Blogs from Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, Europe - page 14

We arrive in Hamburg after a very comfortable and easy three-hour bus ride, quite refreshing actually when one's used to crazily crammed death traps that rattle along pot-holed roads for 15-32 hours towards a destination where you are greeted by scams, touts, backstabbers and all the other usual tourist trail-flotsam and jetsam. In our case, we make our way to our new hosts' place, which turns out to be a spacious old appartment directly out of a 70's Woody Allen-film. The ceilings are high, the floors wooden, and the location central, no wonder its tenants Christine and Johnny have a perpetual smile on their faces. It could also derive from their jobs: Christine is a yoga teacher and Johnny a jack-of-all-trades; primarily woodwork artist and mover of rental cars within Germany, but he seems to have ... read more

Last time, I promised to write a bit about what my life is like after moving to Hamburg and starting a new job. I guess I’m pretty much back to what you’d call a normal life. But it is far away from being a boring one. I work a lot more than I did during the last two years. I’d say that I’m back to something like a fifty-hour-week, but I enjoy it. Nobody makes me work that much, I just do it because I like it. The company I work for now specialises in designing and implementing psychometric online tests and questionnaires. And they provide everything that has to do with finding out about people’s potential, which also comprises assessment centres or sometimes even trainings. So I can do all the things I like and ... read more

You haven’t read from me for quite a long time. I’m sorry. So many things happened, I just didn’t have time to write something. But finally, I managed to at least give you a quick update. By the end of September, I made a decision that I had been thinking about for nine months. I decided to give up hanggliding. It almost broke my heart, I think it is the most painful decision in made in my whole life as I love flying so much. But the thing is that this accident was the fourth within only two years. The other three ones were not as bad, of course. Once a broken nose and a bent back, once a wound in my face that needed to be suturated, and once a big, fat, swollen knee. But ... read more

Hello there Today was a day to breathe some fresh air and visit the Tierpark Hagebeck. A huge animal park on the outskirts of Hamburg. Although I prefer my animals in the wild, its an unfortunate fact of life that humans have encroached so much on habitats that some species can only be seen in captivity. Hagebeck does its job of conservation and education very well so I packed myself some lunch and wrapped up as warm as possible as it feels like the we've reached winter here already with a high of only 4C and headed into Hamburg. The best part about Hagebeck is that for a small donation you can purchase some healthy nibbles and feed them to some of the animals - highligh of which for me were the Asian Elephants, although a ... read more

I woke up in Lubeck at 730. This is actually sleeping in, as most days I wake up around 7 o'clock to breakfast with my family before they go to work/school. My class embarks on a walking tour with a very mustached man we meet by the river (don't worry, it's on purpose). He shows us some sights and tells us some facts, but I'm pretty sure everyone will only remember the mustache. And the marzipan shop that we invaded directly after the tour...yummmm. Time for the bus! We set off for Hamburg. I try to enjoy the scenery along the way, and I do, but it can get a little old, so I make small talk with my classmates and read my book. Suddenly! Hamburg! We were treated to a lunch of schnitzel and french ... read more