living life. german style.

guys, i wish i could honestly apologize for the silence, alas i cannot. life in hamburg is, well, full of life. at this point it is everything i wanted it to be and never thought it actually could. things are falling into place in a way i never imagined possible and at a speed that is a bit mind boggling at times.

first of all there is a lot more hours in a day here. daylight hours that is (yes, even compared to a cape town summer) so i get a lot more done. because even when i am sick (which i was a few weeks ago and i tried) i cannot go to bed at 9pm when the sunlight is still streaming into my room. but regardless of the hours, i want to do a lot more. i have plans and meetings and projects and friends and … a life. i have become not quite a different person here, but a different side of me has come out to play. in the land that has the cliche attached that everybody is grumpy (which is so not true!!), i am not grumpy anymore. not annoyed. not irritable. how that happened, i don't know, but i am starting to appreciate my own grace to handle things these days.

the weather has been horrid for the most part and i don't even mind. i have borrowed one friend's boots and another friend's jacket and as long as they don't mind, i don't mind. this weekend has been hot and humid and all i could do was sleep, so maybe my german cold bloodedness is already back in full swing.

of all the things, i noticed that i have become really unpunctual. remember in cape town i was the girl who couldn't be late even if i tried. here it has become easy. mind you, i am not proud of it, but i am not really bothered by it either. i have learned to relax which again is funny that stiff germany allows me to relax when south africa didn't.

so for the time being i'm relaxed. i write when i want to write. i work. i do what i came here to do: hang out with my friends, go for dinner with my brother, be ignored by my nephew when his friends are around, call my parents for free whenever, watch my godchild take her first steps, fish euros out of my washing machine, buy myself overpriced diptyque candles (i wish i could say with said euros, but the spoils have not been big enough yet...), book flights all over europe (again, not quite, but that's the goal, and yes, morocco has become part of europe for all intent and purpose).

okay, so i apologize for the silence but i am not making any promises right now. life needs to be lived and sometimes that is far away from a computer or a phone, because usually my hands are busy eating ice cream - have i mentioned that i not only live next to the red light district of hamburg, but also the best ice cream parlour in town?

once i put the ice cream down however my new iphone (hurrah) and i have been getting nicely acquainted via instagram so follow me here and as per usual read my thoughts about travel and the big wide world on travelettes.