indraspindra

and again a long times has passed since i last spread some news about me through the web. the reasons for my silence are twofold: either i have no time or i have nothing to tell. after all a big part of my life is taken up by my studies and work. however, a rough overview over my past few months will show that not everything was boredom.

thus, i visited my first open air music festival in a hicktown called Preddöhl and let myself be "spirtually healed" - at least this is what the title promised. i'm not sure if the healing was successful, but i sure had fun and hope that it won't have been the last festival of the kind that i went to, though it doesn't always have to be Goa music (sorry, Eike ;))



















furthermore, i spent a weekend in Dresden. it was the first time i went there, although this quite beautiful saxonian city is a mere two-hour-drive away from berlin. the occasion which made me take the trip was my bulgarian friend Christiana's sojourn in the Elbe capital. we spent a wonderful day together in the old part of the city bathing in the sun and eating ice cream. the following day, before returning home, i took the chance to meet a friend of mine again whom i got to know four years ago in lithuania. we had almost lost touch so it was really joyful to renew our friendship.



besides, i have passed many sunny hours at various lakesides in berlin. often with my mother and my siblings. my "little" brother has grown so much that he's already caught up with me and it won't be long before he will be able to look at me from above. similarly, my youngest sister has made a jump ahead from being a child to becoming a young girl. though small in size - and the only one of my siblings who is still shorter than me and will most likely stay so for the rest of our lives - she is getting more and more mature by both, character and appearance. i know it's the normal course of life. still, it is strange to me to realize how my "little" siblings become less and less "little" within a seemingly short time :)

finally, Wuschel and i have invested quite some time into getting ready for our big (though short) trip to india. making sure to have all the necessary vaccinations, getting the visa on time, buying and borrowing the backpacking equipment, booking flight and train tickets within india as well as the first hostel where we'll stay in mumbai....and reading a lot in various travel guides as we wanted to have at least a rough idea of the places we wanna visit :D

here and there

woohoo, finally i've had time to travel again. a bit at least. after having finished my exams and a long but interesting research paper, i had a whole week left of the semster break. that was during the second week of april right around Easter. i didn't hesitate for long and decided to visit two friends of mine - on in Venice and the other in Paris. the roundtrip berlin-venice-paris-berlin actually cost less than some train connections within germany. crazy, isn't it?
anyway, i got my first slight sunburn this year while in venice, where, by the way, i have walked probably some 75% of all streets, alleys and squares existing on that island. after all there is hardly another way to get around. good thing i had Jamie and her boyfriend as a guide most of the time, otherwise i'd have been lost within a few minutes, i suppose.


well, i kinda liked venice in a way. it is a very aesthetic town. however, it is not very inviting. venetians don't seem to like foreigners very much, though probably more than half of them live of tourism there... as for venice being one of europe's romantic capitals - i don't know. Eike wasn't with me as she had to work and with all the crowds there, i'm not sure i'd want to spend my honeymoon in venice. but the ice cream sure is delicious :o)

paris....of paris i only got to know a tiny bit. just two entire days and a half - by far not enough to really see paris. but i did all the obligatory touristy stuff: i saw la tour eiffel, i went to notre dame and entered le musée du louvre. the latter shocked my quite a bit, though. the seem to have no means to control the tourists there, which results in the worst museum experience i have had in my lifetime. too many crowds without a sense for art. in front of Mona Lisa some 60 persons were standing in a big bulk and maybe but 3 of them were actually looking at the painting with their bare eyes. the rest was either taking pictures or even turned the other way to have their picture taken in front of the....well, i am not sure whether the Mona Lisa will even be recognizable in their photos.
besides that paris was pretty cool. unlike venice i'm sure to visit it again, though it will probably pass some time until then. for now, i've gotta go as i'm supposed to go to Geneva - this time not for pleasure, but with a group from uni.
cheers!

ps. liebe grüße an meinen wuschelkuschel :-*








guess, what they are NOT looking at!!! yes, it's the most famous painting in the world... :-O

ein virtuelles winken aus der verschollenheit

ja, mich gibt's noch. hatte in den letzten wochen bloß ein bisschen stress und wenig lust zum schreiben. aber jetzt habe ich erstmal die ganzen semesterabschlussklausuren hinter mich gebracht und......nein, wer jetzt denkt, ich hätte semesterferien, der hat sich geirrt. vorlesungsfreie zeit hat zwar auch was schönes, aber weniger arbeit bedeutet das für mich zumindest nicht. ich darf mich noch bis zum 6. april mit der schönen frage "gibt es ein recht auf humanitäre hilfe und was würde dieses recht umfassen?" beschäftigen. eigentlich ja ganz interessant, aber eben nicht ganz so einfach. sonst wäre es allerdings auch langweilig, oder?
immerhin, nach der abgabe meiner seminararbeit bleibt noch eine woche zeit, bevor die uni, also die vorlesungszeit, wieder beginnt. und in dieser - hoffentlich wunderschönen und sonnigen - aprilwoche werde ich endlich mal wieder in der welt umherschippern. venedig und paris sollen es sein. gleich zwei auf einen streich, schließlich komm ich in letzter zeit so selten zum reisen ;)
also, eigentlich läuft alles bestens. der winter zieht sich momentan auch ein kleines bisschen zurück - zumindest war es heute wunderbar sonnig - und die recherche für meine seminararbeit wird zwar nicht meinen stresspegel senken, aber wenigstens wissenslücken stopfen, die ich tatsächlich füllen möchte. kein unsinn über dingliche surrogationen oder konkret gefährliche generalklauseln....es sollte also tatsächlich auch etwas spaß machen :D

Krabat auf bulgarisch

gerade gefunden... :)

stressful times

no, i didn't give up writing this blog! i am just having quite stressful times recently. it is the so far most demanding semester in university for me and additionally, i have started a new job working in a law firm approximately 10 hours a week. besides, i spent a whole week away from uni in Hildesheim two weeks ago, where i was the interpreter for the spanish group (officially...inofficially also for more or less all of the other 5 groups as well) to an international youth exchange. therefore, i had to make up what i missed in class...
so, that's just a few of the reasons for my recent writing slackness. however, i am generally happy. being in berlin is great. studying is interesting, sometimes fun, and rarely boring. living and being with Eike a.k.a. Wuschel is the best that has happened to me in years...
summing up: i love my life despite being stressed out a lot!

btw: thanx to everyone's bday-greetz yesterday! i'm looking forward to Katja's and my party tonight. it's gonna be fuuuuuuuuuuuuun :D

new room mates

we've got new roomies since today :) three "Stenodactylus sthenodactylus"...you don't know what they are? well, have a look at the pictures and see how sweet they are.

Geschafft!!!

yay! i made it!! i am enrolled at Humboldt Universität in berlin. woohoo...wouldn't have thought that it'd become this...well...that it'd take so much nerves to become a student here. and it wasn't even because of my grades or a limitation to the number of free places...no, just because the german post isn't trustable beyond the most simple tasks anymore. my mother moved and i moved since i applied at Humboldt. my mother paid for the post to forward her mail to her new address (giving her and also my last name for the mail to be forwarded). well, still the post seemed to think that it wasn't enough - after all my first name wasn't mentioned in that forwarding order - so the acceptance letter from the uni was sent back with the indication that i wasn't anywhere to be found...hahaha, bad joke! after i grew increasingly worried (because i gave up a while ago trusting in our post system) i went to the enrolment office last friday to inquire when the letters would be mailed....i was informed that actually the date for enrolment had already been the previous monday and thus i was too late. because of the f***ing german post. the lady at the uni was so nice to postpone my deadline a couple of days and today it was made: i became student of Humboldt University, which i will probably remain for approximately the next 2 1/2 to 3 years :D

liebe grüße auch vom Wuschel :o)

new couch

after a looooooooooooong long time, i shall write a few lines again. indeed, i thought my whole blogging phase was over since i'm back in berlin, but....well, i heard some rumours that there is someone who'd like me to continue. i will happily do so, because i actually like writing about myself sometimes *hahaha* :D
i will stick to the old title - after all our new flat is situated in the east of berlin, just outside the "green zone" (Umweltzone), i.e. outside the boundaries of the S-Bahn-Ring within which only cars labelled with stickers confirming a certain standard of - well, what actually? fact is, only if you buy one of three categories of stickers, you'll be allowed to cross the center of berlin unfined. supposedly, this measure shall reduce the amount of particulate matter (=Feinstaub) in the capital....in any case, if anyone should want to visit us by car, the sticker is evitable, for you may approach our home without crossing this zone. however, you might be confronted with an elevated amount of unhealthy dust...(personally, i don't think there's any difference between central berlin air and the air outside the "zone". by the way: in the times when berlin and germany were splitted in two parts, the former GDR was often called the "zone" - at least by westeners. now, that i live in an area formerly part of the GDR, however, i live outside the new (green) "zone". thought this was kinda funny, when i first realized :-P

so, as for the title of this blog entry: yes, we finally got a new couch for our flat. Eike and i had been looking for one since we moved into our new home in mid-july. yet, we didn't find one that we could afford until last week. thus, you can imagine that we are quite proud to present our new "big sofa", which is truly big and extremely comfortable. at first, it seemed a bit too huge for our averagely sized living room, but now, we just re-arranged everything a bit, so that now we don't have a room with sofa, but rather a sofa with room. :D here're a couple of pictures

it is about 3 m long and 1,5 m wide. hehehe.







i'll add a few more pics from in and around our flat...

one of our bedroom walls









living room a while ago







one of our (2) balconies and the view from it...

back in berlin

so here i am, back in berlin. back at home. at the moment Eike and I have found shelter at my mother's place, but of course this is but a temporary solution while we are looking for our own place.
mostly, i am busy now with establishing the foundations for my/our next phase of life: searching for a flat, applying for university in berlin, dealing with way too much bureaucracy (esp. for my student support)....since i have come back from sofia, not even 10 days have passed and i've already spent 3 days in freiburg in order to get some more paperwork done and - of course!! - see some of my good friends there.
anyway...there is still enough time to enjoy the berlin summer (yes, he's actually here!) and to pamper Eike whenever she gets home after a long and hard day of work.
i hope my next news will be connected with an invitation to our new flat, cheers! :o)

sommer??

hmm. i kinda thought summer in the south of europe would look differently...anyway, this is what i am experiencing almost every day at the moment....at least there are also a few hours of sun almost every day as well....

before and after

ja, da war ich noch eben beim friseur, bevor ich den günstigen preisen hier den rücken kehre (der neue schnitt hat keine 4 € gekostet).

ich habe heute übrigens auch eine zusage zum praktikum am menschenrechtszenturm (MRZ) in potsdam bekommen. sozusagen pünktlich zu meiner rückkehr nach berlin.

ich freue mich auf euch alle. bis bald!!!

hard rock and pretty flowers

last saturday, apocalyptica gave a free concert to open the hard rock season in kavarna at the black sea coast. thus, Denz and i took the chance and set out to hitchhike to varna, where we met up with Tanya (my CS host from my easter trip, who hosted us again after the concert) and went on to kavarna.
lucky as we were, Denz and I got picked up in sofia by a guy delivering toys to various parts of bulgaria and who was heading towards varna. including a few stops in pleven, veliko turnovo and some other bulgarian small town, we arrived varna within about 8 hours and reached kavarna in tim for the concert.
the atmosphere was really nice - the concert was open air in the town centre and the audience consisted not only of big fans and darkly dressed heavy metal aficionados, but was quite mixed and in the background lots of children were playing as well. including the support act, the concert lasted for only three hours or so. still, i really enjoyed it and actually liked it much better than i had expected. after all, i am not a big hard rock and metal enthusiast myself, but mainly got interested in apocalyptica because of their choice of instruments. quite aesthetic, i think :)

after the concert, Tanya, Denz and i hitchhiked back to varna, where we spent the night. on sunday, Denz and i headed on back to sofia, but this time passing by kazanluk, in order to see the rose fields there....well, in the end we didn't see many roses, but i got to see a bunch of poppy fields for the first time in my life. so beautiful! at one point we were let out to hitch the next ride in our direction opposite a field. there we spent a few minutes just running around and taking pictures... :o)
this really was my personal highlight on sunday!!!
the whole way back was also quite exciting. this time, we needed a lot more rides to get to where we wanted. the balkan mountains we even crossed in a huge truck. small winding roads up and down the mountains in such a huge vehicle...quite exciting, though awfully slow.
still, mostly we only waited two or three minutes until we caught the next ride and only twice we stood more than ten minutes at the roadside before we found someone taking us along. bulgaria is definitely a good place to hitchhike.
crossing half of the country last weekend we either passed or stopped in all of the following places: pleven, targovishte, veliko trurnovo, varna, kavarna, shumen, gabrovo, shipka, kazanluk, sofia....just have a look at the map and you'll get an idea :D

so, this was likely to be my last trip of my erasmus adventure, as well. only 11 days left until my flight back home. home, which will be berlin again, finally, after 4 years living elsewhere...i am so much looking forward to taking up my studies at the HU and moving together with my big love. Eike and i will of course be more than happy to welcome anyone visiting berlin in our flat as soon as we will have found one.

Wuschelfilzball, ich liebe dich!!!

easter vacation in pictures....

my bulgarian easter trip started on the night train from sofia to varna on 26/27th of may. i had in mind to stay two nights in varna and somehow travel up north from there to the romanian border in order to visit my friend iselin and her family (we know each other from spain and hadn't met in almost three years). much more i hadn't planned, except, of course, my accommodation in varna: one night with a russian couchsurfer currently doing a voluntary service in varna and one night with a bulgarian CS woman (>40yrs), who proved to be extremely hospitable and had an admiringly amount of energy. soon she'll even own a small apartment just for couchsurfers a few km away from varna along the beach...wow!!!
the first night in varna i shared the bed with this little cute grey cat (picture 1). he was became really crazy in the morning, though, and kept playing with cat-and-mice with my hand, so i threw him out shortly after sunrise :D
unfortunately, my first two days in varna were....RAINY...mostly i walked through the city with my russian host, her polish room mate and two girls from NZ who had been hosted by tanya the previous nights. and we frequently escaped the rain in restaurants and cafés...well, in the end of the first day, i had been to three or four different places. hahaha. the next afternoon i met with another CSer, who offered me to give me a ride to the romanian boarder the following morning as there is only one bus line serving the route varna - costance which is quite expensive. i gladly accepted and the rest of the afternoon we spent walking a bit more through varna (picture 2: roman bath ruins - the oldest in...well, somewhere, and picture 3: varna beach)....at the end of the day i "moved" to rumi's place - my second host whom i had already met the day before...

sorry, i guess, it's getting a bit complicated with the chronology...but don't worry, it is not so important "when" i did things....the whole point of writing this down is giving you an impression of "what" i did, right?

anyway, the day i was leaving varna, the weather was great, sunny, warm....my "chauffeur" and i stopped twice along the coast - at "golden sands" (picture 4), one of the biggest tourist resorts: sea, beach, hotel complexes, highway, forest (national park). btw, i had noticed already in varna the huge amount of chestnut trees and also along the beaches and between them most trees were deciduous trees, many of them chestnuts as well. in my opinion very "fresh" and beautiful :) - and in balchik we walked to the castle once in the possession of a romanian queen (picture 5) and a bit around in the pretty gardens around - with the not yet blooming roses.

finally, we arrived at the bulgarian-romanian border (picture 6), which i crossed by foot while the cars were waiting in line (the picture was taken from the romanian side looking towards bulgaria). kinda cool!
after a few minutes iselin and her husband picked me up and drove me to their home only about 15 minutes further north in mangalia (pictures 7 and 8 - the church is just a few years old and if i got it correctly, the pastor who married iselin and her husband works there)

well, mangalia isn't really such a picturesque town so i didn't take many pictures there. but after all i have been there to visit iselin and to finally meet her cute little daughter sofia (*6.sept.06; picture 9) and the more touristic areas around mangalia (vama veche, and the resorts further north until constance) i had already visited in 2005 during my first time @ iselin's...

after just two nights, i had iselin take me to kavarna the next bigger town in bulgaria, from where i took the bus to varna. there, finally, i spent yet another day with sun at the beach (picture 10)
and in the company of the polish room mate of my first CS host walking through the center (picture 11 = cathedral in varna), along the sea, across a huuuuuuuge park and and and....until i took the night train back home to sofia just in time to attend a bulgaro-german wedding on may 3rd (greetings to kalina and henning :))

ach ja, und zu guter letzt grüße ich noch meinen liebsten wuschelfilzball, der ab morgen wieder in berlin ist und wo wir bald unsere gemeinsame zukunft beginnen werden *freu*

back to my roots

Meldorf - home of Eike and also of Carsten Niebuhr, my great great great grandfather (i hope i got the number of "greats" right). for everybody who cannot read german: Mr. Niebuhr went to a few excursions to the middle east and drew maps. he also had some political position in denmark and has done even more "great things"....whatever. important is that already my ancestor was a traveller, my grandmother has inherited these traits and so have i :D *lol*

this time i didn't spend a lot of time in germany. only one very short week. still, enough time to attend a confirmation, celebrate a birthday, enjoy the windy northern nature and relax in the sun....

< in St. Peter-Ording

< "boardwalk" in St. Peter-Ording (the first and only time i was there before last week was during a class trip in 5th grade)

< north sea "beach"

< Wuschel @ beach

< Deich idyll

...and now i'm back in sofia. tomorrow, i'll leave for varna...more adventures to come!!!!