Next!

After the terribleness at the outpost I had to keep the rest of my year rather quiet and in-the-living-room, in order to cure myself from various viruses I caught at the party and to get rid of the humming.

Christmas came out of nowhere and so I did all my Chrstmas shopping in one day. Quite proud of myself! Within 5 hours I went from Highbury and Islington to Victoria to Tooting to Charing Cross to Camden Town to Euston to Angel and then back to H&I, got everything I wanted and spent enough money to have nothing to eat for about 2 weeks.

Christmas Eve was my last day at work. It was all about gift wrapping and pushing a tree in a wheelchair around Earlsfield. And then I could dive into something that somehow felt like a proper holiday, even though it was just a regular weekend off work. I gave my folks a shout to say "Merry Christmas" and "How’s the potato salad?" and then met Ros in a pub, where I found her singing the Somerset National Anthem to a bunch of scared looking old men, clutching their pint glasses.

Cause Somerset is where we went for the holidays, innit. And it was lovely! I fell quite a lot, cause the streets were so icey and then we went to a church where the kids came to the front to show off their favourite christmas presents and they had the text for the Our Father projected on the wall and instead of a nativity play they showed a YouTube clip! I don’t know if all services in the world are like this now, cause I haven’t been to church since 1879, I think, but I was quite fascinated and shocked at the same time.

And now 2010 is almost over, thank you, oh Lord. What a year… Moved house again, which was unexpected. Dropped out of college again, which was even less expected, but probably the number one in the hit list of feel good moments 2010. Number one of feel horrible moments is a little more difficult to define. Maybe that time when my exboyfriend’s flat mate had to come into the lady’s in an Irish Pub to wipe me off the floor like a ridiculous puddle of liquid sadness. Or when I woke up the day after drinking vodka with Conny for 17 hours straight and then sleeping for one. Or when I thought I had lost all my jackets, my wallet, my mobile and my dignity (but then it turned out to only be my dignity – so not all that bad, afterall) Or when I went to Primark on Oxford Street. Or no, I know! It was that night in the hostel when I met The Cunt. Cause I was all euphoric at the time about my big decisions, but also a little worried cause nothing was sorted yet and sad about the killer Charlize Theron film and cause I felt a little lonely and then I had to put up with HIM. Arschloch.

*rants for a while*

hmm… hmm... hmm... hmm... hmm... hmm... That’s better.

Oh yeah, and then there was the world cup. Sigh. All in all it was just an emotionally very, very exhausting year, I think. Could do with a nice quiet one, without too many feelings and too many big decisions.

Not all was bad, though, of course. Made lots of new friends, had ice cream, went to Greenwich to stand on the little line, which was, like, all I wanted from life, really. Went to a restaurant with penises all over the bathroom walls. What more do you want? Plus I managed to not get pregnant by accident once again and that’s quite worth something.

I really hope all you people had a better 2010 than me, to be honest, but I expect I will have a brilliant 2011, with even more ice cream and definitely moving house once, but not to a different city this time. New Year’s resolution: Write home more and don’t start smoking again.

NEXT!

Wiped and Unwired

I feel all broken and it was London whot did that to me.
My back hurts. My tongue hurts. My eyes hurt. My feet hurt. My wrists hurt. Alcohol-containing tears are running down my cheeks as I bandage my hands in vodka soaked cloths.

Today Loreena McKennit made me go clothes shopping at Oxford Circus with her. Christmas is not even two weeks away and that time of the year, the WHOLE of Oxford Street turns into what Primark on Oxford Street is all year around: HELL ON EARTH (see List of Places to Avoid in London).

Nameless tourists getting run over by buses, posh ladies in fur coats snarling at each other in a rather unladylike manner (I saw that! It was like they do in Hollywood films!), the white witch of Narnia laughing down at you from high above and in Primark on Oxford Street... well... I believe the cleaning ladies tacitly sweep up lost limps and ripped off heads in the evening...

And in the middle of it all: ME, pushing a lady in a wheelchair from John Lewis to bhs to H&M to Debenham's, desperately trying to ignore her singing the first 4 lines of "Let it snow" overandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandover again. At least I found her trousers she liked and bought and they even fit and suited her and so her FIRST VISIT TO OXFORD STREET SINCE 1998, which OF COURSE had to be undertaken IN MID-DECEMBER of the year I am working for her, was not all in vain...

Maybe, tho, my nerves could have handled the situation better if I had slept more and partied less this weekend, WHICH WAS GROSSARTIG! (If not to say GEIL, cause that is a dirty word, innit.) We went to a party at M&J's, who live in the former dog food factory I mentioned before and I ate bad things, that my teachers at school always told me would make me die. What they really made me do was chew my tongue to shreds and make a "hmmm" noise every single time I breathed out for 15 hours straight. (Sometimes I still do it. And my poor tongue is still sore. Very, very sore.)

(hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm...)

It all was a lawt of fun and not as bad as dying at all. But I think at one point I did fall asleep in the bathroom.

Oh and by the way, the German Christmas market was pretty and fun and amazing and I went on a ferris wheel for the first time in my life, apart, I think, from that one night when I later did pee into my godfather's bed, who didn't care much, cause I was an age when no one cares what beds you pee into, cause they kind of expect you to, but you're still old enough to remember it 22 years later, cause you always were easily embarrassed.

Good night, now, I have to go to bed, hum myself to sleep and forget all the PAINS London gave me.

hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm...

All the Pretty Faces

After writing my last blog entry and turning the computer off, something went horribly wrong on my way to bed and I ended up in Brixton drinking beer with Marcel, Lisa, Marcel's friend Pretty Rahel from Israel and Pretty Rebecca and Pretty Rebecca's Pretty boyfriend. Pretty Isaac didn't join in, cause he had to go to G A Y and Heaven and chat up other pretty boys, of course, since it was Saturday.
I am only writing like this cause we talked a lot about how pretty we all are and how all people in London are very, very pretty, even though a lot of them have horrible teeth. Not quite sure if I agree with any theories we came up with that night anymore. There also was something about the US joining the European Union instead of all them Eastern European countries. I think it was Rahel's idea. She is quite extreme in her political views. But also very pretty.

And seriously, people are very good-looking around here.

Sunday after work I picked up Ros from Victoria coach station, cause she came back from Bradford, having forgotten her mobile and smelling of booze. Aww. We tried to cover the smell of yesterday's boozes by drinking fresh beer in Soho and eating WRONG food from an internationally well known fast food restaurant. Doing this we got into proper christmassy mood and strolled over the German Christmas Market in Hyde Park. It is brilliant. Not very German-Christmas-markety, but very German, anyway, cause it basically combines Oktoberfest and traditional Christmas markets in one big glittery-glimmery-bubble-blobb of Bratwurst and giant singing moose heads.
We are going again tonight with a little group of lovely people to drink some Gluehwein and maybe go for a ride on a rollercoaster. (See what I mean?)

Luckily the snow is all gone and London is working again, by the way. It is still very, very cold, though and I feel like I might be coming down with a cold. So there will be a lot of healthy soup and less horrible burgers for me the next few days. How cold does Britain get, anyway? I hope -2 means "cold" in this country and not -19, like where I am from. Brrrrr...

Wood Green

Gabby is back in town for a weekend!

So I spent my free day with her yesterday. Her boyfriend and her just moved into a new flat in Wood Green, so I got to see a small new bit of London. Wood Green is busy, cleaner than most parts of London I have seen so far and the new flat is cosy and lovely with a massive garden. We wanted to go for some beers and then cook something nice for Enzo - the boyfriend. It all went a bit wrong, cause we drank a lot of beers first and then did the shopping: We bought steak and one box of aioli per person. 5 different Ben&Jerry's ice creams and baking potatoes and 2 bottles of champagne and more beer and also jet black floor paint, cause we thought we could do some DIY while the potatoes are in the oven.

In retrospect I am quite glad we got distracted by beer and didn't start painting the floors.
When Enzo came home, he ended up doing the cooking, cause we were already a bit too drunken. Ooops.

He is lovely, I had never met him before, apart from earlier in the day, when I went to his work at Highbury and Islington to get his keys off him, cause Gabby had locked herself in the flat and then realised she had left her set of keys in Germany.

Anyway, we had a really, really fun night, but I was sensible enough to leave at about 11pm, cause I had to work today and Tooting is far, far away from Wood Green (obviously, as it is far, far away from everything, but Wimbledon Stadium...)
So I got on the tube and only realised that I was going the wrong direction when I was already in Oakwood, which is in zone 5 (!) at the northern end of the Picaddily line. I was home by 1am or something and am all knackered. Tonight: tea, chrstmas card making, early night = utterly right.

End of Chapter One

It is December and I have been here for the whole of three months today.

When I packed my bags in September I didn't even know if I'd come here for a week or the planned three weeks or just a weekend or something in between. I sure didn't expect to spend all winter here and so I only packed a couple of t-shirts and flipflops. I started freezing weeks ago.

So... It was definitely time to pop back to Germany for a few hours to get some more stuff. So I did last weekend.
A rather disappointing trip home, in a way. Didn't see my brother, really and only one of the two selected friends I meant to meet up with. Plus I spent all Sunday night arguing with my mother, both of us being drunk on red wine (and in my case beer and Gluhwein).

I did spend some lovely hours on the Christmas market with a Julia, though. Ate as much German food as I could possibly put in my face within 60 hours and spent shitloads of money on Gluhwein. Also I escaped my dentist's chair once again without him using a drill or anything. 25 years and I've never had a dentist do anything to me! There's something to be proud of...

Most of the weekend I spent packing. I packed like someone who was going to emigrate. I packed sensible shoes and fancy shirts and all the pants and socks I could find. I had to wear 3 Jackets on my way back, for different reasons.
Reason number one: My suitcase was already more than full and way too heavy.
Reason number two: It is fucking freezing in Germany/Switzerland as well as London.

There is a lot of snow here. People die and everything. No one goes to work and school's shut down.
It is ridiculous. Says the laundrette man. He was very happy to see me the other day.

"Finally!" he said "a German person! You won't complain about snow!" No. Obviously after him welcoming me like that I didn't complain about the snow, despite just having carried 25 kilos of dirty laundry through a snow storm.
"The British are pagans (dunno really, what he meant by this), they don't know anything." he said. "They are closing down schools in North London because of the snow! What snow? There's no snow! Look at this, can you see any snow? That's nothing! If they close down schools, the children won't learn anything anymore. Like American children. They go to school for 12 years and when you ask them where Germany is, they will point at South America! I don't know what they do in those schools! And soon it will be like that in England..."

And all because of the snow. Shocking. I love the laundrette man, he is so dramatic. And he loves me for not complaining about the snow. I practically am from the alpes, though.

My mum and I are ok again, by the way. She bought me Schupfnudeln mit Sauerkraut and I bought her an advent calender and then she stayed awake until I was safe in my bed in Tooting, cause she was worried my plane would crash or some London gangster would shoot me on my way home, now that we had had a massive fight.

Home. See how I used it? It is nice being back.

I was walking through Konstanz and thought... I love it so much more when I don't live there. And I do! I love it so much! It is so pretty with the lake and it's tiny crooked houses from 1273. It has the Casba, which is The Best Bar. (Basically it's a room with two foosball tables, three bar stools and a darts machine. All the walls are hidden behind boxes and boxes of bottled beer and the staff are only allowed to drink for free during opening hours.) Also, it has my family in it (Konstanz, not the bar. Only sometimes the bar has parts of my family in it...) And it's full of happy childhood memories and awkward, but important teenage memories.

But I do start calling London home, and it feels all warm and funny in the belly.

In other news: My NVQ course ended today with an English and Maths test. I think I did quite well in both. Didn't really learn anything at all, but well. It's always good to have a certificate for something. Maybe I can sell it on the black market or something.

Three months, ey. It seems so much longer. I am all settled and have friends and am going to Germany as a visitor, when all I wanted when I came here in September was one conversation.
Can't even remember what that man walking his dogs and cat that one morning said to me that made my drunken mind go "he's right, I should probably stay here", but I am very happy I met him.

Meet the Mad Hatter

I had a nervous breakdown at Old Street this morning. Why would the first tubes go at 7.30am on a sunday?? Unbelievable! People have to get to church and stuff!
Loreena MacKennit, at least and that means I have to be at hers just when the first train leaves Old Street Underground Station... what to do?
Wake up your girlfriend, who knows more about buses in London and has internet and cry into the telephone.
If you are lucky, your girlfriend sorts it all out while you roll around on the pavement in a panic. I am very lucky.
And Loreena MacKennit is, cause she is currently singing and praying in her church.
Plus she said I did a brilliant job this morning and was all organised and that and she could see that I was well rested and energized.
Couldn't help saying "Really? I had a bit of a stressful morning." She asked if I had overslept and I said yes, cause I didn't want to tell her that it was more of a lovely wine-and-stew-sit together with dancing around to cheesy music at midnight in East London and a big portion of stupidity of not checking if trains are running on a sunday. Anyway. Won't happen again, ey.

It reminded me, though, of how massive and scary London is. I mean... I start bumping into people I know in the streets and I know lots of bus routes and tube connections and never even have a map on me anymore. But that is because the parts of London I actually "use" are probably, put together, not even as big as Konstanz. And then I strand at Old Street at 6.30am on a Sunday and have no idea what to do and there's 15 bus stops with 57 buses and a million street lights and a huge scary poster of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and that is all it takes to make me feel completely lost, cause I have no idea in what direction Wimbledon is.

I am calming down now. Will go for a nice cup of tea in my next break and make peace with Johnny Depp's face.

A Mad Tea-Party

BIRTHDAY BLOG - I wrote this on Monday.


Hello lovelies,

I know it has been ages and I owe you a long update. Today I am off work, and it is "Nio can do what she wants day", so I had a lollipop instead of brushing my teeth this morning, greasy bubble for breakfast, breakfast TV instead of a shower and later I will go for lunch with lovely people, and in the evening I will go for a Nio-day-meal with someone terrible. But right now all I want to do is write my blog.

So what happened, where was I, am I OK?

Yes, thank you, I am very well! London is still amazing, still exciting, still feels right. I can't WAIT to go to Germanland for a weekend in two weeks, but I think for now a weekend will definitely be enough.
Someone somewhere once said in a very melodramatic voice "No matter where I am I wish I was somewhere else." Then she fell off a boat and died, I think.
That was in some TV show I watched when I was 13 and I always could relate to that sentence so well... restless teenage me. Not only teenage, actually, the last 5 years weren't much better. But I remember sitting in the kitchen in the Vortex thinking... "There's nowhere I'd rather be right now." It was a very new feeling for me and it was nice. But even Galway I left over two years ago and frankly, I wouldn't want to live there again. I love it with all my heart, but it is a weird place, Galway. It's in a bubble. Surreal, in a way. The one place farthest from the world.
Anyway, my point is: I feel like that again. There's nowhere I'd rather be right now, even if it is a kitchen looking out on Tooting High Street. I feel like I'm in the right place. And this time it is London, which is pretty much in the middle of the world and also very real.

Work

Work is still good, quite challenging, lately, but good. Loreena MacKennit is very happy with me, which means she gives me more and more more and more difficult things to do. When I am not fighting Wandsworth council, BT or her Evil Social Worker on her behalf, I am mostly babysitting little Em and little A, who just introduced me to the world of BBC cebeebies. I can feel my brain cells die in dozens every second I spend with the little ones and Tom and Mr Sluffy and Mrs Mouse or whatever their names are. Someone who drinks as much as me mustn't complain about dying brain cells, tho.

Booze

Yes, Boozenews. Some people around here were planning on making November a dry month and I was already worried about no one having a single birthday pint with me. Luckily, by the 2nd of November all those people were already so drunk that a "dry November" was impossible anyway and we all just kept drinking for the next two weeks. Happy hungover nio face.

It was Halloween of course and my first proper one. We had pumpkins and sweets and candles and scary costumes and beer and Sarah killed our faces with make-up, so that they would look proper zombielike. Also we were too lazy to open the door, so could keep all the sweets to ourselves. Halloween is brilliant.

Then, even more exciting, it was Bonfire night. Unfortunately I didn't really get to see any of the big firework displays, but we went to a little house party in a former dog food factory and had our own little firework fun on the roof terrace. With amazing bread.

Bread

People can say what they want, neither baguette and brioche nor ciabatta compare to proper lovely fresh German bread. MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmh...
Christine, a former volunteer, came to visit us for a few days the other weeks and she brought lots and LOTS of amazingbread. So we had a breadparty. We got all excited and almost choked on bites of bread, that's how excited we were. Lisa and me.
Then there was this home made amazing bread at the house party and THEN I got more of it for my birthday on Saturday. So I am stuffed with bread and there's no real reason to go to Germany anymore, BUT...

Germany

... I am going for the weekend! I have booked a flight that leaves Gatwick horribly early on a Saturday morning and another one that arrives there horribly late on a Monday night. Am looking forward to it, though. Am planning on strolls over lovely Christmas markets with lots of Gluehwein, meeting lots of Julias and having dinner with my parents and my brother and get drunk with everyone I meet. If your name is not Julia and you still want to meet me in Konstanz the weekend after next, let me know! I also will have to squash in two doctors appointments, so I won't have an awful lot of time.

Nanowrimo

So while November has been amazing and fun so far, Novelber worries me a bit. I am about 10 days behind schedule and doubt I will finish in time, but who knows. I am still writing. Maybe I'll just make it into a Christmas Present for someone.

Food

Project "get fatter" is now completed. I am fat enough again, thank you very much.

Promise

I will get better again, I promise. I don't want this blog to fall asleep. there's still so much to discover for me in this city, my mouth is still hanging open half the time. I might focus on my thoughts on London more, as well, and less on booze and bread...

Innit

Haven't said it at all this time, innit.



PS: I am going to have a shower and brush my teeth now.