The Frat House

While Koblenz was nothing that I expected, nor was it 100% everything that I wanted from a city (I miss the beach. sob sob sob), I really do feel at home here.

I've travelled a lot around Germany in the short 4 years that I've had an active interest in its language, culture and history. I've lived in a small town in Niedersachsen with my ex-boyfriend, visited Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Köln, Aachen and Bremen, as well as festival and concert hopping in 2010. Now finally, for 2 months I've lived in Koblenz, one of the largest cities in Rheinland-Pfalz in the south-west of Germany.
I certainly do have adventures when I'm in Germany.

After having a tremendously difficult time finding a fucking apartment, and experiencing some awful, smelly old dumps on my way, I found myself invited to live in large room a traditional german Burschenschaft.

Burschenschaften receive a lot of bad press. As old-style student fraternities dating from the 1810's, often with traditional dress worn at events and with old-school fencing duels, it's not hard to see why. The modern view, that anything traditional, German and basing itself on ideas of collaboration and unity, only seems to stir up images of right-wing extremism and nationalistic thought. However, I've found that not to
be the case at all.

What sort of right-wing nationalist student fraternity would allow a gay, British man to live within their walls?
Not to mention a gay, British man with an often less-than-perfect command of the German language....

It's nice here. I have a lovely large room, a great big bed and there's quite an open community feel here. Everyone I've met so far has been welcoming, interested in myself and excited at the fact that I really do like living here and excited that I take an active interest in their events etc.

I must admit to feeling a little out of my depth at times, especially as I'm the house guest of people who have lived together for a few years, or even longer, and sometimes I don't entirely understand what's going on. I guess that's just a normal part of living abroad in an apartment with locals.

The frat guys who live here are really interesting characters too. I live with an entire spectrum of people, ranging from heavy-metal loving architecture students, to mousy, calm, collected ones, all the way through to the manly beer drinkers and the ones who take care of themselves and certainly look the part. I have missed living with guys. Living with girls is difficult sometimes....

If nothing else, this living situation of mine has certainly broadened my horizons and made realise just how diverse and yet spiritually-bound people really can be.

Bon dia, em dic Gareth i parlo català

Monstrously late into my time here before schlepping off to Germany for the beginning of my second Erasmus semester, I have decided to really ramp up my knowledge of Catalan (the co-official language of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, as well as the sole official language in Andorra), despite my lack of Spanish fluency.

With around 11 million native speakers in 2009, I recently found out that i'd been completely underestimating it as a language, in favour of Spanish, down to my complete ignorance of its far reaching historical footprints throughout a lot of Southern Europe. It is an interesting and potentially easier language for me to learn than Spanish, too, since it has semantic roots from France and the Pyrenees area in Europe, as well as Latin. Quite a lot of the vocabulary is similar to what I already know, from French, just with that beautiful Iberian twist that is such a bouncy, passionate and lovely addition to seemingly everything on this peninsula and further afield.

So, after hearing countless amounts of people saying 'Molt bè' and 'Adéu' in the streets, I'm giving it a good go.

I've started with the basics, of course. I can now ask someone how they are, where they live and tell them my name, albeit with a Geordie accent lurking deep throughout, but I'm proud of my achievements already. Hopefully I can keep it up and practise a bit while I'm out of the area!

So, wish me luck!

Mi casa es tu casa

Living in a house rather than in student halls is nicer in so many way; yes, it was a great experience to finally do it after years of either living with family, with friends in student hovels or even just popping over to the boyfriend's and leaving 5 weeks later, but I ended up really really not liking the awkward feel of halls.

I'm sitting in my spanish 'casa' in Tarragona, on a cold, winty night in front of the TV and our bookcase that we filled with random books in 3 different languages and I just thought to myself how nice it is not having to share a shower with 40 other smelly French students on your floor, or having to disinfect the kitchen before even using it, just in case, or something else like that.
Not that it's any different to halls back home, even. I just I thought it would be a bit nicer since it's not home!

Oh well, weltschmerz.

Since I'm on the accommodation topic, I'm starting to look up apartments in Germany after having a right fucking carry on with their notorious bureaucracy already.

Koblenz uni wanted 638€ (deposit + first month's rent) by the end of this month otherwise my reserved room in halls would be given away. It's a shame as well because it was a 20m2-ish self-contained apartment in the halls building with my own kitchen and own bathroom, so there would have been none of that 'leisure centre shower room'-feel that I got from Cuques in Aix.

But payment two month's in advance is asking a hell of a lot, especially when I've had to stump up money for the rent and deposit here in Spain and live off my Erasmus grant until middle of April. cry cry cry.

The question is: do I find a flatshare with potential random nutcases, or do I hack it in a studio apartment on my own?

One month later

So its been a month since my last blog post due to a lack of internets over here in my Spanish casa and a whole hell of a lot of stuff has been happening, I moved to Spain, found an apartment with my friends from university and i'm slowly settling into the manic Spanish lifestyle which only stops for 2 hours per day for siesta time.

Tarragona is beautiful and beachy and full of Roman architecture and remains while remaining very modern in parts nonetheless. I really missed being by the coast in Aix and now this is my lovely lovely interim before heading off further more inland to Koblenz in Germany.

Obviously one month of happenings is quite a lot to read about, and quite a lot of effort to type out but i'd like to sum it up just for the sake of documenting my year abroad, if nothing else:

Leaving Aix-en-Provence was hard; moving away from my comfort zone once again and leaving behind all of my newly made friends from around the world was the worst. All I wanted to do was to curl up in someone's 9m2 room in Cuques, watch bad films and maybe go on an expedition to Avignon or something. but in some ways i'm lucky in the fact that I know I have made some amazing friends who I will see very shortly back home, or maybe on a little weekend jaunt to Ireland for a nice cheeky pint down the local!

The journey was interesting. We stopped over in Montpellier on the way to Tarragona, had the most French meal in the most kitschy French restaurant i've ever seen and slept our backpains away in a comfy hotel room after somehow travelling with around three times our weight in luggage.
Unfortunately the French were on strike once again and our train was cancelled and converted into a coach, significantly less awesome, but still it got us from A-B. The girls had a horrendous time, but I was just excited about moving to somewhere bright and fresh.

Me and some friends visited Jerez de la Frontera/Cádiz/Sevilla for a weekend before I'd evven found an apartment with the girls. We saw dancing horse shows and went on tours of brandy cellars in Jerez, milled around local architecture and city sights in Cádiz and I went on a night out with some random Americans I'd stumbled upon. I lost my passport though, and had a bit of a hungover nightmare at a police station and trying to trace my steps, since I had a flight the next day to catch from Sevilla.
I ended up staying in Sevilla for a night in a hostel, skipping my flight and accidentally taking a business class train back to Barcelona for a cheaper price than the rest of the train, which was lovely. Couldn't have had a more bizarre end to the trip to be honest.

We found an apartment in the Old Town of Tarragona, right next to the Cathedral, a Paul bakery and a shop called Ale-Hop ('allez-hop'). It is more French than France itself, and it even has lovely views from my balcony which has been decked out with some gay flowers and some CD's to keep the pigeons away.

We went to Carnival in Salou, and a festival called Cós Blanco, a giant parade through Salou with 25,000 kg of confetti being thrown around by children and drunks alike. It was awesome.

....and in Tarragona too, lots of people dressed up (including me as Princess G, Carey as a hippy and Lauren with a big red wig and some sexy silky red gloves), dancing and singing in the streets. Looking over onto the parade from Doddy's balcony was really fun, as was getting drunk without realising it, going to an Erasmus house party after, the shot bar Chupitos and losing everyone on the way home and waking up with a new bit of furniture to add to my room.

I'm having a load of fun in Tarragona at the minute, and as short as this trip(?) will be for me in comparison to those staying for tyhe entire duration of semester 2, at the end of March I will definitely be able to take a lot away from it, if nothing a slightly better level of Spanish and hopefully Català too!

Across the Adriatic.

Tomorrow a lot of us cool folk from Aix-en-Provence are taking a holiday (within a holiday) to Croatia for a very long weekend in Eastern Europe.
I've always wanted to go to Croatia and in fact had plans to go a few years ago with my best friends back in Newcastle. We were going to fly to Paris, Interrail from Paris through France, Germany, Austria and Slovakia then arrive in Croatia and go to a dance/electro festival called Hideout Festival.
Here you can see the quiet little affair down below.

But our plans were cut short because my best friend spent all of her student loan on champagne, casino and fried chicken and Ilhan's Special pizzas (which are the best in Newcastle to be fair brrahhh). It would have been awesome, but I plan on going sometime in  the next few years anyways. Hopefully after I graduate I won't be stuck in such a career rut that I can't just casually jet off to something like that (and/or continue with all my travel plans), like so many people I know...

So I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to do it right now!

We're flying with Ryanair from Marseille to Zadar tomorrow early morning (5th Oct - 6am) with pretty cheap flights. Obviously Ryanair is a massive shit sometimes, but i'm hoping that the plane won't just stop mid-air or something. I'd quite like to live a bit longer thanks Mr Ryan.

Zadar is apparently a lovely city, lots of old architecture and awesome stuff, but i'm just gonna in with a totally open-mind and report back with what I thought. I've never been to Eastern Europe before so the language barrier will be difficult but hopefully I can pick up a few words for 'beer', 'tequila' and 'hangover'!

Either way, I now have my passport back after finally paying my rent and a suitcase nicked from my Frenchman so i'm all ready to go! Hopefully I will wake up early enough tomorrow morning so that I don't miss our bus and then miss the flight and then miss the entire holiday....

By the way, final note: If anyone wants to know which hostel we'll be staying at, it's The Drunken Monkey Hostel in Zadar. Amazing name and it's looks great from what we've seen online. It's 92% rated on Hostelworld so I have high expectations that it's gonna be a chilled out place to crash.
There's a few photos down below which i've stolen from the website!

I'm so fucking excited.

Trainspotting and doing stuff...

In a flurry of language hurled at you daily, you begin to wonder if it's only you who can't understand it all. All these people can wear gorgeous dresses and dapper suits, and laugh at things and hold interesting high-brow conversations and understand it all and that's just fine. And as much as I like to be my own person I don't like to be an outsider. I want to know it all. I want to know it all, and be able to hold interesting high-brow conversation but then also have the ability to tell them to screw off because talking about all of their shite is by no means more interesting than talking about the pornstar you saw on French TV at dinnertime or the plans you have tonight or the gossip you just heard about so-and-so and so forth and so on.

Luckily, in most conversations I have (as one sided as they are) I can work out what people are saying with a manner of things like gestures and situational things that I can't properly explain and tone of voice. But in others i'm totally lost.

And it's for this reason that i've decided to put an end to just casually learning the language: It's not going to happen through osmosis. I'm gonna go full-throttle on this badboy and conjugate verbs and form grammatically-sound sentences that would have even Balzac giving me the thumbs up.

So i'm translating literature again. (I tried this method years ago, and only failed because I lost interest in   the shit books we were given to read by the uni: Stupeur et Tremblements by Amelie Nothomb, and La clé sur la porte by Marie Cardinal, both pretty lacking in interesting storyline to be honest, sorry ladies)

I bought Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, and Bilbo Le Hobbit by JRR Tolkien: Both in French, and both different levels of language all together.
I've started going through Trainspotting page by page and reading and noting down the words/phrases I don't understand then reading through again once I do know them. This was a great start.

But I need to tidy my desk.

I can't read with a messy desk, and I don't read well in bed.

I need to eat, because I can't translate if i'm dead.

And I need to write this blog for some reason to tell people how much i'm reading and translating literature because it will inspire me to actually start again


Fuck, I did it again.


Gareth 0 : 1 Procrastination

I'm pretty sure the Erasmus programme was made just so that natives can laugh at foreign people getting lost or making twats out of themselves.

Since i've been here i've made quite a few gaffes. Most of them are down to the good old combination of alcohol/social ignorance/my bad humour........ and although it's alright with friends from home who probably already know that when you've had a few too many you end up talking utter shit (and that's fine), it's so much different in a foreign country with a foreign language holding you back too.

I very frequently make a twat out of myself in social situations and so far I think i've insulted almost every nationality that i've come across so far in some manner or way:

• I was describing the Marianne [national emblem of France] and her flowing hair that I saw on a coin here, but I apparently I made her sound like a total diva and that annoyed some people. 
• Compared some American girls to guidettes from Jersey Shore because of duckfaces. That didn't go down so well
• Made a joke (which to be fair was taken hilariously) about the Troubles as well as the wars between England and Ireland as being 'back in the good old days'. Obviously sarcastically. In context it was funny....
• Talked about Swedish people looking like mannequins with perfect skin and perfect hair.
• OBVIOUSLY there were jokes about the Germans a bit. I'm British after all.
• And finally jokes about French guys being so sleazy...to relatively skeezy French guys.

I think the problem is that i'm overly confident just going up to people and talking to them normally (especially in English) and -obviously- friend humour is different to random stranger humour.

I realised that after sitting in the park with a few friends from uni and others a few times, making lewd jokes or having a bit of a laugh with each other to the point of calling each other names and making comments about things you really wouldn't normally: The faces of the people who weren't in our 'uni friends group' were just priceless. So shocked! Is that because we're generally vulgar though?

Personally i'd like to find out more about 'typically French humour'. We have really deadpan/black humour in England and we know it, but i've not really encountered much obvious humor here to be honest. Stand-up on TV really isn't any good an the bare bones of humor in conversations that I can actually understand between French people here just often doesn't make too much sense to me.

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On the other hand, laughing at tourists is the universal language of comedy I think. Why are tourists so obviously touristy allll the time? And why do they always wear hiking boots everywhere....even in 50 degree Provence? I would like to think of myself as never being 'touristy' to the point of this. I still get lost, look lost and go to museums, and I went to the Eiffel Tower to take photos. But I did all that without wearing ridiculous caps and hiking boots.

For anyone coming to Aix, you will eventually realise that there are a lot of tourists. And for the right reasons too, it's a glorious city, very Provençal with a modern touch. This unfortunately drives up prices in some places around the city centre, but after a while it's easy to learn which places aren't catered for people with hiking boots. I promise.

If anyone doesn't know the Marianne, she's the one holding the flag (and leading the fight): Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.