A small update to my beggar situation. Found 110 Euros in my pocket yesterday evening which came in handy as the hotel did not accept my credit card. I only had to borrow 10 Euros to pay the full bill. I have 6 Euros and 40 cents for the rest of the week.
On completely unrelated news - the new Germany's next Topmodel starts tomorrow evening. I hope to be at home on time so I won't miss it ...
so my cash card stopped working this past weekend. I was shopping for a 31 size jeans (yeah baby - I am on my best way to the perfect surfer shape) in P&C on the zeil when it simply stopped working. It stopped working so much that not even the cash machines would accept it. so I am in Düsseldorf this week on business trip and try to pay everything with my credit card - and by 'everything' of course I mean taxi and hotel because as usual I am not doing anything else than work sleep and eat (plus the minimum bodily functions to survive of course)
I also started to sneeze like hell yesterday and it doesn't look like it would stop any time soon. But it's ok - I just hope to be up and running for the weekend.
We are just finishing up for today and I will go back to the hotel in a minute so I have to stop here.
Ok, just one more video from youtube - good night everybody!!!
wow - just realized that it has been almost 2 weeks since I wrote a couple of lines on my blog. Alba was so kind and commented yesterday (instead of enjoying Paris ...) but only today I am writing something new. The reason for the long break is work of course - since two weeks I work like a horse - at least looking back this is pretty much how it looks. I had to cancel the Spanish class as I am never here, no football, etc. This is getting pretty frustrating to be honest. But first things first.
So what happened since last time? Last week Tuesday I went to Munich to work on our project and have spent the rest of the week there until Thursday evening. Nothing special happened, no police people with guns or anything similar this time. Friday I stayed at home and went to play poker to Giulia's place in the evening. On Saturday I got a long needed haircut and somehow ended up at Alba's place in the evening for some very nice food. Even though I didn't have too much alcohol of course I ended up totally embarrassing myself by first pouring half my drink on my t-shirt seconds before going on stage to sing some Robbie Williams song with the others and afterwards by poking out Irem's eye. We put Alba to bed at some time after 3, washed the dishes and went home.
Sunday started quite late - with a headache of course and ended quite nicely. Estelle and I signed up for another speed-dating event. It was the second time for me (I went once in July 2005) and this time I didn't have any expectations. Last time it was such a desperate forced atmosphere that I was really hoping for a nice evening only. I arrived with a headache totally on time as the last person. They told me to sit at a table with another 3 guys - the "Warteschlange" - table as I started referring to it as - surprise - there were more guys than girls. At first sight the girls were incredibly good - looking and I basically couldn't believe this was the same kind of event as last time.
Anyways - after a - thank God - short ten minutes chat with the guys I sat down at the first table. Hello, my name is Gabor, bla bla bla. After 30 seconds I realize, that I am sweating like a pig sitting there wearing a shirt and a jacket so I had a decision to make. Either keep smiling and spend the rest of the evening in my private steam bath or taking off my jacket and thus destroying my chances with the first girl. I mentally said goodbye to candidate number one and took of my jacket. The rest is history...
I guess somewhere between girl number 2 and number 3 my sweating disappeared and after the first 3 girls (all working for Lufthansa - having unlimited access to cheap flight tickets!!!) girl number 4 seemed really nice. She was blond, studied law in Germany and France and had some Hungarian friends in Vienna. Sounds good enough for me :-)
Candidate number 5 was an economics student who worked as a hostess when she wasn't studying. It is probably not the best translation of what she was really doing, so I will not try to explain here. She was also very nice and we spent the regular 7 minutes plus the break talking. Girl number 6 was a bit scary - with dark black color around her eyes, girl number 7 was a nice French girl with some cool stories to tell about the other candidates. Girl number 8 was British with the most professional "Hochdeutsch" I have heard in my life. Girl number 9 was the summary of my past speed dating experiences. After 1 minute we both knew the thing is going nowhere but we kept talking.
I ended up leaving the place with putting a total of 4 crosses on my sheet of paper...
I spent another fabulous week in the NH hotel in Munich from Monday to Friday. Originally they asked us to be there until Thursday but things changed so that I had to cancel my trip to Vienna also. (Which cost me a phone call to Renate and singing Happy Birthday for her on the phone - sorry, Renate - most for the singing than missing your Birthday).
Anyway - to finish the speed dating story - they sent us the evaluation forms on Wednesday at midnight. I got 3 matches!!!! I was in heaven. I wrote some emails a day later but no replies until now so I am kind of down after a fantastic Wednesday. Too bad for the girls to miss the fantastic opportunity of going out with me ...
I am now finishing my work and will pack my stuff as I am heading to Düsseldorf for next weeks marathon - by marathon of course I mean work. Oh, almost forgot - the Oscars starts in 10 minutes. 'Till next time ...
Today was a nice day. I have sent in two expense reports that should catapult my bank account balance back to zero once processed, did a lot of work, enjoyed the afternoon sunshine and had a wonderful dinner thanks to my favourite flatmate :-)
I have also decided to watch less TV. I have these phases from time to time. They come and go and it's good like that. Did I mention it's LOST season 3 premiere on Pro7 while I am writing this and I am not watching it? So today I have been listening to www.klassikradio.de the whole evening and it's goooooooood. That reminds me of this clip I found on the internet proving how you can have special effects without all the fancy technology. It's really cool and I cannot say how I would have reacted had I been there. We will never know ...
On other totally unrelated news - I am going to Munich tomorrow on business and will return just in time for the weekend. Servus!
Zürich was nothing but a business trip - didn't see too much of the city but on the plane back to Frankfurt I met an Australian guy who happened to be travelling around Europe for business. He was looking for little gadget-like thingies for men for distribution in Australia. What a cool job.
On Thursday I stayed at home working, for lunch I had something spanish that we won at Leire and Jorge's at the Tombola on Tueasday and went to play football in the evening. It was fun, we won, everything hurts - basically the usual routine :-)
Yesterday night Estelle and I finally managed to put some doors on my PAX - Kleiderschrank in the corridor. It looks cool - there is a slight problem though as some elements conflict with the door hinges so that further engineering is needed. By engineering I mean of course heavy wood - cutting and similar destructive activities. This is the first time IKEA furniture does not behave like it should ...
I am doing this new step by step programme. It includes creating a list of things to do (done) and then doing one activity every day. I registered for the Spanish course on Monday and called the facility management company of the flat today to organise the keys for the basement. Tomorrow is going to be tough as I will be travelling to Zürich and back so that I will have to use the evening to do something. I am thinking of buying the new Aldi-PC that is available as of Thursday. I have to decide until tomorrow evening if it is a good deal or not. Hmmm - maybe this is the task for tomorrow. We shall see. I am now going to bed as I will have to get into a taxi in a bit more than 5 hours from now to make it ...
Oh, one more thing. I heard this saying today - it is a bit vulgar as Germans normally do not use the word "fuck" in everyday language as much but I thought I would write it anyway: Ich brauche keinen Sex, das Leben fickt mich jeden Tag. It was part of an email that was sent to a friend and the email contained pretty bad things about this person. Makes me feel so much better about life ...
more at http://xkcd.com
The weekend was a catastrophy. I went to Krakow last week for work. Then on Thursday evening we went out in Krakow and partied like hell. First we went to a local restaurant and had some nice local food - I don't have to mention but I still do - we had waaaay too much of it. Salad first, some local speciality called Pierogi afterwards (translated as filled dumplings according to the menu), a nice fatty soup with a sausage, a potatoe and half an egg - then we ordered the main course. I ordered the main dish with the most fat and garlic possible - I don't remember the name but it was very good. And it was our lucky day - being FAT THURSDAY we got some Berliners on the house! We had to wash the whole dinner away with another local speciality of course. And another - and another. And the fun began!
we headed to the city afterwards and went to 3 places if I have correctly counted them. the party scene in Krakow is amazing. Being a student city it is rumoured to house about 50.000 students - the clubs / bars look pretty much like in Berlin - most of them can be found in normal flats on the first or second floor - or in the catacombs. We went to a place called pauza and later to a place called Lubu Dubu - which was not easy to find but we managed. I put Krakow on my list of cities to be visited as part of my trip around the world, should it ever happen. Plus it was cheap. If you ever happen to be there - try a Tatanka, which consists of apple juice and vodka. It’s a special vodka that has a bison grass in the bottle (see picture above). It is referenced in the movie Dances with Wolves where the bison is called Tatanka I think. (I found this reference on this blog also mentioning another cool thing I have been hearing of for a while - couch surfing. gotta try that at some point!!!
After a relatively short night (2 hours of sleep) I got up to travel back home. I wanted to fly to Vienna, change planes and be back in Frankfurt at around 1 in the afternoon. Unfortunately the second part of my flight was cancelled - for strange reasons. The ladies at the Lufthansa ticket office should align their stories before telling people the reason as one reason given had to do with the bad weather in Frankfurt while another one was the bad weather in Vienna. Hmm - strange. Aaaanyway - they rebooked me for a later flight and I went shopping for a costume as I still hadn't given up going to the carneval party in the evening. Bought a perfect pirate outfit including a jacket, boots, hair and a very nice looking revolver. Of course the revolver was not allowed to board the plane even though it looked pretty ancient - but somehow I didn't feel like arguing with the nice friendly people at the airport so I gave it back. I have also bought some nice little monkeys for a necklace. The plane was full - I counted 3 people with a dress - I figured it was the Opera Ball the night before in Vienna and so I ended up sitting next to a nice lady with an extravagant hat sitting next to me. Of course we didn't talk as I slept the whole flight - only the last 5 minutes before landing did I wake up and we started talking. Turns out she was a family therapist. Well, you never know ...
I made it to the pirates party in the evening - which was great for a while but the tiredness got hold of me at some point and the long sleepless nights of the last 2 weeks finally caught up with me - or it can be that I simply didn't like this kind of parties as I always wondered. We will see next year. The rest of the weekend was spent at home - sleeping, cleaning, going through my stuff and simply relaxing.
And today I have finally enrolled to a Spanish course in the nearby Sprachcaffe. the class will be every Wednesday at 19:00 if I like it so that I can play football on Thursdays and go to the sneak Mondays and for Tuesday evening there will be something else to do. And if not, it's ok anyway. the main thing is that I can return to San Sebastian and won't have to attend the absolute beginner's class ...
