Happy New Year!

Every year at this time, I grow pensive about the past year and the year to come. New Year's Eve has always been my favorite holiday, because I love the idea of a fresh start and new beginnings. I learnt a long time ago that New Year's is originally the holiday of the Roman God Janus, a God with two faces, one looking back and one looking forward. Naturally that is what many people do around this time- reflect on the events past and look to the future with anticipation.

When I was younger I kept journals (I wanted to remember every single detail of my life so I wrote nearly every day! Now I'm not as interested in my own life, haha). Around New Year's I'd write summaries of the year month by month. I did this also at the end of 2013 in my old blog. So here's what my 2015 looked like:

January: Adjusting to living in Munich again and my first-ever visit to the ER, working a lot and even visiting the memorial site of the former concentration camp Dachau again. This is also the month I became interested in veganism.
February: The month of firsts! I met a guy I started hanging around with a lot, met a lot of new people, and partied a loooooot.
March: On and off-again in my relationship, I recorded new songs and visited the Therme Erding (thermal spa north of Munich) which was goooooorgeous. Visited Bolzano, South Tyrol.
April: Spent a lot of time in Austria, trying even more new things, and went to Frühlingsfest (spring beer festival)!
May: PARTY. Basically this month was just a lot of working and a lot of going out. haha
June: My birthday! I was unfortunately sick at this time but I did eventually have a birthday dinner with my mom. Flew to Tenerife (Canary Islands) at the end of the month, which was lovely.
July: More parties, and a lot of time outdoors. Barbecues and rafting on the river Isar :) This is the month I "discovered" Amy Winehouse and began to take an interest in her.
August: I attended a christening for the first time ever! I'm not religious but it was a really neat event, and everyone was dressed up in their Bavarian traditional dress. I also travelled to southeast Austria to a region known as South Styria, right on the border of Slovenia. Delicious wine and amazing, cheap food! I loved it there. Finally, after this, I cut ties with my ex-partner. In this same month I also saw the documentary 'Amy' twice.
September: I think the obvious summary to this month is OKTOBERFEST!!!!! ;) This year was definitely my best Oktoberfest yet and one I'll remember for years to come! So much fun! I also met my band this month, that was undoubtedly a big positive point of the month.
October: More Oktoberfest! Hahaha. But notably this month I also travelled to London, which I really loved and adored. For sure one of my favorite cities in Europe. Finally I also started singing at an open mic night in Munich at a place called Cord Club. It was a huge success and so much fun!
November: Ah, November. A month of slip-ups and drama. But I wrote two or three new songs in this month so it was all worth it ;)
And finally, December: Hard Work! And miracles. I would say December might actually be my favorite month from last year, because so much has happened in just that month: I wrote more music, and of course it's also the point in the year where I felt most actualized, happy, and successful.

All in all, I would definitely view 2015 as a successful year. I really cannot believe it's already over though. It seems so unreal that the year is behind us already. Amongst other things, last year I learned to manage my finances in a much more organized, sensible way- dividing my money into various accounts for spending, saving, investing, and emergencies. Last year I also learned about a certain approach to "reading" people through traditional chinese medicine. It involves looking at someone's birthday and also looking at the features of their face to determine their personality traits, values, and even their path in life. It might all sound very kooky but I find it to be stunningly accurate (and specific! Unlike these weird horoscopes that are like, you have Mars in the 2nd house this week which means you're going to have stress with something. It's like, oh okay thanks for the heads-up) and the thing I like most about dealing with the birthday readings is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the stars, and rather with the natural cycle of the earth. I never liked the traditional zodiac anyway. 

2015 was also a year of firsts. I travelled to many new places, tried a lot of new things, and even for the first time in my life have made a major shift to veganism! When I was younger I thought vegans were crazy. I was always like- but what about butter and CHEESE?!!!! Now I understand it much more, and since trying months at a time of being vegan, I realized it really isn't all as difficult as I thought, and really is much more a thing of mind over matter. And I've discovered I love eating plant-based! Eating mostly vegan I feel healthier than I ever have, and when I gave up dairy I lost excess weight- four pounds in one week!!! Plus a few more after that. Everyone I know is the first to tell me I don't need to lose weight- well I know, and that wasn't my goal with going vegan. But I did have a bit of excess fat around the waist area, and if it happened to go away on its own without me having to lift a finger, well I'll take it! Plus I'm a perfectionist- I'm happy with my body, but if I know I can do better, then that's what I want because I know it's do-able, and I like being in the best possible shape I can be.

Earlier, I would always come up with one solid resolution for the year. But I, like virtually everyone out there, can't stick to a new year's resolution and I think it's kind of dumb to just have like one goal for the whole year. So this year instead of a resolution I came up with a list of things I want to accomplish!

Which includes:
-get a tattoo (I don't have any! Yet) ;-)
-finish my material for the album
-give up dairy completely (I slip up from time to time. It's hard in Bavaria, Germany's dairyland!)
-I am considering bleaching my hair again to the color I had it when I was 18, but I'm not sure yet
-travel to a new continent (so far I've only been to North America and Europe, time to see something new! Probably South America, but I am also dying to visit Hong Kong. Why not both?!)
-climb at least one mountain bottom to top (for starters, but maybe more as well!)
-visit the States- I'll be turning 21 this year. And I just feel like America is the place to celebrate your 21st birthday. So I'll do this either in Las Vegas (I just feel that's the place if anywhere to do the 21st), or I'll head homebound to NYC!
-expand my financial education. This year I read some books that have changed my financial mindset and approach completely. I'm extremely interested in finance and definitely want to improve my skills in it.

There are a few other things on the list but they are not as interesting (buy a blender, for example).
So that was my 2015, and there are my hopes for this new year! How about you? I hope all of you had a great year and look to 2016 with as much hope and optimism as I do. I know I am very excited about the developments and changes ahead- I feel that 2016 will lay the groundwork and be a year full of change, preparing for 2017, which I believe will be an even more exciting year. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves.

Happy New Year! (again) and cheers to 2016!
India

Music for the mood: Tous les Mêmes by Stromae (incredible Belgian artist of electronic dance music, it really helps if you translate his lyrics or if you understand French- because what he writes is GOOD STUFF!)

Hit the Road, Jack!

I'm back again! My apologies once again for the hiatus on writing. The past 6 weeks have been so busy, and needless to say, flew by! What with Oktoberfest, visits to the studio, LONDON, and more studio time... I've been absolutely full!

At the moment I am in Innsbruck recording a brand-new song and putting the finishing touches on two others. My latest song is a very Amy Winehouse-inspired number, and it's actually somewhat of a tribute to her work. Already the guys in my band drew parallels to her music in this song. And like every other song I've made- it's completely different from all the rest!! As much as I'd like a congruent sound for my album, all of my songs are completely different from each other. From jazzy-blues numbers like my latest ("Tell Me Why"), to dance songs like Irresistible or more adventurous like Runner. I'm excited, anyhow :D

Soon, I'm going to start making my very first music video for another song. It's very much a rock song, with plenty of bass, guitar riffs, and a couple of my own personal touches like chimes and some synths. My hope is to shoot the video in a gothic-style church in northern Bavaria, but I am still working on the script for it. This is also something I'm extremely excited about!

Oktoberfest was absolute madness. It was my most intense Oktoberfest to date. It was great fun, I played lots of games, rode lots of rides, and of course drank my fair share of Maß's. A summary of my visit to Oktoberfest: Day 1 (the first Sunday of the festival)- start drinking at noon and just... don't stop. Apparently. I survived, I neither became ill nor blacked out- not after one full glass of wine (1/4), two (or was it three?) glasses of prosecco, a liter of beer shared with my mum, followed by my own liter, followed by continued sharing of beers by the people I was with in the tent until close. I can hold my own, I guess. The next day though, I had to work two tours. I had barely any hangover symptoms (luckily!), the only problem was I went on the high swings the previous day and decided screaming on them would be a neat idea. So I pretty much lost my voice at the end of the day. And then after all that I caught an obligatory cold (nearly everyone catches a cold during or after Oktoberfest). The rest of my days weren't as intense as that, but they were just as fun. I won myself a lot of prizes by going to shooting stands. I even got to go to the ER and ride in an ambulance! Many of you might have already heard about that- it's not nearly as scary as it sounds. Actually a girl chinked her glass with someone else in front of me- she did it too hard, and a piece of the glass splintered into my face. I had my eyes checked out to make sure nothing got into them. Luckily, nothing did!

What also happened in September- I finally met the members of my band! My producer has been working on getting musicians together to accompany me when I finally perform my music live. We still need a drummer (hmu if you know a good one!), but I've met my guitarist and bassist and they are really splendid guys, both so talented and they have worked so hard on learning my music and contributing to it as well! It is truly not only a fascinating experience but also so uplifting, so exciting to have people to collaborate with, to work on a common goal together. And it is all the more flattering that it happens to be my music ;) So we rehearsed last month and now I'm back in Austria again to rehearse with them. We're preparing original material but also a few epic covers (Led Zeppelin, Priestess, etc.)

And last but not least, I've also been over to London two weeks ago!
It was AMAZING (pardon the non-creative adjective, but it was truly amazing, awesome, magnificent, superb!)
Bear in mind, I haven't been to a city as large as London in more than 6 years (last city of that size I'd been to was New York in April 2009). And it absolutely blew my mind. Of course it was completely different than what I expected, but in a good way. First of all, it is massive. It is a huge city! I guess I have really gotten used to the size of Munich, which is a very comfortable one.

It was also my very first trip alone. I flew alone to the U.S. almost two years ago to visit my family, but this was my first trip ever by myself, for myself, and to a place where I didn't know anyone. I'm thrilled to be growing up and making my "first" experiences of doing new things. Traveling alone, first apartment, first backpacking trip, etc. So in London I did all of the touristy stuff, including a free walking tour à la Sandeman's (the same company I work with) of course ;) I also visited the British Museum (fantastic- you can see Cleopatra's mummy in there!), the National Gallery (can't recommend this one, it's just a bunch of random paintings of dead royalty), The Tower of London (my favorite part ever, so much history!), and I spent a toooooooon of time in Camden. I explored the markets and discovered an amazing vegan cookie shop called Cookies and Scream, and I continually went up there to visit the pubs at night. On one Saturday evening I had a particularly adventurous time, visiting first a pub called the Lock Tavern and seeing a live concert from some pretty good bands. Then after three or four pints I decided to go climb Primrose Hill for a beautiful view of the London night sky. Drunken me tried to take pictures up there. Needless to say they didn't turn out. The amazing part about Camden is that everyone in the local pubs and spots seemed to know Amy personally. "I played pool against her once," or "she'd always go to the Hawley, I saw her there once," were phrases I heard from multiple people. And that really made me sad. You could really sense that if Amy were still alive, she'd be there playing pool at The Good Mixer like always. Surprisingly I didn't find too many Amy-related souvenirs though.
The whole trip was great fun and really opened my eyes to the outside world. I've gotten very comfortable in the cocoon that is Munich so it was valuable to me to get out a little bit to a big city.

And that brings me to now. Now I'm in Innsbruck, on Monday I recorded my brand-new song and we also put down the bass line and guitar. I can't even begin to describe how thrilled I am about this song. It just might be my proudest work yet. Yesterday I finished up the vocals on some older work and this evening I have band practice ;)
Tomorrow I go home to a voice lesson, and this weekend is Halloween. I'm planning on dressing up as.... can you guess? ;)

No? (pssst... it's Amy)

What are you going as?

I'll write soon again I promise!

Love,
India

Music mood: Hotline Bling by Drake (sorry bout this one, it's so addictive though)