One thing that I am not going to miss is the amount of spam mail I keep receiving in Neuerburg. By that, I mean actual paper mail, old school spam mail. Emails would be easy.
I think my grand monthly accumulation of mail is a result of being guilt tripped during my first visits to major cities in Germany. In England, in any city, when you're approached by someone asking for change or one of those brightly-T-shirted people with the clipboard and the optimism, they're easy to shrug off.
Here, and certainly in the first month or two after arrival, meeting these people in the street was terrible, purely because language confidence wasn't particularly high and as a general rule, hobos and charity collectors are a little more persistant in Germany. I'd give in after about 8 seconds with a tear in my eye, begging them to take what they wanted and leave me be.
Thus, 8 months on, I am still opening the little postbox outside my flat, seeing what's in there and sighing aloud "man, you donate to one fucking earthquake .."
The moral of this story, and a retrospective piece of Year Abroad Advice, is don't give money. Or do, but stick to one charity and to hell with all the others who try and strong-arm you into a guilt ridden cash payout. Otherwise I can pretty much guarantee that you're gonna spend the rest of your time abroad getting leaflets with pictures of homeless children eating homeless guys poo. I know, I thought that picture went a little too far as well.
Consider yourselves warned.
This is Neuerburg of late, from my flat and from the top room of one of the boarding school buildings where I have nachhilfe.
I went to the pub the other night with a few of my students. I didn't get stared at this time like the first time I went. Obviously being with Germans gives you some kind of legitimacy, which I was quite happy with; when I went with Maria the Russian assistant in my third week or so, all conversation stopped and the music may as well have fizzled out. "Two foreigners in one pub? At the same time? Not in this town." I thought we might have been lynched.
But, as I say, last night it was fine. I drunk a little more than was suitable for such an early start the next day. I remember trying and failing to play darts with the guy who runs the kebab shop at about half one, and Paul opening a bottle of champagne. Either way it was well worth it.
I think I'm definitely going to aim for more of this 'down' time with my students; as in, more so than before, because I'm probably not gonna get a great deal more travelling in these next two weeks, and I'm gonna miss quite a fair few of them whenever it is that I decide to go home.
To give you a brief scope of how excitement has dwindled of late, the other day I accidentally spilt some milk onto my desk while making a bowl of cereal. The splash looked like this. I was genuinely impressed with it. I was so excited I took a photo.
But really, that is awesome right? That's like one of those 'hidden beauty of nature' photos, except with milk, like when you see an amazing snowflake up close? It's cool, right?
It's really cool.
