Berlin Is Full of Things

Wow, it's been almost six months since I've been in Germany. I find this absolutely ridiculous. It feels neither like I've been here that long nor like I haven't, rather it's like I'm in some parallel universe where time doesn't feel quite the same. Things are settled and then they're not. Crazy.

Let's see. I went to Prague for Christmas and New Years. Spent New Years Eve at the Meet Factory at an event thrown by the Prague Couchsurfing Winter Camp, which was cool because it meant everyone was open to talking to strangers. I talked to a lot of people, got a lot of free things (ex: champagne) passed to me, danced with random people and rocked the fuck out.

Happy New Year! Andrea, me and Nicole.

I went to Prague really homesick for it and it was great being there, but also really sad that most of the people I made all my memories in that place with were gone. I could feel their ghosts all around. Was very nice to see my friends that still live there though and I ate very well. My Czech and Czech pronunciation became all but non-existent though. Oops. At least I ordered coffee successfully in Czech my last day without being Englished.

I really like my job and though I only work part-time, it's kept me pretty busy. Since I last posted, I've even successfully expanded my visa to allow me to legally be a Project Assistant for this job! It really is like when I go there my brain slips into super-productivity mode and I forget there is an outside world for 7 hours. It's sometimes nice when there are 100 things like paying taxes, handing in more paperwork I should have already, my social life and my inability to just chill out that would otherwise plague my mind. I could use maybe 5 or so hours more of work per week, just so I can earn extra money to spend on traveling and fun things, but I really don't want to go back to work for a big language school again after the kita-contract nightmare. I'd love to just do coat check or something easy like that one night a week.

I've done pretty well on my intention to develop traditions here, though it is too soon to call them "traditions". Have so far checked out two pub quizzes and a music quiz and it's been a good excuse to get my different friends together in one place…and drink on a weekday. Although honestly, it is all too easy to drink on weekdays in these parts. Besides the occasional hangover, drinking doesn't really impact my life in a negative way, but I'm thinking of doing a "cleanse" anyway just to give my body a rest because half the time it just makes me feel sleepy. Sometimes I feel like going to a bar with people and drinking is something I do just because I'm not sure what else to do. While that's fine I would prefer to be more enthusiastic about what I do with my time instead of drinking just because it's there. After my birthday. Maybe.

Two weeks ago I went to a vegan brunch at a couchsurfer's flat in Steglitz. She cooked about 15 of us strangers TONS of vegan food and it was super nice and I met a few cool people. I also discovered a FRENCH vegan brunch I've been meaning to check out and will hopefully be attending another new monthly vegan brunch this weekend besides the one at the housing collective in Wedding I usually go to. I love brunch.

Last weekend went to some art openings with a friend as part of this festival called Transmediale. I saw a force field! Also went into a crazy room where these speakers made it feel like things were whispering in my head, so maybe now I know what schizophrenia feels like. Most importantly, I discovered this exists:

C-Base

It's the entrance to a co-working space/bar/hangout for computer geeks! It's exactly what a place designed by computer people looks like in my head and reminds me of the vibe I got from any hacking movie I've ever seen, with coffee tables made from archaic computers and all. All of my computer geek friends would pee themselves, basically. I peed myself and don't even fall into that category since I can't make Excel do what I want. Apparently there is a basement that has space capsule like things and more hangout space for members downstairs and if a non-member goes down they ring an alarm to alert everyone. I love that this exists. As part of the transmediale fest they were hosting an event and there were DJs with thes cool visualizations projected all over the place. I also didn't pay for a drink the entire night. I love art.

Last weekend I also went on this sustainable eco-tour of Kreuzberg hosted by a couchsurfer. We walked all over Kreuzberg and Treptow, spending over 3 hours outside in the freezing cold, but it was still really interesting and worth it. I found out about Give-Boxes, which are spread throughout Berlin and basically just these little huts where people leave stuff they don't want and can take stuff for free. I got a really pretty jar that now has my sugar in it! We also saw some squats, co-working spaces and I learned there is an animal farm in the middle of Görlitzer Park! I got to pet donkeys and sheep and almost get bitten by a swan! Exciting! I also learned there are fruit trees planted in the same park and that they plan to expand it. Free fruit! Yesterday I bought a table and rug from a woman who helped plant them!

Give-Box in Kreuzberg

Swan! Wants to eat me! Still cute!

This Friday I plan to finally check out the Dickes Bee food co-op after thinking about it and ogling the website for months. You work for three hours a month and in exchange get to order with them for cheaper prices for food, which has all been checked out for it's ethical and environmental implications. I think I even read something about oil cold-pressed in Kreuzberg, which is where I live! Yay local things for cheap prices! My mind was blown by the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn ever since I went with Brian and ever since I've wanted something like that in my life. I miss having a farm share, so hopefully this will solve my problem once the weather warms up a bit. They also have social events and such. I'm heading over there this Friday for their meeting, we'll see!

I'm planning on finally starting German classes up again because I've been sort of emo and feeling like my German is stagnant and not improving at all. I could study myself for free, but I really just need someone to force me to learn vocabulary and use grammar concepts I avoid, so I think this will be good. Two evenings a week C1 course. I'm excited to have an excuse to sit in cafes and do my homework again, honestly. I justify the cost by thinking if I'm going to spend money, it might as well be for something productive like school, yeah? Yeah. This is also going to lead to more money spent on coffee. I need to buy a coffee grinder here. Fuck instant.

Still working on making friends. I know a lot of people, a lot of really cool people, but sometimes I still feel like I need to build a more solid group of MY people, who I have a lot in common with and a sense of us just  *getting* each other. This involves getting to know some of the people in my life better and reaching out to other ones. Since my life was so stressful and crazy in the beginning, my social life sort of got put on the back-burner, thus it's time. I'm sick of being drunk and clubbing all the time (I say that, and I'll probably end up out dancing tomorrow, so ist das Leben). Regardless, it'd be nice to have more friends I could just chill with, without having to make all these formal plans because lately I just feel like doing silly nerdy things or drinking at someone's house and rolling around on the floor. This is the first time I've moved somewhere without a social network already in place. Most of my life it was school or university that provided a network of friends and in Prague it was my TEFL course that connected me to my first friends and their connections, so here I am really building up my life from scratch.

Our house-warming party is this weekend and it will be interesting. For one, I've never had all of my friends in one place together. My housemates and I also all seem pretty different, so it will be interesting to see our friends all combined with alcohol. You're officially invited if you're in Berlin!

Oh, and yesterday I was FINALLY successful with the German post and got my FIRST Christmas present from my parents. The first time they ALL got sent back. This time my Mom sent a smaller package to my job. When I got to work there was a letter saying I needed to go to the Zollamt (customs office) to collect it and that I'd have to pay for them storing it. I was super pissed and thought I'd have to go pay tax on it. I got to the office after work, which was way out of my way in Schoeneberg, and had to wait an hour and a half in a PACKED waiting room. Once I got in they made me open the box, then poked and unwrapped everything and asked me what it was. Not the way I expected to open my gifts. Luckily, I got to take everything home with me, even the sourdough starter that looked really sketchy and they didn't make me pay anything. When I asked them what the problem was, they said I was probably just a random spot check. I asked them, "So I'm just unlucky?" "Yeah, we apologize for that." Ugh.

Tomorrow I get to work from home, which is great because I can sleep late. For someone who only works 20-25 hours a week, I don't know how I manage to never have enough time to sleep. There is just so much more interesting stuff to do while I'm awake!

First Week in Rostock and Couchsurfing in Hamburg

I survived the first week! It's been interesting to say the least, I think I'm finally beginning to get the hang of my routine. Though I normally live in Berlin, my boss asked me if I could teach an intensive English course in Rostock. I said yes, so now I teach 9 students who're currently training to work for Deutsche Bahn as the people who collect and sell tickets, check the tickets on the train, etc. As part of their training they're required to take a 6 week intensive English course. After that, they have to take Swedish and Danish. Crazy, huh?

As such, I'm here in Rostock until November 10th. For those not in the know, Rostock is in eastern Germany in the north. I teach 8 teaching units a day (45 min each), 5 days a week from 8am to 3pm. It is a LOT of class a day and I think we're all still a bit in shock! Sometimes it feels like too much as the students tend to be pretty done with learning for the last hour and a half or so. However, now that we've started to do English trivia at the end the spirits have raised a bit! Since the students are required to take the course, there are 1-2 that seem that have absolutely no desire to learn English and sit on their iPhones while everyone is doing group work, which can be frustrating. However, there are also some really motivated and funny students in the class, so I'll take the good with the bad. Every day gets a bit better as we all get used to so much English all the time!

I was told the students were all beginners, but in reality I have the younger class and they've all had English before. Thus, we're going through the textbook a lot quicker than anticipated and I've spent a long time each night planning my own material. It's kind of exhausting at times to plan for 8 teaching units a day when I get home, but I know I'm going to be a much stronger and confident teacher by the end of it. The first week was definitely up and down, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it and know I'll be happy for this "teaching boot camp" experience at the end! Luckily there is another teaching here with me whose taught these courses for many many years and he's given me a ton of great worksheets and ideas, which I am eternally grateful for.

Did I mention I'm teaching English in the German language? At least mostly. Oh yes. My German has improved so much since I've been here. Sometimes I feel really bad if a student asks me a question about grammar in German and I don't understand, so hopefully by the end of the 6 weeks I'll have my German grammar vocabulary down.

All I have to say is thank goodness for TEFL Worldwide and the internet. There are so many great resources online. Since I only have my own accent (duh) and the students need to practice with as many accents as possible since they'll likely be working with tourists, I can download listening dialogues in British English and the like. The book "Learning Teaching", which I had to buy during the TEFL Worldwide course, has also been immensely helpful. I've been reading that for ideas and advice during several of my "oh my gosh how am I going to teach this?!" freakouts. I still feel like I'm at the beginning teaching stage most of the time, so I tend to obsessively plan my lessons and end up spending way too long worry about every detail. The book sometimes describes me exactly and while sometimes it sucks to realize you made a teaching mistake, it's nice to know I made a normal teaching mistake and have suggestions for how to do it better next time.

First week behind me, I headed into Hamburg for the weekend, which is 2 hours away. It was a 3-day weekend for the reunification of Germany and the weather was absolutely beautiful. I used Mitfahrgelegenheit for the first time, which is basically organized hitchhiking/rideshare. You can buy group tickets here, where it's the same price for up to 5 people. Thus in this area people often buy a group ticket and post on the Mitfahrgelegenheit website to gather up people so we all pay less. I got to Hamburg for a mere 6 EUR and had an awesome ride with three German girls and a woman from Khazikstan who now lives in Germany. We all spoke German the way up and shared some good stories. I learned the phrase "Einmal in, alles din" (literally "one time in, everything inside") from the woman from Khazikstan about how she got pregnant at 17, which is my new favorite German phrase (even though it's a bit grammatically incorrect). I also made a friend in Rostock as one of the girls in our ride group normally lives in the city, so yay! I love that things like this exist in Europe and the community aspect of it all. Not only did I get a super cheap ticket, but met a lot of cool people to hang out with on my ride to Hamburg!

Found this in the train bathroom on the way to Hamburg!

Over the weekend I couchsurfed with two vegan girls in Hamburg. I should also give a shout out to how much I love couchsurfing. I met up with one of my hosts for delicious vegan burritos in the Schanzenviertel, explored, chilled in a park with my Kätt's friends and watched people slack-lining, cooked a nice vegan meal for dinner (and introduced everyone to rice crispy treats with some vegan marshmallows I brought from home) and then ended up a a party at a local dorm. Again, it's so cool that websites like this allow me to go to a city where I don't know anyone and end up in someone's flat, meeting their friends and leaving with new friends of my own.

Chrissie and Kätt (my hosts) with our dinner!

Now on to week two! Before I leave I want to couchsurf in another city in the area and hopefully check out Copenhagen!

Montreal in Winter (brrrrrr)!

From Feb 3rd to 16th my good friend Lisa from Brighton, England came out to where I'm living currently in Northampton, Massachusetts to visit me. We decided to be super crazy and trek up to Canada in the depth of a New England winter. To explain how cold a New England winter is, let's just say there was a night it got down to -25F (about -32C) and around the time we went anything above 20F (-7C) seemed pretty warm. Lisa had never couchsurfed before, so we set out in search of a host. I'd been to Montreal a few times before, but mostly with my parents and mostly doing super touristy things...so I was excited to actually meet someone who lived in the city and get more of an insiders' perspective! The above picture is the street we stayed on.

On the way up we stopped at a rest stop in Vermont...that we decided was the best rest stop ever. Most notably, they gave us FREE COFFEE!!!!!! and they recycled our poop on site right after we made it!!! Here is Lisa being British with her free tea in front of the plants that were possibly munching on our poop right then and there! I would also like to mention that going into a greenhouse at a rest stop was pretty awesome after the freezing snow.

"Lisa, there will probably be a sign that says 'Last Exit in America'! Good tourist picture opportunity!" There was no such sign, but this was the last exit in America! Commence shitting ourselves about going through customs. They were so scary! Especially the American side, which had about 10 cameras and snapped our picture as we drove through.

When we arrived, our host Shanty greeted us with homemade pizza and Canadian beer! Then we promptly went and fell asleep after all the excitement from our journey. The next morning we trekked out and walked all along Mont Royal and found this awesome cafe called Kahwa Cafe where we partook in free Wifi, lattes and hot chocolate made with fair-trade coffee and chocolate and people watched got our internet fix. The best part about this place were all the cool math and physics problems all over the walls and ceiling incorporating coffee, milk and then cafe as themes. Also they had AWESOME cups (see above).

The aforementioned math problems that were all over.

Interneting right before we went to lunch at Aus Vivres, which was freaking delicious.

While waiting for Shanty to meet us to take us for dinner in Chinatown, we found this in a mall-type building. A pink forest!


She took us into a hotel in Chinatown that had this cool walkway over lots of water and fish! In the photo is Lisa and Shanty.

Shanty and Lisa again. This was a really cool outdoor interactive art thing on Ste. Catherine street made out of clear IKEA garbage cans with lights inside and motion sensors. They were all red until you walked past and then the lights turned white.

Here's a better picture to give you an idea of how big and awesome it was! We definitely frolicked around there for awhile!

Me decked out in my arctic gear, trying to make the lights turn white. I succeeded!

I have a soft spot for street art. So you'll see a bunch of pictures. Number one!

This is the outside of Shanty's flat. Montreal is known for flats with big staircases (sometimes spirals) on the outside. It looks really cool, when you're not almost falling down them in winter!

Lisa all ready for our trek out in the snow on our last day.

Even Starbucks is fancier. See: Cafe Starbucks Coffee.

Crazy alien street art on the way to lunch!

Okay, I'm immature. We went to this awesome vegetarian Asian food restaurant called Yuan, where Lisa got a mushroom that looked like a penis. It entertained us for too long. In fact, I'm still giggling...

On a similar theme, we found Sex Village!

More cool street art!

One night we went out in search of good Canadian beer and our host Shanty recommended this to me. It's apple beer, but not cider! It is soooo tasty and even has fairies on the front! So, you can't go wrong and I'm still obsessed with it. Luckily a liquor store in my town has it, albeit for a bit higher price and only in four packs. So. Tasty.

That was our trip to Montreal! It's cool to be able to drive somewhere where a different language is spoken and get my travel on again! I may or may not be heading back in late Spring...we'll see! I'd also love to get my butt out to different parts of Canada, especially Toronto!

Chester & Liverpool: Part II

You just lost The Game. Sorry. If it's any consolation, so did I and all those in Liverpool who saw this graffiti. After escaping Barnacre Farm, Hayley and I couchsurfed in Liverpool for three nights with a guy named Julian who offered to take us in in the middle of the week with only 24 hours notice. Not only did he give us space on his couch, he gave us an entire room, blankets, shampoo, tours around Liverpool and a plethora of gnome stories. When I realized I left my phone charger at the farm (and thus lost it forever), he also offered me a manual phone charger (think those flashlights that you wind up to get light), but after some 15 minutes of cranking, I gave up. Being without a phone my last 2 weeks of traveling won't kill me, I suppose.

Julian, our host, gave us a tour of the football clubs in Liverpool. I know literally nothing about football, or any sports really, unless rock climbing and my brief stint on a softball team in the 4th grade count, so I'm afraid most of it was lost on me, but it was interesting nonetheless. This is at the Everton Football Club, walking distance from where Julian lived. It's a memorial to about 100 fathers and sons who got trampled to death during a game, leading to all the stadium rooms phasing out all standing room seats in favor of actual sitting down seats only.

My friend Hayley's cousin really likes football, so she made them a sign to take a picture with in front of the Liverpool Football Club. This sort of turned into an experiment to see how many places we could get pictures with this sign. This is me on the left and our host on the right. I've never met you Patty and Kiz, but I hope you're having a great time in Australia.

Our best one though was convincing the guy at the chip shop to let us take his picture with the sign. Salt and vinegar? What a good sport.

I was bad at taking photos in Liverpool. We met up with Holly and her friends at some point, spent a lot of time at the Egg Cafe, catching up on internet and eating delicious veg food and going to bed at 9:00 pm. Then it was off back to Chester! On our first day back, we walked along the medieval walls and were given a bit of a tour of the city. Here is what I'm assuming is one of the guard towers built into the walls.

Here's the front of the Designated Pidgeon Feeding Area. Possibly the biggest birdhouse I've ever seen. We could also call this the designated pidgeon shitting area perhaps, which was the plan, as Chester was tired of them going everywhere and thus attempted to lure them to this one specific location.

Chester Cathedral. I always have the same problem photographing cathedrals: You can never get the whole thing in the photo from where you're standing and you can never get far back enough to fix that.

The main street in Chester. It's apparently somewhat unique in that in some places it has two floors of stores. This is especially handy when it rains, so you can walk around the second floor uninhibited by the drizzly grossness.

During our tour, Ollie led us into a Spud-U-Like jacket potato makin' chain to our surprise. As none of us had mentioned wanted to order a potato, I was a bit confused. Lo and behold, in the downstairs seating area was an ancient Roman Hypocaust, which is an ancient Roman system of central heating. As it was not advertised as such from above, it was an exciting surprise. Above you typical brightly colored and plastic-y chain fast food scheme, below....ancient ruins!

Here's a better picture of the Hypocaust.

We took a short trip to Habitat so Gulli could buy some silicone cupcake containers with his tax refund. Okay, I lied, it wasn't short. We love home decorating stores and pretty kitchen appliances. Hayley found a tipi. Now that we're tipi experts we had to check it out. Our verdict? The decorating scheme was much better, but you REALLY wouldn't fit 12 people in here. I also found a really badass fort bed. Want.

Chester has a river and it is pretty. View from one side of the bridge.

View from the other side.

Walking through the park, which has a TINY TRAIN YOU CAN RIDE ON!! I would have taken a whirl if it had cost less than 50p, but alas, it cost 80. I'm currently very, very cheap.

A tomb built into the structure of these ruins up high! Uhhh whaaaat?!

No, f'realz. Crazy shit.

Ollie gazing longingly into the window space. Everyone was abnormally attracted to this area.

Example A: We Love Small Spaces. And taking pictures in them.

More of the ruins. There are lots of them in Chester.

Gulli says, "I want to have a party right here!" Let's do it. Only really small-footed people so we can all fit on the stone.

So there you go, a proper touristy post about Chester. I would have done it last time, but it was way too cold and rainy so I chose sitting inside, eating vegan custard doughnuts instead.

Couchsurfing in Toulouse

I ended up leaving the Chateau in Lautrec a few days earlier than planned to couchsurf in Toulouse for the weekend. It was the only day Liz's friends could drive me to the Vielmur sur Agout train station and there wasn't much work for me to do anyway, so off I went! I'm very good at straying from my itinerary. Thus, a few days before I arrived a post was made to the Toulouse Emergency Couch group and that's how Thibault came to be my host! After hoisting my over-sized suitcase up to the flat he shares with his two friends, also students, he took me on a tour of the city. The picture above is of Place du Capitole, the main town square.

The sky looked really cool.

Thibault took me to a really cool and quaint tea place with old school decor. I then proceeded to get delicious rose tea and spill a large portion of it all over the table, but it's okay because...

I invoked the powers of camouflage with my green cardigan against the green wall. The white cup may have given it away, though.

Thibault had better tea etiquette than me.

He also had mice! I decided they were my new friends even if they were just snake food.

We drank a lot of wine at their flat with his friends, during which point I quizzed them on French curse words and music. Just in case you were wondering, if you want to piss off a French person you can tell them "Va niquer ta mère!" (Go fuck your mother), "Enculé" (Asshole), "Batard" (Bastard), "Salope" (Bitch), "Pute" (Whore), "Espèce de comnard de mes couilles" (I was told this meant something like 'asshole from my bollocks", okay!) or "Sac à merde" (shit-bag).

I'm not sure why they had these giant face cut-outs of this famous French rapper, but they did!

I went for a walk by myself on Sunday because it was so sunny and wonderful out . I found the water and it was pretty! Unfortunately, everything in existence was closed. I hate Sunday, but I liked Toulouse! Once again, couchsurfing did not let me down! I mean, how else would I ended up in the flat of some French boys who listen to awesome music and also program in Processing? Small world.