- I am going to Berlin! Thanks to Daniel I found bus tickets there and back for 2 euros total (in June).
- This Friday there is a holiday and it looks like we´re going to visit Münster. This NRW ticket (with which we get to travel for free in the whole Nordhein-Westfalen) is great.
- I really need to somehow face the problem that the light bulb in my room went out. And that even with a chair I am too short to change it.

(Flashback to a ridiculously lame moment a few days ago: 

-          I am sitting in my room and the light bulb dies.

-          I try to use my headlight but the batteries die.

-          I try to change them but I can´t open it. (It is more complicated than it looks sounds!!)

-          I send a picture of the headlight to my friend and he helps me figure out how it works.

-          I am sitting in my dark room with a headlight on, too afraid to go to he kitchen to make some food because there is a party with a lot of strange people that I don´t know.)

Mexican night. (or more like one tequila, one Alejandro and very non-mexican guitar hero).

Alejandro. The Mexican of the Mexican party.

t

The door to Narnia.

Learning how to toast in Spanish.

Group hug. Because group hugs are always fun.

!!
Amsterdam.

- what a beautiful city
- what a relaxed city
- what a city where not to bring children

- what an awesome trip

the main station.

(Bicycles everywhere. EVERYWHERE. They even have whole buildings serving as garages for bicycles.)

- There is a pink beheaded unicorn lying in front of our dorms.

- My first Czech-German Tandem session!

- It is so painful to move after yesterday´s karate practice. But it was fun. Also, it looks like a place where I could make some German friends.

-         Kickbox practice <3 (public transport strike → coach got stuck in Dortmund → it looked like the practice will get canceled for the second time → everything worked out somehow in the end)

-         Von Mäusen and Menschen. Finished my first German book.

-         Japanese syntax is killing me.

-         Strange letters about paying for the TV (what TV?)

-         My textbook ordered on e-bay arrived. About a week later than it was supposed to but it did.

-         Amelie decided she doesn’t have enough time to be my Czech-German Tandem partner this semester but it looks like there is a second person in Bochum who wants to learn Czech! Hopefully we meet on Friday.

(me: I thought it was supposed to start at six...?
A: Yeah but that means people start coming around six and it doesn´t really start before seven.

A sentence I did NOT expect to hear in Germany. From a German.)

Super awesome trip to Köln!

- walked around the city, MANY churches (very beautiful)
- visited the chocolate museum (yes, you know what that means for me)
- celebrated Alejandro´s birthday with some cake that Anna made and bier by the Rhein
- (among all the German bier in the supermarket, I found Zlatopramen 1,5l :D)
- sunny all day!

Our group.

The Kölner Dom. So huge. So. many. details. SO MANY!
Such an impressive building, I´ve never seen anything like it.

Švejk!!

Chocolate museum with some free samples. Heaven.

View from the Cathedral.

(Random stories of my life: for some reason I kept thinking I don´t have enough carrots. So now I have about 3kg of them.)

compilation of social media reactions to the "stromfrei" day
it was a big deal, hehe

https://storify.com/ruhrunibochum/stromfrei?hc_location=ufi

All better today.
Got my phone working. (But still, if any of you know anybody who uses a prepaid vodafone card, let me know. Apparently, the thing I bought will be valid for 10 years.)
And I had my first German Phonetics class which was pretty awesome. IPA and Ladefoged, how I´ve missed you.

Vocabulary of the past few days:
- r Stromausfall = power outage
- vermeiden = to avoid, to prevent
- ausfallen = to be canceled (a lecture)
- verwirrt = confused


(And something random: somebody stole my sponge for washing the dishes. Why would someone do that? They could have just borrowed it and put it back and I would never know...Also, does this thing have an official name? Or do people just say "sponge"?)

Thursday:
It´s been exactly one month since I came to Bochum.

-          The Internet connection in the dorms still isn’t working because of the power outage. All the information about whether the classes / sports /Mensa are closed /canceled is on Facebook, of course.

-          I thought I still have two days left (because the phone said so!!) but it turns out my tariff expired today.

-          I went to recharge it and accidently bought something different which doesn’t work on my phone. Now I have 15 Euros worth of pre-paid tariff I can´t use and I don’t know what to do with it. I guess it is my fault but I did explain what I need to the guy in the store and he sold it to me anyway. Grr.

-           #stromfrei “There won't be any classes today (at least not till 12 o'clock).” At least not till 12 o´clock? What does that even mean? Of course, my class is supposed to start at 12 so this piece of information says nothing to me. And how do I find out when I have no internet connection unless I want to pay crazy money for connecting through my phone? (Not that there is any information online when I finally manage to connect to some wifi.)

-          I went to the public library which saved me during my first few days here a month ago. Due to sickness closed today.

-          I cut my finger and I am out of band-aids.

From now on, on the 16th of every month I am locking the door and staying in my room waiting for the day to be over.

I am saved from despair by V.´s  fortune cookies and by the MOSTSUPERAWEOME LETTER from ベロニカ、シルビエ and クリスチーナ!  どうもありがとうございました!!! <3 <3 <3 (Panebože tam je úplně všechno!! :D )

Germany is not that organized as I thought it would be.

Wednesday:

-          Translating from Japanese to German and vice versa is my life now.

-          Today I had my first Japanese Syntax class:

-          It is considered the most difficult course of this year.

-          Everything we are doing is based on Morphosyntax which is a class my current classmates took last semester.

-          The textbook we are using is written in such a complicated German with so many linguistic terms that most of the German students don’t understand it themselves.

-          The teacher of this course speaks SUPERfast. How a person is even capable of such a language-speed, I don’t understand.

-          Stromausfall. The power is down; there is no electricity in the whole campus. Chaos.

-          No lights in the classrooms → classes get canceled

-          I don’t know what reason really → Kickbox practice (and all the other sports) get canceled.

-          All students living in dorms (including me) are without Internet connection. (Yeah, it is kind of hard to prepare for my lectures without any online dictionary or kanji recognizer. That´s the reason I have time to write this post. Well, I would write it anyway but now I even have a legit excuse why it is not procrastination.)

-          When deciding what to do on Monday night when I was tired of preparing for my Syntax class, I signed for karate lessons. Thank you brain. When you have too much work, the most logical thing to do is add more to your schedule, of course.

-          (My first ebay buy. Fingers crossed that I get the textbook on time. Or at least that I get it at some point.)

Sunday picnic by the lake! 

Městečko Palermo usíná. To znají všude.

I got sunburnt. But it looks like spring is finally here! (Anna and I decided to take the Pollyanna-approach).

The way back home turned up to be a two-hour walk. I swear I told them not to take the forest way and then not to cross the field and then not to cross the other field because there is a fence behind it.


(Studying unitl late at night again. Yes, the semester has began.)

Late Easter celebration with coffee and super-awesome cakes at Joana´s place with the campus group. I am the only European student.

So I opened the Japanese textbook to prepare for my Monday lecture... In a desperate attempt to find out what all these abbreviations (or formulas or spells or whatever they are) mean I googled what "ggf" stands for. I guess the first link was pretty accurate: go get fucked.

Second day of school:

-     Placement test for German language courses: a lot of scary stories about crying students who thought they are B2 level in German and scored A2 → took the test and scored a really high B1 so they let me take B2 courses which I wanted in the first place. (I didn’t even have to ask them! They just told me to take them.) AAWW YYEEAAA

-    I found the right classroom for my Japanische Syntax class; waited outside for half an hour and then found out the class is cancelled.

-    Japanese Konversation will be a very very big challenge. Also, apparently, I don’t belong to today´s class but to the tomorrow´s one.

-    My first KICKBOX practice! What an awesome end of the day. I´ve missed punching and kicking. (And of course I was the one who ended up without a partner so I got to go with the coach.)

Vocabulary of the day:

-          e Kniebeuge = dřep (=knee-bend??)

-          r Schlag = úder (punch)

-          r Rollstuhl = invalidní vozík (wheelchair)
-        単身赴任 = wohnen am Ort des Arbeitsplatzes ohne die Familie = taking up a new post leaving one's family behind

(I keep thinking the food in the Mensa here is expansive but I guess I am just really spoiled. There is probably no chance of buying a lunch for less than 1 euro anywhere else but in Olomouc.)

(Á. and B. <3  for the postcard!)

My head is about to explode but I survived the first day of school!

The first class I had (Japanisch - Textanalyse) was half in German, half in Japanese. My brain is really confused. Sometimes I don´t know the Japanese word, sometimes I don´t know the German one and depending on what dictionary works better or who helps me, I write the translation in Czech / English / German. Also, here they use a different transcription of kanji than we to in Olomouc, (ironical) yay... (It took me way longer than I am willing to admit to realize that tyotto is really just an ordinary chotto.) But the teacher looks like a really nice lady and I could actually understand most of the lecture. (Real) Yay! :-)

I came early to the Uni to look where exactly my classes are so that I don´t have to hurry / don´t get lost / don´t come late. Well, I did find where my class was supposed to be just fine. Unfortunately, they decided to move my second class to a completely another building. Only 25 students signed for the lecture so the teacher decided to move the course to a smaller, more cosy classroom. About 60 more students decided to show up. So not only I had to hurry, got lost and almost came late, I also didn´t have a chair. But everything worked out fine in the end. (We watched a German document about a Japanese festival which pretty much consists of building a HUGE* fish, getting drunk and walking with the fish around the city)

*When I say huge, I mean 70-men-carrying-the-fish huge.

Vocabulary of the day:

- Feinstaub = pevné prachové částice (atmospheric particulate matter)

(If you want more pictures, let me know and I will send you a link.)

<3 Áňa and Bára came to visit me!

and they met my cat friend

and the creepy rabbits

one of them even has boobs.

- walking aroound the campus (and asking strangers for pictures)

- real life Guernica

- hon za zlatým deštěm na vajíčka

Ladies party!

- making Easter eggs in progress

- side product: onion quiche

ta-daa

B. and Á. needed to buy tickets back home which turned out to be some of the most exciting hours in our lives.

- Because of the Easter holiday, the tickets are super expensive.

- There is not enough money on Á.´s credit card.

- Because of the wrong cell phone number, some stranger got the confirmation sms for the payment.

- There is not enough money on my credit card.

- The German card has different data on it so it is not possible to pay from it.

- 3am: Štěpán saves the day.

So the next day we just wake up and go straight to the Big Easter Lunch in my kitchen.

- SO. MUCH. DELICIOUS. FOOD.

- I didn´t believe we could all fit in there. But we did and it was awesome.

- (Everybody even helped with the cleaning and we didn´t break anything!)

- The term "kitchening" (which we brought with B. from Estonia) caught on and we now plan to make kitchening a regular thing.

Daniel painted flags of all of us on the eggs. What a cool and creative idea!

Á. and B.´s bus was leaving from Essen around midnight and Daniel, Anna, Alejandro, Salih and Ayberk decided to join us and make a trip out of it.

Essen is such a beautiful city.

(Yea... I was sitting in bird shit.)

A considerable amount of time we spent in the... playground.

Thank you so much for coming. I miss you already!

(A note for myself: Don´t wait until Sunday evening to buy the postcards. Chances are that if you even are lucky enough and some shops are open, they will only have the. most. ugliest. ones.)

(A random piece of information from the weekend: I infected B. and Á. with my paranoia concerning forgetting my key-card.)

Düsseldorf (April 3)

A spontaneous trip to Düsseldorf with Corrado, Barış, Elisa and Stefania on Friday turned out to be awesome.

SHEEP IN THE MIDDLE OF DÜSSELDORF!

The best part was probably the view from the TV tower from which we could see the whole city.

And at the end of April there will be Düsseldorfer Nacht der Museen!