Belgrade - "White City"; smelly fog and my first guest!

after almost three continuous weeks in sofia, it was time to get of town again. so i got my stuff together and bought myself a train ticket to belgrade. i went there during the night from friday to saturday last week. i stayed two days, one night, and came back by train early on monday morning. okay, i have to admit it wasn't the best time to visit the city given the weather forecast promised lots of snow. but who could have known that the snow would be accompanied by so much fog? well, anyway, this way i got to know belgrade as a really "bel" (= white) "grade" (=city) :-D my wonderful serbian guide - marko from couchsurfing whom i had met in ohrid at the CS-balkan meeting - picked me up from the train station in the wee hours of saturday morning and after a short break in his residence, he showed me to this park, where you usually have a great view over the rivers. danube and sava. well, in this picture you can see the gorgeous view that i had *lol*
but please don't get me wrong: i still had a wonderful time. okay, that time did involve some wet feet and cold nose and ears, but also some really nice people, serbian coffee and a palacinca (=pancake) party ;) all that already convinced me that i HAVE to go back whenever the city itself is also more inviting. the people were already!



coming back to sofia, i also found a snowed-in city once again. but the next day was sunny and really nice.
<-- aleksander nevski cathedral covered in snow ...BUT THEN...
there came the fog! no, i won't post any pictures of sofia sunken in in the fog here. first of all, because it doesn't look any nice and there isn't anything to see; and secondly, because i didn't take any :-P
just this much: the fog is not just fog. it smells bad. it makes your throat itch if you breathe in too much. and it is kinda annoying b/c you don't see anything, especially when you have a guest and wanna take a look at the city :(
so, PLEASE! whenever you come to sofia, leave your car at home. and if you move here: sell it! don't take it here!!! ;)

this saturday - 24th of november, one week after belgrade - came my grandmother to visit me. just me! whoohoo, my first guest!!! considering the above mentioned smog, the best we could do was to escape it at least for one day. thus, to vitosha we went. vitosha is the mountain right by sofia. one of the lifts going up there has closed cabins in which one can ride quite comfortably to aleko peak (hight ~1200m).
surely, i didn't have to organize this excursion myself, nor had my grandmother and i to go there by ourselves. hristiana was a perfect great and wonderful company. thanks again, dear! it was really a great idea to go there and with you together it was at least twice as much fun :o)

i hadn't seen the blue sky for at least half a week, we had a sunny bright day. hadn't it been for the chilly breeze, we would have been sweating up there. it was definitely a lot warmer than down in the center of sofia.


by the way, the following day, monday, the fog lifted a bit, but it started to rain instead. also not perfect for sightseeing. yet, my grandmother and i enjoyed our time a lot. and if anyone else feels like visiting me here: now i know a few really good places to have delicious bulgarian food ;)

Highlights

sooooooooooooo, i guess it's time to write a bit again ;)

actually, i didn't feel like there was too much going on lately, so i decided to wait until a few things would have accumulated and i'd have more to tell.

my personal highlights of the past two weeks:

well, let's start with uni - last week on monday i had my last day of the handelsrecht (german commercial law) course and finished it successfully the following tuesday with a short oral exam. the same day i started another german law course - verfassungsrecht (constitutional law) - which is mostly repetition for me, but still interesting enough and after all i have wonderful classmates ;) that make up for any minute of boredom that might come up. besides, i need to complete a few law courses during my stay here as this is a requirement from the erasmus programme/my home university... i also started and finished another intensive course - "international conflict managemen and mediation" taught in english at the political science department. actually, it was a course designed particularly for erasmus students - i'll take part in two more courses like that (also political science) - and it's only a few germans, dutch and polish taking these classes.

and nightlife - yep, i finally did go out in studentski grad (in short "studgrad" which often sounds like "stuttgart"). for all who don't know what's so special about it a short explanation. studentski grad means "student city". it is the district at the outskirts of sofia where ALL the student residences are located. that means that there are living 20'000 students all in the same area and everything there is of course made to fit the average student's needs: bars, student restaurants, clubs, 24/7-shops and more bars, bars, bars... i went on friday to catch up with manolo (spaniard) whom i hadn't seen for a long time and two of his friends, ignacio (also from spain) and tuba (a really pretty turkish girl). we went first to one bar, then to another and simply had a good time :) i went again on saturday as rozi had asked me to come along to a concert of a group called P.I.F. - pretty good bulgarian rock! rozi, i and amélie who had joined us once again had a great time there. however, we didn't stay until the end as at 3'30 am we were still waiting for the band to come on stage for a third time that night (they started quite late and took kind along breaks inbetween) and we were all really tired ;) this week on tuesday, i went to studentski grad for a third time. this time i followed two of my class mates from the german law courses to a karaoke bar. don't worry, i didn't sing myself (so it's safe for germans to keep coming to bulgaria - at least it isn't my fault if bulgarians have a bad impression of germans :P ) but i did enjoy listening to some of the others interpreting bulgarian and international songs. especially hristiana: you've got a beautiful voice, girl!

and finish with so much more - first i've got to dedicate some photos to my dearest LeLe! also spatz, schau dir mal mein weißes sofia an ;) weißt ja, dass mir das gar ned gefällt, aber für dich musste ich das doch trotzdem festhalten.










well, at the moment the snow is gone again and i am quite happy about that. when i woke up last saturday and found studentski grad covered in snow it was somewhat of a shock, though ;)
anyway, besides the snow, i also received some good news last week: i finally got my erasmus money - that tiny scholarship from the european union - and as i got the whole amount for all of the ten months at the same time, i actually am "rich" enough to travel around again without too many worries. that's great! you can imagine that i've already planned my next trip: tomorrow night i'm taking the train to belgrade :o)
AND i also received an email from the person responsible for my bafög (money the german government half loans/half gives to students whose parents don't have enough, but only after a huge amount of completed paperwork). after more than half a year i have managed to send them all the papers needed and by december i should receive the first payment (covering the three months from october to december). that's great news although i don't yet know how much that money will actually be :P
to conclude my little story, a really nice highlight from last night ;) kalina, member of my former moot court team and a bulgarian freiburger, came to sofia to visit her family for a week. and yesterday she invited me to celebrate her birthday with her and her friends. it was kind of strange to see faces (kalina's and that of her boyfriend, or should i say fiancé?, henning's) that i only connect to freiburg in the middle of sofia. but much more than strange it was of course really nice to see someone whom i've known before my life in sofia - and i'm looking forward to see a whole lot more people who shall come round to visit and are always welcome to be my guest ;)


und hier noch etwas für deutschsprachige leser. ich habe diesen artikel heute während meiner arbeit bei der kanzlei gelesen und diese beiden sätze beschreiben ziemlich gut, was ich an berlin so schätze: es ist eine absolute multi-kulti stadt und JEDER kann berliner sein, egal wo er/sie geboren und aufgewachsen ist. und korrigiert mich, wenn ich da falsch liege, aber ich meine, dass ist in deutschland sonst an (fast) keinem anderen ort möglich.

http://www.spiegel.de/reise/staedte/0,1518,517166,00.html

Die Karl-Marx-Straße steht gleich für einen ganzen Stadtteil, denn Neukölln ist mit 163 Nationen einer der ethnienreichsten Orte der ganzen Republik. Das Patriarchat dominiert, und wenn man in den Geräuschfetzen andere Sprachen hört, dann sind es keine Touristen [...], sondern eben ganz normale Berliner.

H·A·L·L·O·W·E·E·N

i know halloween was already a few days earlier, but it was still enough of a reason to party and so i went. i was invited by one of my work mates. her boyfriend is american and workst at the american embassy in sofia so most guests were people connected somehow to the embassy and they kept asking me what i was doing there. well, in the end they still accepted me into their party crowd and we all had a lot of fun.
figuring out a costume for the party was quite a difficult task for an uncreative person as i am, especially because i didn't have many clothes and accessories to create something. a friend then gave me the idea of making a type of toga from a white bedsheet. so, i went to a second hand store, got a big white bedsheet and an old golden tablecloth and turned myself into an ancient greek...hmmm...something ;) at the party i even found my counter part in an ancient greek warrior - named tom - and i have to say, i was really satisfied with my outfit.

just a normal day

so what did i do today? what does a regular day of my erasmus student life in sofia look like? and anyway, what is a normal day here?
this morning i got up around half past eight. i had meant to be up earlier, but i just couldn't get out of bed :-P so, i dragged myself out of bed -- bed? well, i'm actually talking about a sofa here, since for the first few months in our shared flat the living room is "my" room and so i am stuck with a sofa as bed until february. then i'll move and the next one will be the "lucky" one finding out how it is to crash on an extremely ugly sofa ;) in any case, i got up, took a shower, had a quick breakfast...just the typical things you do before going out of the house. and then i headed towards CMS for yet another day of work. today, it was the day of education or something like that, which means that NO educational students are opened for the whole day. no classes meant more time on my internship. most of the morning and part of the afternoon today i did some research on tax law. how and what kind of taxes does a german company pay if it is the owner of 100% of another bulgarian company? uff, not too interesting really, but i at least learned something and i know now: in the end you might be left with less than 50% of your gains before you paid taxes. inbetween in proofread a german text. actually, it was a text that i had written and two of the lawyers went over it, made some changes and prepared it to send it to a client for approval. wow! i didn't think that i'd really do useful work like this! i don't mean the proofreading part, but that my original text had barely been changed. ready to be a lawyer??? i don't think so, but it still feels great to do a useful job. i also found out today how much i will get for this job. and...well, after all it's not a real job but just an internship so i should really be happy about any cent. still, when i heard the sum, i kind of thought, i could just as well not receive any kind of salary: i will get 3 bulgarian lev per hour! that is less than 1'50 €. ridiculously little, but hey, this is the salary of someone working at mc donalds here in bulgaria. so, i guess it's not too bad :-P
around 5 pm i decided that it was time to go. i've had done enough work for the day and i wanted to meet dessi (the first bulgarian hospitalityclub member i met in sofia) at 5'30. well, she was late but her boyfriend wasn't and on the way to a café she eventually joined us. in the café we chatted about this and that, i had a cinnamon latte and it wasn't long before i had to go again. as it was the first thursday of the month there would be a german "stammtisch" meeting at a german bar/restaurant this evening and two of my colleagues had asked me whether i'd like to come along. hm, there was quite an interesting and diverse crowd at the stammtisch. many bulgarians that spoke german, one half spanish half english guy who didn't speak either german or bulgarian, and then of course a bunch of germans that are currently in sofia for different reasons. at the other end of the table i saw the german ambassador and i even shook hands with his wife -- she actually came round to greet everyone at the meeting while his husband kind of seemed to ignore everyone except for the ones immediately around him. but i might have gotten a wrong impression, after all i only saw him from the distance.
eventually, i didn't feel like staying much longer and i left to meet yet another friend of mine. a bulgarian girl, who had spent two years in germany (in the first year she learned german and passed the german as a foreign language exam that enabled her to go to university in germany within only SIX MONTHS), but then she realized that she just wasn't made for life in germany, quit her medicine studies there and returned to bulgaria. good for me, cause back in sofia i've met her and it was really a nice finish for this normal day. we went to a pizzeria and i ate about half of my roquefort pizza (four cheeses with some pizza dough underneath) had "edna zagorka golyama" and walked home afterwards. so, here i am now, still awake though it's already 20 minutes to 2 and tomorrow, i will actually go back to work. again.
good night, folks!