This is not goodbye

But actually it is. 

I am going to cry any minute now. I feel the tears just hiding behind my lashes. I’m sorry, everyone, but I’m going to stop writing on my blog now. Its just that I can’t write anything with this sadness. My time here in Germany is done. Its finished. I have only one week left and that’s it, back to the real world. I can’t believe that I’ve kept up this blog since February. Thank you all so much for supporting me, for reading and being the audience I needed to keep me going and writing. I really appreciate it. 

Now its time to go. When I get back to Namibia or South Africa I’ll start another blog, because many people told me they’d love to know more about Africa and life there, so look out for it. It’ll probably be called nina in africa. see you then. 

ciao.

There goes my football spirit

Did I ever tell you guys that the European cup ended Sunday and I never saw Germany’s last match? Jip, the one day that I decide I am too tired to go watch their game, and they lose. Now, I’m not one to overestimate my importance, but I think it says something…
The worst of it all is that I have a Germany hat, flag and flowers to support! And now I can’t even wear them again! Its sad, man, that’s what it is.
And then the worst of it all is that when the finals did come and it was Spain vs Italy I decide to root for Italy. Guess who lost? Italy. I think from now on I will stick to rooting for Project Runway finalists. At least then I get it right.

Graffiti me, take two!

Here we go, more pretty pictures of silly pictures made by silly people to make the public spaces of Bremen even more silly!

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and that’s it, folks!

If you meet me half-way

The worse thing about being a student in a foreign country is the foreign currency. My lack of it, that is. I’m running low on dow, and so, in the spirit of keeping in rhyme, I met my German friend, Sina at a point on the map to which both she and me could travel for free thanks to our student semester tickets.Oh, thank the Lord for that ticket. I would have been utterly broke (or my parents) if it wasn’t for that thing.

Any case, so it was off to Osnabrück this little ol’ lady took herself this morning, and that’s where I met up with my blonde-haired German buddy from another muddy?? no, that one didn’t work.

Osnabrück isn’t so bad, man. People told me its not much to see, and well, Bremen is still the closest place to my heart, next to Namibia, but it was surprising how much I actually liked ol’ Os.

Such a hipster, my cellphone is, I know. I tried to get it out of him/it, but its just too hipster, just way too hipster.

I took this little pic (using Hipstomatic, ’cause I’m a hipster naturlich) but its just of the beautiful Bremen Hauptbahnhoff (main train station for you non-German fluentals!)

Friendly Germans, man

I really am stunned sometimes  by the kindness that I have experienced here in Bremen. I’ve spoken of it before, but its like a pretty breeze in the wind, you flip your hair to it, because it just feels so damn nice, and you can’t help remarking to your friend, “hey, don’t you love this breeze?”. 

Yeah, its a nice thing to have people around you, people you don’t even know, but who are civil and sweet. 

So this is what happened. 

I got home from somewhere and realized that really my bike is sheisse, and that I have to tighten the screws so my light can work. So I’m there, with my red nails picking at the rusty screws, when I become aware of someone talking to/about me in the window above. I look up, and its obvious there was someone looking at me, although at first I couldn’t tell whether boy/girl/man/woman/dog/elephant. My first reaction was (naturally) to cover my cleavage. The stalkers!! But then again… what cleavage. 

Eek, realized my father reads this blog. Woops. Anycase, on to the more serious matter of my red nail polish that was systematically being scraped onto rusty nails and metal. This man then comes out and in German starts chatting away, oblivious to the fact that I am an idiot who after five months in this damned country cannot follow his train of conversation being spitted at me. Yet, somehow that did not matter in any way at all, because the old man was trying to help me. Yes, in my lack of fluent German I could see what a man wanted to stop her and sort out the mess a woman was making of things. So after a bit of shouting to his wife over screwdrivers and what not he even gets the neighbor involved. I was kinda embarrassed I have to say, because all I really wanted to do was fiddle with the light and go home, but there I am, like the sheep watching the farmer build an rocket-ship, no idea what the hell is going on or what on earth I’m doing there. 

In the end though, I met some really nice neighbors and they fixed my light, so now I can go on biking around Bremen, happy with the knowledge that I won’t hit any unsuspecting padestrians. Well, at least not if I don’t want to…