10 Observations

Hello! Guten Tag. Wie kann ich Ihnen helfen?

Sorry, in work mode then. Anyway, welcome to one of my less prose-like blog posts (I can hear the sigh of relief from here). Going about my daily life in Hamburg for a month (!!!) now, I have noticed certain things:

1. Big City, Busy People
I suspect this applies to most cities but I've noticed that living here you automatically adopt one of two mentalities: generally the I've-got-places-to-go-people-to-see-sauerkraut-to-eat mentality. Anyone who dares to get in your way for more than a second is The Most Inconsiderate Person on Earth, and if anyone shouts at you they have no right do so as your business is much more important than their business. Anyone who tries to talk to you can only want something  you don't want to give them (money, your phone number, time). I realised I'd turned into this monster today when, striding purposefully during the mall on my lunch break, a weak voice saying "Bitte, wissen Sie wo..." (please, do you know where...) seeped into my busy busy thoughts and I turned to see I'd walked past a little old lady without even seeing her. It turned out she'd entered the mall on a different floor (the two main entrances are on different levels) and couldn't figure out how to come back the way she got in. She said she'd been standing there for 5 minutes before anyone noticed her. I felt pretty ashamed of myself.

Occasionally, and blissfully, Hamburgers adopt the complete opposite mentality, where they lie in parks drinking beer all day without a care in the world.

2. Areas of the city
Most Hamburgers will talk about certain areas of the city that make them sound like Mordor. Harburg being one, a popular student area the Other Side of the River, which, while it probably does have more problems than your average area, actually turned out to be clean, tidy and with much more affordable rents than the rest of the city from what I gather.

3. Bars
Bars are brilliant in Hamburg! Open all night (which as a Brit still slightly shocks me), there are plenty of rock bars and alternative bars, which play good music. Thumbs up Hamburg!

4.Cycling
In Hamburg you get told off for cycling too slow, yet also too fast - someone actually took the time to shout at me and tell me I was going to get flashed (as in, by a speed camera, not by naked body parts, or at least one hopes) for going too fast (I wasn't). If someone decides you're too far over to the left in the cycle path, they tell you off. Which brings me too my next point...

5. You get told off a lot.
I can never seem to do anything right, try as I might. Then again, I suspect Hamburgers just love to complain, so if I'm helping them vent their anger then hey, why not. I'm very practised at letting criticism wash over me. Anyway, its not like I can really judge, I delivered a few choice words through the window of a car that cut me up the other day.

Ironically, the thing I keep doing which I should get told off for (drumroll: hoovering on a SUNDAY) appears to not bother anyone in my building, so I happily hoover away, scot free.

6. Franzbrötchen are lecker!
These are the typical pastries of Hamburg (see below) which are kind of like croissants with cinnamon and butter layered inbetween. Mmmmmmm yum.


7. Rabbits. Rabbits, everywhere.
Seriously, around my apartment there are colonies of wild rabbits who only bother to run away from you when you're a good 2 feet from them, which I find endearing, and the last thing I expected living in a city. Plus its quite calming watching them have their dinner on the grass outside your window in the evening sun.

8. German radio is weird.
Taking a shower the other day, I had my trusty little duck radio going. The concept of the evening chat show? Ring in and finish this sentence: sex ist... (sex is). Cue extreme awkwardness on the presenters part as people rang in with the oddest suggestions, which I won't repeat here, but it cheered my evening up no end.

9. Working full time, I can't be superwoman (or at least, not yet).
I was determined to be that person who manages to work from 9-6 then heads out for an array of exciting and varied evening engagements. I'd planned out my work-to-evening attire (Glamour eat your heart out) and had visions of coming home at 11pm most weeknights, tired but happy.

Shock horror, this hasn't exactly happened. Not that I'm really struggling for plans, more struggling for the energy to carry them out. From 7.30 am I am craving my bed again and it's a guilty pleasure climbing back into it to skype/sleep. I'm working on becoming that überproactive go-getting girl, but in the mean time I'll settle for relaxing evenings (with or without friends), healthy food and a good night's sleep on weekdays so I can actually do my job successfully, and leave the other bits for the weekend.

10. New vocab
I'm currently learning about 3 new German words a day through my job. Who'da thunk it'd be so fandabidozily nutzlich?

First Week at Work

Hallo zusammen,

I am currently sat in my room on a Sunday morning, my lie-in rudely interrupted by the little boy from the flat above who is a fan of early-morning tantrums. But no matter, I have the whole day to relax, write this blog and clean the flat a bit more, which right now seems like bliss. 

So my first week at work is vorbei! It went really well and is actually more interesting than I expected. The office is nice, there's about 9 of us, though I've only met 7 so far, and we speak a mixture of German and English, though mainly German.

I do a mixture of translation and checking other people's translations: currently more of the latter but I like the puzzle of trying to figure out if what is on the page in front of me is the best it could be. It usually is, but sometimes you get a little thrill when you spot something to improve. (Sad, I know). My German and French are getting a workout too, I've already learnt a lot of new vocab, it feels like such a natural extension of my degree.

The best bit is that, when I don't have any big projects on I can search out my own smaller projects to translate/correct. You are constantly communicating with people in the other branches and it's such a friendly atmosphere.

Anyway, I feel like I'm going to learn a lot about the translation business here, giving me a very informed decision about if that career is for me, which is the one of the main purposes of this internship anyway.

But of course, I'm not one for hanging around at home in the evenings: I've been doing plenty more city-exploring, see photos below!

The Elbe strand beach at Blankensee. Very strange, as you'll be sat there sunbathing and then a MAHOOSIVE freightship will come past, and the water recedes by about 30 metres before coming back in a huge wave, soaking a poor family that was busy enjoying their belegte brötchen.

Not very clear in the picture but this is the Rote Flora house in the Schanzenviertel, which has been squatted since 1989. My couchsurfers and I attempted to go in during the "Offnungszeiten" on a Monday, before it was kindly explained to us that those times were for people who had business at the house, as being able to randomly wander in wasn't really the point of a squat. Oops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_Flora

The harbour is a lovely place to hang out at night, I've been to several bars of an evening lately but this photo was actually taken just sat on the wall with a friend, our feet dangling over the water, drinking an Astra (local beer) and watching the sun go down, very nice.

One of the best things about Hamburg is the sheer amount of parks - I keep discovering new ones and during the summer they have plenty of open-air cinemas, waterfall light shows etc. You really get the sense that the Hamburg folk get the most as possible out of their harbour, industrial city. Southampton could really learn A LOT from Hamburg on these matters!

A few little anecdotes from this week:

Geldbestrafung der HVV (fined by the local transport)

Typical German story this: I was shattered on Thursday so got the u-bahn to work and back, which is only 3 stops. I had it in my head somehow that 3 stops or less was a Kurzstrecke (short stretch) ticket, at €1.50. The next ticket up is local transport ticket at €2. Anyway, I got home and blocking the way out of the station was a wall of people. A bit startling of course but I had my ticket still in my hand, and happily passed it over to the middle-aged woman with an official badge and an expression like dirt. Of course, I wouldn't be telling this story if it had gone well, and of course it transpired I'd bought the wrong ticket - the kurzstrecke is calculated according to distance travelled, and I figured out I'd travelled 200m too far. As the Germans say, pech gehabt (tough luck). €15 euro fine and treatment like a criminal followed, because I'd made a genuine error and paid €0,50 too little. Gah, Germany. 

Lesson learnt though! 

Expat world:

I went along to a meet-up for a facebook group called "20 Somethings in Hamburg" on Friday night, which is mostly a way for young expats from around the world to make friends in Hamburg, though there were some locals as well. I'd been looking forward to going along to this for a while (I even mentioned it in an earlier post) and had had such good experiences with CS meet-up, so had high hopes. Anyway, I got there and after an initially friendly meeting I started to feel pretty uncomfortable: I can't think of a better way to put it other than the people were well, pretty full of themselves. Most of them had been living here for over a year yet seemed pretty proud of the fact they had learnt next-to-no German. One British guy was so drunk out of his mind at 10 pm even I could barely understand him. Another guy attempted to get into an argument with me about how the Welsh identity didn't exist. A third conversation ran thus:

Me (in German): so where are you from?

Girl (in German): [A city in Southern Germany] but I study here. *awkward silence, she stares at me*

Me (in German): oh cool, so what do you study? 

Girl (in German) Film. *awkward silence*

Me (in German, panicking slightly): oh cool, so what semester are you in? (which means how long have you been studying)

Girl: (in English, angrily): Wow, why all these questions? You'll want to see my birth certificate next. *another long awkward silence, while she evidently expects me to continue the conversation without asking her questions, yet without asking me anything*

Me: Erm, I'm going to go get another drink? Want anything? No? Oh well! Tschüß!

I left soon after that. I might give the group another chance but otherwise, I think I'll stick to CouchSurfing.