Dora's exciting trip to Ikea

Today I went to Ikea. By myself, and without a car. Ikea isn't really designed for a lone visit; it's a big, intimidating place, which requires moral support. It's also not designed to be visited on foot. Trekking through the car park felt like taking my life into my own hands. I also got really lost. On the way there, I was fine. On the way back I decided it would be clever to go a different way even though I didn't know where I was, and as anyone would predict I got very lost, carrying my Ikea bag and trying to look like I knew where I was going as I traipsed up and down residential streets. I didn't want to ask for directions...that's not my style. The station turned up eventually and it had definitely moved.

Ikea itself wasn't bad at all. I think it's the one place which is just as confusing in England as it is in Germany, because everything's already Swedish anyway. Sadly, Ikea don't take Visa or Maestro card, and the cash point there didn't like my cards. So I ended up with only 30 euros to spend. This meant I had to put back three amazing purchases that I didn't have any money to pay for; a fluffy rug, a retro alarm clock and a small heart-shaped rug that was definitely aimed at children. Sad times. I'd planned where to put them and everything.

So Ikea wasn't as successful a trip as I'd hoped but at least I have my own bedding now and at least I know where to find the place. Once my new free travel pass starts working on Friday, I'll be able to go back any time I want for free so I can go reclaim the items I couldn't have today.

I have successfully joined the Bochum Ruhr Universitaet now. But I still need to buy another ticket to get free travel all over Nordrhein-Westfalen. Despite what the British Council say, this doesn't seem to be inclusive in the price of joining uni. Warum muss alles so kompliziert sein?! Who designed Germany, anyway? I want to inform them that I could have done a better job.

Dora.
xxx

Oktoberfest!!

I'm struggling with this blog site...it could be that it's all in German but more likely I'm incompetant. It took me a long time to work out how to write a new entry, almost as long as it took me to find this website again and remember my password. Btw I don't know what this background I've chosen is like, but I picked on the basis that it was titled "fantastisch".

Oktoberfest this weekend was epic!! Definitely worth the sweaty 19 hour round trip; never underestimate how big Germany is. OK, so it looks roughly the size of the UK on most maps I've ever seen but that is because maps in the UK are bollocks. Munich is really really far.

I'd say that I'm pretty sure all the Germans at Oktoberfest hated us; I could understand that. Oktoberfest has a lot of rules. We didn't know the rules but when we found them out we just did all we could to get around them. For a start, everyone else had Dirndl and Lederhosen, but 100 euros is a lot to spend on something you're gonna wear once; our alternative was white T-shirts with profanities scrawled over them in highlighter pens.

You're meant to have a table before you can get a beer, which means you have to arrive at 7am to get a good table. Wrong. It means you have to hang around other tables and then impose yourself on well-behaved German people (or if you're less lucky, pervy italian people), demanding to sit at their table. When they protested, our only form of negotiating was cheerfully shouting "PROST!!", standing and clinking glasses with everyone so loud that there was no way we could be aware that they wanted us to leave. Leeds Uni 1: Oktoberfest 0.

Ok, so we nearly got chucked out a lot of times, were moved on security very frequently and I was definitely told off and forcibly removed from a table by an angry waitress. But overall it was a wicked weekend.

Today I managed to get up on time, make myself look presentable and go to lessons. I taught a small group of 13 year olds for half an hour which wasn't that productive but I don't think they minded. We got through the 3 exercises the teacher gave me quite quickly and the kids weren't that chatty. So I explained that they could go back into the class, or we could chat in English for the next 10 minutes and they wouldn't have to do any work. They perked up a bit after that.

I was meant to meet 3 different teachers today to help plan lessons and I am pretty sure I got stood up by all three; either that or I somehow got the times and meeting places of all three completely wrong. No, definitely the former. Everyone knows I'm not that incompetent...

Dora.
xxx

Dora jumps on the band wagon

Everyone else on year abroad seems to have a blog. This means I want a blog because when everyone else has something, I want it too. No one likes to be the only one without a blog. Everyone wants to feel like their life is equally worth reading about.

So, I am a teaching assistant. That has been my job title for a week now; can't say I've really done any teaching as such, more just a bit of chatting English to German kids, smiling and trying to stay awake even though it's 8am, an hour I don't normally see. The early mornings are actually killing me; you'd think it'd be great to finish work at 10.30am, but all I did with the rest of today was nap, go on facebook, and conclude that I should start a blog. Productive.

To be fair though, there's not much else to do while hanging around my 'flat'. Inverted commas cos it's more just a corridor with cell-like rooms and a communal kitchen. I like communal living, but there is nothing communal about living with 10 other people you never really see or talk to (mostly because I forget who they are and which language they understand, if any, out of English, German and French). I make the effort to try to be communal by spending a lot of time sitting on my own in the kitchen just in case anyone wants to hang out with me, watching TV that I don't understand and drinking tea. All that's achieved really is fulfilling the stereotype that English people always drink tea.

My placement is sort of going successfully, apart from a mishap the other day where they changed my whole timetable without telling me and then were surprised that I didn't know about it. Well gutted I no longer have Mondays and most of Fridays off. They've instead kindly given me Wednesdays off. What the freeeeak am I supposed to do with a Wednesday?!

Bochum seems like a cool enough city. Have already sampled some crazy salsa night that one of my flatmates invited me to (the one who talks to me). And me and Glen, my fellow language assistant in Bochum, have now tried out Bochum gaying and Bochum sushi. Both roaring successes, except that I think I was mistaken for a bloke in a gay club...I guess there were no other girls in there, so it was a fair assumption. Still not a massive ego boost though.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Oktoberfest with many other Germs. I am so excited!! Even if I didn't manage to purchase a Dirndl for the occasion, I am instead bringing lots of enthusiasm, and biscuits shaped like zoo animals for the car journey (I did have pringles too but I just ate them all).

Dora.
xxx

This site is in German and I accidently posted the same entry twice. I can't work out how to delete this entry, but I can edit it. So here's a picture of a caterpillar I found in Hamburg.