Food

Marcel and Anna assemble IKEA PAX furniture, take a risotto break, and later eat pancakes.

We successfully built everything. Let’s just not mention how, a couple of days later, a real handyman had to come and bolt it all to the wall properly.

Marcel adds tiny amounts of sriracha to spicy food while trying to get used to the heat.

I’ve never understood people who pride themselves on how much heat they can stomach. Good job, dude, you’re hurting yourself on purpose. Very impressive.

Marcel enjoys tea, a botanical garden stroll, a farmers market, a bookshop, and vegetarian haggis with companions.

I later discovered that Waterstones is just the starting point. There are so many incredible bookshops in the UK. What a paradise!

Marcel and Anna eat, Marcel packs a suitcase, then plays a video game on the sofa beside sleeping cats.

Packing is the worst. I’m not even bad at it, it just isn’t fun. It’s like a puzzle where the result will never be perfect, and you just have to live with the compromises. Especially when you’re flying with only carry-on luggage.

Marcel sits at his desk wearing a headset, looking annoyed during a meeting that has run long.

It took me quite a long time to realise that I tend to get hangry. Once I noticed it, the fallout was reduced significantly, and I’d consider it a solved problem now. But it’s funny how we sometimes don’t reflect enough on the connection between our bodies and our moods, and end up spending years running around grumpy simply because we haven’t eaten and never made that link.

(I really can’t complain about too many meetings, though. We have a very strict “Let’s not fill everyone’s days with something that could just as well be a non-synchronous Slack thread” policy. So when a meeting runs longer than planned, it’s usually for good reason.)

Marcel shares food with Anna, meets his father and Jutta, shops, cleans the apartment, and relaxes with Anna.

I love city life, great weather, and days where you don’t have a plan and just let things unfold.

Marcel prepares food in the kitchen while wondering how to convert a cup measurement to European measurements.

A cup is not a precise unit of measurement, and Oz is home to a wizard.

Marcel sleeps, eats breakfast, cleans his apartment, and visits a museum with Anna to see a polar bear.

It was the Long Night of Museums. You buy one ticket and can visit every museum of the city.