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!!!