So how is my new house? I've been telling people to read my blog and find out but things have - like always - been busy. But finally, here it comes!
I moved to the other end of the Karl Heine Street. The reason I had to leave my nice house was that the house managers wanted "ein neues Wohnkonzept", meaning the wanted the house only for the rich bitch people who could pay the higher rent. All the students were kicked out. Well luckily there are loads of free rooms in Leipzig and the rents are really low. I found my new room through the university interenet notice board. Daniel, whose room I rented, is travelling exactly the time I need the room (til the end of July). Perfect.
Moving up to number 108 showed me also some other sides of my home street. First of all its much longer than I thought and this end of the street is the total opposite of the beginning. My first house was fully renovated, with shiny wooden floors, white walls and a dish washer. My new house is also old, but totally unrenovated. The woorden floors are creaking and the paint has is quite worn away. In the first end of the Karl Heine Street there are a lot of big villas with lawyers' offices and nice gardens, but as you move towards this end everything gets crappier - and livelier. There is a huge compound here nearby where there are consatanct art exhibitions and an alternative movie theater and nice bars. And I have a natural products store right around the corner!
My rent is now 1oo euros less (only 160 euros) and I have 1,5 rooms in stead of one. There are not so many furniture in here, mainly a big bed and a big stereo, but I lived from my suitcase. Daniel is living quite Spartan and he also left all of his stuff to the only closet in the room. The heating is, like in many unrenovated houses in the old DDR area, by coal. I'm happy that it's summer so I don't have to get coal from the cellar the first thing in the morning... But the green fireplace for the coal is really beautiful!
In our aparment live officially me, Thomas, Natalia, Chrisu and Marina. Marina pays the rent but she is never here, I haven't seen her. Apparently nobody knows where she exactly is. Thomas is a German natural medicine (Heilpraktiker) student who also gives tango lessons. He's very nice and resposible for the rent and many other practical stuff. Natalia (34y) comes from Argentina and doesn't speak German. She is a tango teacher and has lived in Germany for one year. She has a lot of visitors the whole time, now a friend with her boyfriend and next month her mum from Argentina is coming for a month. Crisu (Christiane) is a friendly young student girl, who I already infromed that her nickname sounds very Finnish and she told me her mother made it up.
All the people living in the house form a kind of family and it's not uncommon to find our down- or upstairs neigbours cooking breakfast in our kitchen. Only I'm not yet sure who are the people actually living in this house and who are just visitors.. Well, I just introduce myself anyway. There is a garden where you can barbecue and I've heard there are quite often two cats hanging around. :)
It's a quite hippie house with a lot of music and visitors but surprisingly things like washing the dishes don't form a problem. I hope to learn maybe some basic argentinian tango and spanish while I'm here - I almost hear spanish more than German. Well, maybe the Argentinians are just noisier... ;)
I've been sleeping okay in my little bedroom corner and have all my things finally somehow organized in the room so it feels quite home. Also my roommates are very very friendly and social and nice. So I'lle be alright here for the last two months, although it does feel a bit temporary.
O, I have to tell how I moved my stuff from my old house. It was hilarious! Suvi from Helsinki was here last weekend and we were sleeping in my old house while all the furniture disappearing one by one - the last 24 hours we didn't have a kitchen as it's here quite normal to take the kitchen (meaning all the cupboards, machines, everything) with you. Monday morning we stacked all my stuff on my little blue bicycle and Suvi carried the heavy backbag on her back and was pulling my suitcase - as she said it would be too heavy for me. So I walked with the bike full of things and well, there were some constructor worker whistling at us when they saw our system... About the half way we thought we should've taken a taxi, it would've cost something like 4 euros, but well, we got some exercise at least.
The weather has been very sunny here, and warm, like summer. Last Saturday I went hiking with the other exchange students in the Saxony Switserland and it was unbelievably beutiful. Next weekend I'm going to Berlin on Friday to vote and to be a tourist, and Saturday again on an exchange students trip, this time to Weimar. I have loads of things to do for the university and I have been doing also some stuff with the young greens here in Leipzig. And I finally found a good salsa school! Sot it's as busy as in Finland ;).
Now I have to go and do some German bureucracy - to go in person with my passport to the city hall to change the number of the house I'm living in... - and then I have some school. Liebe Grüsse!
maanantai 25. toukokuuta 2009
perjantai 1. toukokuuta 2009
Oh my it's already May
Hyvää vappua! Though the big spring feast isn't as big here as in Finland. Today has been anyway a holiday and there were lot of people enjoying a free day and some live music in the park.
I've been recovering of my political trip the whole week. In the end I was quite exhausted, although it was fun. My first weekend I spent in Stuttgart in the Local Councillors Meeting/Federal Assembly of the German young Greens. The Local Councillors Meeting was quite official with headphone-interpretation and a very nice setting. I met some guys from Malmö and was inspired by the public participation ideas from Vienna. In the evening the both conferences had a party together in this incredible location: some muddy barracks with local artists' work premises. They place is quite famous also outside Stuttgart for the good parties you can have there. It was also very nice!
I slept at the school where the Bundeskonferenz was held and got to know more young greens. There were surprisingly many people I knew already from Berlin and it was very cosy. I stayed in Stuttgart in a hostel for one more night more to see the town a bit. I really liked the way the town is situated in a valley with trams climbing up the hills. Then I travelled with Mitfahrt to Freiburg just to see the town. I shared a train ticket (there are group tickets you can chare) with a Chinese girl living in Freiburg, with whom I also had a beer next evening. She was very friendly and we found out that she had ended up in Germany after her year as an exchange student in Germany with the same organization I was with in the Netherlands.
I really liked Freiburg, it was very cute and I had a very nice hostel room right next to the big hill with some famous Black Forest. I observed the biking conditions in the city and was a bit confused as they didn't seem so terrific. The town has a green mayor and is supposed to lead the way in Green municipal politics - and in biking tracks. Well at least there was a little water-power station right next to my hostel... I also heard the Green mayor of Freiburg is not very popular among the Greens and the Green city council party group has split up because of his weird politics...
After a long day travelling I arrived quite late in Düsseldorf where there were some drunk Swedes in the hostel urging me to go out with them. I just slep one night in the hostel and woke up a bit early to see at least a bit of Düsseldorf before heading to Maastricht with the train around 10.00. I'm really proud of my Mitfahrt-train-trip, I managed to save a lot of money and do some "slow travelling" meeting I a lot of nice people on the way. I also saw a lot of Germany when travelling with cheap local trains. Although, when I first left Leipzig to Stuttgart the car which was supposed to pick me up never showed up and I had to take the train for 90 euros... Luckily I met a young Green boy in the train who I had met in Leipzig already :).
Maastricht and the FYEG General Assembly and Spring conference was a quite of an experience. The program was really tight from early morning til very late in the evening. There were maybe 100 people from all around Europe, from Finland in total 5 including me, all new faces to me but it was nice. Very exciting discussions, a lot of new information - especially about FYEG as organization and EU politics - and new contacts. We were also a bit unlucky though - the people told me that so many things have never happened in a FYEG conference: there was a biking accident with a Dutch man (from the Greens) losing 7 teeth (I really felt sick and had to think a lot about my Accident, as I happened to pass by when it just had happened) and a Belgian guy got beaten up after the party in the park because he had kissed with a another guy... Homofobia in practice! On Saturday evening we had also a big quarrel about the voting and the rules and it took forever before a new Excecutive Committee was chosen. For the first time in years there is nobody from Finland in the FYEG EC as Markus Drake was unfortunately not chosen as the mail spoke person.
I was for the first time in Maastricht, in the very southern corner of the Netherlands, and got a some kind of picture of the town although didn't have much time to be a tourist. I was talking in too many languages the whole weekend (Finnish, Dutch, German, English, even some very few words in Swedish..) and was totally exhausted when I got home quite late on Sunday evening. My roommates had stayed up and waited for me with bad news: I have to find a new home. They had told me earlier already that the owners/house managers can be a bit difficult sometimes and this time it was really bad. If we want to stay we have to pay a lot more money. So Susi&Saskia had decided it's not worth it, they would have to work so much more (both students working part-time). They were very sorry about leaving the house, they have lived here for years, and of cource the situation the put me in. Well, I'm very sorry too as I really liked living here and it felt home - but no-can-do. At least I now get to know some other place and people too. And there are a lot of empty (and cheaper..) rooms available in Leipzig so that shouldn't be a problem. Only my conditions - for 2,5 months, furnished - can make it a big tricky.
We have to be out by around 15th of May so I have to find something soon. Yesterday I went to see a room in the same street as this and I'll take it if they boy renting it agrees. I think - and hope - I'll know more in a week.
Now I have a couple of day with no program, which I'm a bit confused about. Well, it's good for me and at least I get some school stuff done. Sunday I'm going on a trip to Potsdam, a beautiful and quite famous city near Berlin. They arrange very cheap day trips to different towns for exchange students here. I have decided to mainly stay in Leipzig for the coming months, though, as there is a lot to do also here and I have been doing sooo much travelling this year already.
Ciao and yes I'll inform you when I know something more about the new room,
Iida
I've been recovering of my political trip the whole week. In the end I was quite exhausted, although it was fun. My first weekend I spent in Stuttgart in the Local Councillors Meeting/Federal Assembly of the German young Greens. The Local Councillors Meeting was quite official with headphone-interpretation and a very nice setting. I met some guys from Malmö and was inspired by the public participation ideas from Vienna. In the evening the both conferences had a party together in this incredible location: some muddy barracks with local artists' work premises. They place is quite famous also outside Stuttgart for the good parties you can have there. It was also very nice!
I slept at the school where the Bundeskonferenz was held and got to know more young greens. There were surprisingly many people I knew already from Berlin and it was very cosy. I stayed in Stuttgart in a hostel for one more night more to see the town a bit. I really liked the way the town is situated in a valley with trams climbing up the hills. Then I travelled with Mitfahrt to Freiburg just to see the town. I shared a train ticket (there are group tickets you can chare) with a Chinese girl living in Freiburg, with whom I also had a beer next evening. She was very friendly and we found out that she had ended up in Germany after her year as an exchange student in Germany with the same organization I was with in the Netherlands.
I really liked Freiburg, it was very cute and I had a very nice hostel room right next to the big hill with some famous Black Forest. I observed the biking conditions in the city and was a bit confused as they didn't seem so terrific. The town has a green mayor and is supposed to lead the way in Green municipal politics - and in biking tracks. Well at least there was a little water-power station right next to my hostel... I also heard the Green mayor of Freiburg is not very popular among the Greens and the Green city council party group has split up because of his weird politics...
After a long day travelling I arrived quite late in Düsseldorf where there were some drunk Swedes in the hostel urging me to go out with them. I just slep one night in the hostel and woke up a bit early to see at least a bit of Düsseldorf before heading to Maastricht with the train around 10.00. I'm really proud of my Mitfahrt-train-trip, I managed to save a lot of money and do some "slow travelling" meeting I a lot of nice people on the way. I also saw a lot of Germany when travelling with cheap local trains. Although, when I first left Leipzig to Stuttgart the car which was supposed to pick me up never showed up and I had to take the train for 90 euros... Luckily I met a young Green boy in the train who I had met in Leipzig already :).
Maastricht and the FYEG General Assembly and Spring conference was a quite of an experience. The program was really tight from early morning til very late in the evening. There were maybe 100 people from all around Europe, from Finland in total 5 including me, all new faces to me but it was nice. Very exciting discussions, a lot of new information - especially about FYEG as organization and EU politics - and new contacts. We were also a bit unlucky though - the people told me that so many things have never happened in a FYEG conference: there was a biking accident with a Dutch man (from the Greens) losing 7 teeth (I really felt sick and had to think a lot about my Accident, as I happened to pass by when it just had happened) and a Belgian guy got beaten up after the party in the park because he had kissed with a another guy... Homofobia in practice! On Saturday evening we had also a big quarrel about the voting and the rules and it took forever before a new Excecutive Committee was chosen. For the first time in years there is nobody from Finland in the FYEG EC as Markus Drake was unfortunately not chosen as the mail spoke person.
I was for the first time in Maastricht, in the very southern corner of the Netherlands, and got a some kind of picture of the town although didn't have much time to be a tourist. I was talking in too many languages the whole weekend (Finnish, Dutch, German, English, even some very few words in Swedish..) and was totally exhausted when I got home quite late on Sunday evening. My roommates had stayed up and waited for me with bad news: I have to find a new home. They had told me earlier already that the owners/house managers can be a bit difficult sometimes and this time it was really bad. If we want to stay we have to pay a lot more money. So Susi&Saskia had decided it's not worth it, they would have to work so much more (both students working part-time). They were very sorry about leaving the house, they have lived here for years, and of cource the situation the put me in. Well, I'm very sorry too as I really liked living here and it felt home - but no-can-do. At least I now get to know some other place and people too. And there are a lot of empty (and cheaper..) rooms available in Leipzig so that shouldn't be a problem. Only my conditions - for 2,5 months, furnished - can make it a big tricky.
We have to be out by around 15th of May so I have to find something soon. Yesterday I went to see a room in the same street as this and I'll take it if they boy renting it agrees. I think - and hope - I'll know more in a week.
Now I have a couple of day with no program, which I'm a bit confused about. Well, it's good for me and at least I get some school stuff done. Sunday I'm going on a trip to Potsdam, a beautiful and quite famous city near Berlin. They arrange very cheap day trips to different towns for exchange students here. I have decided to mainly stay in Leipzig for the coming months, though, as there is a lot to do also here and I have been doing sooo much travelling this year already.
Ciao and yes I'll inform you when I know something more about the new room,
Iida
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