Stalled

Turns out, my friend Markus, who I thought was in Canada, lives in Cologne at the moment! He studies film and he's brilliant at it. Was very happy to see him so unexpectedly and watch his newest creation "Stalled", which was also ace. Other news: lost at pool, ate amazing burger, watched lots of films. Dad 3 loads of laundry. (My grandmother forced lots of Camembert on me, so I took it to Cologne. When I unpacked my backpack the whole thing stank like hell. So did my clothes.)

Dirt Crowds Noise

THE FAMILY

Cologne!
Is where I am.
I am using my current homelessness and unemployment for a tour through the home country. It started on Friday at the edge of the black forest, where I met my dad, who took me to a wine tasting in a pretty little town close to the French border. The place made me sick, that's how pretty it was. And so quiet that it made me nervous. It's weird. Countryside is stunning, people come from all over the world to see it, the wines are excellent, the food is the kind I grew up with and the people are supposed to be... well... my people. And they were lovely and welcoming and gave me a VIP ticket which let me eat and drink for free all day. But walking around the vineyards, sucking at my bottle of white wine I just realised how wrong I feel there at the moment. It's where I grew up, where all my best childhood memories are, where I am supposed to feel at home, but I just don't. 2 days and I miss London like mad. Dirt and crowds and noise, how are you over there?

It was a good trip in some ways, tho. I had a proper 1 on 1 catch up with my dad, which is something that never happens. And it felt good to realise how much I actually miss my folks. Cause it's the good kind of missing. The kind where you just know that they are there somewhere and will be when you need them.
Plus my dad is one of the funniest people I know and he knows how to make me laugh when I am all melancholy from too much white wine and too much nature.

Then we travelled on to my grandmother. There was no time for lonely walks then. They all hadn't seen me in 2 years and were all over me. My granny's sister put lots of expensive jewelery all over my wrists and fingers while my grandmother was already busy mending the holes in my jeans and shoving lots of food into my mouth at the same time.
They say I am too thin, not dressed properly, my hair looks like a boy's and scruffy on top of that, I should wear more pearls, but be careful not to lose them, cause they were very expensive and maybe it's best to wait until they have died and I stop behaving like a teenager, plus they won't let me take them to England anyway, cause they'll get stolen there and they'll give them to my dad to look after them for me until I am a proper lady.
My favourite thing was when my grandmother suggested for me to move back in with my parents cause then I wouldn't have to pay rent and I'd surely find a cleaning job in Konstanz, too. Danke, Oma!
She also gave me a necklace she got given for her 90th birthday 6 weeks ago. I think she is convinced she won't see me ever again anyway, but if you ask me she'll live to be 100, at least. She's as fit as a fiddle.

Well, and now I am in Cologne. Hurray! They have dirt and crowds and noise here!
I am sleeping on my friend Julie's sofa and I can't wait to meet her later, when she's finished work. She's a lovely squeaky always there if you need her gives good advise kind of friend who lived with me in Ireland and always made me lovely smoothies and I miss her lots!

Then in a couple of days I will travel on to Bochum to meet more amazing people, play some pool with my friend Mel, hang out with Gabby (for the first time in Germany!!) and restock my currywurst sauce supplies.

And then my cousin's wedding, which I am looking forward to very much. I love weddings now. I LOVE WEDDINGS.

The First Wedding

That was the royal wedding, as you know. I watched it (well at least the service and the kiss) with Loreena MacKennit on her living room sofa. In the middle of it all I had to cook a soup, so I missed lots, but nevermind.
I thought the dress was pretty and some of the hats ridiculous. I thought the tree's in the church instead of flowers were a lovely idea. That was mainly my thoughts. And then I finished work and went to an amazing street party in Hackney. Ros and our friend Aidan welcomed me by throwing me into the air and bringing me other surprises and then I drank lots of cider and peed against a house wall. A girl I didn't know held a scarf in front of me. There were people in wedding dresses and Sam waved a little flag. That is all I remember of it.

I was mostly celebrating The End of Shad. For me. It was the end for me, not for Shad, obviously. Bye bye, thanks for my 60 quid!
Oh and bye bye Tooting! I'll come visit, promise, one day...

The Second Wedding

The second wedding was that of P and T, friends of Ros', who I had met at various occasions. The two of them are in an amazing band together, Royal Treatment Plant, who y'all should totally check out and like a lot.
And theirs was the first proper wedding I've been to since I was 6. The ceremony took place in the Royal Festival Hall, which is a great venue for that sort of thing. With a view over London and all.
The reception then took place in West London, so we all got put on two old routemasters and carried through London, being given our own little sightseeing tour.
Now I don't have any weddings to compare this one to, but I thought it was an excellent party. Great food (paella!), great music (whicdh I told the DJane over and over...) and a free bar all night!
The speeches weren't boring and also Ros crashed into a table, which is always fun.*
Unfortunately that perfect evening ended a bit annoying at 5am somewhere in Essex, cause Ros and I both fell asleep on the night bus. Ah well...

So yes, I am totally in the mood for love and trumpets and soppy stories and more wedding cake. 4 days till wedding No 3! Can't wait! Nervous, yet, Ju?






* Her version of the story goes that she was just about to lean on the table when it collapsed spontaneously a second before she even touched it. Also possible, of course.

Royal Wedding Eve

So. Town is full of old American women who have William's teeth tattooed on their boobies. I really wish I could go to town tomorrow and see THE DRESS with my own two shortsighted eyes and wave a little flag and scream and then faint. Who wouldn't?
Alas, I will watch the ceremony with Loreena McKennit in her living room while eating currant buns and drinking tea.

So yeah, last shift with the shadsters tomorrow. On the weekend I will move all my 3 posessions into Ros' room and start looking for jobs. Cross your fingers, everyone!

I know this is short, but I don't really have anything else to say about Royal Wedding Eve (which is tonight). It is as exciting as Christmas, but as far as I know I won't get any presents, so meh.


PS: I won a game of pool against Ros last night, which is even more exciting than Christmas!

I dos.

My last shift with SHAD is on the royal wedding day. Which is a bit unfortunate. Because, little as I am interested in any royalties, this wedding promises to be quite the excitement. Loreena McKennit says people will sale cake on the streets.
I just heard on the radio that this wedding will cost £20m. Twenty million pounds. That is ridiculous and fascinating and it makes me think that people here will have to sell a lot of cake to afford it.

So yeah, the prince's is the first wedding I am excited about. Then there's more exciting ones, tho, which I am actually invited to.

I have only been to a traditional wedding once, when I was six and throwing flowers and I was wearing little white socks and pretty shoes. Horrible day. Then I was to a wedding where everyone wore black and it took place in a cinema. And then as an unborn Nio I was at my parents' wedding, which was small and I (= my mum) wasn't even wearing a wedding dress, but a grey skirt and blazer and the only guests were archaeologists coming to throw flowers and rice in their lunch break. My glorious parents.

Anyway, as you can see, I am a wedding newbie. But I won't be anymore when the summer is over. Just wait.

Sprimmer*

So Mothervisit is over and it was good. I got to be a tourist and pose in front of tube and street signs. Until my mum's camera's batteries died and she got grumpy cause my "dad should have told her she has to bring the charger" cause how's she supposed to know. Seriously. Batteries haven't been around for that long afterall and my mum's not so good with new technologies.
She went to lots of art galleries and we did a lot of walking through Soho and Camden and a lot of drinking, too. She bought me a towel and underwear and we had asian food every night. Cause it's the only food you get in Tooting and cos Green Papaya is the loveliest and Ros and I had to take her there. So all in all it was a lovely, if a little exhausting week.
My mum is also good to walk around with, cos she notices things. Like... You have a street, a normal street, houses, fences, bins and the odd tree... and for some reason you look at it and know you are in Britain and not in Germany. You don't know why you know, something you can't put your finger on. Here's one reason why:
They PAINT things here. With oil paint. They paint their fences black with oil paint, while we leave it the grey metal. Sometimes they paint the fences grey, but they still paint them. Same for window frames and... I don't know, pub fronts. And doors. We just leave them wooden or plastic or whatever. They paint them brown or white (or any other colour, they have lovely coloured doors here). They must spend shit loads of money on oil paint in this country. But it's good, cause a grey painted fence is prettier than a grey fence.

And now it is SPRING! The sun is scorching the skies and petals rain from the trees. Young girls and old men sit around and write poetry. Woodpidgeons fall in love and all that. Ladybugs... etc. And I get drunken in beer gardens and parks. It is a proper relief, cause it is cheaper and also you need less food.

And cheap is good, cause I have no money. I lost my wallet again. (Feel free to comment on how big a twat I am, but in my defence I want to say that my mobile phone is one year old this month and that's quite amazing and I am proud.)

Also, my job ends in 10 days. I can't wait, can't wait, can't wait! But also I am a little nervous and am getting the oooh-something-ends blues. And all of a sudden I get all sentimental while watering Loreena MacKennit's orchids and sitting around St-Martins-in-the-Fields at 10 on a Sunday morning, all tired and bored and hungover...

ANYWAY I am mostly excited. May will be nice, I think. There's two weddings, a trip to Germany which starts with a wine tasting with my dad and some of his clients, a trip to see my grandmother, who just turned 90!, a couple of days in Cologne with my friend Julie, who I can't wait to see and then a few days in Bochum, and then my cousin's wedding, which will be a proper family reunion, I think.

I am not the biggest family reunion fan. You usually get nice food, but it's exhausting cause you have to pretend to be a nice, hard studying/working straight girl and wear a skirt or something with flowers on. In the past my cousin Ju and me had the best times together, cause we just have to look at each other and crack up about something some auntie just said. And usually after lunch we just fucked off and spent the rest of the day locked in in a toilet cubicle or somewhere. But this time she's the bride and might not be up for it. sigh.

Anyway. Also in May I need to find a new job and flat. Am considering moving into Marcel's skanky flat, cause his heroi n housemate was just thrown out. The flat is urgh, but it's only a 5 minutes walk from Brick Lane, which is rather brilliant and about 20 minutes from Ros' house and everyone else I know. Will think about it. It's not exactely a place I'd invite my mum to. And she's been to all my volunteer's flats and liked them.

Today: games, sandwiches and sunshine in London fields with the Meganican.


*Spring plus summer

I'M NOT DEAD!!!

Surprisingly.

I did my best, had Schnapps for breakfast and didn't sleep for days, but I am still here, still going and now I will blog about it, no excuses anymore. I was just lazy.

Today I was thinking how funny my life is. Funny, cause it has so many extremes.
I was watching a middle aged man pull a fake guitar out of "Mr Tumble's Spotty Bag" on today's Cebeebies with little Em wiping her snotty nose on my jumper - awww- and babbling incomprehensibly away (we don't always watch TV, by the way. Today we also played with "Baby", read two books about Spot the Dog and solved a biiiiig jigsaw puzzle. 4 times.).
And while Mr Tumbles was still pretending to be a pop star and teaching us how to sign "pop star" in sign language I was thinking about Marcell, who I am a bit worried about since I saw his new flat.
It's not so much the flat I am worried about (even though it is a rather shabby former council flat with nothing in the kitchen but a pot, 2 plates and 1 spoon (and since Marcell moved in: Tiramisu), it's more the BADdrugs using flatmate, a lovely and extremely good looking French guy, who I met in the hallway, him being unable to talk to me, cause "the police found him on Upper Street this morning and brought him home and he's still a bit spaced out". Ehem. Will try to meet Marcell more often, he seemed a bit lonely to me all alone there in Whitechapel.

Then there's work. Hmmm... I mean "normal work" not "little Em work". I have exactely 5 more weeks with Loreena McKennit. I will use the time to copy lots of her recipes and write a new handbook for the new volunteer, whoever that will be.

At the moment my mum is over for a visit, but I shall tell you about that another time. It is nice, tho. I get to be tourist again and she brought me lots of German things.
Not that I needed many. My Germanlandlongings are rather small at the moment after our brilliant week there in the beginning of March.
We stumbled through the streets of Konstanz as Yin and Yang should do on a Thursday morning and drank lots of fig flavoured vodka with Emma who was dressed as a mole. Lovely times!

Lots of lovely parties lately, the last Outpost party in the dog food factury for example. M&J moved to the countryside somewhere... booo... they'll be back, tho.
And they had a nice little goodbye-do, which I couldn't fully enjoy, cause I had to go to work twice in the middle of it, but I was terrible enough and luckily I am young and can survive on 30 minutes of sleep in 3 days.

Then last weekend we all tried to get into Unskinny Bop, but again that didn't work out, cause of lesboverflow. Ended up at a night called Queen Bee's, which I enjoyed a lawt, cause it was full of crazy hair cuts, lovely people and weird music it took some time to get used to, but was ok, cause there were drugses.

Oh and it is getting warmer and warmer. Sitting-at-the-canal-or-in-the-park-with-cans-warm, actually. Which I do, a lot. Spent a crazy drunken day at the canal with Gabby, who is practically living here now and only goes to Germany for 2 days a week. She is a nightmare for the environment, but she is ace and I am happy that I'll see more of her from now on.

And then there was an afternoon in the park with Eva, Ade, Ros and Megan. We had polish bread and cheese and hangovers.

I know, I know... a whole month and it is difficult to summarise now. But I will write again, soon. Promise, cause things are happening!

So long...

1, 2, 3 Holidays!

Oh there was so much going on lately, I don't even know where to begin.

Biggest, bestest news maybe are that we are leaving for Germany in less than 24 hours. And I am incredibly happy and excited, cause I do miss it, I do and it's been ages. We will go for walks at my lake, go on a boat, drink lots of schnaps for breakfast and dance with the witches. And I can't wait to see some of your German faces, you lovely German people, who I miss. (AND YOU BETTER REALLY COME, CON, OR I WILL CRY AND BABY JESUS WILL CRY AND KUNIBERT WILL CRY AND I WILL EAT THE Boots' Blueberry Nougat Bar I BOUGHT FOR YOU MYSELF!!)
So my next blog entry will probably describe how Ros and I managed to lose all our important possessions (=2 crappy mobile phones, 2 sets of keys and 2 wallets) while getting drunk in the medieval streets of Konstanz being dressed up as chess boards or something. Don't miss it.

The most amazing fact about us going to Germany tomorrow is, that I actually managed to sort identification papers out that will let me fly to Zurich and travel to Germany tomorrow. I think I already described how ridiculously complicated it is to get a new ID card when you're not actually living in Germany. Anyway. I also told you that when I went to the embassy a few weeks ago they asked me to come back within a week before my flight goes. So I did. On Thursday. Then I was told that as my flight was going into Zurich (which I had told them last time I went there already, by the way) they couldn't promise that the Swiss boarder people would actually let me into Switzerland with the letter they could give me stating that I am a German citizen and allowed to travel to Germany. They might let me in, I was told, but they might just as well turn me around and send me right back to London.
Great, I said, and what happens then when I am back in London and still don't have papers, will they let me back in or will I end up living in the airport like Tom Hanks in Terminal? They said they didn't know.
So I went for the slightly less risky option of applying for a provisional passport, which is valid for a year and a 60 quid bargain. Miraculously they actually managed to get it ready for me in time to pick it up on Friday just before they close down for the weekend and I am now the proud owner of a pretty, green little passport, which I love and won't ever, ever lose.

Apart from embassy troubles, the first 4 days of my holidays were nice and relaxed. Thursday felt a bit like summer and so Megan, Ade (her new girlfriend) and me had a beer picnic in London Fields and even though Friday the weather wasn't quite as nice I had another beer picnic on Friday with Gabby in St James' Park.
Talking about Megan, it was her birthday a little while ago and last weekend she put on a brilliant birthday party. Ros and I only wanted to pop in for an hour, as we were incredibly tired from a long, long night at the Outpost, but of course we ended up being the last people leaving the Treehouse in Finsbury Park at about 1 pm the next afternoon. Too much beer pong. Too much weed. Too many nice people and too much dirty chicken in the early morning hours.

In general I got way too little sleep lately. Lisa and I hardly ever see each other anymore, even though we still share a flat, but since her sister moved to London she's always at her house in Walthamstow and I am at Ros' place a lot. So whenever we happen to both be home for a
night we end up drinking and talking into the early morning hours. Sometimes we go for a game of pool at the Trafalgar Arms, which is a slightly dodgy pub down the road, but mostly we wrap ourselfs in blankets and stay in the kitchen and drink beer out of cans or wine out of tea cups. Oh the glamorous life of Shad volunteers...

Yesterday, for the first time, I went on a UK Uncut protest with Ros and Dom. They've been to a few, but I was always working. Now, holidays and I could come along. It was fun, we turned a bank into a launderette: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/372
Lots of lovely people doing important work here. Reminded me that I should go protesting more often again, especially as I only just learned that Germany got rid of tuition fees in general, which was something I did lots of protesting for during the last few years and it shows that sometimes you do get heard, you just mustn't give up. So well done everyone from Bildungsstreik in Germany! We got what we wanted and didn't break a single window!

Shocking, tho, how little I know about what's going on in Germany at the moment. I occasionally have a look at certain German news homepages, but not often enough and I only have a vague idea about the Guttenberg scandal and everything else that's happening at home. Maybe I should get some information in tonight or there might be horrible surprises when we get to Konstanz tomorrow morning and the place is not only burned down but the whole of Germany a completely different world... you never know.