A big slice of update. Ja

Ridiculous few days...in the nicest possible way! Only yesterday did I actually stop, and this was of course also the moment I realised how tired I actually was and began to fall asleep whilst playing mini golf....


So Friday the week before last saw a fair few things, mainly the end of my camp career for this year plus the arrival of my Mum and sister for a few days. The second week at camp was a lot more difficult than the first in that I had a group that just refused to listen no matter how loud I shouted, in English or German, and this resulted in a rather balls-dropping-esque voice for most of the next week :( ...However I guess it's still experience and, eventually money though I have yet to see any of it. A strongly worded email is currently winging its way to the camp owner...god I love writing a good shitty letter. So cathartic :)

It turned out that when my family arrived they pretty much did the one thing I told them not to do and went to the travel ticket office for some nice advice. Although said advice was really not so nice at all, and they ended up paying €50(!) for a three day travel card. I'm sure these people are targeted or something as EVERY single time I go to the DB (German train people) travel office/helpdesk they try to sell me a more expensive ticket than the one I need. Fuckerzzzzzfrheqt...but anyway, this lead to us really seeing the whatever out of the city, in no particular order and in only three days we went to...

Ammersee - lovely lake with nearby hotchpotch house and fantastical ice cream...

Fasanerie again - once more for schwimming galore :)

Dachau - concentration camp this time as opposed to the beer festival....which my Mum thought had actually been held in the camp..."Well that's a bit disrespectful" haha...

Eis Cafe-ing - as ice cream cafes are a rather unknown phenonenon in the UK (they are EVERYWERE here) we spent 12 euros on an Ice Cream sundae the size of my head and ate it in about 2 minutes flat...

Cycle Path-ing - we hired bikes, which my Mum fell off and neither me or my sister could help her up as we were laughing too much...she then crashed 3 more times, worst. cyclist. ever...

Chinese Tower - of course we did the obligatory trip here and drank a nice pint of cold beer :)

Toy Museum - cutest thing ever, it lives in Marienplatz and if you have an hour and 3 Euros I really recommend it. Loads of toys from through the years, it was truly magical :)

In conclusion it was lovely having them here, and as I'm so tired I know there are a thousand and three things I have forgotten to mention... but after many episodes of Bully Beatdown, soon enough it was time for them to go, and when I put them on the train I felt a little :( ... This lead to a Facebook status that got everyone thinking I was genuinely unhappy haha. Sorry to disappoint you but only the opposite is true these days ;)...in fact, before I swiftly move on from speaking about Facebook outside of Facebook (definitely in my top 5 of social faux pases) I would like to officially retract that little colon/open bracket combo and file it away with "things that I have done that have got me too much attention" - more on this file later, but the evening Mum and Ma left was spent in really good company, and I was so horribly tired that I pretty much passed out afterwards with a warm floaty feeling in my stomach that my quota of girl chat had been comfortably reached :)

The next day, I went for a cycle at about 9pm, spoke to various friends who happened to be nearby, and went down to Thalkirchen for a beer. This is the main area of the Isar that people have little barbeques in, it's deceptively close to my house (about 10 mins by bike) and ever since I walked along this path in my first few weeks here I wanted to sit there and watch the sunset with a group of the very best. When I arrived, it was pretty much dark already, but the company was nice and the talk was funny. This (obviously) entailed then caving into peer pressure and joining in town for a drink, which ended up being muchos late and not massively drunken, but I was pretty much out in a pair of leggings with no covering - something again which is most certainly on the social faux pas list. I had also jumped in the river to cool off after a cycle, so my clothes were wet through and it looked rather like I'd had an accident on bottom and was in a wet t-shirt competition on top. I also woke up covered in croissant crumbs but, I guess it really doesn't matter when you're not trying to impress anyone right?! And on the upside, I didn't get hit on by any random horny travellers (unfortunately a staple happening @ hostel bars) which I must say did put a spring in my step :)

The weekdays after that were pretty uneventful, apart from I was working in the day and working out to the max in my time off. I am determined to be beach-ready in time for Spain in about 3 weeks, and I've been working out upto about 2 hours some days. Which when written down sounds utterly ridiculous, but it's more a case of really enjoying myself and forgetting the time rather than obligation. Really! If only the fat kid I was 10 years ago could meet me now haha, I'd have a few stern words to impart... :p

Friday a friend of mine came back to Germany for a fleeting night, before swanning off to Austria with her aupair family. So, we went for a late night hot chocolate around 9 in the Fraunhoferstr area, which still continues to be my favourite place here. Although originally pegged as an hour or so, another friend arrived and we were there till well gone 11. It was lovely :) and then I went over to someone else's house where a bunch of people were chilling with Mean Girls, again. I happily watched it for the second time in about 3 weeks and also happily accepted the offer of a bed when the rain started trying to knock down buildings. Thank you kind people!

Saturday afternoon saw me sat in a tepee with the dad and the eldest girl, speaking to an Indian descendent, who was firstly one of the most interesting human beings I have ever encountered and secondly had such an beautiful tepee! It was so warm and cosy, and this man lives there in the week to work, returning at weekends to his real house. In between trying to mentally translate what he was saying in French (I'd say I got about 80% which I was rather chuffed with) I did actually begin to nod off as it was just the right temperature and the seat (which he'd made himself) was too comfortable :) it's moments like that, when I meet someone truly interesting that I make a mental note to better myself in whichever way I can. It disturbs me a little that most of my stories from here involve beer in some way, and as a result I'm considering taking a beer holiday...but I'm not 100% quite yet. I've given up drinking successfully before on two occasions, for about 6 months each time, but doing this in a culture based on beer I'm guessing will be rather difficult. I'm still on the fence...

The night before we'd been out to this club called Neuraum, which was OK but there was glass all over the floor and it was HUGE so I seemed to just be walking around a lot trying to find people (unsuccessfully, see: glass and beer). I did that thing I do when I realise how tired I am, and can't stop thinking of a nice comfy bed...in that I just left. I really can't be convinced once that thought arrives, yeah yeah whatever I prefer a nice lie down and a cup of coffee and a book. So sue me :p

As for yesterday, I made serious inroads to Project UBahn, which had been left by the wayside a little of late. As a result I now only have to go to one more location, and then I'll have seen the end of every line haha. Anything to pass the time, and on a more serious note I'd been spending so little time alone recently that it was so nice just to watch the scenery go by, listen to the old iPod (a Reuben renaissance, if you're interested) and simply think to oneself. I'd been feeling a little claustrophobic for reasons that continued to be unknown to me...until I earmarked that few hours to spend some quality Bethy Time and all that just lifted :) I then headed up to Olympiapark to play some incredibly unsuccessful mini golf, climb a hill and view the city (such a great panoramic viewpoint, I will be returning...) and then sit in a shisha bar wrapped in a blanket until I could work up the guts to cast off my blanketty coccoon and steel off into the night.

As for now, I'm feeling a little ill after so many late nights, I slept so badly last night and am becoming something of a night owl again. I need a morning job so this doesn't happen completely, I have worked so hard on my sleeping pattern in the past, and refuse for it to all go downhill just cause I like procrastinating. So I'm going to make a decaf coffee, wrap up in various blankets and rewatch as much of Spaced as I can, as I'm not needed so much today. Heaven...

:)

x

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Wednesday 25 August 2010 Posted in | , , , , , , , , | 0 Comments »

Pacemaker, pace yourself.x

So, as half-arsedly promised I'm going to elaborate a little on what have essentially been two lists :p today finds me sat once more at the red desk, the rain is raining itself down and my legs are full of that muscular pain you get when you work out too much. Every day when I've returned from camp I've been buzzing on the remnants of a day telling thirteen 9-year-olds what to do - even when I've been practically falling asleep on the train? This excess energy entails me either sitting in front of various screens - pointless as I don't gain anything and feel somehow more awake - or, better, going on an epic bike ride most days to tire myself out physically so that (logically anyway) sleep will arrive. Today is the exception only because I feel the beginnings of a sore throat tickling away, and don't want to be sickington gay for the weekend when I have my very first out of town visitors :)))


Other things then, as camp is busy, and fun and muchos hard but mainly worthwhile, but I don't particularly want to talk about it a lot as all I do every day is be there. I am currently indulging in playing the Sonos ridiculously loud whilst I can, and bopping around in my underwear/towel/etc haha most days. I'm currently having a mini renaissance of all the heavy stuff I used to listen to backalong 3 years or so, Poison The Well...Every Time I Die...Beecher and so on...I have mainly (completely) fallen into the acoustic/pretty music world these days but I must say there's something utterly satisfying about hearing metal played on Bose surround-sound speakers. The sound just goes right through you, awesome ^_^ ...apart from that I re-read the most beautiful thing I have ever read about two days ago, if I can find it somewhere around I'll quote it at the end...and I'm also enjoying the general fitness that's coming my way after all this working out, and have become once more steely in my determinedness to get back to my former fit self. Sometimes having an Iron Will actually does benefit oneself, and in just two weeks I've noticed a marked change and I'd say I only have another half stone to go - plus of course muchos toning which makes the most difference. I feel so much better in general, but know that contentedness is more a state of mind so am trying to surround myself with things that make me the very happiest also. Starting with some of my family who are the lucky Friday visitees :)))

After a really tough week at camp on Friday, me and the other counsellors went for a night out which made me really quite ill come Saturday morning. Don't get me wrong, I like a good pint of cider and I'm so rarely sick, however I didn't have time for a proper dinner (schoolboy error) and knowing people who work in the bars you tend to go to sometimes gets you free shots which don't mix with beer too well. I completely blame that terrible/amazing SHOTS SHOTS song that seemed to always bring shots my way when it was played (funnily enough)...which was about 367 times that night. Argh! However, I didn't do as badly as my poor camp colleague who was escorted home by the Polizei...

Saturday I went to a friend's house for a dinner party (yeah I know, I'z well kultured innit), she had cooked an awesome vegetable curry - it's nice to meet other vegetarians and know you'll be catered for ;). We then (yes, really but I only had one beer) went for a drink at the single best bar I've been here since I arrived! It was this dingy little backstreet place called X - too cool for a mere word name and it was really like someone's house, but with better furniture and darker lighting. I guess I'm just a sucker for fairy lights and foosball tables though, whatev. I will be returning!

I'm sure there's something else...oh! Dachau, which was the next day on Sunday. I headed there after a meeting for the camps, feeling a little stressed from last-minute changes and in need of a chill out with some good faces. Apart from a tagalong in the form of the single WORST individual I have ever met (sample quote..."I feel like I'm being checked out by so many chicks right now"...no he wasn't being funny, sarcastic or charming) this particular objective was achieved, and a lovely time (I hope) was had by all. Dachau Volksfest itself was a warm-up beer festival for the impending madness of Oktoberfest which I can now NOT WAIT for. Let me just put here that I have never felt more like I was in Germany than at the moment I walked through the door to this Bavarian-flag bedecked marquee, 80% of attendees were in Tracht (lederhosen etc) and there were massive wide women carrying 15 tankards of beer each in these really impressive tower constructions that weren't stuck together(!). We danced to the terrible music, did the actions (or tried), got up on our benches and danced our little faces off. It was the nicest end to a rather ridiculous weekend, and once we'd sacked the American tosser off things were definitely a 9 on the Scale of Awesome Things....(the scale goes up to ten, if you care :p)

RIGHT so this now marks the third day I've been attempting to write this, but have mainly been being distracted by writing letters (watch your letterboxes) and watching films as well, of course, as jumping aboard the Workout train. To be quite honest I'm sick of staring at this page, and need to eat some dinner. I found the Dorian Gray quote after much searching, and must admit that this passage is pretty much perfection in writing as far as I'm concerned. I am becoming a Wilde girl through and through.

Until next time...x

...There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.

♥

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Saturday 14 August 2010 Posted in | , , , , , , | 0 Comments »

Yeah, so...

I made this thing a whole lot privater...not really sure why...just got a little creeped out about internet presences and such. There you go. That's that. This is this. Life is life. Etc.


Not much else to say here apart from this week has been tough tough tough. I'll elaborate a little more once I have the energy to, but lets say it involves me looking after a bunch of 10 6-8 year olds, three of which are pretty painful and use that brush to tar the other 7 who are a complete delight. Still, last day tomorrow...

Also, I should be going to some tradition German beer fest this weekend. Get the lederhosen out! I have yet to purchase any. I'm gonna stick out like a sore thumb...

Sweet dreams alles,

X

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Thursday 12 August 2010 Posted in | | 0 Comments »

But you don't care, or understand...how it feels to be a single double strand...

A blog without a blogger, a sad affair indeed. After somewhat of a (...n improptu) hiatus I'm sat at the bright red desk with many a word working its' way down my arm, from brain to fingertip...and on to computer screen. The phone is ringing but it's a freephone number and i STILL don't have the confidence to speak on the phone auf Deutsch, my final hurdle. I'll be working on it, someday.


Coffee in hand time, then. Life, and all who sail in her. The other post from the undisclosed location was, in fact typed at home...just to clear that one up. The outdoor play was in Bristol, I subsequently had the most fun night where I went to school in Butlinstown - which is very truly a feat worth writing down. I rounded things off with My First Road Trip up to the Derbyshire Dales and the wonder of Y Not Festival. It was wonderful, the light was just spectacular at points, the music fairly exquisite...the setting was remote and it rained like a bitch but I couldn't have been happier. +10 life points and a fair few notches on the old Laughing About Stupid Stuff Post :)

On my return back to Germanland, I somewhat missed the beginning of things due to my rather large lack of sleep. After catching up with where I was, I (in no particular order) loaded my German mobile with credit, visited the Library Bus again, found a really cute pair of 50s style red polka dot shoes for 5 EUROS, walked all night to find the single worst club I have been in here so far, became rather enamoured with the concept of night swimming, spent a whole day lying down watching MTV auf Deutsch, dreamt once more of Morocco (or at least the Moroccan bar they had at Tollwood), went to a Girls' sleepover complete with lashings of Mean Girls, was reminded how funny Mean Girls really is, took the train to deepest Zorneding and a lovely afternoon barbeque-ing, took another train signposted to Fitness via Exercise, enjoyed deleting a bunch of people off Facebook rather too much, sat in a cornfield and watched the sun disappear behind the trees, set up Skype fully, and ate rather too much dry cereal from the box.

The next two weeks see me somewhat more employed in that I have a summer job here. The first day was stressful via 3 x fights (hence the cornfield), but today was just schweet and I hope it sets the tone for the other days........we'll see.

Anyway, I would severely like to write more but the Exercise train is leaving. I just wanted to note it down before I went so that I don't forget a thing...I will attempt to remember to elaborate at some point in the future, promise. Kisseszzzxx

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Tuesday 10 August 2010 Posted in | , , , , | 3 Comments »