Times are changing....

....once again.

Sorry for the bad updating but I cannot seem to settle down. I have quit my current job and will start a new one once my 2 weeks notice have passed. In the new job I will finally have the chance to do what I studied: write, create events and interact with people. The only thing I am really nervous about is that I cannot live up to the expectations. Since I got some time to settle in the job and there will be a boot camp to get to know the company and my future tasks, I will soon enough know more :-) Immediately after I got the ok for the new job I received a phone call from an HR-woman of another company, something like a headhunter, asking if I was interested in a job. How is it possible, that I am waiting for something like this to happen more than 1.5 years and now everything is happening in just one week??? Being told to move out of the apartment, being offered a new job, agreeing to the job, being offered another job and quitting the current job: that is quite a lot happening in just one week!

Task number 2 on my agenda: finding and apartment yet again. I live in my current place since 4 weeks and now it is time to move again. Berlin flat market looks kind of alright though in comparison to other European capitals, also pricewise, but depending on the area, which one is aiming to live in, one can also stand in line in the staircase with 30 couples. Really motivating, I can tell you. I looked at a promising flat yesterday and I was also the first one to look at it. Maybe this comes as an advantage. Immediately after I looked at the flat I emailed the landlord. Please feel free to cross your fingers for me!

Hopefully there will be a decision on Tuesday.

One Night Only -- Can You Feel It - MyVideo

The Naked And Famous -- Young Blood - MyVideo

(Sorry for the stupid advertisement before the video... youtube has deactivated those videos for publishing on other sides...)

My sore spot

There are not many things in the world that really piss me off and annoy the hell out of me. I am happy to announce that the German railway (Deutsche Bahn) is constantly leading my charts. As soon as I take one step into a trainstation I get this hint of annoyance. The Berlin main trainstation really pushed me to my annoyance level: Following the signs to the luggage storage led me and my visitor through all 4 levels of the stations, walking in circles and loops and finally ending up at the luggage lockers just to find a sign which said "please go to level 1 to the luggage storage". WTF?

So we asked the friendly lady at the service point where to put the luggage: we got some direction to the luggage storage service of the German railways (with the advise that all the lockers are full for today). It only took as mere 20 minutes in line with the ridiculous sum of 2 people before us until it was out turn. Then we had the pleasure to watch one of Frankenstein's monsters trying to fix a stapler and nearly stapling himself to his desk before he finally realized that a couple of VERY annoyed people were waiting to hand in their luggage. Honestly, ridiculous! At that point we were already aware of the fact: we need to pick up the bag at the same location in a while...

Next stop: buying a ticket. My dear visitor still had a voucher from his last trainride on a sleep train. Why he got a voucher? The entire sleeping cabin was contaminated with bedbugs... However it was impossible to use the voucher online and on the ticket machine. So, back to queuing up again. The woman at the counter informed us that there are so many different vouchers and only a max of 50% of them work in the ticket machines... Great, thank you dear ticket selling woman for pointing out the incompetence of Deutsche Bahn. And another detail which just makes me shake my head in disbelief: when you buy a ticket at the counter you have to pay EUR 2,50 service charge... I wonder why this voucher did not work at the ticket machine.

When we arrived on the platform the fun continued with endless delays without any clarification when the train will arrive and why it has been delayed.

There is just one thing left to say to express my embarassment for having this awful company having the railway monopoly: Zänk juu for träwelling wiz Deutsche Bahn.

(for you non-Germans: The German Railway is very well known for their excellent English skills, therefore there is a group on the German facebook just dedicated to this amazing company....)

Springtime is here

This weekend Berlin had the pleasure to meet a long forgotten friend: Spring!

I will just let the pictures speak. I took them yesterday and today at Tempelhofer Feld, Volkspark Hasenheide and Mauerpark. The entire city changes with the increase of temperatures and the sun light. I even feel quite energetic although I haven't been to the gym in 2 weeks and I haven't had remotely enough sleep laterly. Enjoy the pics!

I don't like violence, but...

... when it seems so justified like in the case of this Australian school boy I cannot do anything but cheer. What a brave boy, fighting back after years of mobbing and torture! When you have a little sibling who has been given a hard time at school although he would never harm a fly you just develop empathy for those poor sufferer.

Teenagers or school children in general can be so awfully cruel and I am so glad, that I am not in school anymore nor a teenager. I was lucky enough to never have been picked on and in general school time was rather easy-peasy for me (could have had better grades but hey, I guest I was busy with other things ;-) )

Besides the skinny moron being evil, I am also wondering why nobody has lost a single word about all the teenies standing around and filming this and cheering on the idiot child punching the poor (until recently) helpless Casie. How can you stand next to something like that and cheer? And how can you not have a better idea than filming this?

The skinny boy decided that he should also use the publicity his violence has caused and claim that he is the real victim. Sure, I agree that this videoclip has caused a big media stir and the pressure for the 12-year old offender and his family must have been immense, but claiming to be the real victim just goes too far. He started this thing and the only one to blame for the pressure being put on him and his family is himself. Everybody is responsible for his or her own action. Be aware of the consequences of your actions! This boy (hopefully) learned this lesson!

Oh happy day!

After bad times, come good times. This is probably something we can rely on. And I finally hit the turning point. After something that felt like an eternity I finally spoke again to my BFF in a country far far away. This wonderful girl got engaged to somebody, which makes her an even happier person than she has already been.

You know, sometimes you meet a person and you immediately know that this person is your soul mate. And this person is Ana. I miss her everyday and even though we sometimes don't speak for months, when we finally find the time to catch up it is as if nothing has happened and that we last spoke yesterday.

When we finally skyped a couple of days ago she told me her whole beautiful engagement story. It is so good to know that there are men out there, who would do ANYTHING to make their chosen girl the happiest girl in the world. He put so much thought and romance into the beginning of a new chapter of their lives together that it makes me speechless. And in the middle of this fairytale like story Ana asked me if I want to be her bridesmaid. This was the cherry on the cake and I just burst into tears. I feel so honoured!

Ever since that evening I feel so happy and cheerful. Whenever work gets annoying (yes, I had to work the entire weekend) I just thought of Ana's voice and the most beautiful questions that she could ask me and I feel happy again. Thank you darling for letting me be part of your love story! :-*

Crazy days

Do you know that feeling? Sometimes nothing is happening at all and you feel restless because you wanna change something, just anything. And then there are times, when the 24 hours of the day just don't feel sufficient? Today is one of those days when I wish it had at least 36 hours.

Tomorrow I am moving house, yet again. I will also sleep over at a friend's place to avoid being homeless for a night. Wednesday I am flying to Stockholm, straight after work. Mainly to pick up my things or more having them picked up. I also want to meet up as many of my beautiful friends as possible, but at the same time it is impossible to plan anything because I still don't know when the moving guy is coming to Stockholm and picks everything up. Might be Thursday, might be Monday, God knows!

I am in bed and my head is just spinning around. I just want everything to move a lot slower. Somehow I am under the impression, that the world keeps on spinning faster and faster and it becomes more and more difficult to just enjoy the moment. Especially when good things are happening. You just want to stand still for a while, take a deep breath and inhale all the positive energy. Those rare moments, in which you actually HAVE the time to stand still, I mostly appreciate when they already passed by. Like last Sunday, when I managed to take a 1 hour walk and just enjoyed the sunshine. This Saturday I was happy enough to have the best Saturday in a long time: I went to the ITB fair for tourism, on which I met up with a great colleague and friend of mine. Turns out, when you see exhibition stands of all those amazing places on earth, it is rather difficult to accept that you are bound to one place for a while. What makes it easier is to share those moment with someone who feel the exact same way. (Thank you dear Ivan)

Afterwards I met another colleague/friend for dinner. Geat food, great talk, amazing person! I finished that day with watching Melodifestivalen, the Swedish pre-round basically for the Eurovision Song Contest.  Being in a cosy apartment, with great company (Thank you J.), watching cheesy Swedish songs on a projector, having some nice wine: honestly, what could be better???

After such an amazing day I walked home with my feet burning badly (stupid idea to wear heels for a day on a fair...) and just felt happy!

So now I should catch some sleep, big day ahead!

The perfect way to start a Sunday

Yesterday a friend of mine came to visit. We did not go out that long yesterday, but being woken up by the awful children from the family living above me (awful because they are the loudest human beings I have ever experienced) at 9am I thought "wuuuäääääähääääähääääh". Opening the curtains I could see tons of people enjoying the bright sunshine. Admittedly I had to squint my eyes at first, but what is better than waking up and seeing sunshine, having the feeling that spring time has arrived? Nothing! Even terrible neighbour children cannot spoil that mood: hopping out of bed I was lucky enough to receive a very nice message and I started listening to this amazing song:

Watch the video! Oahu with all its beautiful beaches (and surferboys :-) ) 

So far I managed to take a long walk down Kastanienallee, along Bernauer Strasse with the leftovers of the Berlin Wall, I climbed up a watch tower so I could see the graveyard and the wall from the top, I walked across the flea market at Mauerpark, got myself  a nice juice and walked back home. Now I still got plenty of plans ahead and I got the feeling that an amazing Sunday lies ahead of me!

Enjoy your weekend!

Who would have thought...

I am not really a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, neither of Chris Martin and Coldplay. And seriously, naming your children Apple and Moses, that is just wrong. However I have to admit, that I really like her singing voice. Who would have thought that she has such a lovely voice?

Life's too short

We all have had those moments in which we realize: "Hey, life can be short!" You'll never know how long it will last, you better make good use of it.

By a weird coincidence I found out that my 1998 summer camp "boyfriend" died half a year ago in a tragic car accident. Just a few weeks before his passing away we had started getting back in touch again, sending messages to each other and updating each other on what had happened in the past years. I was already wondering why he has not replied but figured that he is busy.

 

Here I was sitting, pittying myself to be in a city, that I don't like, being single again, wondering why I did not follow my dream to become a journalist and blah blah blah. These sad news certainly helped to snap out of it. We all only have this one life, and we will never know how much time we have left. So we better make sure to make the best of it and live it to its fullest.

Thank you dear friend for reminding me of how precious life is. I hope you rest in peace.

Easy steps to find out, whether or not this is a week to stay at home...

My week started already a little sleepy, as I worked on the weekend. Being completely convinced that my compensation day (one day off in the week before and one day after the work weekend) was on Tuesday, I made plenty of appointments for that day. The most important thing though was to sleep long as I had the feeling I was trapped in a bubble of sleepiness. 7.55am I receive a call from work: "You know that your compensation day is tomorrow, right?"... Good start into the day!

Today after work I had my language course again. I barely made it to my tram, got off at the wrong stop, had to walk to the closest subway station, missed my train by split seconds, realizing, that I only have 5 minutes left until the class starts but still a 20 minute journey ahead of me, I decided to go back home and study there. That is the moment when my next challenge was waiting for me: getting home. I took the tram which I thought was right, after 10 minutes of journey I got the hunch that it was the wrong tram, I got off, started walking around a little just to realize: Damn, it was the right tram! To look at the bright side, I could at least entertain my sister while I was chatting with her on my way home.

Unbelievable! That is when I realized, that it is maybe time to go home before I start hurting somebody or myself.