Goodbye Berlin, Hellooooo Hamburg!

You know how people say “time flies” when the months go past and they don’t really notice because they’re busy with all sorts of things and then they get the shock when they realise it’s beginning of month that symbolises the beginning of Spring?? Me, right now. IT’S MAY PEOPLE!!

The last few months have been absolute madness: In February, just after my last post, I got a brilliant job offer from Hamburg, which had me move there and start my job within like a week! And since then it’s been even crazier! Settling into work has been smooth sailing, but finding my feet on German ground again isn’t as easy I imagined.

To be fair, I knew it was gonna be a major adjustment, and it’s gotten better over the last five months that I’ve been here, but there’s still soooo many things I miss:

- Sunday shopping. Germany, especially retail, shuts down nearly completely on Sundays. Which means that you gotta do ALL the things you can’t get done during the week due to work on Saturday. So basically you can’t have a lie-in until Sunday. I wanna spend more money, dammit ;)

- paying by card. Like, I don’t even fathom how this country is such an economic power. Most places don’t take card payment. I’m not even talking credit card, but the simple lovely debit card. You either face a charge of 50 cent or 1€ or you just have to run around to find a bank to get cash. Like whaaat??

- withdrawing money from any bank. Another thing that contributes to me “OMG HOW DOES THIS COUNTRY EVEN WORK?!?!” moments: unless you withdraw money from your own bank, you are facing charges. How ridiculous is that?!

- customer service. Don’t get me wrong, we moan about this a lot in the UK, but we just haven’t seen the worst of it. I’ve basically been told to not come back to their shop when I asked whether they could slow down when scanning my shopping because I couldn’t keep up packing things up. That’s seriously the standard response: “well you don’t have to shop here”. Fine, ok, I’ll take my money and business elsewhere if you really don’t want it. The freaking official public transport provider in Hamburg – international turning point for lots of logistics – DOES NOT TAKE DEBIT CARD. Only prepaid debit card. I have never even heard of that?!

- cider and going for after-work-pints. People don’t seem do to this. Not a lot of them tend to mingle and mix their professional with their personal life, which for me makes no sense. Sure, you might learn something about a colleague, that changes your view of them, but that doesn’t make them worse at their job, right? And yeah, they don’t get cider at all :’(

When I moved to the UK almost 10 year ago, I knew no one, and I’m still bloody grateful for the drinking after work thing. I would have struggled sooo much trying to meet people. Like I am here. I think people at work secretly think I’m just about partying and getting shitfaced, because I constantly ask people if they wanna go for a pint after work. So out of boredom and loneliness of sitting at home I’ve been eating loads and putting on a lot of weight boo.

I guess it’s just different to move to another country when you’re 20 having no other choice but to force yourself onto people to know ANYONE. Now I’m 30 and while I don’t expect people to flock to me, people often forget what it’s like to move to another city, or in my case to another country, without knowing anyone.

ENOUGH MOPING!!

But everything is ok when I think of how much I absolutely love doing what I do and do what I love. My client is absolutely brilliant and the job I’m doing is exactly what I’m meant to be doing. I genuinely can’t imagine my doing something else.

So how have you guys been? xxx