Germany, Health, Me, Myself & I, Travel

No No and Yes

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I had a doctor’s appointment this morning and I went with the intention of getting confirmed that my asthma has been really good and I’m basically fine for some disability insurance. After waiting an hour, even though I had an appointment, I spoke to the doc and she had my lungs’ functions tested after giving having me get a quadruple shot (yay for multiple protection in one shot). Well, it turned out that my lungs are only having about 75% of normal capacity right now and some test was even at 65%. I was like “huh?! Nooooooo!” as I really do feel great and my nordic walking is much faster with less huffing and puffing than my Mom’s who does loads of excercise. Ah well, maybe I just didn’t do the test right but either way, I’m gonna have to take some cortisol twice a day now. Fun fun. Not! But if I feel great now, imagine how I’ll feel after having taken that medicine for a while.

In the afternoon I went to the hair dresser to have my hair trimmed. Uhm yeah not too sure what to think of what she did. She just cut shorter and shorter and I was like, uhm… ok way enough. I mean my hair was way too long but I’m not really happy with what she did to me. Hmpf! No!

But yes, I got my flight confirmation and I’m gonna fly to Charlotte in 1.5 weeks and I’ll stay three weeks to relax, hang out in the pool, see all my friends again, shop, and drink loads of sweet tea! Should be fun. Yay!

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Family, Friends, Germany, Travel

Good Weekend in Bankfurt

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I realize I’ve written a lot of protected entries these days but hey, you never paid for getting 100% insight into my soul and brain and this is my blog. 😉 Some things are just not ready to be known to the world yet so have a little faith in me.

Anyways, as the heading suggests, I spent the weekend in Germany’s financial center, in Frankfurt am Main. I got invited by a company to introduce myself there and I figured it’d be wasted money if I don’t spend some time in town while I was there. I met with my old friend A for coffee and we chatted for a while until my family unfortunately called and made me do some crazy things. That morning it had been my sister’s graduation from high school (yeah unbelievable… she’s growing up and got a brain, too) so I drove my mom’s car to the train station and they were gonna pick it up with their spare key and take it home. Well, turned out my sister had lost her keys including the spare car key that god-knows-why was on her keychain to begin with. The car was standing there in a 1 hour parking zone and now they wanted me to overnight the key. OK so I’m just a bit annoyed that A and I have to leave the nice cafe and find a post office but you know, shit happens. Of course the line at the post is looooooooong. Half way through my mom calls me again to tell me to cut a copy of the key in case the post loses it. Uhm ok so we leave the line again and try to find a locksmith. Found one but he doesn’t have the right keybase to make a copy. Nicely enough he saves us a walk to the other one by calling and asking if they have one there. They didn’t. So another call to the family and we’re allowed to mail it without making a copy. Back to the long-ass line at the post office. Had a real nice post officer who actually gave us a bubble wrap envelope for free when he saw that I had wanted to buy a box and then we were finally done. You’d think my sisetr would say thank you for making it possible for her to drive to some music festival the next day and in the process kind of ruining the afternoon with the girl that was my bestfriend in middle and high school. Nope, no thank you at all and I had to ask my family to give me back the money I paid for the overnighter. Tzzz!
Anyways, enough bitching about that, I’ll just remember for the future.. Muahaha!
So after that episode, I met my friend K and after retrieving my bag from the lockers at the train station we headed to her place. She just moved to Frankfurt this year and she’s got this amazing apartment. We got some groceries with her boy (if you’re curious about how it feels for an American to live in Germany, click on that link titled Frankfurt Files on the right) and just hung out and cooked a lovely coconut chicken curry and had that with our friend I. Chatted until midnight and then just slept looong. More relaxing in the morning with nice breakfast (sorry D my stomach just wasn’t ready for eggs then ;-)) and then we met I at Starbucks in the city center and relaxed some more. I also got the tour of Frankfurt, which was kind of messed up by the Ironman event’s stages but I still got a feeling that Frankfurt is an alright enough city that’s quite livable. Water always adds a big plus to a city and walking along the Main with the skyline on the other side was just plain nice. You’d think a big city like Frankfurt would offer all sorts of food but it took us forever to find a place that was a) not way too redlightdistricty or b) too fancy=expensive. We finally settled on Chinese and I won the contest of ordering the best dish (though everyone had been eyeing it on the menu anyways, I just made the call) but even K’s sad peanut chicken was quite good. 😉
We finished off the day at a cocktail bar where we had to wait ages for our waitress to come by and she was bitchy about it too but we still got the happy hour deal.
Sunday was more relaxing with another great breakfast (yum those pancakes!) and K’s boyfriend giving me lots of great advice on negotiating salary in case I’ll ever have to… *rolls eyes*. Then it was time to catch my train again and I even came to the station to say bye so that was sweet.
Oh yeah the train ride…! My reservation was for a seat in a compartment (cause the normal seats were booked out) and this guy sitting accross my seat had his feet up on my seat when I got there and he was really big. Didn’t stop being annoying the entire train ride with putting his fat legs everywhere and dropping his big magazine on my feet without saying sorry and then hitting everyone in the compartment with his backpack. Everyone was just rolling their eyes at him. Ruuuude!
Anyways, I’m back home. Had lunch with my Dad yesterday, which was nice. My friend J came over on Monday night and I made sushi for her. Also finally got my deposit from my apartment in Werni back after calling them again. Yay, I’m rich now! Happy days 🙂

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Germany, Travel

Home

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I’m home again and guess what, the grass here is greener than that in Ireland so I’ll keep the green layout until I find something better. 🙂

The trip was fine. I didn’t sleep much the night before because I had drank some wine my roommate the night before instead of packing my bags and cleaning my room so I still had quite a bit to do in the morning and was worried I’d sleep in or not get everything done or that the taxi wouldn’t show up and what not. I got everything more or less done though and the taxi driver carried my suitcases downstairs (good, strong man).
At the airport SAS was nice enough to only charge me for 25kg instead of 30kg excess weight but then they only gave me one baggage ticket at check-in. That resulted in me asking about that at the gate coutner and then they had to take all bags out of the plane again to make sure both my bags were in there. Ah well, not my fault ;-).
In Copenhagen I ate some Smörrebröd for lunch and then walked around the shops a bit, bought an American Cosmo and read that at a cafe with a nice cafe americano. Yum! I love Copenhagen’s airport, it’s so light and they have these cool trolleys for your carry-on. Otherwise my shoulder would have been dead with lappy’s bag filled to the brim. The flight to Hanover was alright, too. I had this lady next to me who had horrible breath and she kept looking out of the window where I was sitting. Yuk! Nasty breadth!

Now I’m back home and it’s alright. Almost feels like I’ve never been gone. I did manage to put all my stuff away – sooo happy about that! I still feel super cluttered in so I guess I’m gonna have to ebay some things off this summer.
Wrote some words for my thesis today. Yay! Chapter 5 is almost finished now and hopefully I’ll get that done in the next two or three days. Wish me luck!
Oh I also planted the shamrock that Kathi had given me for Christmas today so hopefully it’ll provide me with lots of luck. I really do need some in regards to a job right now so keep your fingers crossed, pretty please!!
Well, time to snuggle up in my nice, big bed with the nice smooth sheets. Though I do have to admit, I miss my pillows from Ireland. These 40x80cm pillows are much more comfortable than the 80x80cm ones we have here.
Night night!

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Boys, Culture, Friends, Germany, Travel

I Love Germany

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Being back in Germany was so exciting! Everything was in this luscious spring green and the temperatures were much higher than in Ireland. Ok so when I landed in Frankfurt the clouds were hanging so low they were touching the trees in little cloudstrings and people don’t say sorry when they bump into you but they do try not to run you over unlike people on sidewalks here in Ireland. 😉 Having made it to the central station in Frankfurt, my mouth almost dropped because lunch rolls/bagels etc. cost about half of what they are here. I hadn’t been able to get a reservation for the train seeing that it was a holiday and probably booked out months earlier but I was lucky enough to get a tiny seat even though coach 7 (the one without reservations) wasn’t there. I had a group of fathers on their way to Berlin for father’s day sitting around me and they happily offered to share their beer and sausages with me and we chatted all the way to my town. And they were German! Nice! That was actually the second time I got free beer on the train – seems like Germans aren’t as unfriendly as I always always make us out to be.
So I got home fine and on time(!) and I relaxed a bit at my parents’ house and then my step-dad and I visited my Grand-Ma who was in hospital (she’s fine and back home now). We came back and cooked a delicious dinner of porkroast, asparagus and potatoes. Yum!
Friday I took the train to Hanover for the wood working trade show Ligna. I met up with my friend and we walked around for a bit until he had to take care of some customers. So I explored a bit more myself, looked at some artsy things made from wood, had some lunch and watched timber sports. I definitely need to remember the Ligna fair as a great place to find guys, there were maybe 20 women in total that I saw (other than the hostesses of course). 😉 Anyways, met up with my friend again and talked to a couple of his bosses and then we headed to Bad Nenndorf where their hotel was. Hung out for a bit and then went out to eat some weird Italian food for dinner. It was supposed to be Spaghetti Carbonara but was more like Spaghetti with half-raw eggs. The pizza was yummy though.
Saturday I slept in and then we headed to Hannover, checked my friend in his new hotel and then started looking for some breakfast/lunch at 2pm. Luckily there was an Alex right outside the hotel. We were too late for breakfast (wahh) but lunch was fine, too. We walked around the city for a bit but the stores were so hot and I was feeling kind of weak from the weatherchange and lack of sleep so we headed back quite soon. Hung out a bit more and then Massimo drove me home where we had a quick dinner and I gave him a tiny tour of my city. Had a cup of wine with my parents and then I just fell asleep like a stone. So tired!
Sunday I slept in a bit and then packed my bags and tried to sort through some of my things. I don’t know why, but every time I come back from a trip, my closet is still full. A pile of mail is also awaiting me and I don’t even know where I’m supposed to put all my things. Arg! I go through my clothes every time I come back from somewhere and still no space! I’m at a point where I don’t want to give away any more of my things because I’m only left with the ones I like. Ebay…. big bag full of Beany Babies, books, CDs,…
My Mom made a rhubarb cake for me (yay!) and we sat on the porch in 26C sunshine and ate it with whipped cream. Oh so nice! I just caught my train in time (they closed the Autobahn and the cars were blocking the city) and this time coach 7 was there and I got a seat all the way to Frankfurt. Got into the S-Bahn (commuter train) and some British guy sitting opposite of me asked me if it was the one to the airport. I said yeah and we chatted for a bit. So we get to the airport and he asks me to show him Terminal 2 and bla. Then he’s like can I give you my card and nice girl that I am I of course say yeah. Well, he doesn’t hand it over, he sticks it into the backpocket of my jeans. Yikes! Weirdo. Also very nice that it’s one of those free to print out cards and looks really weird. Well, ego boost nonetheless. 😉
Made it back to Dublin and now I’m working working working. Seems like my to-do list is getting longer by the minute.
So overall, I had a lovely weekend and had a great time with my friend. We still get along super great even though he’s not the nice, good guy he used to be anymore. Talk about Americanization!

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