Weekend with Friends

Aug 27, 2016 | After The Great Journey, Photos, Trips

That not everybody could make it to the first big reunion was inevitable. But only the fact that we were sitting down again. Us, not at all strangers to each other anymore. In one room. Talking. This fact made this meeting with us friends just complete.
Just like back then in Wellington, when we shared the ‘au pair fate’, we spent a little time together…

I didn’t fully realise at first, just how elementary important friends are in life. Looking back, my heart fills with wonder and awe, thinking about the wonderful persons I had the chance to get to know.
But you know that. Every single heart I have taken to my own knows this. I hope. 🙂

 

 

 

 

After we were reunited from the different corners of Germany, we had a calm night around the campfire.

Hamelin is an old city full of tradition. Those days, some great city celebration was taking place and thus, the streets weren’t empty at all.

The traditional figurine show we had the chance to witness. Not a funny story, the one with the Pied Piper…

Weeeeell, you won’t see something like this in New Zealand. 😀

A golden specimen is worth a picture for a rat sympathiser like me!

Vast.

I would love us all all living around the area. Like the old days.
But like this, every other meeting of us characters is very special and one not to be forgotten easily.

 

 

 

 

On top of the Hohenstein.

 

 

Next to a demanding apprenticeship (code-word rise early again) and some more smaller or bigger projects on the side, there are these small islands you want to stay on but a little longer.

A whole lotta Hamburg

Aug 14, 2016 | After The Great Journey, Photos, Trips

A weekend in Hamburg with all the great attractions. That was the plan.

The set time for this undertaking fell on the weekend after the first week of the apprenticeship.
The same was a highlight in itself, raising high hopes for the life at work to come.

After my friend Christina and I were reunited, we went towards the train.
We didn’t count in all tosses and losses of the train wreck of the German train connection and after a chaotic 6 hour long odyssey we arrived. Luckily, our Airbnb host was a very helpful and generous one and thus, the day ended well after this uncalled for adventure.

In the beginning everything appeared sunny…

Our schedule included 3 main attractions: ‘Dialogue in the Dark’, ‘The Lion King’ and the ‘Hamburg Dungeon’. We went more or less well rested through the Speicherstadt and experienced a Dialogue in the Dark.

A plain recommendation!

Not to tell you too much beforehand: Dialogue in the Dark is a very well carried out guided tour by blind people. To put it lyrically, you learn to see the world with different eyes.

Next to historic buildings, Hamburg offers a rich architectural palette.

Having some coffee: CHECK

What impresses my fond-of-music self deeply, is the Elbphilharmonie.

That night it was time for the musical experience. Either price you pay, you can’t leave disappointed. A perfect show with a perfectly aesthetically crafted stage design and musically brilliance, which made me leave to the utmost heights of my emotional receptiveness.

 

 

Before, again not as much well rested, we went to the Speicherstadt to learn about the horrid side of Hamburg history, we visited another Hamburg attraction: The fish market.
Pitchmen, bargain chasers, tourists (like us) and real Hamburg people created a colourful and sometimes quite tight crowd.

 

 

The Speicherstadt is an incredible work of masonry, especially coming from New Zealand and unable to think of anything comparable…

 

 

 

 

In the Hamburg Dungeon we learned, less off horror than of entertaining episodes, about the more unpleasant chapters of Hamburg. Maybe one day I might sign up with them and make use of my acting talents to scare and teach others… 😀

After a short, but most invigorating weekend we stepped onto the train and were let down successfully for another time. This time it was masses of soccer fans, which didn’t fit the capabilities of the wagons. That way, the way back was not of ease standing up more than sitting down, but we arrived. And that counts for something. 😉

Back at work I have some more memories to spook my head next to CSS and HTML. Moving weeks these are, but it doesn’t get boring…
At least! 😀

Clear the Decks!

Jul 31, 2016 | After The Great Journey, Updates

I love to begin new chapters of my life on a clean slate.

I have tidied up my room, re-organised my folders of paperwork and even decluttered a little. 😀

The projects I wanted to finish ‘before the apprenticeship’ are all done and I am feeling quite ready.
Two and a half months have passed since my homecoming and not many major things have happened. But that is not bad at all, as sufficient things have been going on. Sufficient things to sound the bell for a new era of my working life and sufficient things to have accustomed to the German way of life.

But everything I say now, I say looking back on my previous life. I am curious for the changes, after the August commences… 😉

Life is Strange

Jul 13, 2016 | After The Great Journey, Thoughts

When I was a child, I liked to play ‘dead’ man at the pool. You just float face down on the surface and leave yourself be without moving.
Up to the moment when the oxygen runs out, you are freed of any duty and responsibility, you just don’t have to do anything. For a brief time you are all detached from the things happening around you. Afterwards, you just move on, you come to the air, take a breath and swim on…

I think I have played ‘dead blog’ long enough, now. Back in the day, when I read many blogs in preparation for the great journey and got inspired by those, I had to notice that many blogs ended abruptly with the end of the stay abroad.
I didn’t want that to happen. I still don’t want that to happen.

There are not many things I deem worth mentioning happening on each day. But there is something happening, indeed: My life is happening. It goes on.

When my past everyday life was a chewy chaos, now it is but a furious stream. And this river leads to a vast waterfall. This waterfall marks a change in my life: The beginning of something new!

I will begin a second apprenticeship! Back then, as I started this blog, I just had finished my first apprenticeship. Only I didn’t know, what the next two and a half years would lead me to. In the time up to this moment I did hardly know where I would find myself after a few months from then. Now it is all under a seal with signatures, shaking hands and words of welcome, where I will spend my future 3 years: In my apprenticeship business, here in my home town, an apprentice to become an IT specialist for software development!

Some might think my life has been ‘set back’ to a previous state. Again an apprenticeship, again at a point from 6 years before, when my original apprenticeship began.
But I don’t look at it this way. My past cannot be told using the lone words secondary school. Not at all, as some things were added. Some things that have majorly defined my very self.

I ask myself if I will be able the start this apprenticeship as simply and carefree as back in time. Back then my life was of simple structure. Nowadays, that is not the case anymore as many new elements have been introduced: New friends (many abroad), new personal experiences/ ways of thinking and a refurbished mindset, new tasks and new objectives.
All is nice and fair, but how do you tend to all these elements of old friends, mindsets and tasks at home at the same time??
There is work to do in that department. You don’t want to lose sight for both…

My past has been written down in this blog neatly and my future I want to share with you, also. As I don’t want to raise the impression, my life after the stay abroad has become boring! 😉

A Business Interim Report

Jun 13, 2016 | After The Great Journey, Updates

My blog shall be about my life now, as the great journey is complete.

The important and worth writing about parts I will gladly put down for you. This raises a question: What is important enough?

This takes us back to a topic of old, before my journey, which was central in my life: The apprenticeship.

A major point on the agenda of the ‘reintroduction’ is a job.
As many know, I have finished an apprenticeship as an electronics technician and wanted to freely look around the job market when I come home.

As my interest in computers of all kinds has been ever-present and the only thing holding me off turning passion into profession is further education, I looked in that very direction.
And behold, the best thinkable career path is a local IT company, which has some more apprenticeship openings to fill this year.
So I was offered an internship, to have the chance to decide between the different kinds of apprenticeships. I am looking forward to it, a unique opportunity!!

I am all content with the idea to start growing into a blossoming company as a twice graded IT guy one day.

That’s all about my career plans. Let’s see, maybe something worth mentioning might happen in the next days? 🙂