Two birds with one stone

As I had written before I am taking a Turkish class since a couple of weeks. It is going quite alright although I get a knot in my brain every once in a while. The whole language structure is completely upside down in comparison to English, Swedish and German. I have a very nice teacher, who has all kinds of advise how to get vocabulary into the brain. Right now our whole apartment is plastered with sticky notes saying "fridge", "light switch", "door", "shoes", "mobile" and so on. The tricky grammar stuff is at the bathroom mirror as I spend a little bit more time over there. Since I put the numbers, grammar structures and conjugations there two positive side effects occurred.

1.: I brush my teeth longer and even use mouth wash again just to spend more time in front of the mirror, trying to memorize everything.

2.: My roomie also learns Turkish now. I bet she can count to 10 by now :-)

Another advise of our teacher is to use index cards for vocabulary on to always carry it around, for example on the bus or subway. I admit, I am a little geeky from time to time, but I decided to do the language course thing right from the beginning. So I am actually one of the geeks on the subway studying with index cards. And it actually works!

If I had had the same ambitions back in the days in school I probably would have understood French. But right now just the sound of that language makes me gag (sorry, I got nothing against French people, I just dislike the language!).

Me like?

Well since I am unable to survive without music, I also always try to find new songs, old bands, songs that touch me and I am always most happy if I discover someone really really good by coincidence.

Latest discovery is the new band of Liam Gallagher. I am really not sure if I like it, it just sounds too much like Oasis (which I ADORE) but still not quite as good. Liam's voice is simply too recognizable but everything else is just not convincing. Same same as Oasis but still different.

Then my long-time favs Beatsteaks have released their new album. I am sorry, but I am so disappointed. I always loved them but somehow I had higher expectations after years of break. What a shame, was so looking forward to that. Still love Arnim's voice, still love just staring at him, but... it is just not enough... yet. Maybe I get there after a few more times listening to it.

Then I also realized very late that Gogol Bordello had released a new album last year. Since the wonderful balkan-wedding of Svetlana and Andrea I discovered balkan and gipsy music even more for me, like Shantel and well, Gogol Bordello :-)

I am trying to get used to Berlin (I know, I have heard often enough that I should feel damn lucky to be here) so I opened the concert season again and spend all my spare money on concert tickets. Coming up: Friska Viljor, Kaizers Orchestra, System of a Down and I am still considering getting Mando Diao tickets.

They are just too big in Germany and I am not sure if I am still able to stand in a teenage girls crowd. Always so exhausting and impossible to listen to hear the music with all the screaming. Unfortunately all tickets for Robyn in March are sold out. Maybe I can find a spare ticket somewhere... Would be great!

Alrighty then, time for sleep and sweet dreams. xx

Playing games

Love has an uncounted number of synonyms and is probably the reason for the most wonderful songs on this world.

Right now nobody describes love better for me than Pat Benatar: Love is a battlefield. And when are you most confronted with that topic? Right! On Valentines day. I am one of the poor fellas that has been heartbroken right before lover's day. Speaking of timing, huh?

In war like in love there are no rules, this already implies that sooner or later somebody will be hurt. However I refuse to take the safe road and hold back my feelings for someone simply because of the fear to get hurt because what's the point then? I rather have been madly in love with somebody and be crashed and burned badly than looking back and realize that I have never loved. As much as it hurts me to admit that right now, but it is true. For all the pain that I am feeling right now I am still grateful that even after all those painful experiences of the past years that I am still able to love somebody unconditionally, madly, unreasonably, to the moon and back.

Little background story: Just imagine somebody telling you those magic three words and after half a year basically takes them back again. I am not making this up, things like that happen also in real life, not only in cheesy soap operas. And for a fact I know that I am not the only one trapped in such an awful soap.

When finding yourself in extreme situations sooner or later the only thing that seems to count is power. Who has the last word, who has said what, whose turn is it to apologize, who needs to make the first step and so on. Love is therefore not only a battlefield but also a big playground for childish and unreasonable behaviour. I am not excluding myself from that although I like to believe that I am still kind of reasonable and down to earth. Speaking to my girlfriends I hear the funniest, saddest, weirdest, most disturbing and entertaining stories from their love playground. It is fascinating to see that even the most reasonable friend of mine is capable of doing insane things, say the most hurtful things to a person she supposedly is in love with just because of jealousy, love or whatever you might wanna call those extreme feelings.

The classic "playing games" would be of course: Person A likes Person B (the gender is of no importance here,both men and women can be truly fucked up), as soon as Person A shows more affection than Person B, Person B looses interest. (The same can happen vice versa.) As soon as Person A realizes that Person B is not returning as much affection, Person A is holding back. This creates more interest in Person B, causing Person B to show more affection to Person A. Person A being happy that the whole "holding back" has worked out... and so on. We all know that game either exactly that same way on in slight variations but the general dynamics stay the same.

Another type of playing games would be a concept called the "what-if" person. The general concept behind this that we have a so called what if person, a person of which we always wonder if things could have worked out. This person stays something like a mystery, you never know if things would have worked out in a parallel universe or even in reality. We like to stay in occasional contact with that person just to see what this one special person is up to, check the relationship status on facebook and so on. We might not admit it to ourselves but mostly there are pretty well defines reasons why we are not together with the what-if-person. Let it be distance, just being into the looks of the person or not that much into the character, liking the persons way of thinking but not liking the outside (yeah admit it, sometimes we are just superficial!), whatever the reasons might be, but there is at least ONE reason why it would never work with the what-if person. The simplest explanation: we know exactly that we have idolized that person so much in our minds that we know that hit by reality we can only be disappointed.

I find myself wondering if those games are really inevitable? How do those happy couples around me, that got married recently or will get married soon, manage to reach that point of getting married, admitting to each other that they want to spend of their lives together? I always seem to end up with boys that first are head over heels and after a while back-off and realize that they enjoy being singles and wanna take things slowly (meaning pushing me away). Am I picking the wrong men or are the wrong men picking me? Am I making decisions in the whole mess or am I just following someone else's lead?

I once had this all absorbing, unconditional, harmonic, crazy, honest love and it somehow got fucked up as well after years of wonderful being together. This man wanted to be with me, would have done anything for me, followed me wherever, supported my every decision, even if it meant letting me go far away for a while if it meant making me happy, the kind of love that many write songs about. Where did that love go? Where does love go to when it suddenly just disappears? Interesting side note is that we never actually used the L-word but just knew that we love each other.

Little message from me to all you girls and boys who are fans of big romantic words: Instead of telling someone "I love you" and by this raising expectations, rather SHOW that you love the person with smaller and bigger gestures. In the end this does not put that much pressure on a fresh relationship but in my opinion rather creates a atmosphere of love. The L-word is a very very big deal to me, three words full of hope, expectations and meaning that are used way too casual if you ask me. But hey, that's just my opinion.

One thing we can conclude for sure: When a heart breaks it don't break even, but time will for sure heal all wounds and I KNOW that I will still be able to fall in love! Because I want to!

Sleep tight all my wonderful friends all over the world! xx

The Script - Breakeven (Official Video)

Berlin calling

Good morning!

If one of you was wondering, why everyone is hyping Berlin, this article might bring some clarification. I am still not the biggest fan of the city and still have a severe allergy against hypes but the writer certainly got a point or two.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/berlin-became-coolest-city-planet-97748

BTW: also give the comment section a glance and discover the clash between tourist opinions and born Berliners (fyi: born Berliners are of course the ones claiming that no one else understands the city like they do and no one who moved to Berlin is allowed to have an opinion about the city)

Trying to be strong

I am trying out new approaches. Approach number one: trying to be reasonable. Meaning: taking a job that I did not really want, moving to a city that I swore to myself I would never move to, resisting the travel urge in me that wants to join my lovely friend Michaela, who has just landed in Bangkok and will spend the next 3 months traveling around in Southeast Asia, and my handsome friend Pedro, who will go to Bali for a month.

Although there is nothing else I wanna do RIGHT NOW but leaving this city and see the wonderful places on earth, I have to stick to one thing for once. Stockholm has not exactly been easy in 2010. I had found a job which turned out to be awful and boring, frustrating and depressing. So this time I had no high expectation of the job but was positively surprised by the atmosphere and my co-workers. There is a lot going on in this company. Every other week we are meeting after work for some drinks, there are Christmas parties and Christmas bonuses, there are bonuses for good work, there are plenty of opportunities to develop within the company and so on. So maybe it is not the worst thing to be reasonable for a change (though the travel bug is quite intense...)

Maybe I just need to stick to one thing for a change, see if I can last for half a year or even a year before I follow another dream. First traveling for a while and then moving to Istanbul. You cannot imagine how badly I fell in love with this city. I have been there a couple of times now and can say with absolute certainty: I wanna move there for a while. Luckily a friend of mine from Stockholm, who is half Turkish is also considering leaving Stockholm and moving to Istanbul. That would be truly amazing.

Three weeks ago I started taking Turkish lessons, which I enjoy a lot. The language is quite demanding because the whole structure is kind of upside down in comparison to Swedish and German. However I am enjoying it a lot. Last weekend when I went to Istanbul again I had my first mini conversation with a taxi driver, which went quite alright. Since he made a few compliments, which I understood, he was expecting to get double the money than the journey costs... nice try!

The mentality will surely be very difficult in the beginning, but with some determination (which I definitely have) I think this will be an amazing adventure. It is something to look forward to.

This is basically the key how to survive a rough patch or in my case a patch of reason: creating the light at the end of the tunnel. I am back to writing applications for Istanbul and planning my summer. I bought several concert tickets for Friska Viljor, Kaizer's Orchestra and System of a down. I am also planning on going to the Capoeira workshop again in Portugal. The best vacation one can have: training, sun, heat, beach, playing instruments, meeting exciting international people, clubbing... just pure perfection!

First things first, I need to find another apartment again within the next 5 weeks. My landlord apparently got kicked out by wifey (so he says) so he needs his apartment and me and my roomie need to move. In general it is not so difficult t find a place t live in Berlin, but I REALLY don't want to get a place of my own, I rather just move with my 2 suitcases. I cannot be bothered to buy furniture as Berlin is just supposed to be a stop over for me. I still got plenty of moving boxes in Stockholm, which I need to pick up next month so I rather keep everything light while in Berlin.

I keep you posted how that works out! Now out into the sun!

An open book

Let me introduce myself: My name is Svenja and I am an open book.

Yesterday at work we had our first official team meeting. Until one week ago we were all just one big family with three team leaders. Since we will get 50 more colleagues by the end of July we were divided up into teams.

So, yesterday the first meeting. Our team leader had the idea to hand out three little papers to each one of us on which we were supposed to write three secrets about ourselves. We had one hour time during work to come up with ideas. While my team mates were most worried not to share something too private with the team my problem was rather: I don't have a secret. I say what I think, I say what I feel and although I have just been at that job for a little more than two months most people already know quite a lot about me. Since I was little my mother used to warn me not to share too much personal info with strangers but apparently up to this age I haven't managed to hold back. Apparently this is who I am, this is how I roll. If I was a celebrity I would be all over the tabloids and papparazzi don't even need to follow me, I would probably tell them everything straight away and take the pictures for them.

Maybe I should try to be a little bit more careful, the world is cruel to naive girls who assume that everyone is nice and honest. Personal information is such a valuable thing and it should not be available to everyone who is asking for it (and in my case not even asking for it). It is the constant struggle between knowing one thing and doing the other thing, between heart and brain.

I am not sure if me being so open is a good thing or not, but all the time fighting who I am does not seem like the right track either. Some people might find me overwhelming and too talkative, but I am not aiming at being everybody's darling. First of all because it is impossible to be liked by everyone and second: why would I? I used to have classmates and friends who were changing their opinion depending on who they were talking to. I wonder if you are still able to have a really own opinion after all if you keep on changing your direction like a little flag in the wind?

So my colleagues wrote down things like "I like traveling", "I like vampire movies", "I am married" and "Globetrotter" while I wrote down "Have recently been heartbroken", "I am terribly scared of clowns and spiders" and "I hate making mistakes because I wanna be faster at work". While most of my colleagues wrote quite general things on their papers it was rather difficult to guess who wrote what. On the contrary it was very easy for the others to guess which notes I had written. Again, I am an open book!

Good night dear friends!

To hell and back

Today, on the last Saturday before Christmas, I had the semi-smart idea to go to the city center. And believe me, I should have prepared myself for a war-like situation. I just wanted to get some Christmas cards and since my family and me decided to have another Christmas without presents, I had forgotten that everyone else is still doing the annual shopping for presents. When I arrived at the mall, the main entrance was closed as there was too much water from melted snow. The whole floor was basically 4cm under water. So I had to walk aaaaaaaall the way around the mall to the other entrance. I was not the only person, moreover I was in a bunch of some 100 people. Arriving in the mall some idiot teenage boys threw their milkshakes down from the first floor onto the people below. This time I got lucky and nothing hit me, but some other people looked quite disgusting after the milkshake attack.

When I finally got back home, which took a while since the tube didn't work anymore and I basically walked one hour home, all I wanted was food, some nice wine and something funny to look at. Luckily my sister supplied me with some fun animals clips. Oh and in the supermarket the usual thing happened again: As soon as little Svenja goes alcohol shopping, people get a huge interest in my ID. I picked a nice wine and went to the cashier and she kept on looking at me, not constantly but every once in a while while she was scanning all the other items. In the end I just asked her "Do you wanna see my ID?" and she just answered "I was not sure, if you would count it as an insult but I am really not sure if you are old enough..." Note for foreigners: buying wine in Germany is allowed from age 16. 

I say cheers to that!

Back to business!

Soooo, finally, I have something to do again. This week I started my new job at an amazing company. So far I am more than happy: a company full of opportunities, like-minded people (most of us are "home-comers" to Germany and spent a lot of time abroad; also many people from abroad), working language is English, yummy lunch at the office, new office building, big fruit baskets, chocolate surprises for Saint Nicolas' day etc. It is pretty much the kind of working place that I have been searching for a long long time. I am still kind of adapting to being back in Germany and being in the one city in which I never wanted to be. However it does not feel bad at all, especially since I am living in a very handy location close to the subway stop (it only takes me 20 minutes from my house to my work place: booyah!), all kinds of bars, restaurants and nice shops. It is also a cozy apartment with high ceilings and timber floor boards. I think what also helps my transition is that I am surrounded by foreign languages pretty much all the time. 

This first week is dedicated to training, which means that we need to learn a lot about the booking system, regulations, the company and hierarchies. I am completely pooped every evening and feel like going straight to bed at like 7.30pm. After two months of no routine whatsoever getting back into a daily routine can be a little tough. Don't get me wrong: I am more than happy to have a routine again and so much input! Getting those rusty braincells back into action! Also getting to know so many different and yet so similar people is amazing!

Friday is the first test to evaluate how much we could actually remember. Since I need to apply all those new things soon, I better study a little tonight!

TTYL

Car talk

We had that chapter before: my car. I believe after 21 years even a Volvo gets tired (although my Swedish friends keep on disagreeing with me on this matter). However, I brought it to the shop a couple of weeks ago just to have some weird sounds checked out. There was squeaking, rattling and a problem with servo steering. Well and of course my windshield wiper went missing on the motorway (ooops). I told the car mechanic to not fix anything but to give me some estimates before taking care of anything. Well, the number came and I would have been very thankful if he would have told me to sit down first: 800 Euros! The breaks are apparently fucked up and get stuck all the time, the windshield wiper motor broken and a hole in the exhauster. Great! I asked him about the squeaking noise and the difficulties with the steering. He didn't check that. And my assumption, that it could have something to do with the v-belt and the hydraulic pump just made him look at me as if I was annoying him. Well I decided to not have anything fixed after all, since 800 Euros would exceed the actual worth of the car. 

This weekend I visited a very capable engineering friend who took a look at my car. First thing he found: a 1 meter long rusty piece of pipe, just lying around in the motor compartment. It belonged to my air filter. Second thing he saw: the loose v-belt and the hydraulic pump are in each other's way as soon as I am steering causing that annoying noise and making steering the car as difficult as pushing a tank. Thanks, my car mechanic, for not even having a look into the motor compartment!

Instead of paying 800 Euros we got a new pipe for 24 euros and by this got rid of noises and difficulties. The breaks can indeed be loosened with cobbled stones. And who needs a back windshield wiper?

But cars seem to be a man's world and the only way for girls to be allowed in it is to wash it.

C'est la vie

It always happens towards the end of the year, that pretty much everyone of us starts reminiscing about the past year. It is also time to evaluate achievements of the year, all the ups and downs, our friendships and so on. It is also often the time when we start getting back in touch with people, at least I tend to do that. Today I heard some really really good news from the other end of the world, but also some sad news from loved ones. It often seems like good news are accompanied by bad ones, just to keep the universe in balance.

2010 hasn't exactly been my year. Most of the things went down the drains in pretty much all parts of my life. After half a year of searching the only job I found was working as marketing assistant, which is not my thing really. The "company" was crushing my spirits within a matter of days, which made me quit something for the first time in my life. And I really tried hard to get along with it. The fact that EVERYONE I worked with has also quit by now says something about the quality of this work place. Then there was trouble in apartment-heaven of Stockholm, which resulted in me being kicked out of the apartment thanks to a stupid little mistake of my landlady. Then there was the third break-in into my car since I am in Stockholm. Before that the back windshield wiper was bend down and the valve of one tire was kicked off. The only thing the thief could get from my empty car was the user manual of Volvo in German. Congrats! Packing up my stuff, leaving Sweden. Packing the car I also ended up with a parking ticket for standing in front of the house two minutes too long. That pretty much closed the deal of me leaving for good. (btw: never paid that ticket!) I simply had no idea anymore what would hold me in Stockholm. Most of my friends wanted to leave soon anyway and besides the fashion industry and the daily styling inspiration on random people there was nothing to keep me from leaving Stockholm for good.

The fact that I really don't miss Stockholm besides the good shops and the few friends left there tells me that it was the right decision to leave.

 

Since two months I am back home, living in my home village and it just happened last week, that something finally happened. I got offered a job at a fantastic company and I will start next Monday. I am so grateful to finally get something to do again. The bonus is that I will start before the years ends which will give me the chance to start 2011 with a brighter outlook. And I will also start exactly one month before my birthday, which I also take as a good omen.

In the meantime I kept myself busy with language courses, visits of job fairs, going to the gym, visiting friends and relatives and taking care of bureaucratic work. Admittedly I had to get used to doing everything a little slower. It was good to slow down for once. The hectic will come back faster than I wish for.

I had made so many plans for going traveling in South America but sometimes unforeseen factors enter the calculation with the result: change of plans. I was really looking forward to taking half a year for traveling, learning new languages, enjoying the company of many different people but also the luxury of being completely on my own. Change of plans does not mean, and that is for sure, that I will not take that journey someday. Just for now I need to be reasonable, start working for real, get experience, enter a new city and save up some money for the one big trip, which will come for sure! I already had the chance to meet so many fantastic people, that I want to visit: Brasil, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Scotland, China. The travelbug has bitten me a long time ago and I am convinced that this bite is incurable!

Until I indulge my travel passion again I will be happy about my new job and the new beginning!