Moin Moin aus Hamburg

I'm here!! The year abroad is well and truly begun... eeeeeeee! I flew out a week ago yesterday, and life has been an absolute blur ever since. I'm going to try and keep up to date on the blog, not least so that I can look back when I go home at the end of the year and remember just how it feels to be new in a new country. Eek!
Hamburg is great, it feels so friendly because it's broken into districts, you wouldn't know you're living in Germany's second city. My house is lovely, I'm living in 2 rooms in the converted cellar of an 'einzelhaus'- meaning detached house, pretty normal for the UK but far less so for Germany. I live with 3 girls, a trainee teacher (S for the purposes of the blog), a trainee occupational therapist (C) and a landscape architect (U). I've been gradually beautifying my room, slowly as cash is thin on the ground until my erasmus form arrives and my deposit from Austria is paid back into my bank account. I need to nag my flatmate about new lights (most of them are broken) and a wardrobe, but I have a bed a desk and 2 chests of drawers which is good. I got a bedside table and bedlinen at Ikea the other day plus 3 plants which have made it feel a lot more like home.
I had to travel down to Cologne to have a 3 day training course in a Monastry last Sunday, I travelled with my friend Rich from Uni who's also an assistant (125 euro gone, like that! on the train tickets.) We met up with a couple of other assistants who are working in Cologne, and ended up in a bar with Germany's oldest pnuematic steam orchestra (for orchestra read accordian and tuba player made of wood with pumpy cheeks). You should hear that belting out 'Sex Bomb' by tom jones (it was one of the very few things on the song card I'd ever heard of).
The training course itself was OK, incredibly intensive, with the worst imaginable glutenfree food (one day all i got was cornflakes for brekkie, potatoes for lunch and rice for tea. its like anti-atkins) with copious amounts of overly detailed lectures on health insurance and the vagueries of the German school systems (all 16 of them!!) It was really good to get to know the other assistants though, that part was really fun, theres around 30 of us in Hamburg which should make for some fun nights out. That said, it'd be really easy to slip straight into that social circle so I'm trying to make myself get to know my flatmates which is tough because one of them talks even faster than me in dialect!!
Germans are so blimmin organised. I had to go register my address at the 'bezirksamt'- like a district office, where I was given a really complex form and a deli-counter esque tag and told to wait my turn. Then having got past the beauracratic hurdle of my complete lack of prior address within Germany, I paid into a reverse cash machine (it took my money (6 euro) instead of paying it out) and was officially angemeldet (registered) with a jazzy piece of white a4 to prove it! Closely followed by buying a german mobile for 15 euro which i'm pretty sure doesn't work. Followed by drinks at the alster pavilion (wikipedia it, i can't be bothered) with the other assistants, it was a pretty cool day all in all.
Which leads me onto today's fun and games. Got up at 5.30 am to go to an icelandic horse tournament as part of some duty-induced flatmate bonding. My horse Vocab has increased 200% at least!! Did you know icelandic horses have the most gaits of any horse? me either. But after 3 1/2 hours of watching, it transpires that they can 'toelt' sa well as walk, trot, canter and gallop. Anyway, once the flatmate who was participating was knocked out (she came 17th in case you're wondering...) and C and I were well and truly frozen to our cores, but bonding quite well, we got to go to the second bit of the day- Kartoffelfest; think Oktoberfest, but for potatoes. Surprisingly a great afternoon, lots of chips plus beautiful scenery, loads of tiny german children doing wholesome farmy activities, baby piglets allover the place and a nice bio farm shop with a glutenfree section which I would have patronised if it were not for the chronic lack of money! Then back to the tournament in time for the pairs fancy dress competition (2 horses, 2 people dressed as a pair, so bride and groom or princess and pea, tied together with toilet paper which can't break) before home for communal veggie stew and rice. (with more sheeps milk schnapps)
Look at me and my wholesome Germanic life. I don't think I've ever had so many new experiences in one day, roll on starting school on Monday! I want to go to church tomorrow, but I'm dead on my feet so am catching up on some much needed sleep!!
much love
xxx