...

I'm still alive and well if anyone has been wondering. It's just that I'm a bit busy lately and a lot lazy and very much in love :) -> the three reasons why i haven't written anything for a while...

and I don't really know what to write any more because everything seems either too ordinary, too long to describe or just too personal. There are things that we can't put into words and publish just like that.
plus (taken from personal experience) - long and often renewed blogs are too hard to read even if really interesting, so people loose track and then it's already too late...
[maybe it's also bacause blogging has become so overwhelmingly popular these days that i feel a bit squished and demotivated] ...but enough already with stupid excuses!

so what's new?

heatwave in Strasbourg. Fourth day in a row with sunshine all the way and over 30 degrees of non-stop heat. Somebody send me a ventilator and lots of liquorice ice cream!!

I find myself more and more often thinking in French... Peut-étre je devrais écrire en français mainteanant? non, quand même pas, je suis encore trop nulle pour savoir bien écrire des choses, en plus je perdrais trop des lecteurs :p

across the street there is a house where people don't close their windows too often. On the third floor there lives a family with a little kid who always runs arond naked and cries and makes his mother yell at him. On the fourth floor it's even worse: a man who obviously likes walking around butt naked, not even bothered by the fact that across the street there is a school with people looking out of the windows at various times..

and a rhetorical question to put a point to my post:

is it just me or the French humor?

Woo-Hoo! Can't Get Any Smarter Than THAT! [my eye hurts]

I'm finally taking a break with the whole alcohol consummation. Let me tell you why. First of all, I had been drinking for about two weeks non stop. The last week I switched from beer to wine (‘cause beer is not too good for weight and so on)... So, every evening I was out, enjoying the great weather and drinking. It's dangerous to have spring unusually early I guess, makes people feel they're almighty...
So it was – another evening out, sitting under a bridge (yeah, that’s how low I’ve gone) with five bottles of wine and two friends. The bottles were emptying quite quickly when suddenly I realised that I had Annabelle’s fire chains with me. Never mind the fact that I don’t really know how to do anything with them, I decided I should practice a bit because I will have to perform with that for our school play at the end of May. What a weird coincidence that one of my friends had some fuel stuff, so I put my chains on fire just for the hell of it. Everything went considerably well. We drank some more. And then some more…
I don’t really remember the continuance of things but at some moment the guys found me swearing and covering my eye. Apparently – I had swung one of the lit chains right into my right eye. The fragment I remember is when I was covering one eye and then the other and saying something like: “oh look! One eye sees clearly and with the other one it’s all hazy… no but, no problem, I don’t mind!” I can suppose that my friends were quite shocked so they immediately took me to the nearest place for help – to the fire station. There I remember that young firemen put me into their truck and closed the doors and looked at my eye. When it was time to leave I had refused to get off the bed and out of the truck. I can imagine that the firemen had quite a few laughs on my account that evening. Oh well.
Next destination – first-aid station at the hospital. As soon as I heard that I was being taken (yeah, I couldn’t really walk alone) to the hospital, I started crying. Fred told me later that I had brought the disappearance of my favourite hippie-bus as an excuse for my tears. I think that the real reason was (even though I still wasn’t too sober) that I finally started to realise the seriousness of my situation – I couldn’t see well with my right eye!!!
In the hospital, as I vaguely remember, they looked into my eye with this light-machine-thingy, then they made me read letters from a board with my good eye (which wasn’t all that easy because the world seemed a bit hazy even with that eye) and then they stuck me up with eye drops and cream and Fred knows what else…
I think (or at least I hope) that on the way home I was quiet and humble, on the name of all the embarrassment I had caused to Fred and not mentioning myself… So now I’ve had to put stuff in my hurting eye about every four hours every day and quit alcohol (not only because of the eye). The traces of what I did are still there even though I don’t remember doing it. My eye lashes are about half the length they should be and I already removed the part of my scorched hair around the eye.
I have no idea what I would have done without Fred who practically carried me from one place to another and then put cream into my damaged eye. One other thing to thank is my outrageous luck that let me get away with just a superficial burn. I can still see!

Anyways, can you imagine anyone doing anything more fucking stupid than that? Well ok, maybe after an effort… But: “the bus is gone!”??? Geez!

Week-end in Germany

Last Friday we packed our little bags and went to visit Steffi with Marvin, Diana, Keiko and Virginie. She lives a few hours from Strasbourg, near Ulm. There was a lot of snow in Germany, which is a rare sight for someone who’s living in Strasbourg. The first thing we did after getting there was eat a lot (not that anyone was hungry). Then we played Rummy that we took with us extra for Steffi. She loves that game, I don’t know why. The rest of the evening we spent telling her all the news of Lucie Berger.
The next day after breakfast we all got into ridiculous (but warm) skiing outfits, grabbed some sledges and went to enjoy the snow. After a while of sliding down the mountain and climbing back up, gasping for breath we lost the childish spirit and headed back for some home-made cake. The rest of the day we spent playing games; learning choreography for the animators’ dance at the school’s final party; eating, looking at photos and discussing Anna.
The next morning we had a little festive brunch, after that a short sightseeing in Ulm (the town with the tallest church, the most inclined house and the place where Einstein was born). Finally, even after a nice relaxing weekend like that I was still glad to get back to our ugly-prisonny, but nevertheless sweet “home” :)
It’s good to be in Strasbourg!

Mme Perrin

Our dear Chuppa-Chups, what would we do without her? Probably party all day and night, practically never clean the salon nor wash the dishes, invite anyone we want whenever we want, never worry about anything… Yeah, that would be the luxurious life in Lucie Berger. But no, we’re stuck here with the board school supervisor, as she sees herself (let us not mind the fact that LB is not a board school for years now)… She lives in the school with her husband (who is the school director and a really nice person), in a huge apartment one floor downstairs from us. She is the one that is in charge of our accommodation and week-end/vacation nourishment. And she is the one that doesn’t want us to have any visitors ever (oops, I guess we kind of missed that rule).

There are a lot of stories about her, for example, why do we call her the fridge-bitch: Keiko had some mushrooms and salad that disappeared from her fridge, so she went and asked (frank as she is) the f-b if she had taken her mushrooms. Mme Perrin answered “No, but maybe it was the cleaning woman”…

One late Friday evening we were making cookies in our salon, it took quite a long while so we left the cleaning-up for the morning. But the next day when I wanted to get our key to the diner I found the salon locked. There was also a letter on our message board: “if you want to use the salon, make sure it is well cleaned”. So we weren’t able to have our breakfast and I still don’t know how she had imagined us cleaning up a room with the door closed. By the way, she did it once more some months later just because of three unclean plates.

It was already a long time ago when Marvin and I started collecting all of our empty alcohol bottles into a small cupboard. When Mme Perrin discovered it she immediately assumed that it was all drunk by Marvin. She insisted on cleaning the cupboard and insulted him by telling into his face that she thinks he has a drinking problem. Of course we didn’t clean anything – how could we possibly throw away our precious collection?! After the Christmas vacation, when Marvin came back to LB he found his room full of empty bottles. Yes, she often uses her double key to enter our rooms. I don’t know what she’s doing there but it annoys me as hell! Anyway, don’t think that we’re just a bunch of wussys here or that I’m not doing any small and quietly undermining revolutions. Of course we started our collection again, but this time we hid the key of the cupboard so that she can’t look inside and therefore have any problems about what’s there. If she should ever ask where the key is we’ll just tell that maybe it was the cleaning woman who took it ;)

Before Christmas vacation she gave me money (not a small sum) for food as I wasn’t going home like most of the others. Keiko was the second one staying here. She didn’t get anything, we discussed it and good-old Keiko went demanding right away. Mme Perrin had her money all ready in an envelope, but she wouldn’t have given it if Keiko would not have asked. Plus – she got less than I did just for no reason. There are plenty of other money-stories with her, actually – we’re having problems with that all the time.

But the most irritating about her is the nasty hypocritical nosiness: she always has to know when we are here; when are we leaving, where, with whom and to do what. She always has that disgusting smile on her face that’s so false, you could tell that she loves you as much as the dirt under her shoe. We just really love her, that sneaky, stealing, room-entering, party-ruining, double-faced bitch!!!

Tout le monde

I've been in Strasbourg for over five months now. Some things/people/opinions have changed since I last wrote about the people here, so I'll just make a new round:

Olivier: I still get the feeling that he doesn’t like me too much sometimes, but otherwise he’s a cool guy to have as a boss. I couldn’t say I really communicate to him a lot though…

Roland: he’s continually funny. It wouldn’t be the same without him and to be honest – I’d prefer to have him in charge here. He’s all chill and baila guy and doesn’t take it personally when we make fun of him. He doesn’t love working here too much, so he’s trying to make the dull stuff as amusing as possible.

Virginie: is replacing Audrey. I really like her, she is all about irony and that’s just too funny. Of course, she herself always stays serious. She has helped me a lot with the work and all (moral support), a very professional person, highly educated as well.

Eric B: replacing Aleks. He worked here some years ago and is being really active in organising ateliers and stuff. He is a very nice and friendly guy, but sometimes weird. He asks a lot of questions and tends to take everything personally. And as Marvin said: “He gays on me”… but then again maybe it’s just his paranoia because Eric has a wife and two kids. You never know...

Eric S: still our tutor with whom I don’t really communicate all that much. I get my real support from other people I guess…

Steffi: unfortunately just lately left Strasbourg to continue her studies. She is sooo funny, the way she laughs and everything. We had a huge, you could say – massive – good-bye party organised for her. It’s kind of quiet here without her…

Marvin: what would I do without him?! He is still my best friend out of all the people here. If I have a problem I go to him. If I like or don’t like someone I tell him about it. We mostly share the same opinions about things and people, so making jokes about "things" is our daily routine. We talk about everything, we have parties together, we break the rules together etc. He can sometimes be a really typical guy, but it is mostly forgivable so I don’t really mind.

Keiko: I am so SO sorry for making fun of her before getting to know the real person behind all the weirdness. I just love her, she is so great! She’s really funny and she always says what she means and on top of everything she’s just too nice. She is not afraid of responsibility and organising things, plus she has a great sense of humour. I have learned a lot about Japan from her, including some vocabulary. How could I have been so wrong about her!!! Keiko is great :)

Diana: our Spanish girl who is doing her Erasmus program here. She came and immediately won everyone’s hearts – a really sweet and nice person, easy to get along with. Marvin has special feelings for her (can’t blame him) and she is sometimes our co-conspirator in braking the rules business.

Anna: oh, we could write a book about her, Marvin and I. It would be a grosely funny one. “The thing”, that’s how we call her (le truc de merde). She is getting worse and worse, I think I’m gonna have to dedicate a whole another chapter to her and all the thingy-things. She is the only person that hasn’t really integrated into our group so far and I know more and more people who don’t like her. Strange thing. Gollum.

Chun-Yu: the new Chinese girl, replacing Xiang-Yan since January. She has been here for over a month and I know nothing about her. A rather non-social specie… She doesn’t speak French too well and always says “pardon” for not knowing how to express herself. If we offer her something she usually answers “no merci” in a rather grumpy manner.

Szofia (Sophie): the new Hungarian girl who’s replacing Steffi. She arrived not so long ago and doesn’t speak a lot of French yet, so I haven’t talked to her a lot. But she seems cool and funny, plus she’s the only person who is making an effort to clean our salon, that’s already a plus :)

Mme Perrin: our "landlady" who also lives in the shool with her husband. We call her the Fridge-Bitch because we suspect that she is stealing food from our fridges; and Chuppa-Chups because she is short and small with an unproportionally large head. She is the factor that stops us from enjoying the utter greatness of life and freedom here. I guess she will need an extra column as well.

Fred, PolM and Annabelle: the three students that we (Marvin and I) have become good friends with. We do stuff together outside school (sometimes inside, which is actually a big no-no), that mostly includes heavy drinking. Thanks to them I actually have a life outside this damned place. Thanks guys! If someone in charge would find out that we're hanging out with them it could be big trouble, so don’t tell anyone ;)

I guess that shortly describes everyone I'm more or less in contact with (living/working/having fun together). Closer thingy descriptions coming soon...

PS: some new photos are now up in pilt.ee