This is the end...my only friend...the end...

Sad face! So, my job is officially over. I still have to go to school and get various forms and things off my mentor, and potentially go out for ice cream with her and some other English teachers. I hope that does end up happening, it would be nice to have a sort of quiet goodbye...thing. It doesn't really feel like I've left as yet; my last class was with some year 8s, who don't seem so bad now I don't have to teach them again. They're learning about limericks, and two of them performed their limerick to me as a rap, complete with actions. Yeah, they're really not so bad.

(I'm looking forward to living in a room that isn't on the ground floor, directly next to a footpath; there are two gardeners working right outside my window. One of them just casually wandered along, stopped and stared at me through the window, holding a large branch, then wandered on. Unnerving...he could have at least smiled...)

I also am yet to update about my last two weekend trips. First, I went to Madrid with Jessy and Robyn, where we stayed with Jessy's brother. An excellent host, who can speak Spanish; very useful considering we definitely do not speak Spanish. Because I'm the one that does languages, regardless of my having never learnt Spanish, Jess and Robyn seemed to think it suitable for me to be the one to communicate wherever we went. Admittedly, I have no shame when it comes to attempting to speak other languages, apparently even when I actually can't. I would do a lot of hand gestures and say "si" and "gracias" a lot. Failing that, maybe speak a bit of French (they're the same, right?) or offer a list of languages I could slightly more competently communicate in ("English? Deutsch? Francais? Nederlands??").

Anyway, a highlight of our trip, apart from obviously improving my spanish, was a lot of karaoke on the first night, where the karaoke bar was empty when we got there and full by the time we left. No doubt this was due to our excellent renditions of, among others, Rollin' by Limp Bizkit (with actions), the Thong Song, Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang (with actions), Backstreet Boys, many a Beatles song, many a Blink song, and right at the end a woman insisted we stay to sing Don't Stop Believing with her. Unfortunately, the song she had in fact requested turned out to be a different song by the same name. This did not damage our confidence, and the three of us happily belted out the Journey song over the top of the wrong backing track.

Iiiii waaant it thaaaat waaay...tell me WHYY..

There were protests in Madrid. Here are Robyn and Jessy getting into the spirit of things.

We went to the Botanical Gardens, where we found a tree trunk that...quite vaguely resembled a knob. Vaguely.

Me and Jessy hanging by a pond.

We also went on a night out, during which we surfed on a travellator. It's always been beyond me why they don't have these things literally everywhere.

The band we saw in a club. There is a picture of Green Day behind them; they were not Green Day, but they were quite good. We enthused.

If we ever go back to Madrid, I fancy nipping to Ibiza, as it's so easy to get to.

We went rowing. Here's Jessy with a mermaid we met.

And Robyn having a really good row.

Overall? Excellent trip. Then came another week of school, which frankly, I remember nothing about. It can't have been especially good or bad. I probably didn't do much.

This weekend just gone, I went to Dresden again. It would have been better, had I not been suffering from a really bad cold, and basically couldn't breath all weekend. Bleurgh. We did go on a lovely hike in the Sächsischer Schweiz though.

Dora and Sophie enjoy a cliff-top.

Dora, Sophie, Rachael and Hanna enjoy posh picnic of wine in plastic champagne flutes, cheese and crackers, grapes and pom bears, on top of some nice rocks. This was along the main tourist footpath and it felt a bit like we were on stage.

So, I guess my year abroad blog is coming to an end. No more exciting trips, just another week in Bochum. Me and Glen did Abmelden (deregistering) yesterday. First attempt! And it was successful! We celebrated with a little walk around Stadtpark, to say goodbye to our duck friend. We also met a friendly cat! And went for sushi. Omnomnom.

Dora.
xxx

Things that have happened since Osterferien

I went to Aachen again. Another final trip to Ladies' Night (or rather, "constant free drinks to pass round the group" night) at B9, Aachen's most gangsta club, followed by another night on Sophie's floor. I did want to finally visit the Dreiländereck and skip from Holland to Belgium to Germany, but somehow, possibly as a result of overindulging at B9, a hungover picnic in the park, featuring chicken and baguettes and sunshine, was somehow more appealing. 

Me, Sophie and Glen also went to the spa. We are classy people. It was actually amazing; we basically just went swimming, but I left that place feeling all chilled and happy and relaxed. I guess that's how you'd imagine you should leave a spa day, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. So surprised, that I had to calm myself by going for tapas and wine with Sophie, which was so good that we had to calm ourselves with two more bottles of screw-top wine in her back garden, where we stayed up till all the Germans went to bed and we could finally have a go on the sun loungers. Though not before deciding we needed music and dancing to our ringtones. Which looks like this, if anyone was interested:

Yes, that is a bottle of beer. Yes, we may have moved onto beer because somehow a bottle and a half of wine each wasn't enough at the time. The next morning I realised it definitely was.

Following Aachen weekend, I spent a week trying to entertain myself while Glen was being a hobbit (yes, he does mean hermit) and writing his dissertation. I went to Düsseldorf Kaiserswerth by myself, because I vaguely heard it was quite nice there. It was. I sat by the Rhein and read a magazine. And wished I had more friends.

This last weekend, I went to München. It was pretty special. It was nice being reunited with Rachael, and remembering that she is insane. We intended to have a few drinks, maybe go out, but not stay out too late because we were going out on the Saturday. This is us after about an hour:

And then when me and Pippa finally made it back to Rachael's. Notice how it is definitely the next day. And we were the first ones home.

After recovering through a lot of fajitas and a side order of spinach (we like spinach, OK?), and trying to muster some enthusiasm (by drinking energy drink so strong that last time it gave Rachael hallucinations), we arrived at Kellie's friend Phil's house, to hang out with the Bayern language assistants and watch Eurovision. Oh it was fun! We randomly selected 3 countries each and had to drink...when almost anything happened. Some favourites were "every time Germany does something embarrassing" and "every time someone is orange".

Rachael and Sophie hadn't met the famous Daniel Brooks before. I do like it when my friends meet each other and hit it off.

We also thoroughly enjoyed the S-Bahn into Munich town. As the well-known saying goes, there ain't no party like an S-Bahn party. Apparently Müncheners disagree though. We did actually get bottled at one point. Bottled. Just for livening up the journey with some loud but beautiful renditions of club anthems.

We are lovely people.

Night out success. Next day lunch success. Mitfahr back to Bochum success. And I was definitely ready for bed when I got back to Bochum at midnight.

That is, I believe, an update of everything that has happened since Osterferien. There's a mere 7 working days left at the school. Seven. And just two more weekends of fun. This year is definitely almost over. I'm glad I get to go back to the UK. I miss it. And I've actually only been home once all year. Once. Apart from Christmas, and apart from going to Leeds for a weekend to find a house, I haven't been back to England.

I'm going to Madrid this weekend, so I'm going to finish this entry and go on with trying to learn some basic Spanish off the BBC website (if it goes as well as my learning Slovakian and Hungarian pre-eastern tour, I will be chuffed).

I think I might be addicted to going on holiday. I better get over this problem by the time I go back to Leeds and have to live off student loan again.

Dora.

xxx

Dora attempts to summarise Eastern Tour

So, it's been a week since we flew home from Vienna, after a week of exciting tourist fun around Eastern Europe. Since I can't really be bothered to recount every detail of the trip, here's as brief a summary I can manage, complete with photos to illustrate the things I fail at explaining. One paragraph = one day.

So the first day, me, Sophie, Ali and Max flew out to Budapest to join the Dresden crew, and Hannah and Bertpfeif, who had already been enjoying Budapest for a whole day. We went out to a ruin bar, which looked amazing. At midnight, it was Ali's birthday, so I bought him a Birthday shot of delicious Unicum. Oh, I definitely recommend Unicum. Especially if you're a fan of spirits that taste a bit like alcoholic soil and claim to be healthy.

The second day, we saw literally as much of Budapest as it is physically possible to see in one day. We did a walking tour with an awesome tour guide, who told us all about how happy but poor Hungarians are and recommended us the best places to go out, as well as forcing the reluctant group to sing happy birthday to Ali. We followed up the tour with a trip to these amazing underground candle-lit caves, which featured a wine fountain. In the evening, we headed to another ruin bar called Szimpla, which everyone had recommended, and it did not disappoint. We sat and drank in an old Trabi. The only slight set-back was when me and Sophie accidentally got left behind by accepting free tequila shots just when we were meant to be leaving, and ended up very lost in Budapest, until we finally got rescued through the magic of Ali and his iphone.

Owl on the wall at the first ruin bar.

Decorative bunnies across the room in first ruin bar.

Dora enjoying the Buda side of Budapest.

Our tourguide, showing us how to grope the horse statue's balls for good luck (and good sex, apparently).

Dora enjoying a castle that looks a bit like it's made of sand.

Ali and the wine fountain in the caves. We were advised not to drink the wine. It didn't kill us.

Sophie in an old Trabi at the second ruin bar.

Sophie, lost in Budapest, with a book and a beer she acquired along the way.

Tuesday was Bratislava day. Budapest started looking nice and sunny, but it was time for us to trundle along to the next country. Our train to Slovakia was very exciting; there were compartments! We sat in a compartment! Did I mention it was hot and sunny in Budapest? Well in Bratislava, it was grey and rainy. It stayed that way for most of the time we were there. We spent most of Eastern Tour running away from good weather. Our first day in Bratislava was quite chilled. We went for a massive chinese, then in the evening we went out to a bar where I had a cocktail that used sparkling wine as a mixer, and we saw some Russians being racist. It wasn't our favourite bar of the holiday. They did give us free shots though.

So the next day, we walked around Bratislava and saw pretty much all they had to offer. The centre is very nice, probably because it's all been built for tourists. The rest of the town, outside of this cheap little haven of cute restaurants and souvenir shops, is grey and depressing. There's a nice castle though, which we did visit, and everything was incredibly cheap. The only real fail was that Bratislava is completely dead during the week. We tried to go to what looked like an incredible club in an old bunker, sort of built into the side of a mountain, but it was closed during the week.

Yes, we made it to Slovakia.

 Walking up some cute winding side streets, towards the castle.

 View of Bratislava. I told you it wasn't pretty. There is a bridge that looks like a UFO, though.

One of many cultural experiences; Pippa with some Tesco value string cheese (yes, they have Tesco!), which seems to be popular in Slovakia. It tasted a bit like rubber and looked a bit like intestines.

Oh, did I mention we got a really fast BOAT to Vienna?

They let Sophie drive.

We may or may not have shouted "boat wankers" at any inferior passing boats.

It was really windy.

We made it to Vienna! Third country in a week. Glen joined us (after I managed to find him, all lost at Westbahnhof, as I expected) and then there were ten. The first day, we did some chilling, seeing as we were all getting a bit shattered. We went for a very cost effective italian, and I can safely say I went to bed at about 11pm, exhausted.

Refreshed and rejuvenated, the next day we went to Hundertwasserhaus, which is a pretty, odd-shaped building, and then to Prater, which is like a big funfair. Fun it was. By this time, it was the 29th April, which was Royal Wedding day, and we celebrated in our own special way, by getting wankered at the hostel, then going to a club by the river, wearing Royal Wedding bunting from Poundland (because somehow we didn't feel we looked "Brits Abroad" enough yet). We made a fantastic impression on Vienna.

And Vienna made a fantastic impression on me. So much so that I had to spend most of the Saturday afternoon at the hostel, napping and being sick. I'm getting too old to make party. I did manage to recover in time to join the others for afternoon tea in a posh cafe. That night, we enjoyed our last evening of Eastern Tour in a vaguely Austrian themed restaurant. I had Käsespätzl. I can't tell you what it is, sadly, but it's tasty.

Our last day of Eastern Tour consisted of checking out of the hostel (kindly leaving our leftover pre-drink in the fridge with a multi-lingual note, encouraging people to help themselves to it) and going to the zoo. After deciding the zoo was too expensive, we settled for the gift shop, where Glen got very attached to many of the soft toys. The last adventure in Vienna was a visit to Cafe Central, previously frequented by Lenin and Freud, for a very classy glass of wine and a very posh chocolate mousse.

Crew outside Hundertwasserhaus, near a Hunderwasser fountain.

Pippa about to enjoy exciting soup served inside some bread.

Royal Wedding-themed clubbing.

Glen looking pensive in Cafe Central.

Oh, and me, Glen and Sophie had a nice little silent disco to liven up the plane ride back to Cologne.

I think that is a suitable summary of everything that happened on Eastern Tour. Ooh na na...Eastern Tour...

Dora.
xxx