Solitary Brooooooother!

Yes, I am listening to Killer. It is fit. And yes, there is a part of me that wants to live.

So anyway, I'm sad. And just sneezed. This makes me sadder. And it's raining. And I've overdosed on cake. Sadsadsad.

Basically I'm sad because I have no friends. This is of course a total exaggeration, I have plenty of friends. But they're all English. And I guess the people at the Studienkolleg will become more friend-like as time goes by. But I want to make some at uni. I have so few classes, and don't actually take part in any proper degree structure, so I'm just this random outsider who sits there and then leaves at the end. Alone. While they all talk and chat to each other. In German. It is well depressing. I mean, the classes are really fun and stuff. I'm thinking Finnish and Hungarian was a fabulous idea. But I just dunno how to MEET people. I can't function in a university that doesn't have a college structure. Since I don't actually live in uni accomodation and never have small-group classes or supervisions, I don't really feel any connection to the other students or the institution as a whole. How do people at normal universities make friends? Or do they not? Is this adulthood? It this the wonder of being part of the most mobile generation ever created by our individualist society? Is this what it means to have the world at my feet, bursting with opportunity?

Coz it just smells a bit like solitude and no matter how much cake I eat it still tastes like disappointment.

Bleergh. I am already so over my whining. Just shut up Bryn. Apologies.

Bryn
xxxx

I have Jet Lag

Right, I have come to the conclusion that I simply can't cope with living in Berlin. It is far too cool for me. How can you got out on a Friday a stay up until 8am and then have worked your body clock round again in order to GET UP at 8am on Monday. Wrong. Ah well, I had a well good weekend. We went to Das Haus B, which will be known to those of you who went interrailing with me as the really trashy gay club near Warschauer Strasse. T'was great!

I have also started my Finnish and Hungarian classes. Hoorah! :-)

Ooh, and I got wined and dined on the top floor of the Hanselmanturm...a really prestigious (and proper well fit) piece of Communist architecture. The view was AMAZING. I'm so into the Studienkolleg. Tonight is the official opening of the Kolleg year, and I'm giving a little speech abou our group's project. Funtimes.

There are so many people I want to talk to in person about specific things. Blogging is a frustrating format. Ah well, such is life. Laterz! xxx

University has started. Not.

So, long time no write. I would like to claim that this is because I have been hugely busy achieving marvellous things with my life, making hundreds of new friends and finishing my dissertation. Sadly I cannot, as that would be a lie, and I'm a good little boy.

I haven't actually been to a single learning event yet, as everytime I attempt to go, there is nobody there. This makes me sad. Almost to the point of crying in the streets. The whole system is so vague and confusing. I mean, it's good to have the freedom to put together your own course and stuff, but I really miss having a director of studies. There's just no PERSON I can go to and say "WTF is going on?" Instead I just wander round on my own attempting to go to lectures which have evidently been cancelled. Hmm. Let's just say I'm finding the transition from the 3rd best uni in the world (better than Oxford, woot!) to one that hovers in the late hundreds a bit of a rough ride. I did get a place on the Hungarian course though, which is good. And Finnish hopefully will start soon. I'm just gonna keep turning up until it does. Then all will be good. I might actually just do those two and give up on the idea of going to politiky lectures. I'm just too fond of well-organised clarity to cope if it's gonna be all messy and unpleasant and undignified. I'm just too mentally neat. Hmm. I'm really trying to be all tolerant and enjoy the multicultural experience, but I'm starting to think Cambridge is just better in all ways...

HOWEVER. Not all has been woe. I went out! Me and Ralph (friend of a friend) decided to frapper gayville (the area around Nollendorfplatz) on saturday night. It was odd. It was kinda empty, there were no women and no young people. I was turned away from a club for wearing trainers...I was really shocked at this as I hadnae thought Berlin was that kinda town. I mean, shoe-based entry policies are just so common. Vodka Revs has one. QED. We were then turned away from another one because we by this point had a woman with us. I got very angry about this, as the guy at the door was really rude to her. Lazy gay misogyny really pisses me off. I mean FFS, our rights are totally dependent on women's lib. There was also a real lack of noisy drunks fighting and women crying...I miss England! :-p

Hmm, I just made it sound like I didn't have any fun, which is not at all the case. It was well fun talking to randoms. And very interesting. I don't think I'll ever go back though. It just wasnae my kinda area. Not enough...well I dunno...life, I guess. Not enough FUNFUNFUN. I always feel like that going West though. The whole place depresses me. Feels so dead and pointless. Fills me with the really strange mixture of creeped-out-ness and pity. The night was, Berlin style, also sooo long. I got home about six in the morning (partly because Nollendorfplatz is so far west, like basically in Cornwall) and then had to leave pretty much straight away for the expat day at the seaside. Turns out that the sea is VERY far away, which I find strange, being from a town about 10 mins from the sea in a country where you're never that far from wetness. It took about 3 1/2 hours...and we're actually really quite near by German standards. Weird. Still, it was really nice there (Zinnowitz) and the beach had real sand and CLEAR water. Take that Felxistowe. Obv it was way too cold to actually go swimming, but we paddled a bit and went in this really cool underwater cinema to watch 3D videos about fish. Funtimes.

Right, I am going to go achieve summat with my life. Laterz.

Bryn
xxxx

ARGH!

This country is bloody ridiculous sometimes. Matrikulation was a huge disaster. I mean, in Cambridge it was just an excuse to dress up in our gowns and ponce around a bit before signing a piece of paper. Here it's a massive black hole of bureaucratic nightmaricy. Here is the process in bullet points:

1. Go to desk.
2. Wait in (something that in abroadland counts as a) queue.
   
3. Get piece of paper allowing you pay fees.
4. Go to other end of university and pay fees.
5. Go see a man who will write on a piece of paper that you have a piece of plastic proving that you have health insurance.
6. Return to desk.
7. Wait in "queue".
   
8. Receive number.
9. Wait.
10. Matriculate.

Anyone with a basic understanding of, well, just about ANYTHING can see that that is stupid. No multi-stage process should ever require returning to one of the earlier stages to proceed to the end. Especially not when this stage is a desk being run by ONE very stressed looking Italian woman. This is basically the platonic image of a bottleneck. Honestly, it was a better bottle neck than the actual neck of the actual bottle from which Jesus poured the wine in the Holy Grail before sacrificing himself to rescue the souls of mankind. (Except anyone working in the admin department of the Humboldt University, who are quite clearly servants of Satan.)

The system also allows no self initiative. My attempts to pay my fees at the Kasse without first going to the desk and getting my pink piece of paper allowing me to pay my fees were firmly rebuffed. So I go to the desk, wait for ages, and then receive my piece of pink paper, on which there stands not a single piece of information that was not already on some other piece of paper elsewhere. How ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous, by the time I had got my piece of pink paper giving me the right to give them my money and hurried down to the Kasse, it had shut. And that stupid cow down there was SOO rude. Bitch. I hope she gets very very itchy thrush. Well, with the Kasse shut until one I couldn't pay my fees, and without paying my fees I couldn't matriculate. The Kasse opens again at one, but this is when matriculation closes...

Excuse me?
No, but, actually, EXCUSE ME?

What the hell is wrong with these people? How on Earth can they have such amazing public transport but be SOOO rubbish at what is actually a fairly simple administrative task. Honestly, if they had just given me all the forms I could have done it myself in about ten minutes. FFS.

So, Bryn is now pissed off and has to go back tomorrow to finish it all off. *weeps*

Laterz.
Bryn
xxxx

Wannsee Life

Hillo all, hope you've been a-having a nice week. I have.

So, I was in Wannsee for the introductory week of the Studienkolleg. It was well cool, but bloody exhausting. Much discussion, many speeches and lectures, much drinking, much eating, much befriending and much dancing, and a little kissing. Alles auf Deutsch of course. Funtimes.

They're a really nice bunch, which bodes well, as I have to work with them for the rest of the year. There was a little too much democracy going on, as in endless constant discussion and voting of what we should do. But still, it was coolfit. I even had an introduction to conflict management, so should any of you fall out with a friend, workmate or neighbouring state then you know who to call!

Best of all, we sorted out our project groups and I pretty much got to do my idea. Hoorah! There's five of us, and we'll be travelling to the border between Hungary and Serbia to look at the effects of the recently-extended Schengen zone on those living near the border. Am tres excited.

In even more exciting news, I am FINALLY matriculating at the Humboldt tomorrow. Yay! Lectures, however, don't actually start until the 14th of Oktober.

Bryn
xxxx