MERRY CHRISTMAS

May God's blessings come to you a thousand fold;

may the love in your heart never get old;

and may you find treasures more precious than gold.

 

Have a blessed Christmas

and a happy new year

to you and your family!

Cafe New York in Budapest

Let’s go to Cafe New York...

The four-floor New York Palace was built in 1894

in eclectic style by a New York-based life insurance company: of course, not as a palace but as an elegant office complex. (opened by Sándor Steuer a member of a famous coffee-family

The cafe became one of the most popular iconic cafés

of fin-de-siécle Budapest, especially amongst

Budapest literati: writers frequented the café for its inspirational atmosphere and company as well as for good coffees and meals. Can you imagine that there were 400 different journals and papers in the café to read at the turn of the 20th century?

 “Indeed, this is where Sir Alexander Korda – director of films such as The Private Life of Henry VIII & The Thief of Baghdad - started out for his world award winning career, just as Michael Curtis, Oscar winning director of Casablanca did too,” according to the hotel’s official website.

 

In 1945 the palace was bombarded, the café had to close down in 1947 and was turned into a warehouse. What a beautiful warehouse it must have been…. It opened again in 1954 renamed as ‘Hungaria’ (New York was too capitalist for the then communist Hungary, and it was not a café any more just a buffet and restaurant).

From Spring 2006 the New York Café welcomes
its guestsin all it's former splendour recalling
the milieu of the beginning of the 20th century

For your coffee, I suggest trying the Tiramisu in real
Italian style,
 or just sipping a glass of Tokaj aszú –
according to totally
unscientific studies it helps to feel
the grandeur of the café...

ENJOY!!

stepping into a new week

Happy Monday my friends!

may this week find your steps..
{whatever kind of shoes you happen to be wearing}  
graced with patience. courage.
and, lots of opportunities to just sit back and smile...

{stepping into a new week}

Happy new week...

Happy Monday lovelies!
The weather  here is soooo cold,
we have a new blanket of snow.  
My weekend consisted of lots of
cups of tea with a lemon.
I spent yesterday most of time
in bed to be ready for the busy week ahead.

 I hope all of you had a lovely relaxing weekend...

~♥ ♥~

Christmas Markets in Vienna

Romantic Festive Season in Vienna

you should experience the beautiful Christmas

Markets in Vienna and let yourself

be enchanted by the fabulous locations

of the Christmas Markets in the Austrian capital.

The Christmas Markets at the Vienna Rathausplatz

and in front of Schoenbrunn Palace

or Belvedere are the Christmas highlights

 in Vienna. Here romance, nostalgia and

fairytale landscapes await you.

ADVENT IN VIENNA

A PALE BLUE DOT

Pale Blue Dot
Carl Sagan

Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home,

that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know,

 everyone you ever heard of, every human being

who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands

of confident religions, ideologies,

and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager,

every hero and coward, every creator and

destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant,

every young couple in love, every mother and father,

hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every

teacher of morals, every corrupt politician,

every "superstar," every "supreme leader,"

every saint and sinner in the history of our species

lived there

– on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam –

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those

generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph,

they could become the momentary masters

of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties

visited by the inhabitants of one corner of

this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable

inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent

their misunderstandings, how eager they are

to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance,

the delusion that we have some privileged

position in the Universe, are challenged by this point

of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great

enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity,

in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will

come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.

There is nowhere else, at least in the near future,

to which our species could migrate.

Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the

moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling

and character-building experience.

There is perhaps no better demonstration

of the folly of human conceits than this distant

image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores

our responsibility to deal more kindly

with one another, and to preserve and

cherish the pale blue dot,

the only home we've ever known.

MUSIC

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. 

 ~Berthold Auerbach ~

The dust of our life can come in waves and when we feel most venerable. Those dust clouds can whip up and even knock us over. Music can wash through our soul and keep our vision clear to see the things in life that are the most precious. We are reminded of love’s ideal through a love song and maybe we can give a loved one a chance to try again.

Another song helps us feel through our disappointment and sadness. Still another transports us to a memory, still and quiet. And music is there to help us feel our happiest. We celebrate with music washing through our soul and feeling the ‘high’ that life has to offer. After all, we all have a soundtrack! Embrace it and discover more of your soul.