a bell tower. Guess what it was? The Old Rathaus – A.K.A the museum. So it used to be the rathaus and now it wasn’t so everyone in Sindelfingen and all the signposts kept pointing us away from it towards the current Rathaus.

The museum from the direction we approached in.
The museum from the direction we approached in.

It was closed. I couldn’t actually make sense of the opening hours because there were three different sets posted on the door (in German – nobody in Sindelfingen spoke English except our hotel receptionists) so I decided that since the lights were off and the door was locked, we were out of luck. That was fine, I had really wanted to see the building itself, not the stuff inside it, that would have just been icing on the cake.

The statue outside the Sindelfingen museum near Stuttgart Germany
The statue outside the Sindelfingen museum near Stuttgart Germany
An interesting doorway around the side of the museum.
An interesting doorway around the side of the museum.

We continued to wander around Sindelfingen to take in more of the timber framed houses, stopping off at the shopping centre for some more Balea silver shampoo for me to bring home (and lunch – schnitzels and chips), then we went back to our hotel, happy that we had found the very best and unexpected thing to do in Sindelfingen, that hadn’t been mentioned anywhere, and that the museum had been pretty spectacular from the outside.

The museum from another direction, looking even more spectacular.
The museum from another direction, looking even more spectacular.

Skincare: 6 Ways Cosplayers Can Get Picture Perfect Skin

Good skincare is critically important, and this is the WORST time of year for skin maintenance due to a bunch of stuff, so I wanted to talk about how to get your skin looking fabulous, especially since I’ve been ill October through December and need to get back into my full skincare routine. If your skin is already fabulous, you may want to skip this post.

I recently saw a cosplay pic that I cannot show you because it’s to do with a secret project that my husband cannot know about yet. Now there’s more chance of hell freezing over than of him actually reading my blog, but just on the off-chance that he accidentally lands here on an internet search, I’m not going to tell you what the costume was. Let’s just imagine it was a Jessica Rabbit costume cosplay.
All you need to know was that, through the side of the amazingly detailed and accurate dress, there was one very miserable looking, red, pimply, washed out leg poking through what should have been a revealing and sexy split.

It got me thinking that perhaps, when people are doing a cosplay, when someone’s taken the time, expense and effort to make a costume of a well-known character FROM SCRATCH, perhaps buying a £5 pot of skin lotion, drinking a glass of water and fixing their skin wouldn’t go amiss.

*OK, I’m sold, how can I sort my skin out so it looks awesome with my costume and hair?*

1. Get some moisturizer. There’s loads of expensive ones out there, but anything’s better than nothing. There’s myths about parabens, BPA and silocones if you want to buy into scaremongering (literally, it costs a fortune to avoid these; don’t waste your time or cash), if not, go for something cheap that smells nice. You are going to moisturize every time you have a shower.

2. Does this costume show your bare legs? Do some leg toning exercises! Cassey Ho has some fabulous leg toning workouts at Blogilates that don’t require any equipment. I have been using her workouts now for over 2 years and they’re a fast way to get into shape for anything where you need to look your best. Exercise tends to make all of you look good for a variety of reasons.

3. Eat well. More fruit, more vegetables (think half the plate), more protein (to make new skin cells), less crap. Look for foods rich in vitamin K such as kale and broccoli, which will get rid of redness under the skin, as well as foods with vitamin E which stimulates glowing, healthy skin (and eat your vitamin E foods such as avocado about 4 hours apart from the vitamin K foods, otherwise they compete for absorption which is why multivitamins containing both E and K are a waste of time).

4. Exfoliate. This removes the dead skin cells so the newer, nicer ones can shine out, and according to Elle MacPherson it’s the best way to stay looking young well into your 50’s.

5. If all else fails, use fake tan (or gradual tanner, AVOID THESE IF IT’S A WHITE COSTUME), foundation for your face, and dance tights. You might want those last two anyway, especially if you’re cosplaying a caucasian character from before the 1990s or anyone from any musical, as they almost all wear Capezio dance tights in the shade ‘light suntan’ or ‘suntan’ (I’ve worked in the ents industry in various jobs, the Capezio tights are industry standard).

6. Make sure you get enough sleep, drink enough water: These two make everyone roll their eyes but it’s true! You may need to do these both long-term if you need to fix chronic dehydration and sleep loss, so an extra pint today will help you in the long run, but it’s not a quick fix, it’s a lifestyle habit. If you have chronic insomnia, do what you can and focus on everything else.

Barring acne or infections (which require treatment from a doctor or dermatologist), if you want movie-star beautiful skin all year round, rather than for a one-off event, do those 6 things all the time. If you want your skin to look shit, do the opposite for many many years then complain a lot about how some people are just blessed with good skin.

If you want to make this a year-round goal, to really get your skin looking fabulous, make some time to sunbathe for a few hours a week during summer (less for your face, as too much sunbathing causes premature ageing), as a bit of sun will stimulate your vitamin D synthesis, melanin production (in the skin) and it rebalances your serotonin/melatonin production, which will all make you look fabulous (actually, the serotonin/melatonin won’t, but bringing this into balance properly will help get you to sleep which WILL make you look your best). That way, you’ll be ready for cosplay, fancy dress, and dressing up, all year round. Just do it safely; we all know the rules of sunbathing right?

Why do I say all this specifically targetted to cosplayers? Well, people seem to understand that a character is the product of their costume, hair and makeup, but the skin tone and transparency is also very important. If your skin’s showing red patches and veins through all over it, and you’re trying to look like, oh, I don’t know, let’s pretend (again) that we’re talking about Jessica Rabbit; let’s say you want to be the sexiest woman in Toon Town (or whatever, I can’t tell you the real costume I was looking at but you get the gist), you need to fix your diet to improve the skin from the inside and start moisturising to help the skin from the outside.
This is true of all cosplays, and it’s what most real leading actors do who have a long career (I know, I’ve worked with many), so why not make it a routine?

It really doesn’t matter what size you are, whether your eyes or ear shape match the character, whether you tracked down the *exact* shade of eyeshadow used in the original film/series/whatevs, what does matter is getting your skin to look like it deserves to wear the costume which you just spent days, months or years making. Everything else can be worked around or fixed with makeup.

If you look at the most successful cosplayers, the ones on the lists of best cosplay, they’re not size 0, they’re not 34GG of the breasts, they generally don’t innately look like the character, but the reason we find them visually pleasing is because they look vital, radiant and larger than life… which is generally something they share with the characters they portray.

It’s not complicated, you don’t need expensive or time consuming rituals to look good, just follow these steps and you too can score a perfect 10 for your cosplay.