The first days of spring

It had been unusually lovely the entire week. But we were preparing for a group of international students to arrive so I could not revel in the loveliness outside, instead spending most of my time in front of the computer. 

And then D-Day was upon us: the planes were landing, the students disembarking and hopefully all our planning would work out. A beautiful sunrise set the tone for an exhausting but fantastic day. We left Flensburg at 8.00 and drove to Hamburg, where I was dropped off at Ikea (yay Ikea!) to buy bedding for one of the students. I also went to town in the material section because I want to make myself some curtains. Our one roommate is moving out soon as well and she brought most of the kitchen utensils with her, so I bought two mugs, a whisk and new sheets for myself. 

Then I took the bus into the city and received a message that one student had missed his flight and would therefore land 4 hours later. My colleague was already at the airport and could thus leave earlier, whilst I had more time to kill and would bring the last two students back to Flensburg by train. 

I ended up getting out at the main station and just walking around. It is like my friend G. said: when the weather is no longer dark and brooding the population changes switches its personality. Everyone stops hibernating and heads out to soak up the sun.

After the exam period and worrying about all the arrangements for the international students it was soul quickening to get away from Flensburg and just walk around by myself without the pressure of having to discover the city. Luckily I had my camera with me so I just walked around, bought myself a sandwich and chilled by the Alster. 

The moment of repose did not last long because thereafter the days have been rather stressful: Thursday we spent the entire day at the airport and the entire weekend was filled with activities for the students. This next week is also dedicated to wading through the bureaucratic nightmare that is Germany. 

Additionally, the weather has turned again and has soured the atmosphere. No longer are people walking around joyfully and basking in the sunlight. But at least the Hamburg day has given me hope that spring is in fact coming, slowly but surely. 

Little Talks

Driving to the airport there are two signs: Arrivals and Departures. But I feel like I have neither really departed nor arrived. I have landed, not arrived. My luggage is here, my things are here, but all the emotional baggage remains lost somewhere between here and home.

It is a strange in-between. Maybe it is just being-20-something and realising that at some point I need to find my own life. Today I made an appointment to go to the dentist for a check-up and it felt like an enormous achievement. My mom had always done it for me. I never realised how much admin it takes to be an adult. 

Hopefully with time it will get better, both the becoming-an-adult part and the not-feeling-like-this-is-home part. In the meantime I am a tourist in the place where I live. 

Arriving at Glücksburg

This is Denmark, apparently. 

The next day I walked around the harbour with my roommate because it was such a lovely, clear day after weeks of dappled rain.

I live in the blue house :)

Tea & Sympathy

After last week's sad sad Friday the 13th (maybe I should've taken the ominous date as a hint that no good could come), this week's Friday is a lot better. In the meantime I have managed to find a place to live, ordered a futon mattress, bought a knife and two mattress covers at Ikea and made bobotie and malva pudding. Both dishes were a bit disappointing in that I couldn't find all the ingredients and that thus they only tasted like 3/4 of home. 

However, I did visit an interesting tea shop last week. It isn't really a tea shop, more of a tea-experience. The Tadshikische Teestube  is almost 40 years old and the interiors were originally a gift by the Soviets to the Society for German-Soviet friendship after they were exhibited at a fair in Leipzig in 1974. If I understand correctly, the tearoom used to be located elsewhere and recently moved to its current location in the Oranienburger Straße.

I am used to rooibos tea in a pot. Here, it was a different experience all together: you sit on the floor and then order which kind of tea you'd like. We went for the Russian tea ceremony, where you get what I would call a tea-espresso (as in a lot of tea in a little water) on top of a silver urn that contains hot water, which I think is called a samovar. You then dilute the tea with a chosen amount of hot water (we went for 1:3) and sweeten you tea. The options were: sugar cubes, orange/lemon fondant, candied lemon and orange peel, strawberry/rhubarb jam, rum raisins and various types of sugar candy. There was also a bowl with different cookies, although they all looked as though they came out of a packet and weren't baked by the Teestube.  

It was a lot of fun trying out the different types of sweetening methods. Oh, and I forgot: there was a shot of vodka as well. Hot damn, my alcohol tolerance had really become weak. One shot of vodka and I was a bit too glad that we were lounging on the ground: there was no way to fall. All the sweeteners were interesting, although the only one I'd use at home again was the addition of jam to tea. That was quite cool. 

We also had borscht and solyanka because at the moment Germany is a cloudy cold mess and soup alleviates the lack of sunshine a little bit. I really miss the sun. Yesterday I laughed out in the S-Bahn because my mom had said that when Europeans are in SA and have time to sit in the sun, they look like a rabbit does when headlights flash onto it: paralyzed but looking straight at the light. Now I understand why. 

Walk it off.

It was not like touching another living thing. Snakes, dogs, cats, lovebirds, horses, sheep, cows, humans, everything that breathed still somehow conveyed its being-alive-ness. I mean, Jesus, that snake-touching was no fun because it was a 3m python, but still, through the clammy coldness it was alive and, well, it could (try to) eat me.

Not the elephant though. The elephant felt strangely like touching a stuffed museum exhibit. Her skin was harder than I had expected, seemingly impenetrable, with bristles sticking out and a layer of mud caked on. I knew she was observing me, and feeling me sort of man-handling her stomach, the bottom of her back foot, the hairs at the end of her tail and the patch of skin behind her eye with some kind of special gland in it (I wasn't listening as intently as I should have to the elephant handlers). It was as though I was playing every part in the parable of the blind men and the elephant, except that I knew I was touching an elephant.

Only upon touching the back of her ear did it feel less like interacting with a 7t dirty rock and more like she could crush me whenever she felt like it. I felt an interesting contradiction between fascinatedly touching something so big and powerful, but at the same time so silent and vulnerable. All the elephants at the sanctuary near Hartebeespoort are orphans. Their families had been culled because of overpopulation in the Kruger National Park, and they were the only ones that could be relocated. So aside from the threat of crocodiles mauling their trunks, predators attacking them and humans killing them for their ivory, the elephant is on the endangered species list because it needs space to survive, and we are encroaching on its habitat.

It was a bit sad to have to resort to making an interaction with elephants all about taking photographs. On the tour one hears almost everything one can about the loxodonta africana. Then one proceeds to feed them handfuls of pellets, after which one enters one by one to pat the elephant down and pose for a photograph. At the end one walks around an enclosure, with the elephant's trunk in hand.

The entire visit was very cool to experience, but it also felt a bit rehearsed, as though we were at Disneyland queueing to go on a ride. Here we were just queueing to touch something frightening and beautiful. For instance, for the trunk-in-hand walk, I know the elephant did not want me to hold his trunk (I was walking with a different one than Ms. Elephant) because he kept pulling it away. Which I can understand, I also don't like holding people's hands. But then the handler would authoritively say a command, and the trunk would be back in my hand. Sorry Mr. Elephant.

If you are ever in Gauteng and don't know what to do, this is great. But I would bear in mind that this is an animal that could crush you, and not merely a great photographic opportunity to show to your friends back home.

Hello Ms. Elephant