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[Oct. 16th, 2008|10:44 pm] |
My trip has come to an end and I am quite sad, that I have to return to Ontario, but I had a great time while it lasted.
Since I don't have a lot of time and should be packing, I'm just writing a quick entry now.
Points of interest on this trip include:
- Elbowing a bass player at a concert really hard, by accident
- Cruise Ships
- Cabot Trail
- Whales
- Dolphins
- Seals
- Lots of birds
- Fall colours
- Driving, lots and lots of driving
- Laughing like a moron, but being okay with that
- Giant landmarks
- And some more pretty awesome stuff
I have to go pack, but when I get a chance while I'm home I will write something a little more detailed and have some pictures to go along with it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 11th, 2008|05:38 pm] |
Oh hey there!
I flew to Nova Scotia last night. I'm going to be here for a week and I'm really excited about it.
I arrived at the airport about an hour and half before my flight was scheduled to leave, only to see that it had been delayed another three hours. After various text messages to the very awesome people picking me up at the airport to let them know, I ended up wandering around looking for some food and chocolate milk. I found both and enjoyed them. I still had a lot of time to kill, so I spent most of it making really ridiculous playlists on my iTunes.
We finally got to board the plane, and there were a few people after my seat, because it was the same as the boarding gate number. The flight went pretty well though, and we landed in Halifax safely.
I found Kira at the airport pretty easily and she had made me a greeting sign, which I was really excited about! After that we booted it out to wait for Mark to pick us up outside the airport, and then we drove the rest of the night to Sydney and arrived at about 5:00 in the morning, and fell asleep pretty much as soon as we got in the door.
Kira went off to work today, but was kind enough to leave me her keys. So I went and wandered around a bit, but came back because I'm still really tired.
I wonder how Kira's doing, I hope she's not too tired at work.
I'm sure my next update will be about something I've done here that's super fun, and not when I'm so tired and zombie like.
I think I'm going to have a nap. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 27th, 2008|01:04 pm] |
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This is a bit overdue, but this journal is on hiatus for the next few months. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 29th, 2008|10:49 am] |
I decided that I wanted to update this journal more frequently, and am now going to attempt to do weekly updates.
The week isn't completely over yet, but I wanted to write down some of this before I forget the details.
Saturday was a pretty uneventful day. I spent most of it sitting around or eating bread and Johanna's amazing noodles. It got more interesting that evening. Johanna's friends from Giessen stopped by and they convinced us somehow to go out to a bar and watch the Eurovision Song Contest. They are apparently big fans. Her friends were very nice and bought us drinks. One of them had studied in Vancouver so she was excited to talk to a Canadian and the other one had been to Guatemala as well so we also got along really well.
We then took a taxi home, then went out to McDonalds. I got fries and won a free soft drink. That was good, because I was thirsty after eating fries.
After McDonalds we headed back to the apartment and called it a night.
Sunday was another lazy day. Johanna's friends left to go to a dog show pretty early in the morning and we exchanged information so that I now have some friends in Hessen. After we all said good bye I spent most of it eating bread again. and later on after bread eating I was craving some ginger ale and so we went out to the gas station to get some. Nothing is open on Sundays here, with the exception of some kiosks and gas stations, and everything is over priced. It was also a gamble walking to the gas station, since there was no gaurantee of them even selling some ginger ale, however, I found some and it was pricey, but tasty.
Johanna and I hung around the living room drinking gingerale and eating ice cream, and watching youtube videos for the rest of the afternoon.
 Her flatmates came back that evening with Turkish pizza for us and we set up her computer so we could watch movies. We ended up watching the Jungle Book, which was all in German and so I had a hard time understanding it, and I had figure out what was going on by memory from when I last watched it. After the Jungle Book, her flatmates wanted to watch Halloween, so they put that on, it was in German and English. It kept switching between the two languages, which made it more amusing than anything to me.
After the movies we all said good night and everyone went to bed.
Monday I woke up. Everyone had gone off to work already so it was another quiet afternoon in the apartment for me. I decide to have a shower and then get some breakfast, which was left over pizza.
I spent the rest of the day preparing and packing for my interview on Tuesday in Frankfurt. I was interrupted by a lot of commotion going on out side; it's not unusual to hear sirens going off out side of the building, because we're in the city on a pretty busy street, but this was more than usual, so I stepped out on the balcony to see what was going on. A fire apparently.
I went back inside and had some lunch. I had left over noodles (I think they are even better as left overs) some salad and more bread, then wrote down my schedule for Tuesday.
 I cleaned up my lunch stuff and tidied the kitchen. People started to come home from work, and we all sat on the couch and chatted for a bit, or they weren't chatting with me I listened and tried to figure out what was being said. I'm getting better at that. I can distinguish certain words in their speech and relate them back to another time they were used, so it ends up that I can sometimes get an idea what the conversation is about.
Dinner was made, I don't remember what we had that night, but we ate, and sat around chatting some more. Eventually it got dark and late, and we all went to bed. I double checked to make sure I had everything ready for Frankfurt, and then lay awake on the couch for along time. I was nervous and had trouble falling asleep so I chatted with Kira on-line for a bit until my internet cut out and I decided that was my hint to go to sleep.
 Tuesday, I woke up at 5:04, and realized I didn't need to be awake that early, and fell back asleep. My body goes into panic mode when I am nervous about something and I will wake up a lot in the middle of the night thinking I have over slept. It's really annoying.
I woke up again at 6:30, and decided to get up and have a shower. I still didn't need to be up that early, but everyone in the house starts to get up around the same time and we'd all be fighting over the shower pretty soon. So I thought I'd get that out of the way, so it was free for the others. I got dressed, and since I was anxious to leave, I decided to walk down to Cologne Hauptbahnhof rather than take the U-Bahn. It was about a half out walk, and it helped me to relax a bit.
I hadn't eaten any breakfast yet that morning so when I arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, I went to a bakery called Back Werk and got a chocolate croissant and some apple juice, then went off to get my train ticket. I had to fight with three different machines, but one eventually worked and gave me the proper ticket to Frankfurt. I had unfortunately forgotten to purchase my ticket at least 3 days in advance, so I had to pay full price. Which was a bit shitty, but I guess I'll remember next time. I headed up to the platform to wait for the train,  and finally eat my croissant. While enjoying breakfast, they announced that my train would be about 10 minutes late. Everyone there waiting got all groaned at once, and one lady started shouting at one of the Deutsche Bahn employees on the platform. I felt bad for him, it's not his fault the train isn't on time. I put on my iPod and ignored the random irritated people, and eventually the train showed up. It was only about 4 minutes late in the end. I got on and experienced my first ICE train experience, and it was very comfortable, fast, and much more enjoyable compared to the 10 hour train trip I took from Berlin to Cologne, on the regular line trains. Though the entire time, I kept thinking about that Discovery Channel documentary about the ICE train that got derailed in a small town in Germany, then I decided I need to stop watching disaster shows on Discovery Channel.
The train slowed down, when it got to the Frankfurt Airport. I wasn't sure if the airport was also the main station so I asked the friendly DB staff on the train, and she told me to stay on the train until the next stop, and so I did.
I arrived at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof about 5 minutes later and 10 minutes ahead of schedule, and looked around for where to take the S-Bahn. I ended up outside at one point, and the first thing I saw was someone shooting up in between two parked cars. The Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is located right by the Red Light District, and apparently though things have gotten better over the years it's not unusual to see people doing this outside the station. Anyways, it made me uncomfortable so I headed back into the train station, to try and get my bearrings instead, and ended up finding an entrance to the S-Bahn inside the station. I headed down the stairs and found a schedule and hopped on the appropriate train out to a suburb of Frankfurt called Dreieich where I would have my interview. 
The woman greeted me at the Dreieich-Buschlag train station, there and was very nice. She drove me back to her house where her husband and two children were. She runs english lessons from her home, and pretty much told me I had the job at the train station, she just wanted to get to know me and have me sit in on a class with her. I did that and it was a lot of fun. She uses a lot of hands on learning with the kids, and I think that's great. She is offering me a room in her house starting the 22nd of June, and also setting me up with a job at a summer camp. It's all really very exciting. I'm really excited to move to Dreieich, and I guess I'm going to be doing that in about 3 weeks time. It's a nice smaller area, which is what I need.
Her and her husband fed me lots of food, and let me
sleep in their guest room/my future room for the night. It was the best I've actually slept in a few weeks. In Cologne it's really noisy because I'm downtown, but I was in a residential area in Dreieich, and so it was a lot quieter. 
Anyways, today I trying to enjoy my celebratory Mac and Cheese I bought at an English/American import shop a few weeks ago, but I bought a generic brand of it because it was the cheapest, and now I wish I had spent the extra money. It tastes like nothing. Just a bunch of warm mush.
I was saving it for a special occasion, because it was really pricey. Yeah that's right, saving mac and cheese for a special occasion!
This has taken me quite a while to write, so I think I'm going to end it now. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 4th, 2008|09:37 pm] |
I strangely enough do not have too much to update about. I have pictures, they are all also on Facebook, so I appologize for there not being anything new here, but if you haven't seen them on Facebook then I guess they are new to you.
Life in Cologne is really nice, I like the atmosphere of the city. I hope to get out and do some more exploring this week, since I didn't have a good chance to do that this week, hopefully the weather will continue to be beautiful.
I've mostly just been helping people move and sitting around. Tomorrow though I have plans to go post card shopping. I hope I can find ones I like that aren't so expensive. I find ones I like and then look at the price and change my mind.
Anyways here are some pictures of Berlin and Cologne. Berlin pictures are more touristy than my Cologne ones so far.
( Pictures )
One last thing, please don't hate me or assume I'm dead if I don't respond to your emails right away. Ha, it seems since I've been away my new messages in my inboxes have increesed like 110%, so I'm slowly getting back to everyone. Keep sending them though! I love keeping in touch with you guys!
Anyways, hopefully I'll have a more interesting update for you guys soon enough! |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|03:53 pm] |
Week 1 is now over, and was a greater struggle for myself than I had imagined. I probably spent more time feeling sorry for myself than enjoying my time in another country.
I didn't really prepare myself for homesickness or culture shock, because the last time I went travelling I only really experienced reverse culture shock and homesickness once I got home, and was kind of figuring this would be the same. However, I was completely wrong.
It hit me in full force. I think this time, it's because though I knew I was in a different country, I'd often forget, and then when the realization hit me it was a really overwhelming thing for me to know that everyone I know is actually so far away.
I ended up going to my orientation and deciding to leave Berlin, and head to Cologne. I e-mailed a friend of mine asking if she knew of anywhere cheap for me to stay or if anyone was looking for a flat mate, and ended up e-mailing me back to let me know that I could stay with her for awhile, until I got things sorted out. Which is really, really, really super nice of her to do, since she is in the middle of moving at the moment.
Here's what went down in week one.
I learned people in Berlin LOVE their bicycles. I think I may have almost been killed by a bicycle rather than cars whenever I stepped on to the road to cross the street.
I got stopped by a bunch of people protesting. One guy just kept going on and on about various world issues, and kept wondering where exactly he was going with the topics, like I thought he was going to ask me to sign some petition or something, but no he just kept rambling on. At one point I mentioned that I was Canadian, when he was talking about how young Europeans need to get more involved in the world, and he ended up looking at me and saying 'Oh, you're Canadian? I thought you were German!' after talking to me in English the entire time.
Anyways, after about 20 minutes of being talked at I politely excused myself by telling him I got separated, from my tour group and had to go.
I walked around...a lot. Like endless hours of walking. It helped keep my mind off of missing home, and I got to be a bit of a tourist. Though I wish I had taken up an opportunity to go on one of the free walking tours, because thought I visited a lot of touristy areas, I don't really know why certain things are touristy.
I discovered, I have horrible luck with hostels. Those at BF, will remember the struggles I had with the hostel in Toronto, and my dad ended up saving the day.
The atmosphere at this hostel was really nice and laid back, although maybe a little TOO laid back. I think I mentioned somewhere that when I had arrived at the hostel, my reservation was under a different name, and so it took them about 30 minutes to sort it all out. While I stood there jetlagged, and sobbing at the front desk. Ugh, how embarrassing, I remember though all I wanted to do was go and lie down and sleep and I was so frustrated because my luggage hadn't shown up at the airport, and then I couldn't even check in to the hostel.
While the staff were helpful, they seemed like they wanted to be doing nothing more than texting behind the reception desk than doing their job.
After my second night, I booked 4 more nights at the hostel, and I got put into what I referred to as The Reject Room. It was the only room that wasn't painted, it made weird noises, there was no lock on the door, it was beside the smoking room, the shower was broken, and it had 10 really gross looking beds. I asked numerous times if I could change rooms, but it was always the only one available.
One night I shared the room with a girl backpacking around England, and some creepy guy. The second night, I was excited because I thought creepy guy was gone, but he showed up again at 1 in the morning.
My last nights were much better though, I had some students from Spain in the room with me and they were all friendly, so when I checked out on Saturday morning I was actually I little sad to leave The Reject Room.
I got a discount card for the next time I stay there though, but I don't think I ever will again. Though the rooms are cheap everything else costs extra money, and they want a lot too. It was a little ridiculous.
I had my orientation this week, it went pretty well, and like I mentioned I ended up deciding to come to Cologne instead of staying in Berlin. The man who gave me my orientation was very helpful, and was more than willing to help me out no matter what. I told him that while I was sitting there I realized how poorly I had planned this trip, and he told me not to worry, because he would do his best to make sure I could be successful over here in Germany.
So it was really nice of him, and I'm starting to get all of my things sorted out and trying to plan this trip as I go now.
We both agreed that giving it a shot for 3 months was a good plan, unless something major happened and I had to go home earlier. We both agreed that would give me time to decide if this plan really was a good idea for me or if it really was at a bad time. I hope it turns out to be a good idea. I mean I think it will be, I'm feeling much more optimistic this week about this anyways.
Saturday morning I got up bright and early to check out of the hostel and take the Train to Cologne. I got to the train station and went to buy my ticket and almost ended up buying the more expensive ticket, when luckily some guy was like 'NO! Get that one, it will save you so much more money!' so I did, and though I saved money, it was quite a train ride. It took 10 hours to get from Berlin to Cologne, because I had to stop and change trains numerous times. However I noticed the further I got away from Berlin the friendlier the people were. One man even carried my insanely heavy luggage up the stairs for me, after seeing me curse it and whip it around when it wasn't cooperating. Then he informed me that there was an elevator I could have used. Oh...how embarrassing. Haha.
I made it to Cologne, where my friend met me outside the train station, we then sat by the river and ate some delicious pizza. It was so good. I cannot even describe it to you.
Yesterday I wandered around Cologne for a bit, and got to know this area.
I'm really liking it a lot better here, it's much more open and I don't feel as cramped in as I did in Berlin.
It's a little rainy out today so I decided to stay in and do some job hunting and all of that fun stuff, so we'll see if I hear back from any of them.
Ah, I realize this entry is getting less descriptive as I go, but I'm getting lazy and tired.
I guess to finish this off, I will say, that I would love to give Berlin another chance, just when I'm a little more settled in, and am willing to be a bit more of a tourist, rather than a mopey lump.
Let's hope I have some good luck down in this area. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 20th, 2008|05:37 pm] |
Wow, I never realized that the last date I updated this would be 3 years to the date that I take off again. Weiird, but not really.
Anyways I'm on the hostels internet, which I have to pay for, which kind of sucks, but they've been pretty helpful to me the past few days.
The trip here doesn't seem as dramatic as it did yesterday. I hadn't slept well on the plane to Heathrow, any ways I had to transfer there which went smoothly, I slept for a bit on the flight to Berlin, but since it was a short flight, it wasn't long enough.
I got off the plane and headed towards German customs, which was actually fairly simple, considering I usually have trouble at customs because I get too nervous. I got asked one question, then was allowed through and then headed to baggage claim, where my bag was nowhere to be claimed. The staff at the airport were somewhat helpful, but not very, and nothing is signed well, so it took me forever to find where I was supposed to go to tell them that my bag had not shown up.
When I did finally find where I was supposed to go the lady told me that she had tracked my bag, and that it was still at Heathrow, but it should come in today,and she would have a car deliver it to the hostel for me.
I was tired, but I thought to my self not to go into panic mode about my luggage not being delivered, because it happens all of the time to people. So, I decided to make my way to the hostel, which I managed pretty well, however when I got to the hostel to be confirm that I was here and all that jazz, they said that I was not booked. I could feel my eyes watering up, and told myself to cool it, but I couldn't ; The combination of jet lag, missing luggage and soar feet caused me to embarassingly start sobbing uncontrolably to the people at reception. They got it sorted out though, turns out the people who booked me in here, messed up and put me down as someone else.
My luggage arrived later that night, after I had a nice long nap. I came downstairs to e-mail people to let them know I was still alive, and saw my luggage sitting there. It was a beautiful moment.
I woke up today, feeling a little lonely, and I still am. I haven't realy met any people yet. But I did go out for a walk and got to know the area a bit. It's really beautiful around here. Tomorrow I might go on a tour or something, and bring my camera with me, but we'll see.
Anyways, I'm running out of time so I should go.
I'll hopefully update again soon. |
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