Perfume

Marcel and Anna attend a perfume-making workshop, smell and mix fragrances, and leave with a perfume bottle.

This was a lot of fun! I wouldn’t say I’m particularly happy with the perfume I ended up with, but I understand the process much better now and already have a hunch about what I should have done differently.

The instructor was incredibly helpful and clearly knew what she was doing. She had worked for the EU on making perfume ingredients safer and could sniff out even the slightest changes in our mixtures.

The nice thing is that we can come back with our recipe, tweak it, and see whether we like the new version better. Apparently, making the perfect perfume is less of a one-time thing and more of an ongoing process of iteration.

Fun!

Marcel and Anna walk around the Alster, sample perfumes, and watch cars being towed; later, Marcel falls asleep while trying to read beside his cat.

A cute little day. We spent quite a while in the perfume section of a large shopping center, trying dozens of fragrances. It was fun, and it sent Anna spiraling down a deep rabbit hole of fragrance research. I love those moments when you suddenly unlock a new interest and get to learn an entirely new set of things. I also learned that I’m apparently a big fan of pine in my fragrances. Who would have guessed I’d enjoy smelling like a tree!