TGIF

TGIF - Thank God Its Friday

It is Friday. Finally. Actually, the week passed super fast, but Friday is always good. Cause it's Friday. As simple as that. ;)

I have no plans for tonight although I wanted to go to a concert of a colleague originally. But then, in the end, noone ended up going and going alone? Nah, not really. Thats the downside to living in a big city one does not yet know very well. But it will come with time, I guess.

On the other hand, I was not going to go out for too late anyways, because my long awaited couch will finally arrive tomorrow and as they cannot really give me a time frame that helps ("We will arrive between 8h and 18h... plus / minus 30 minutes") so will have to be awake and ready at 8h because my appartment still has no interphone so the doorman can call me and I won't wake up from a simple knock on the door (at least not as far as I know me... ;)

Another great thing today was that my boss approved my holidays, thus I can travel somewhere down south with Alessa (who landed in Sao Paulo today and will be travelling around for 4 weeks) and then in October I will go to Buenos Aires to visit Ale and to see the city I always always always wanted to live in. Maybe one day I still will. And its all thanks to Anna who moved there when we were still in Kindergarten. Her stories when visiting Germany in the summer apparently were enough to make me wanna go. Oh well and it helped of course that Ale told me about it, Marisa did, Carlos (Schmitz, that would be) said he loved it and my former boss moved back there twice and would go again as soon as he had an offer... Buenos Aires must be amazing.

Oh and guess what? No, that is not all! I will go to Santiago de Chile next week. A night in Sao Paulo on Friday and then Saturday morning to Monday Night in Santiago. City Tour with Carlos (Mendoza, this time) and his wife Consuelo, skiing in El Colorado and a Wine Tasting Tour at Concha y Tore :)

Yepp yepp yepp, amazing plans... And I am soooo excited. So who cares about a friday night at home when you have those trips coming up?! Thats right, I don't.

Last but not least I tried to buy a Blackberry Phone, cause there is an amazing promotion going on these days that would basically offer me "unlimited data" (VOIP here I come, skype on the go all day long and thus being able to communicate with my family and friends throughout the week cause they wont be sleeping when I come home from the office) and "unlimited" phone and messages (well, it would be 1000 minutes and 1000 messages per month, which for someone like me, hating the phone like nothing else, is basically unlimited). And as if that was not enough there is a 300 Reais Rebate too (which is totally necessary cause electronics just seem to be insanely expensive in Brazil when you grew up in Europe).
Unfortunately, Blackberrys are sold out every-f*in-where in this city and thus I was not able to get one. But I will keep trying and send all you busy business friends of mine my BB Pin soon, so we can message for free and be cool, and to all those normal people outthere: This means I can have Skype turned on all day and thus be reacheable through my German Skype-in Number :) :)
Yes, it sounds really good :) But: I need to get the opportunity to buy one first. Of all things, I did not think this would be an obstacle...

So, thats enough news for today.

Except maybe: I finally saw the movie "Das Weisse Rauschen". Now, to be honest, I am not a big fan of those Dogma 95 style movies because the movement really makes me motion sick, but here it was just really really helping the story and Daniel Brühl was really really good. If you havent seen it yet, you should.

Beijos and good night!

Some Random Brasil Facts and Stories

In the video rental store here, the dvds are not sorted by genre and then alphabet, but (and I am totally serious, I was just there today) by genre and then by COLOR!

I spent 3 times as much money for groceries on Monday than I spent the same day to fill my car's tank.

(Some) cellphone providers charge you for roaming when you change states within Brazil.

If you want to buy something big, or rent a dvd, you need to register in the store. In order to do so, you need to give two phone numbers of friends or colleagues for reference. (So, if you thought of stealing a 15 Reais DVD, they will hunt you down, may it cost whatever...)

Nobody has dishwashers. And as most people clean their dishes with cold water, the soap here is so aggressive it cleans everything. Burnt in, dried out, who cares!?

As it hardly ever rains in this city, streets turn into raging rivers when it finally does.

You think you can skip cleaning dust this week? I don't think so. The earth here is red as I would only expect it in Africa... and you can see red on EVERYTHING.

Bills have barcodes, so you can pay them easily on the ATM Machine. Yet there is no such thing is automatic debit (only for water and gas) or "Bankeinzug".

Brasil has no Ikea.

Things in Brasil sell out easily, as stores do not stock much. If you see something you like, buy it.

Your CPF number shows people if you are paying your bills, if you have a valid identity, and (through noticing if you know it by heart or not) how long you have lived in Brasil (in that order, by the way ;))

You need your CPF Number for purchases of all kinds, to use your credit card, to open bank accounts, to rent appartments, to register a car, to register your signature, to get Internet Access, and the list goes on and on. You even need it to be allowed to enter clubs and bars sometimes.

You need to register your signature. In Brasil it is not necessarily enough to sign things (twice or three times). Your signature also needs to get a little sticker, another signature of a state worker, and a couple of stamps before its valid and proven that it really is your own signature.

If Brazilians call anything "Alemao" (=German) you can translate it as "Bavarian". Dirndl and Lederhosen are typical German cloths, Sauerkraut and Eisbein are typical German food (and sausages), the Oktoberfest is what every German attends once a year and Franziskaner is a typical German Beer. And beer is drunken warm in Germany, cause it is so cold over there... Mmmh, lots of work left for me.

Brazilians love fireworks. There is a big rocket sent off after every GOOOOOOOOOOL here at the stadium.

The lines that show you lanes on the street are there, but they are useless and thus ignored. And you better ignore them too, if you dont want to cause an accident. Who honks first, goes first and there is ALWAYS space to change (imaginary) lanes 5 to 7 times on 100 meters in rush hour.

... thats it for now, but I am sure there will be more to come...

Pictures of my Appartment

Here are some pictures of my appartment. It is still missing a lot of decoration, but I think that will come with time... Also bookshelves are missing, thus, some of my books are still in boxes.
Nevertheless, it was finally time for a nice housewarming dinner with my friends to thank them for all the help they gave me to start here in Goiânia!

Fire in the Attic

No, I dont mean the band. I mean actual fire.
On Friday night I sat in my appartment and watched The Butterfly Effect, when the TV made a loud cracking sound and turned off. Damn it, I thought, I will miss the last minutes of the movie now...
My phone and my internet also work over the cable network, so it was all turned off. What now?

I heard a loud knocking on the door... Whoomp Whoomp Whoomp it went. Mh, I thought, maybe someone wants to know if my cable tv stopped too.

"Helloooo?"
"Oi, its the porteiro! Come out please!"
"Uhm, hold on a second" *key search, turn keys, open door*
"We gotta go. There is a fire. Upstairs."
"A what?..." *grab wallet and cellphone, grab shoes*
"Fire. Come quick.*

We ran down the stairs. 15 floors. He had run them up before. He was sweating. Nervous. The building had just been opened and he was new. New to this job. New to this responsibility.
My knees were a little shaky. I had done this before. Ran down the fire stairs, once from 11th floor once from the 26th. It always turned out to be a false alarm and as there was no smoke, I thought this must be a false alarm too. Yet the porteiro seemed very nervous.

The only thing I could be thinking was: This is not possible. This cannot be true. My stuff made it all the way from Germany to Brazil, by train, by ship and by truck. It will not burn down now. And why am I carrying my sneakers in my hands. My socks will be ruined when I get downstairs. Why I was thinking that? No idea. Kinda ridiculous. My socks? I mean, who are you kidding... I run around on socks all the time and for years my mom keeps telling me that I keep ruining my socks and i never before cared. The brain works in weird ways sometimes...

When we arrived outside there were already people standing there. From the outside I could see that the building had a light alarm, that was blinking heavily in the night, but I did not hear a sound.
From the other few people that live in the house so far, I learned that the little three year old girl saw the fire. When going to bed she looked out of her window and saw the fire reflection in the new building next to ours. "Oh look mommy, how pretty. It has fire in the window." Mommy of course didnt think it was so pretty, grabbed her little one and ran downstairs informing the porteiro and the local fire brigade.

When the fire brigade arrived, the fire still didn't seem to be big, there was not much to see from the outside.
The fire was on the top floor, where the appartments arent ready yet and noone lives there so far (well, there are only 5 of 22 appartments used so far). Apparently a construction worker had left one of those tools on, that make a flame to melt things together. He had left it on small, so it took a couple of hours before the material caught fire. As far as I understood, we all reacted right. When the chief of the fire brigade came back downstairs to tell us the fire was out and why it happened, and all the details that everyone wanted to know so badly... I didn't really understand it all though, people were all talking at the same time, talking fast, talking portugese (of course), but at least the guy was very handsome... so I just looked, and had someone explain it to me later...

A little later we wore allowed to go back upstairs. It was a little weird. The fact that i did not hear any alarm got me a little worried. What if it happens again and the porteiro cannot run up 15 stories again... but then again, what are the chances of it happening again in the same night, when the fire men just took care of it?! And the alarm will be repaired or re-adjusted too.

...it's been a while...

I did not remember how much work moving was. Then again, I think I have never really moved like this before. Moving from Berlin my parents did all the work, moving to Canada just involved 2 suitcases cause the rest stayed in my room at my parents, then I moved out from my parents house but I did it in little bits and pieces, and Madrid, like Canada, involved more work putting things in boxes for storage than it involved unpacking...

Either way, I am nearly done now. There are still two and a half boxes with stuff left... the boxes with the stuff that you collected without really noticing, and for which now you cannot find a space :D haha
And there is soooo many books. I knew I had a lot of books, but somehow miracly, they all had a nice space in my old place. Now here, I have two big bookstands and still I have a huge box just with books left. I need to find a carpenter to build me bookshelves that I can put into the cupboards that are built into the walls here. They are made for clothes and thus just have one compartment to hang stuff.... Hey Joey, didn't you want to go down south when its winter in Montréal? I mean, you cant really build a house here, but I could need a good carpenter ;) Free beers included!!

I also had to realize that I have a lot of clothes and shoes. Frankly, I do not beat my mom in shoes and clothes, by far. Yet, for someone who mainly wears sneakers it is a lot... And guess what? After sorting all my shoes into sandals, winterboots (which I so didnt need to carry across the ocean), gym shoes, sneakers, highheels... I still wondered why I can find my red, my black, and my multicolored chucks, yet the brown ones and the green ones are missing. I am wondering if I sorted them out in Madrid, where I sorted out a lot of stuff that would get me over the 20kgs luggage for the plane... damn it, should have thrown out other stuff ;)
Also, so many clothes that I forgot that I had, because they went into storage two years ago, when I left to Madrid. Mainly work clothes, but also my favourite band shirts that are so damn worn out but that I just cannot throw out cause they are tied to the best concerts ever (like the Less Than Jake Shirt from my first rock concert ever, when they played with Bad Religion in Montréal) or just great moments and friends, like the "The Frikadells" t-Shirt which was made for me when I left to Madrid, from all my friends that were on my balcony on a random drunk bbq-burger night when we decided to start a band called "The Frikadells". We even prepared our "The Turtle is the Mailman" Tour and had already a bunch of songtitles... yet, we never reached the moment of actually hitting a single note together...

Moving is a lot of work. But as you can also see from this post, it brings back amazing memories. I found my two favourite stuffed animals in a box, for example. One of them a bear that my aunt had made for my birth, without which I have not slept a single night between my first days on earth and leaving for Canada. Other people have a small pillow, I used this bear as a small pillow (and frankly, by now he looks like a pillow, all flat...)

In another box I found the guitar that Anne and Joey made for me when i left Canada so that I would remember them. Next to it the Bongos that Andrea gave me at Grad Day for the same reason and a McDonalds Name tag from Allard, which was his first name tag of his first job that he was so damn proud of.

I found my high-school exams from my challenge classes physics and english, and my economics notes from my German University and from Madrid.

I found tons of pictures from being a child, from being a teenagers, from holidays in Estartit, from BBQs at my first own place, from work, from school, from university, from Berlin, Canada and Madrid. Maybe unpacking took me so long, caues I looked at them all ;)

But now I am sitting here, I nearly finished everything... I put up the pictures and paintings I brought. Kurt Cobain, who has been travelling with me since Canada, is back on the wall and looks down on my beautiful living room ;) (though this poster definitely needs a frame, it is starting to rip on all edges)

It is a nice sunday, a couple of clouds. Not too hot. And I feel really comfortable. Here. Finally. At my new place.