Internship in Poland - Erection at the beach!

Friday morning! Woke up at 6.30 am! Why? The ferry left at 8.30 am and it's a long way to the pier! Our bags where stuffed with the things we would need for the day: swimclothes, a 1,5 l bottle of sparkling water, too short towels, sunglases, etc. On the ferry we were lucky to get the last bench outside on the deck in the morning sun. 5 minutes after we took off an interesting dressed man in his 50ies (he wore a blazor with short!! sleeves, white 3/4s trousers and Puma sneekers) came to me and asked if I could take pictures of him and his daughter because "she doesn't like to be photographed". We didn't know what to do so after a while I took the camera and pretended to take pictures of the Baltic Sea with half a ferry and small containerships far in the back. I guess the girl thought I was stupid or actually figured the whole thing out. About 100 pictures later I decided to stop because other people were starting to look at me as if I liked to take pictures of little, young girls on ferries. The man got back the camera and we were almost in Jastarnia, the village on the peninsula right in front of TriMiasto. Nice weather greeted us and I felt a little bit like being on Juist again, ... ah! Hungry as we were, we looked for a restauracja but after 10 minutes of wandering Marta and Ewa noticed that we were going in the wrong direction!!! Heading back to the village, we looked at all the shops and it reminded me a little bit of a very small "Jahrmarkt". After a while we decided to enjoy scrambled eggs and bread; the sun was burning and it was something about 10.00. Having eaten, we were prepared to head down to the beach where nice, white and clean sand was waiting for us! We even had to cross rails and went through a forest. The beach was very nice and after a short time of area-scanning we found the perfect spot for our bodies to be burned by the sun! Adjusting the precise angle of the towel to the sun we knew this would be a nice time! Relaxing our souls, we snoozed for about 2 hours and when I woke up the right side of my face was aching. In the background we heard a man crying out loud: "Lody, lody na śmietanie, kto spróbuje temu stanie!" which somehow means that you get an erection as soon as you eat the icecream he's offering. I guess you could let all the boys-scouts in the world camp on that beach...!

Windy; rainclouds; droplets! The weather changed nearly instantly after we woke up. And to make that situation worse, a mother lost her six years old child and some lifeguards where looking for him! As a parent this must be horrifying and I wouldn't want this to happen to anyone! As we couldn't do anything we packed our stuff and left our paradise to grap something to eat and later to take the ferry back to Gdynia.

Back home we sent off Ewas parents for a weekend trip canoying with some friends! What a beautiful way to enjoy the wonderful nature and forget about everyday life. We cleaned the house and ate dinner followed by some episodes of the great tv-show "Scrubs".

What would bring us the nex day? At least we knew that we were all together and that this day was interesting in all it's ways it has been! I hope the mother found her boy in the end... !

PS: I burned half my face so I could perfom the indian (as in the native Indians in America) version of ebony & ivory :P DS

Internship in Poland - The journey and arrival

And I'm off again... I guess it's just the way it is, but I have to get away from home every now and then! This time for a 9-weeks long internship in the wonderful city Gdansk in Poland.
Since I still had a busticket i chose to take that, rather unconfortable but cheap way of travelling to my home for the next 9 weeks. Lucky as I was my roommate Andrés helped me with the stuff I had to carry (well actually only two bags: a HUGE one and a small one, guess which one he carried :P). We arrived at the nice ZOB at 19:32 and the bus wasn't there yet, so I decided to grab a bite at the nearby "Golden M". The bus arrived and I wanted to check in and got to the busdriver who was not able to understand a word of German neither of English,... brilliant! My great "Dzien dobry" and "herbate" phrases wouldn't help me here... in the end we fixed everything and I got to leave my bag. Andrés, letting me drool over my two burgers, was still waiting for me and we had a little chat before he took off again. I was unbelievable lucky to have found a seat right next to the most pissed girl I think I've ever met. Asking wheather the seat next to her was free, she exhaled "YES!!!!". "Well lucky me" I thought!
As all long bus journeys, it was very horrible and my legs and butt started to fall asleep or hurt every 5 minutes. During the night, the pissed girl tried to sleep like in a normal bed and almost pushed me out of the seat with her a**! After a while she turned around and then all of a sudden her head was only millimeters from my shoulder... Movie of the night was "Big Mommas House 2"; now as I don't understand Polish yet, it wasn't a great success for me because of the professional dubbing in Polish TV and Homevideos: One who is somehow "telling" the story with the same accentuation during the whole film and the films original sound faded so much you only hear it a little bit in the background. I call that: "Great Entertainment",.... not!
We had luck at the granica (border) where the bus in front of us got checked in every little spot you could find, even the garbage bag got a suspicious look from the german "Grenzpolizist". The polish roads were very empty and fog was covering some parts of the roads in the North, it was very beautiful. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep to "Whitest Boy Alive" but instead I snoozed for a bit. I woke up around 5.20 and realised, that we were almost in Gdynia.
At the busstation, waiting for Ewa and her dad to pick me up, the wind was trying to get into my jacket and it was pretty cold (it was 6 am in the morning and the sun had not yet warmed up the awakening air). The only thing I now longed for was my sweet girlfriend!
Tired..., that's what I was after the long journey. Having rested until 10.30 we had breakfast and then took off to the centre of Gdynia to buy ferry tickets for the next day. When it comes to buying tickets the tricky part is always the studentdiscount, which some companies do offer even to foreign students and some do not, so you always have to discuss with the counter-personnel if you will get it or not, jobbig! In the end I was allowed to purchase a studentticket using my ISIC card, for the first time ever in Poland! The day ended with a little tennis "game" at a court 15 minutes from Ewas house (we never got to play on the courts so we were just practicing our backhand drive and booked a time for saturday at 10!!! o'clock. The day ended pretty easy, eating a little night snack and some talking.

India - The first days

Mumbai - a city which is moving, a lot!!! Our first day in Mumbai we enjoyed an nice indian breakfast and the warm air was already making me feel happy. Considering whether i should wear long or short pants, I decided to go for the shorts - "it's the best" I thought. The Bharuchas (Pearlie, Rustam and Zubin) took me to the center of Mumbai. Temthan and me, went down to the beautiful bay and we took our first "India-tourist-pictures". Zubin felt like a tourist himself, so I had some company :P. We enjoyed the nice weather and walked by the Marine Drive.
Lunch was 100 per cent delicious indian food (as all the time) at Zubins place (Zubins mother, Pearlie, makes the best Indian food I've had since we came). That day lucky to experience the traffic of Mumbai in a "cab" (a very old car from the 50's, at night the home for the driver). I can't believe how people are capable to drive in this mess. There are cars everywhere and there seems to be an accident every 5 seconds (oh my god, very scary)! The night, we went out to grab some beers with Zubins friends and we realized that it's more expensive than it is in Germany - wow, didn't expect that!!
Yesterday we had two functions, one at the Bharuchas place and in the evening in some restaurant. It was the 25th anniversary of Zubins parents and I could experience a very interesting parsee way of celebrating it! In the night, we got delicious food and drinks and I met a lot of people, very nice!! (more details later)
Today Pearlie, Zub and me spent some time walking around in Mumbai. We saw a lot of nice buildings, such as Parsee fire-temples, The GPO, Central-Station (beautiful one) and all the other nice buildings, most of them from the British time! Now we are just preparing ourselves for the next day - the trip to Dehli, Jaipur, Agra- "great success"!!! We'll be back on the 26th.

India - The Trip to Mumbai and the first night

So here I am, experiencing another culture and a different world. Our whole trip to the oriental world started on Saturday morning 3.30 a.m. After a long packing night and 30 minutes of sleep, we were heading down the bus-stop "Wachtelstrasse" in Barmbek. It was really cold and the bus made us wait for some minutes. The "172-bus" was taking us down to the airport of Hamburg and there we checked-in at the check-in desks - easy and fast, a great way to make your journey smooth and fast! Standing in the line I was so excited to get to India, I pushed my suitcase into the legs of an old man in front of us - "great success" :|. Lufthansas reputation - being punctual - really showed it's best side. Arriving in Frankfurt we had about 24!! hours until the next flight to Milan would take off. We tried to check-in our laguagge, but at the counter the woman said, we could do that in the evening, 19:30. So our bags had to spend the day with Mr. Boogie. We went to the city, not knowing what to do, and climbed on top of the Galleria Kaufhof. On our way down. we decided to see a movie (in english, of course!) so we went to the "Turm Palast", enjoying "Flush away". Zub (now called Temthan) was so tired he passed away after 20 minutes and sweet american kids were making this film a "great success" :P! After the film we still had more than 12 hours until the next flight, so we went to the crowded "Weihnachts Markt", listening to a singing fake-moose while we were drinking mulled-wine. Frankfurts old city is really beautiful, worth a visit. Later the day, at 19:30, we checked in our bags and got "x-rayed". Zubin had the pizza from our dinner earlier that day and through the x-ray it looked "very nice" :). Our flight to Milan was: start-up-down-land=50 minutes. In Milan we just had a short stay and when we were boarding, some indians were complaining about us trying to get in front of them. Suddenly another queue was started and we were happy to be one of the first in that line. All of a sudden these people were screaming and really being weird, telling us we don't have manners and that we will never change.... no comment on that. :| To be honest we were really surprised about the punctuality but the service on-board is horrible! So bad and good.
Arriving at the airport at 23;00 the first thing that hit me leaving the plane was the garbage-smelling air from the suburbs of Mumbai. It actually reminded me on my stay in Indonesia, to be honest. When we approached the Immigration Beaureau of Mumbai we were facing an incredible long line of international passangers. Finally getting to the laguage claim for a short time we were actually believing that Alitalias reputation - loosing laguage - would happen to us. In the end we got our bags and could head for the exit, "great success"! Outside Pearlie and Rustam were already waiting for us and they took us out into the wild traffic of Mumbai - very scary! Compared to german traffic this is a rollercoaster and actually I don't understand how people can drive here not having an accident every 5th second - great respect!
When we arrived at "The Homestead" it was already 1 p.m and we were really hungry. Luckily we could head down to the Golden Crown to have my first Indian dish in India, "great success"! After that our little souls were tired and we had to get to bed. The end of two really interesting and active days finally approached.
..... to be continued.