The Crow, The Collapse, and the Cleaning Man

     I have quite a few friends in my German classes. We drink beer together and find German people to steal and cook Schnitzel for us and sometimes all dress up in German clothes to visit pubs on weekday nights. English literature, however, is an entirely different story. I have a few friends from English who I am very proud of, but our friendship was built upon other things, like Berlin, or drinking tea together at work, or...actually, no, just two.

     Anyway, at risk of digression, one of said English Lit friends turned to me today, and proclaimed, 'Hilary, you are the only person I know who manages to get herself in so many socially awkward situations quite so often'. I took this as a compliment, but it could have been her bidding me adieu in order to find cooler English Lit friends.

A poem, by my mum, October 2014

     The tale of the cleaning man comes after a particularly long weekend involving muffins, wine and very little movement. Safely in the swanky new toilets of our swanky new department building, I was inspecting my new-found stomach in the swanky new full-length mirrors. I admit, I might have even poked aforementioned flab. In comes cleaning man, to be greeted by a lot of skin and a lot of bra. We both laughed it off. 

     The crow was a little less entertained by my new gain of weight. The crow tried to carry me away. I was walking home from a 10 o'clock lecture, having a great time and envisioning tea and biscuits and the Made in Chelsea catchup on 4od. Then, there was a crow on my head. It was heavy and had grabby claws. I shrieked and shrieked and shrieked, and all the people in the meadows turned round to see me, the girl, flapping around, with a crow having the time of its life in my hair. 

     The collapse should be taken very seriously. I fell up the library stairs. Now, the library is not a place to stop and be embarrassed and look around at your audience, all the while laughing nervously at the accidental fall. No. The library is a place of no eye contact. The library is a place of silence, even if you might be dying. So up I hopped, sprinting up the rest of the stairs to safety. It soon transpired that I was not in the right shape for sprinting, as the world began to get darker and fuzzier, and the pain in my knee was far greater than that time I forgot to get off a t-bar ski lift and ended up ploughing into a snow-covered rock. I found a nearby table (a tall awkward one, like you get in costa or airports), and lay on it. It was there that two girls found me, shaking me and asking if I needed assistance. 'Because we're medical students', one said proudly. 'Well, medical sciences', said the other. (Even I could work out in my near-death state that this meant they were not actually doctors.) 'I'M FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE' I moaned, throwing myself further across the awkward too-tall table.They wheeled an office chair across from the other side of the floor, which I flopped into, and they left.

     All these stories are much better told in person with hand gestures and real life screams, but they are also told in a shorter form on my twitter.

The Bluffer's Guide to Berlin (part 1, all things Berlin)

A lot has changed from my first whirlwind of a day here, exactly three weeks ago. I have just read back on my last post and I adore my amazement at all things Berlin, especially that people listened to my German. Here is just a tiny post on how things are different now from my first besotted impressions. 

I now have a hat. My ever-complimentary friend Blythe says it is very Breaking Bad-esque, which offends me, because I am not a man. Anyway, when I'm walking/ jogging home after night out, falafel in hand, I like to think it makes me invincible to all possible night-time predators.

The U-bahn; I was so amazed with the u-bahn! I swore I would never need a bike, or set foot on a bus, or even think about another mode of transport. I have very quickly fallen out of love with the underground. It's very cramped, and sometimes, I could walk faster than it takes me to get to some areas of Berlin. Sometimes there are dogs. Once, when Lauren came to stay last week, a cat was in a box, and it pooed in said box. The owner had to run off with the cat wrapped around his neck like a snake. In the week, trains stop at around 12am, resulting in mad dashes searching for those infamous blue 'U' signs, or long journeys home involving the tram. Nevertheless, I do love it when there are buskers on the train (it should be a full time job).

Currywurst at Mauerpark

MY GERMAN (this deserves capitals because it is so non-existent). I feel like this Guardian article here. Even in class, all conversations are initiated in English, which is very much my fault. Now that I am out of the Bavarian Forest, and surrounded by people who can understand my jokes, I seem to gravitate towards English-speaking people, even when they are actually Austrian!

On a more positive note, I am living in a bustling Bezirk*, as they say auf Deutsch, with amazing, amazing food. I ate bread in Bavaria and got fat. Here I am going to eat from all the countries in the world, and attend yoga on Thursday mornings. Also, I am going through a bit of a burger phase, so here is my current top two favourite burger offerings:

The hat

Burgermeister! A renovated public toilets lounging underneath Schlesisches Tor U-Bahn, it offers top value burgers and cheapy cheap chips. We sat on old beer bottle containers which resulted in a zig-zag imprint on my bum, but it was still worth it. Some would even say edgy.

Hasir Burger: They own 6 restaurants in Berlin, and several in the Kottbusser Tor side of Kreuzberg, but they're not all selling burgers (some are turkish food I think, but I am yet to try). However, their burger restaurant is fab, with picnic tables outside and AMAZING wedges and chips. They cook on an actual barbecue too, which is the ultimate taste of summer.

*your area, 'in my Bezirk'; your endz etc etc.

What happened in Bavaria?! Part II

     'We didn't think you would come.'

I must have done something right at one point

     On my first day at school, I was greeted by this compliment. What she was trying to say about British reliability I am not sure, but I took it as something positive; that the worst was over, now I was here and we could go on as if the doubting never happened.

     The doubting did not stop happening. About 6 weeks into term, I asked if I could set up an after-school club for English. 'My own lessons!' I thought, 'Now I can do what I came here to do!'

     Oh no. It was never going to be that simple. 

     On the week before, I designed a beautiful poster, specifying the time and date I had been given. I found some fancy pictures of the Union Jack off Google images. I printed the posters not only on white paper, but also on yellow card. Lesson plans were made, fun 'ice-breakers' researched. I was ready to go.

     The day of after-school class came, and, dressed in my most authoritative get-up (jeans and a jumper or else the Germans get confused at the output of effort into outfit selections), I strolled along to class H.13. H.13 was harder to find than H.12 and H.14. It began to seem to me that H.13 was a ploy to make me shut up about after-school English.

     Eventually, though, I found H.13. 'I'm sure I have been in this room before', I thought as I opened the door. Oh yes. Oh yes, I had. A row of sinks greeted me. And some mirrors. And some toilet cubicles. No one was there waiting for after-school English. I began to realise that I had advertised to the whole school that class was going to take place in the toilets. 

     Confronting my mentor about the situation was yet another humiliation. 'I must have got confused', she chuckled, and went back to her lunch. 

     And that was the end of after-school English class. 

The Difficulty of Now

At the risk of being misunderstood, this is a post about the struggles of right now. Don't get me wrong; I love being back in the UK. I love fourth year. I love my flat, and my part-time job, and the fact a very large percentage of my friends are all in the same city as me (after living in the Forest, this is a novelty I will never again take for granted). I appreciate that the workload is demanding, but the motivation this provides me with is the most motivation I have had for at least 3 years (thanks 'A' Levels, you were mean). But what I really hate about now is the not-now: The future. 

'The future is in your hands' (I feel like people say this a lot. Or maybe just my dad).
My future is literally in my hands. If I ain't typing applications, all I have in front of me, literally and metaphorically, is a white blank page (see Mumford and Sons for some good mood music). I am a particularly worry-able person. For the first time in my life, I have no idea where I will be in a year, or even where I should be in a year.

Last week, I visited a careers workshop for my school, the school of  Languages, Literatures and Cultures. I expected to be bombarded with places to go to find a job, and useful application strategies. Instead, I drew a spider diagram of what I enjoy and who I admire. I'm not being scathing; I see how this can help people to maybe see where they want to go. For me, it just said the obvious: I like writing, and I like being around people I like. This I knew already. I desired a more narrowed-down answer of where I can go in order to achieve this. And what is yet more frustrating, is that right now, I am expected to be doing a lot of writing, and I have enough time to spend with people I like. I like the now, so why should I be spending it thinking about the next? 

The answer? The next terrifies me, and in order to make the future a little less terrifying, I should think about the next. I'm applying for graduate schemes. I am scouring the internet for internships. I become confused about salaries and start dates and deadlines on a daily basis. But I have a feeling that if my new future does not comprise either writing or friends, this time next year, I will still be complaining about the now; only with less time to change it.

The now: beer, sausages and friends

The Top 5 Places to visit in Western Turkey

Given 4 weeks, you can see a lot of Turkey (of course not enough). Here is a short and snappy countdown of my favourite places to head to.

1) Cappadocia
Always wanted to see the grand canyon but not sure you can make it to the USA just yet? Cappaodocia is the next best thing. With scenery comprising yellow and orangey rocks everywhere, deep crevices and towering 'fairy chimneys', a castle and several astonishingly enormous underground cities, this area is a playground. The 5 am hot air balloon was pricey (around 100 euros with some haggling and pitiful pleas of, 'but we are students') but worth it for the beautiful sunrise. Staying in a cheap but excellent hostel in a cave is mandatory, as is devouring Gözleme, turkish pancakes and a speciality of the region, on a daily basis. Hire an inexpensive scooter and feel like the ultimate racer boy amongst the coach-riding tourists. 

2) Kaş
It's small, and cute, but a little bit expensive (we had to resort to staying in an old man's guest room). Used as our scuba-diving base, this quaint town was ideal, with its purposefully-sunk lifeboat and aeroplane lying at the bottom of the sea, and we had 6 excellent dives in the relatively still waters. Afternoons were spent eating ice cream and jumping off rocks from one of the many seaside cafes. There are fancy restaurants, but we also found somewhere that sells giant jacket potatoes for very little. 

3)Pammukale
Is it snow? Is it sugar? No it's salt! (cringe soz). Just a mountain covered in salt, with tiny salty pools on the way up to sit inside. There are some 'ancient baths' at the top but I would either avoid or sneak in free, as it reduces the breath-taking scenery to a Disney-esque mess.

Sunset : tourist-free and beautiful

4) Istanbul
A vibrant, exciting city to which even a week could not do justice. Read more on how the city enchanted me here. 

5)Ankara
Go, because it is relatively non-touristy. The new capital of Turkey comprises limited hostels, restaurants with non-english menus and no direct flights to the UK. A giant mausoleum dedicated to Ataturk, the first president of Turkey, and a tiny but adorable old town, mesh ancient with modern. It was the only place in Turkey that I felt on edge, mainly because I was female. I received a lot of scathing and inquisitive looks from both the men and women of Ankara as I traversed the streets in exactly the same clothes I had been wearing around the rest of the country. It's sprawling and ugly, but the beauty in the old town only benefits from this dichotomy. 

Ataturk's Mausoleum 

What we can learn from the Turkish

Having been firmly planted back into normality for almost 2 months, it seems now is the perfect time for my belated thoughts on our travels in Turkey. Was it what I expected? No. Would I go back in a heartbeat? YES. 

Reluctant as I am to make comparisons with my travels in India, I am going to push forward and do it anyway. Thus, India was most definitely the country of the train. If you've ever fancied yourself as a bit of a James Bond, the sight of hundreds of Indians running towards a moving train and clambering on-board will make those previous expectations of oneself pale in comparison. Anywhere is a seat in India, the roof of a train included. When unwilling to pay much, they are hot and smelly and crowded, but if a little extra dollah is outlayed, a 20-hour night train is almost unpleasant. Two loos in each carriage to choose from (depending on if sitting down or standing up when pooping is preferred), a service including  the ordering of hot meals to be delivered at the next station, and provided clean sheets and blankets for those long overnight journeys, all contribute to a rather fancy railway system. 

Encouraged by this, we set out into Turkey with the train as our preferred mode of transport. Then we looked on the map. There were very few railways detailed. There were sighs and a sauntering off to the nearest pharmacy to stock up on travel sickness tablets. 

However, Turkey proved the old saying that 'you don't need something if there's something else much better'. Buses were cheap, far-reaching and at generally amicable times. There was always a lunch-stop, even if the bus had only been going for an hour. They were almost always on time, apart from when the bus broke down and waited on a country road for a man to deliver the parts by motorbike. Snacks and water from the bus-waiter were free, including tubs and tubs and tubs of ice cream (at the beginning of the journey since the buses do not have fridges). On the back of every seat was a television which came with headphones and somewhere to charge electronics. Buses were never full, apart from when we took a 'dolmus' -  tiny, rickety minivans which stop regularly to pick up roadside wayfarers. We weren't sure if this was actually a legal service offered by the bus companies, but the bus-waiter seemed happy collecting ticket money from these guys. 

And with the mention of tickets, I come to number 2 of 'What we can learn from the Turkish' (and also Indians). Every tourist destination we arrived at proffered long, complicated price lists. There were museum cards and Istanbul Cards and just normal prices, too. But the stand-out thing was that if you were Turkish, entry into Pamukkale salt fields or Topkapi Palace in Istanbul or for a hot air balloon ride in Capadocia was much, much cheaper. It was the same in India, too, with the Taj Mahal becoming invitingly cheap if Indian nationality was held. This led us to a rather heated debate in relation to the question of: if this was done in the UK, would more people be interested in visiting National Trust houses or top tourist attractions? Although it is excellent that our museums and art galleries are always free, there are a lot of extremely expensive cultural attractions which are unaffordable for many. 

We got on a coach, it got on a bus 

So, what can we learn from the Turkish? Back in the UK, I am now open to taking the coach for long-distance journeys, having spent 10+ hours with ample leg room and without the worry of someone having stolen my bag (I experience this every time I set foot on a train). For me to rely only on coaches, though, I would need the UK's bus companies to step up their game and improve their service and vehicles. Discounted tickets for non-tourists, however, would make attractions much more accessible.