chicago.

I've been in Chicago for the last little while which is really exciting as I've never been here before. I got sent here to open a store kind of last minute two or so weeks ago.

Fun people, beautiful city, no garbage or graffiti on the streets and lots of work to be done.
If it weren't so cold I'd want to move here for a bit.

The new American Apparel is now open at 39 South State Street in Downtown Chicago; if you're in the area - go check it out!

One of the displays I did earlier this week:

pourquoi pas?

I've spent the past few weeks reassessing my life.
What is important? What do I want from life? What do I want to do?
Learn. Experience. Create.

I'm going to go on a year or more long journey around the globe.

I've studied Graphic Design, Photography, French, Advertising.. yet I've spent little to no time cultivating any of them. I've come up with a list of goals.

I want to spend a significant, undivided amount of time on my artwork. I'll spend a few months in an inspiring yet remote location in order to make my Design portfolio what it deserves to be. Limited or no internet access. I am unable to focus on this in New York with my obsession with work, a bustling night life and one too many distractions.

I will not return to New York until I am at least tri-lingual. I'll spend enough time in a French speaking country in order to perfect the French that I already possess. I also have to decide which third language I would like to learn. Berlin is affordable, has an inspiring and exciting art scene and will also have opportunities to work on Design internships. Ideas in their beginning stages.

Then I want to go explore places that I have never been before. Explore them through my lens; God knows over the past few months enough dust has collected on my camera to make it seem as though I'd never picked it up in my life.

Once I feel as though I've accomplished all intellectual and artistic pursuits I set out to achieve abroad, I will move back to a major city and get serious about my career.
Hopefully by this time I'll have enough experience and knowledge to begin a career creating movie credit sequences and working with motion graphics.

For the next year or so though, I'll stay in my beloved city of New York, continue to work around the clock and save, save, save.

Thats the plan, thus far, anyways.

indulging in: Sense and Sensibility.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

nesjavellir.

[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

paris.

I've been to Paris once before but didn't really get a taste for it's cultural flare being that I visited during the summer when most Parisians are out of town on holiday.

We got to spend time with some of my Parisian friends, going for coffee and dinner and made some new ones over cocktails.
Versailles was the most gorgeous, awe inspiring architectural brilliance that I've had the pleasure of experiencing.. (and photographing).

Speeding down the Champs Elysees with my friend Alayssia and some French guys we met, in a Porsche blasting 'Empire State of Mind' on our last night.
Parfait.

indulging in: Ativan by Atlas Sound.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

dublin.

I went back to Dublin for the first time in a year.
When I first arrived, I teared up and never felt more at home in a place as I did in that one moment.
After all of the drama that went down there in my past I wasn't sure how I'd feel and had genuinely surprised myself with how excited I was to be back.
I was so happy to be back that I didn't even want to leave for Paris the next day.

When we got back for two days after Paris, went out for a lovely lunch, spent time with my old room mate Joe and then went drinking again with my Irish friends.
I had the best night in Dublin that I'd ever had and I left for New York the next morning excited to go home to my city knowing that I couldn't have had a better time, or more perfect closure as I did.

indulging in: Red Cave by Yeasayer.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

jetset.

Just booked flights to Dublin and Paris.
Now lets just hope I survive the rest of the semester so I can actually go.

indulging in: Golden Ticket by Manchester Orchestra.
[photos © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

iceland.

If I had one place from all of my travels that I had to recommend for people to go.. it would without a doubt be Iceland. I've never seen such gorgeous landscapes in my life, I literally felt like I was on another planet.

We got in at 6 am, hadn't slept and while we're about to get off the plane the air host we made friends with lets us in on a little secret - Bjork is on the plane. What are the chances that our first time to Iceland Bjork is on our plane!? We get to baggage claim and she happens to be the only person there, in lime green tights and shoes. I try to strike up a conversation and she hurries off with the creepiest smile I've ever seen. Needless to say, she wasn't as interested in talking to us. Once exiting the airport in sleeveless shirts and skirts realized we should have packed warmer clothes because it was bloody ]FREEZING. We couldn't check into our hostel until 2pm so we call our friend Stefán to come have breakfast with us before he heads off to work, where we get to try the Icelandic food 'Skyr' (note me holding it up with a big smile on the bottom right photo).

Later in the day when Stefán gets out of work we meet up with him and his friend Eydis and he takes us to the Blue Lagoon, which isn't too far from Reykjavik. It was beyond incredible. It was like a gigantic hot tub full of cyan water and gorgeous backdrops. We took about a million photos and harassed some of the old Europeans floating around.

The next day Stefán set us up with a private tour with this crazy amazing Icelandic man named Yonni with 'Choice Tours Iceland'. For $90 he takes us all around South Eastern Iceland for 9 hours seeing Volcanoes, Glaciers, Mountains, Craters, Waterfalls - everything. We couldn't get enough of him, he was beyond entertaining. So if you ever take a trip there, you MUST use him as you're guide. He told us he weighed 260lbs and lost 80lbs dancing on his own which we were like.. hmm ok. But little did we know we'd wander into a pub later that night to see Yonni dancing by him self in the corner to Pink Floyd.

Iceland was definitely the most incredible place I've ever been. The people were seriously so nice that I constantly thought I was about to be robbed or sold into sex slavery (the New Yorker in me). That's the one place I wish we had more time in.

indulging in: Isobel by Bjork.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

london.

We take a very long and expensive train ride from Paris to London where I'm not the MOST excited to go, figuring it'll be just like Dublin (where I lived for awhile) - just more metropolitan. It was almost like a mix of New York and Dublin, to me, and I had so much fucking fun. Our hostel pretty much looked like Hogwarts and we met some crazy Dutch men there who accompanied us on most of our late night adventures.

Our first night there we go to reception at the hostel and I simply say 'just tell us where the men in skinny jeans go' and I get a one word reply 'Camdentown'. So Camdentown it was. Unfortunately when we got there, the entire town was closed down due to a drug bust and after walking around for awhile we found ONE pub, that everyone else had seemed to find as well, that was open. London is no Berlin, doors closed at midnight and a platinum blonde man (in white skinny jeans) with Michael Jackson's voice + an English accent asked us to accompany him to this other bar, Bartok. The skinny jeans clearly seduced us (me) there. Little did we know it was a gay bar, which we didn't mind in the least but our man friends, from the hotel, weren't too thrilled about. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, with a few funny/shocking things happening here and there - an overall success.

The next morning we crankily decided we should maybe sight see a bit. We stumbled around central London with coffee after coffee, only speaking in Spice Girl quotes (because we're so very cultured like that) and layed in the grass of Westminster Abbey for a good hour or so. We decided to get an early start this night in hopes to have some fun before all of London closes at midnight again. We go to this one place 'Zoo Bar' in Lester Square and realize its full of WANKERS and head back to the land of skinny jeans to find that everything is fucking closed - again. We make two friends while in Camden, one gorgeous man who spent the rest of the night running around London with us and being my English 'boyfriend' for the night and one crackhead named Brooklyn..who also spent the rest of the night running around London with us. They bring us all over, with no plan or destination - which I think made it even better. We have a hilarious video of 'Brooklyn the Crackhead' laughing maniacally and telling us about 'Midas' but I'm not sure how to post that.

Anyways, all in all, London was great fun. Like Berlin, not so culturally stimulating being that we mostly only came out at night but it was an amazing time and I'd love to go back.

indulging in: Oh What a Night by Billy Joel.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

paris.

Paris was absolutely wonderful and beautiful. We lived off of baguettes and cheese (cliche), rode bikes through Monmartre at 3am, smoked Cuban cigars in front of the Eiffel Tower, told my good friend Kelley (the blonde one) that 'J'aime ton cul dans ce jean moulant' means 'Hi how are you?', and drank more wine than we can remember. We made friends with a Frenchman while in Stockholm and he had us over for an amazing dinner one night and I swear his apartment was actually Versailles. There's a photo of his 'music' room above. We wanted to swim in a fountain, but unfortunately the only one we found had no water. We made due.

[oh and if anyone was wondering, I'm the brunette often times wearing nutty lime green wayfarers]

indulging in: Glittering Clouds by Cut Copy.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

berlin.

To be honest Berlin was my least favourite city in terms of aesthetics, people, etc but I had the best night of my life there.


Let me set the scene for you.. We arrive in Berlin and by the time we actually find our hostel deep in East Berlin where no one speaks English, or are completely unwilling to try (yes we did try speaking broken German!), it was nearly midnight. We throw something on, get in a cab and say 'Bring us somewhere good'.

We end up at this club named 'Bar 25' that has a line nearly (no exaggeration) half a mile long. We think, how long could it REALLY take to get in, people wouldn't be waiting if it wasn't amazing. 2 and a half hours later we get in to see two old german men techno dancing under a white tent. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. 3:30 am, in New York bars would closing at 4 so we figure we couldn't even go somewhere else.

Well.. we walk around the bend to find a fucking AMUSEMENT PARK turned club. The first thing we see is roughly 15 drunk people paddling out into the river on a plywood makeshift raft, flames bursting out of the tops of log cabin 'game rooms', disco balls hanging from trees, swings hanging from tree's going over the river and the craziest bunch of people we've ever encountered. We saw many 'celebrities' that night such as Jesus, Osama Bin Laden, Beetlejuice, John Lennon and many more. As you can tell it was an eclectic mix. As the night went on we met a group of aspiring-nudist Australians who joined us on a walking tour of Berlin when we left the club at 9:30 the next morning. By the way, the photo with the line of people. That is when we left, at 9:30am.. and that is a line of people who still wanted to get in. Unfortunately the club closed a week later otherwise no words could describe the amount of advertising I would be doing for them but I'm glad I got to experience it while it was still around.

The rest of the trip was a series of adventures, parties, drinks and not much culture.
There's always next time!

indulging in: Some Girls/Some Boys by Manna.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

stockholm.

Stockholm was my favourite city we visited this trip. I can't really explain why, its not that I had the most fun there, or that there was the most to do.. but Stockholm just had this aura that I loved. The people are gorgeous, the fashion is incredible (if I had more money I would have been twice as in debt), and the city is just so damn clean.

We wandered into this little chocolate shop in Gamla Stan (the old city) where this Persian man floated around and ended up seducing us into spending like $60 worth of chocolate and 'love tea'. He brought us chocolate from the back room that I swear had drugs in it, because we were literally high and he wouldn't let us purchase any to bring back home. A few days later, with absolutely NO money left we went on a search for butter at 2 am to put on our pasta. Unable to find a 7-11 or anything open at 2am on a Sunday night we settled for the Swedish version of McD's (how American of us, I know) called 'Max' where we met the best entertainment Stockholm had to offer. I complimented the guy sitting next to us's skinny jeans and we somehow got into a conversation that lead to him screaming some Swedish racial slurs, which almost got the shit kicked out of him. You had to be there, but it was hilarious and he gave me a piggy back ride around the streets of Stockholm / was our tour guide for the remainder of the night. I've never been in a place with more perfectly dressed me and the best part is - THEY WERE STRAIGHT! Well enough of them were anyways.. Oh I will be going back to Stockholm. I promise.

The trip ended with my good friend Kelley losing her passport and was forced to remain in Sweden an extra night. We felt terrible leaving her but its not the worst place to be stranded. She eventually made it home, so now we can make fun of her and laugh (with love of course) hahaha.

indulging in: Jungle Drum by Emiliana Torrini.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

back in new york.

I just got back to New York from my European adventures. Feels good to be back but I'm missing the excitement of exploring new cities and meeting a plethora of new interesting people everyday.

I bought an amazing pair of boots while in Stockholm which I'm excited to post photos of soon. I've got plenty of photos from my travels to post as well. Unfortunately, my camera died right after Iceland, so I borrowed a friends. Nothing too 'artsy' from then on out, mostly just documentation of our various states of international intoxication.

I've never had so much fun in my life. My bank account is currently literally -$20 but .. It was worth it and I needed that, it was so refreshing.

[photo source: blake coleman]

Ísland.

Off to the land of fire and ice in a few hours and I've yet to pack. I've been so preoccupied with other things that I never even got the chance to get excited for the trip, I can't believe its finally here! It feels like we booked it forever ago.

I'll be shooting international street style for my column in Shut Up! Magazine and I'm so excited to work on personal photo projects as well. I'm luckily going with two of my close friends who are hilarious, adventurous and overall amazing so they will make it all the more fun.

Also, my close friend and editor for Shut Up!, Sahar, just started up her editors blog.. so go check that out here. She always has awesome finds, and great taste in pretty much everything.

Unfortunately I won't be able to update much, I'll be back in two weeks - with lots of new updates.
Sjáumst Bitches!

indulging in: The Ballad of the Broken Birdie (Ruxpin Remix) - Múm.
[photo source: eugenio recuenco]

varanasi.

Varanasi, India - 2007.

indulging in: Karma Coma by Massive Attack.
[photo © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]

gone traveling.

In a week I'll be off on some nomadic adventures through Iceland, Sweden, Germany, France, and England. I thought I'd write a quick post about it in hopes that some people could give me suggestions on interesting, rad, cheap places to eat/shop/explore. We went a little crazy and spent all of our money, so unfortunately we can't do any lavish shopping. I can fondle and drool though, so feel free to suggest high end places as well.

I'm looking forward to Hot Springs in Reykjavik, Street Style in Stockholm, Nightlife in Berlin, Laduree and Cafe's in Paris, and Punk men in London.

And most importantly... documenting it all via me Nikon.

Tell me an exciting story from your summer travels.

indulging in: Sweaty Wet/Dirty Damp by Gameboy Gamegirl.

[photo source: hedi slimane]

dublin.

Shot in film with a Diana f+ in Dublin and Wicklow, Ireland.

indulging in: Electric Feel by MGMT.
[photos © Kristen Schultz; please don't use without permission]