Steffi’s Blog

Hey everybody,

well, as I promised … I am back and the next thing I promised … in English! I hope that my English is not as terrible as I always imagine it to be .

However, how to start?! I’m back in Germany for quite a while already (in fact I’m already back to work as well !) but nothing much has happened so far! The first couple of days were rather difficult for me - at least emotionally (there won’t be any complains about the weather which is absolutely great, in case you don’t have to work)!
It may be best to start at the very beginning where the beginning of my time in Germany actually starts already with my last day in Dublin! Tuesday, 04/07/2006, the day X, the day I had to leave… ! Well, by now I’m able to see all that a bit more relaxed but that day was really very horrible. We spent the Monday night at the Pav which means that I arrived at home quite late so that the guys were already in bed. I only had a sweet note in front of my room saying that they’ll say goodbye to me in the morning…

The morning came and I was still so sleepy at the time Aratz took his leave that I managed somehow to supress my tears and though I had to fight a bit harder by the time Eneko left I was still successful…! However, then my breakfast ‘date’ with Zuzana followed, I had already packed all my stuff, and she already fought her tears back while we were still having breakfast and talking about the ‘good old times’ !

Well, when the time came that I had to leave the house with all my luggage (I’m still surprised that I was able to bring all that home without having done serious damage to my back…) it overcame me…! I was so happy that I managed for such a long time not to cry that, apparently, all the supressed tears showed up at that time…it’s amazing and believe me or not but, actually, I cried all the time, from the time I had to leave the house until my parents picked me up at the airport - which makes about 6-7 hours!!! The people on the bus and on the plane must have thought that I was insane or something similar/worse !

Okay, however, now I’m back in Germany and slowly I can say that I’m really back, I mean not only physically but also mentally/emotionally. As I already said it took quite a while but there were some circumstances which really helped me to find my way back to ‘my German way of life’. More or less the first thing I did when I arrived was that I made a TODO list with all the things I needed/wanted to do and that kept me quite busy for a while. The very first point on that list was to call the people from the job I used to work during the holidays and ask if they might need me (well, who wouldn’t ). So I called them and the nice woman told me that they don’t need anybody right now but she can put me on the waiting list (on which were already 400 others)…okay, I thought that I have to find something else to earn my money with. However, the whole situation changed somehow when I told her that I already worked for them ! About two hours later they called me and asked if I’d like to start on Monday (10/07/2006) - well, I didn’t exactly want to but, yeah, sure…! That means that today I finished my third week as a hard working person :-)! But they gave me three weeks long the early shift (and the fourth week will be early as well) and everybody who knows me may know what this means… ! Anyway, I don’t want to complain, it’s really very good money I earn there but, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to work there for longer than four or eight weeks… after a while your brain turns into a huge mass of jelly and as a kind of ‘compensation’ for that every other part of your body aches like hell…but no, no complains at all !

Well, what else can I tell about my time here so far?! hm, to be honest, I don’t do very much which could be described as thrilling… . Day in and day out I have more or less the same rythm: work from 6am to 3pm, relax a bit, go to the Volleyball training (at least twice to four times a week), chat for a bit and have a nap (you can’t really call that a proper sleep since most of the time it’s less than four hours. Ja, and this ‘lack of sleep’ leads to the fact that on Wednesday (after Volleyball on Monday and Tuesday), the latest, I’m so tired that I could die on my feet ! Hm, the only thing I can say about that is: Was nicht tötet, härtet ab!

So, as you can imagine, there’s not much time for doing anything else except that. Sometimes I manage to cycle to Langholz beach and have a quick swim, it’s really great to have the gorgeous Baltic Sea so close by! The weekends are not very interesting either, nothing much changes except: no work, longer naps, longer chats ! Well, I do try to catch up with some things I simply don’t manage during the week.

The good thing about being completely unsociable at the moment (I hope that this will change soon) is that I earn so much money that I can probably afford to go on holidays even twice ! I’m really looking forward to that and it helps me so much to survive this f*** time! In September we’ll set off for Riga and some other places and in October I hope that I can go back to Dublin for some days before University starts again. Oh ja, I already forgot, I’ll be in Freiburg for about a week in September and then again at the beginning of October… for all the people there: you can already put a reservation on a table in the Feierlings beer garden !

Anyway, I guess I should stop to keep you from more interesting things (in comparison to my life at the moment)! But as long as it’s only for a while and I know what it’s good for…! I promise to write again very soon and tell you all the news (which news, haha?!). Until then: Take care everybody and I send you big hugs!

Your Steffi