The past few days have had enough excitement that I can now make another post. Hurrah! Over the weekend, my old roommate Leya, moved out. Packed up most of her stuff, and gave the rest to me. The one exception is a box of hers which she's planning on retrieving in July. To celebrate a little, we went to a street bar / cafe on the
Reeperbahn, located in
St. Pauli. We hung out at the cafe / bar for a while, and some of her friends showed up, and then we wandered off to go to a party. On our way to the party, we stopped by the video store where one of Leya's friend's boyfriend works. German video stores aren't too different from US ones, other than they're less classy and corporate. At least this one was like that.
So, eventually around 12 or 12:30, we made it to this party. Calling it a party is sort of a stretch, since it was more like the area infront of an apartment building fenced off, pretending to be a club. After sitting around and talking to some mildly intoxicated Germans for a while (a few hours), we decided to leave. Leya said goodbye to her friends, and we left. On our way out, we ran into some people who wanted our wristbands, required for entry. We gave them up, but ended up staying another hour or two, conversing with some of the... interesting... people we found. All in all, I stayed up way too late, and fell asleep almost immediately after my teeth were brushed, when I made it home.
So, that was Saturday night, which was a lot more exciting than Saturday daytime. I walked to Real, which is a huge superstore chain that bought the Walmart stores when German Walmart closed down. So, Real is HUGE. Not only is it massive and cover lots of area, maybe the size of a regular US Walmart, but it also has an upstairs. Yeah. It's huge. After my adventure at Real, and accomplishing my mission of buying laundry detergent, I made my way home and did laundry. yippee.
On Sunday, I decided I needed to do something more interesting than laundry, so I got up and walked into the city. For those of you not in the know, I live in a suburb or area in Hamburg called
Lurup. Here's where I live on
Google, so you can get a better idea. I made it the stop before my work, Altona, and took the
S-Bahn home. I also bought
Eis, and found some stores that are open on Sunday. If you didn't already know, Germany is closed on Sunday, except for restaurants and places that can somehow justify to pay the extra taxes required to be open on Sunday. So, finding somewhere to buy groceries (!!) on a Sunday is a big deal.
Also on Sunday, my new roommate moved in. I think the first thing he said to me was "Hi, you must be... kann ich mit dir auf Deutsch reden?" (can I talk with you in German) So, apparently Germans appreciate the fact that I not only can, but want to speak German with them. He's a little older than I am, but I think we'll get along just fine. We found out today that he studied finance and is now working in computers, and I'm studying computers and trying to work in finance.
I'm just a few days away from getting my
Monatskarte, which will give me a lot better access to the bus and trains. Once I have that, I'm going to give the
Swing Club a try, and see if that's any fun. It turns out that I'll definitely have time after work. One really cool thing that happened at work, was we were all working away in the Back Office, work work work, and then I look out the window, where river is. Instead of the river and the port, I saw a wall floating by. A ship that's larger than our office building just happened to be cruising by.
Work seems to be really flexible as far as hours go. I get to show up anywhere from a little before 9, to 9:30 (and I could probably show up even later if I wanted) without incident, and I can leave between 4 and 7 (depending on what I'm doing) without causing a fuss, AND, I get to take time off for work related things. Like getting a visa. I don't think I could get a whole week off though, unfortunately. I've even been ordered to go home before 5:00, because it was a Friday, and I should go home and relax! Unfortunately, I didn't make it out until 6:00 that day but the next time that I was ordered to leave by 4:30 or 5, I made it . This whole relaxed attitude leads me to believe that they wont be too hard about me taking a day or so off if I have visitors, or go on a little trip.
I kind of want to go to Flensburg, and visit the Valentinerallee, or see a little bit Denmark (and hear them speak funny Danish!). We're pretty close to the border, so it wouldn't be that long or expensive of a train ride. I'm sure I can find some other interesting places in the area...
Here are a couple pictures I took recently:
Here's my dinner from a day or two ago.
This is a bridge that reaches across the street into the building in which I work, and a shot from it. What's it for? you may ask. I did too. I thought it was just decorational. Herr Joost corrected me though. Apparently, about 3 times per year, the
Elbe floods so high, that they need to use that bridge to access the building. That's also why all of the stores on the ground level have these metal doors for their windows. I thought it was just so they could pretend they were ships. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be flooding while I'm here. Oh well.