Broken German

Broken German: what is spoken when Cathryn attempts to speak German.

I'm now in Prague, after a fantastically busy (or do I mean fantastic and busy?) week in Berlin. I found Berlin to be very gritty - posters caked onto the walls, different types of people, lots of colourful buildings. Some cities have big skylines and tall buildings, but Berlin is very eye-level, with lots of graffiti, as well as lots of cool bars, and public spaces. I think I came at a good time - spring - as lots of Berliners seemed to be out and about, enjoying the weather, which added to the 'happening' kind of vibe I was feeling.

 Bubbles in the Tiergarten

Graffiti, south of Kreuzberg.

 East Side Gallery on what remains of the Berlin Wall, Frierichshain.

Whilst enjoying the city, I was also hit with surprising bout of homesickness. I was surprised by it because I see this 7 week backpacking trip as the separate ‘last leg’ of my 6 months away. I thought it’d be easy: I’m on my way home, I’m travelling and going to places I’ve always wanted to go to. I figured I'd be too busy/occupied to be homesick. But, obviously, that was not the case. I found (and sometimes still find) myself daydreaming about coming home; what it’ll be like arriving at the airport, spending time with my boyfriend and friends, going to parties, having conversations with people at home, etc. I’ve had this all along, but, particularly late last week, it was really, really strong. I'd be walking along the street and not taking anything in because I'd be daydreaming. Probably because I’m so close to coming home. Like, when you need to pee really bad and then after waiting for ages the urge to pee is most intense just as you’re locking the toilet door. Anyone else get that? Anyway, to be honest, catching myself daydreaming about this (the arriving home bit, not the peeing) really bummed me out. I didn’t want to not be present, and then get home later and realise I’d wasted my whole time in Europe wishing I was home.

I think I was also a bit flat while in Berlin because I felt like I wasn’t experiencing all that I could. My days consisted of going to art galleries, museums and tourist spots, and then my nights mainly consisted of going out drinking with some cool Canadians I met in my hostel. I mean, none of those things are bad, they’re really good – but I thought, ‘isn’t this what every tourist in Berlin does?’ I was feeling dissatisfied – with myself. I’d come to this fantastic city, and all I was doing was letting myself feel down, and like I wasn’t making the most of it.
Two things helped changed this. 1) Skyping a loved one at home. Seeing a friendly, loving, beautiful face really helped reaffirm a few things for me. 2) Couchsurfing! I couchsurfed on my last weekend in Berlin, and I got to do and experience a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Verena (my couchsurfing host) and I rode bikes to Tempelhof, which is an abandoned airport. It's pretty much just a huge park now - so many people were out, tending to little garden plots, skating, flying kites, kite-boardings, playing Frisbee, flying miniature toy planes. It was so cool to ride down the length of the runway too :)

 Then we rode to the Karneval der Kulturen. Saturday was the market/fair day, with lots and lots of stalls selling clothes, accessories, food and cocktails. I even found an Australian stall, which was selling (amongst other things) 6EURO jars of Vegemite. There was also a lot of performance/music stuff happening as well.

 On Sunday there was a parade, with lots of music and dancing.

The photo above is of the Electro Swing Berlin float - it looks like a stage in the photo, but it was actually a big truck moving along the parade route, playing awesome music! The crowd followed behind, dancing to the music. I joined in :) It was such a friendly, fun atomosphere.

I also met some really cool people at a vegan dinner I went to later on Sunday. I think it was at that point that I felt satisfied - I wasn't just scratching the surface of Berlin, I was actually meeting people who lived there, and having experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise. I think that's what's important to me when I travel - I like to feel I'm doing the kind of things I would never and could never do in Perth.

Thanks for reading!

Sending lots of love home.

-Cathryn

Traffic marmalade

Ok, so I'm in Berlin and this blog is now officially misnamed. I've just come from Hamburg, having spent 4 wonderful and busy days there.  

I spent my time in Hamburg with Marina, a friend of my mother and aunty’s from many years ago, when they were all travelling through Europe together, just like I am now. I really enjoyed staying with friends, as opposed to staying in a hostel and being a 'tourist'. Marina made me feel so welcome! I'm incedibly grateful to have met her and spent that time in Hamburg. If she's reading - HI MARINA! Haha. I feel it was a good start to Germany, and it also allowed me to learn a practice a little Deutsch before heading to Berlin on my own. 

 Here's Marina and I in her amazing garden! I think I definitely came to Hamburg/Germany at the right time - spring is in full swing, all the flowers are blooming and the sky is (mostly) clear. 

Marina took me sailing! The weather was a little bad in the morning (overcast, light rain), but then in the afternoon the clouds opened up and we got some good wind. We sailed along the Elbe River for most of the afternoon.

Other things:

I’ve packed too much, I need to throw some stuff out. I don’t want to, because the items I’m thinking of throwing out (my winter coat from London, for example) have sentimental value to me. On the other hand, I really want to throw them out, just to force myself to break this ridiculous hold that these objects have on me. They serve no purpose now and are quite literally weighing me down. Also personal possession related: I'm stressing about the boxes of stuff I've sent home to Australia from London because I forgot an important form and now they may be getting sent back to London. I'm sure it'll work out, but I'm also prepared for the worse case senario: I'll just have to get my landlady to resend my stuff and pay for it all over again myself. I hope the customer service rep at the company I'm shipping with shows a little (more) patience. *crosses fingers*. I just wanna sort it out, so then the rest of this trip can be as stress free as possible.

Money-wise I think I need to set myself a budget. I might make some time for myself either tonight or tomorrow morning to sit down with my diary and my bank accounts and work out how much I will be spending/have spent on accommodation/transport, and the work out from there how much more I can spend on this trip. I’m trying to think back to my trip to New Zealand 3 years ago to remind myself how to be frugal, as I did really well on that trip spending-wise. I find food is my main downfall. If I find something that’s vegan and looks delicious, I buy it regardless of price/hunger because I reason that I may never come across it again, or at least elsewhere on my trip. This generally leaves me eating too much food, and with not enough money in my wallet. 

Here's a question: what's the difference between a tourist and traveller? To me, tourist = bad, traveller = good/genuine. I have a few ideas, and perhaps in thinking about this question while being a tourist/traveller myself, I'll find some specific answers. I'll share them in a later blog post :)

Until next time...

Cathryn :) 

Ps. Just realise the title for this post needs explaining. My first morning in Hamburg, we were all sitting around the dining table having breakfast, and I was explaining to Marina how jam and marmalade are different things in Australia. Someone - I can't remember who, but it was either Marina or her husband - then made the observation that since jam and marmalade are different, you could not use the term 'traffic marmalade' in place of 'traffic jam' and have it mean the same thing.  I thought it was very funny at the time, and it's amusing in that it's the kind of joke that would only come up between people who speak different languages. :)

The only taste I know is bittersweet

Well, here we are. I'm sitting in my room, it's totally messy and I really should be packing... but instead I'm blogging. Tomorrow I leave London for good. I've know this day would come since I first got here, and now it's finally arrived. I wasn't entirely sure what to blog about for today, but I knew I wanted to at least write one - to mark the occasion, so to speak.

I'm a very sentimental person. Over the past two days (and even over the past 2 weeks), I've been counting down, taking note of the things and people I won't see again, the things I won't do again.

I'm sad to be leaving - I feel a sense of loss, of knowing I will no longer be near a place that I like to much, and doing things that I find so exciting. But, on the flip-side (and this is something I have been unwilling to admit to myself for a while) I'm also happy to be beginning my journey home. I'm going home! As much as I loved being here, and fulfilling my dream of living abroad, there was always a sense of distance, and of lonliness. I have some regrets after my time here, and I'd like to list them:

Not making friends. 

This is a big one, and an obvious one. It kind of snuck up on me... I keep hoping friendships would happen, and then when they didn't I clumsily tried to make them happen myself (in hindsight, I see that I was a little too heavyhanded/desperate, but at the time I felt I was being earnest and open). However, I also learnt that long friendships are not necessarily the most important. Irony is sometimes the best teacher. I formed significant, temporary friend/relationships with people who I wasn't expecting to form them with (such as my landlady, my counsellor, etc). I look forward to meeting lots of interesting characters in my travels through Europe, and allowing myself to be open to these fleeting friendships.

Occaisonally being too complacent. 

Sometimes I felt like I spent too much time on the internet, not taking advantage of being in this city. But, I'm aware that I have done quite a lot in the past 4 months, so it's a matter of acknowledging good times along with the lazy times. And it's ok to have both.

I'm a firm believer in learning from ones mistakes, so I know that in time these regrets will be lessons learned (and to be honest they mostly already have). So, having a few regrets is small change to what this whole experience has been to me in the long run. I say, with only the faintest shadow of a doubt*, that this has been the best 4 months of my life (and in my head I'm expecting to say 'best 6 months of my life' once I'm home). I say this, not because it's been a flawless few months, but quite the opposite: it's been a coalescence of painful, difficult times and positive new experiences. I've learnt and relearnt some difficult lessons, moved to another country (and thus, acheived a life-long dream), experienced loss in some of the deepest ways and all the while been reminded of the beautiful adventure that life is. Here are a few high lights of my time here in London (big and small):

Snow!

 

So, snow was a first for me. I can still remember how quiet it was that morning. I've since learned that that silence is because Londoners don't know how to open their front doors when it's snows.

Counselling.

I don't have a photo to illustrate my counselling sessions, because... y'know... taking a photo of my counsellor and I never really seemed appropriate, haha. I started counselling sessions here in Febuary, mainly because it seemed like a now or never kind of thing. I could go to counselling when I get back to Australia in 6 months... or I could start tackling my issues now. I chose the latter, and it has been immensely beneficial.

Travelling (with Ella, sometimes)

I'll always be really grateful that Ella was in Europe around the same time as me. This photo was taken in early January, as I was about to board my bus back to London from Amsterdam. I was starting my exchange in London, and she'd just finished hers in Amsterdam. I remember feeling like it was really poignant, with both of us starting our different adventures. Since then we've travelled together a lot, so my 'highlight' here is twofold: having a friend/good coincidences, and being able to travel to lots of cool places with relative ease. I love how central London is!

Museums and art galleries

 The Natural History Museum was probably one of my favourite museums. I also tried to go to a new gallery or event every week. London is such a busy city - I could go to an event every night of the week and still be missing out. When I get back to Perth I plan on going to many more exhibition openings and private views, because they're something I really enjoy here. I never went to a lot in Perth before I left because they're almost always in a Friday night and I usually worked Friday nights. So when I get back, depending on how/where I'm employed, I'll make sure I have Friday nights off.

Next time I post I will probably be in Germany. I really want to update as much as possibly during my travels, because I like keep this as a log of my activities. However, backpacking can be a fickle business, so I'm acknowledging now that any plans I have for regular blogging may fall through.

Much love to those reading,

Cathryn.

*I say 'faintest shadow of a doubt' because it feels like a big call to make. Also, if I say it's the best 6 months of my life, then the rest is all downhill from here, right? Let's say: best 4 months of my life so far, in progress :)

Assessments and such

Last week I finished my course here in London. It culminated in a small set up of my work, to be marked by two tutors while I was absent. My work was then to be left up for the private view (meaning, everyone gathers in the studios-turned-exhibition-space, drinks free alcohol and waffles about the uselessness of everything), along with all the other exchange students and second years. Here’s a picture of my set up:

Um... yeah.

Anyone who knows what Curtin assessments are like is probably scratching their heads. Basically, back in Perth, we set up ALL the work we’ve made for the semester, and then have a review, where we discuss our work with 2 tutors and the rest of our class (usually). It was much different here. First of all, there were ‘space restrictions’. We were asked to only hang one significant piece, along with an artist statement, and all our supporting research (visual diary, failed works, etc) to be neatly piled below. As you can see from the photo above, the space restrictions didn’t really end up being much of an issue, but I complied anyway because I’d already decided which piece I wanted to hang, and it was small anyway. I’m also not sure how we receive feedback for our work... I’m going to email my tutor in a week or two if I haven’t heard anything. At Curtin it’s pretty straight forward – you get a scribe to take notes for you during the review, and you receive the tutors remarks and grades within a few weeks. I’m not sure if it’ll be the same here, especially since I wasn’t present for the actual marking, and have had no critical feedback for the whole semester. Anyway, I’m glad I’ve finished my course here. I’m looking forward to getting back to Curtin and feeling motivated, a little stressed, and most of all, productive. Here I felt stressed, but it was more a case of being stressed with aimlessness that I felt within the course. I don’t feel entirely satisfied with the work I’ve produced here – it’s been good, and it’ll be a great springboard for when I get back to Perth, but ultimately there’s been no blood, sweat, and tears, which generally leads to some sense of satisfaction and accomplishment towards the end of semester. This last week felt like a bit of an anticlimax.

I’m currently in Glasgow, enjoying my last week and a bit in the UK. Glasgow is beautiful, and I’m loving my hostel  - it’s big and old, yet cosy at the same time.

As you can see, it’s probably haunted. But, I’ve checked under beds (no grabby ghosts) and since there’s no elevator, no chance of a blood monsoon... so perhaps there’s nothing to worry about.

I’ve only been here a day, and already I can feel myself getting excited for travelling again. I’ve been all down-in-the-dumps lately because I’m sad about leaving London for good, but being here, seeing new things and doing new things (as opposed to being in a routine and/or procrastinating) has re-energised me a little bit. It’s got me looking forward at what’s to come, as opposed to what I’m leaving behind.