What's another year? Hello 2018

2018 has started at it seems to continue just as 2017 had ended. I wrote an entry about 3 weeks ago. This post was somewhat never saved, except for the headline.
Trying to figure out what I wanted to write about, I can only come up with the 2nd week of january.
As it contains everything involving travel, fashion and Eurovision :)
Now a month ago I flew to Manchester. But if you now ask me what I think of the city, I cannot say. I did not see anything of Manchester really. How is that possible you might wonder? I arrived rather late on a monday and planned to leave early tuesday. Why was my trip only that short? I went there to help out a friend. He has a chat how about eurovision and in the beginning  he  had asked me if I would be willing to be a guest on his show. Naturally I would. Firstly because I will always try andhelp friends when I can and secondly we are talking Eurovision. Unfortunatelly the trip did not go as smoothly as anticipated. It was raining cats and dogs, my friend made me feel like I was not really welcome afterall and that I basically invited myself and the recording reveals how my English has made a turnfor the worse. From my Irish accent with a bit of German, living a year in Berlin I now sound like  full on German with a bit of Irish influence. I will see if I can link at least one of the audio sets at the end of this post.
The best part of the trip, however, was us having to pass by the BBC Radio city where they have Daleks and a proper Tardis on display and I got to take a picture with both - whoop whoop!

While I left for the airport at 10am, due to Ryanair delay, I did not arrive home before 6pm. The next two days I went to the Ethical Fashion Show, Premium as well as the Panorama here in Berlin. Most beneficial was the Ethical Fashion Show. I attended two presentations, one about alternatives to leather and the other about the care lable in clothing.
Did you know that we overwash our clothing? As it turns out, most of the care lables in todays garments are still on the standard of the 60s and 70s but washing machines and detergent have had huge improvments over the last few years. And most importantly: instead of putting your garments into the washing machine after every use (we are not talking underwear), hang them out into the fresh air. this is just as cleansing as a wash but more friendly not only to the environment but for the garment itself.
And did you know, you can make leather substitutes from plants as well as bacteria? Well, I think the idea of growing a garment out of bacteria is somewhat disgusting, but I have seen and touched it and it is a really nice fabric. Now, I still prefer the vegan options that use the by-product of the Olive Oil and Wine production. At this stage the alternatives are quite expensive but definetely something to consider, especially for embellishment on my garments. Let's wait 2-5 years and see how this develops. Especially waiting on the environmental impact of those alternatives.