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!