After a quarter of a century

The orientation course is almost over and I think everbody's happy about that. I realized today that my tiredness must also come from the constant effort to speak a foreign language and not nly from the long days. My German is going good, though, and I just had fun couple of days ago practicing vocabularity you don't learn at the university with my room mate Saskia (words like der Pinsel = sivellin, der Schneebesen = vispilä, der Nudelholz = kaulin...). I've been spending most of my time with other exchange students and we still speak German together, which is good.

My birthday on Monday was nice. When I went to the kitchen in the morning to get some breakfast there was a little cake with candles around it on the table - I realized I have very nice roommates! The leaders of the orientation course had bought me a book and they sang to me, which was very nice. In the evening I had a beer (yes, beer) with some exchange students and everybody was impressed about my quarter of a century. I'm one of the oldest on our cource.

Last week I went to the doctor because the pain in my feet (propably just overexertion and sore muscles) got worse. I got some pills and creams and well they haven't been helping much. Maybe I have to go back and force the doctor to send me to physiotherapy or do some magic tricks. My back is also killing me as my bed and computer chair are not so good. But I'll manage. Otherwise I've been surprisingly healthy. Biking again feels good. I almost killed my MS syringes as I put them to the back part of the fridge which was too cold. The packages were already frozen but luckily only one syringe so I didn't lose all 4000 euros.

The courses at the university start next week and I've been stressing about what to take and do I have to enrol or can I just go to the first meeting. Well, I write about that when I have found out more.. I also paid the fee to the university gym and am going to check out the local salsa school next week.

I know my way in the city much better already. Yesterday I had to throw away my first map as it was way too torn. I learn new routes all the time, like yesterday the quicker route to the city centre thorught the HUGE park right next to our house. I have to get to know the park better when the spring comes. Now we have had a couple days of sun, before that it was just rain and wind (even hailstorm and sleet). There's much to do in Leipzig, very many interesting museums and places to see. The buildings are old an beautiful but there are strange blue pipes all aroung the city as they are building an underground city tunnel (metro) and need to pump up the groundwater. An interesting municipal politics solution, the ugly pipes are there for 10 years in total - but a great investment in public transport.

The university is turning 600 years this year and there is a lot of ceremonies and happenings. It's unbelievable to study in the 2nd oldest university in Germany. A lot of famous people have studied here, from Goethe to Angela Merkel. Bach has also lived and composed in this city. The are 500 000 books at the university library which has been restored after it was almost totally destroyed in the 2nd world war. The neighbourhood I'm living in (Plagwitz) is the result of the industrial development in the area and used to be an own municipality. It's very near to the Leipzig city centre though and a bit poshy nowadays.

That's all the news at the moment. This weekend I'm going to take it easy. Last Saturday we were in the state capital Dresden with all the exchange student and I'm planning to go to Berlin during the Eastern holidays. On 17th April I'm going to skip school and leave for a 10-day political trip to Stuttgart and Maastricht, Holland - but I'll get back to that later.