I wanna be daylight in your eyes

Wanna know you better
Wanna push you baby
But never too far
Wanna show you heaven
Wanna be like you
Just as strong as you are

I wanna be daylight in your eyes
I wanna be sunlight only warmer
I wanna be daylight in your eyes
I wanna be love only stronger
I wanna be daylight

Wanna live forever
Wanna touch your hand
And explode like a star
Wanna stand beside you
Always be together
Wherever you are

I wanna be daylight in your eyes
I wanna be sunlight only warmer
I wanna be daylight in your eyes
I wanna be love only stronger
I wanna be daylight

Good Morning!

Well, boys and girls, I yesterday managed to write not only my 16-page essay in one shot during the day, but I also sat down and wrote another 5-page paper in the evening. Now that is what I call a very productive day! Both were due for wednesday, and I am very happy to have it all done and tonight I can just relax, cook something noce for myself and watch a bit of tv.

I don't know what's gotten into me these last weeks, but even during my exam week, I took at least half an hour a day for excercise, and I've been living a very healthy life, something that I have been wanting to do for years and it seems like I'm getting the hang of it.

I have also started doing things just for myself. Last night, after working so hard on my essay, I exercised and then cooked a really good healthy recipe just for me.

In short, I have much to do, am as always really busy, but I am taking good care of myself and feel I deserve it.

And I feel great!

hurray!

Today, in one hour and a couple of minutes, I will start writing my last exam. hurray! After, I am going to work and will get paid. hurray! After that, I will come home and enjoy the first evening in a very long time that I can spend watching tv, relaxing, and not studying. hurray!

All that will be left in the near future is the paper I have to give in next wednesday, which I will write over the weekend. Then I'll be on vacation! (semester break, as the germans call it ) until mid april. (well, I do have one big paper to write and hand in beginning of april, but stil, it's a three quarters of a vacation.

I will be able to work more, get some cash together. hurray!

hmmm maybe I'll buy a lottery ticket...

BBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I am slowly going crazy...

I had an exam on Thursday, one this morning, one tomorrow, one on wednesday. Then I have to hand in a paper for feb. 28th. My brain feels like it's going to explode from too much information being crammed into it.

On a more joyous note, my boyfriend surprised me on Valentine's day with red roses and guess what... He managed to find red foil-wrapped chocolate hearts. He's the best and I was so not expecting it, I am so happy to have such a thoughtful guy.

He left on sunday morning for a 3 week vacation in Marocco. (Lucky!) Hope he gets lots of sun and fresh orange juice.

Last week I burnt my arm pretty bad on the oven and now it looks really weird and itches... maybe I should go to the doc? NO TIME!!

Back to my books.

Valentine's Day

John was the first one today to wish me a happy Valentine's Day. He's such a sweetie! Thanks John!

Here in Germany they don't really celebrate it, although in all the stores there are hearts everywhere, it's seen as mostly commercial and I think that sucks.

I want Valentine's Day to be filled with red tin foil wrapped chocolate hearts and pink roses, "will you be mine?" cards and little mini cinnamon hearts. And no, they don't have little mini cinnamon hearts here, not even in the stores.


Well, I guess I'm just going to have to imagine myself up a storm!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Superstar

Another season of "German Idol" has started and it wakes my musical side.

I will probably start singing again over the next weeks.

here we go again

I WANT A BUNNY + A PIGLET NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

Snow

We had a great snowstorm here on Friday. The kind that makes me wonder about nature. The kind that also makes me miss home.

I miss wind stinging my cheeks.

I miss huge snowflakes landing on my tongue.

I miss walking in the mountain/forest, hearing nothing else than the crunching of snow under my boots. The absolute calm invading my soul when I walk in the middle of a blizzard.

I miss the smell, the taste of fresh snow. The intuitive feeling I used to get, as a child, in the morning, when it had snowed during the night, I just knew.

I'm losing my instinct.

Thanks, John!

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Viscountess Francoise the Eerie of Chignall Smeally Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Back to normal life

Well, 2007 has started pretty well for me. I'm inching back into normal life, and have started a new job after many difficulties with my last employer. All has resolved itself in the best manner possible for me. My new job is to assist a french teacher at the technical university in Berlin. I am helping in planning language trips to France and eventually Canada. I will get to give my own french class at the language insitute in April. It's really weird to see my name on the teacher's list. Some of the students will be older than me. I'm a bit afraid, but terribly excited!
The teacher with whom I work is really a great guy. He has 25 years experience in the field and just knows so much about it.

Much positive vibes in Berlin. New projects, new ideas, new moods - a new beginning.

Back in Berlin

Nope, I'm not dead yet!

I went home for the holidays, and it was great, stressful fun and hectic!

I thought I would be relieved to come back "home to Berlin, but I find myself REALLY missing Montreal, a lot more than I thought I would...

It was absolutely fantastic seeing my friends and family, even if I did only have a very short period of time to visit with each person.

At the same time, I know I was home "on vacation" so life seems a lot better without uni- or work related problems.

Nevertheless, I feel this hole in my heart whenever I think of Montreal. It just feels like home, my home.

I wish I could have dinner with my parents regularly.
I wish I could just call up my best friend and go out for a beer.
I wish I could meet on the street someone I hadn't seen in 10 years.

Sorry for the pity fest, it's just that this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

On the other hand, I did settle a lot of emotional business while there and did realize that on certain aspects, I am very happy to have the chance to step back from certain issues and take a deep breath. What can I say, some relationships are just better with some distance.

I guess life'll just put me where I should be when I should be, but in the meantime I miss my "family": the genetical one and the spiritual one.


This is my best friend's daughter and she is the cutest little girl in the entire world. I want one JUST like her when I have kids. I must say it was really hard on the last night, after story time she did not want to go to sleep and started crying saying she didn't want us to go (another friend and I). I must say this little almost three year old has stolen my heart and after that I had to sneak in the kitchen and cry myself.





This is Elvisse, my beloved doggie. I have had her since I was 11 or 12 and she now lives with my mom. It probably was the last time that I saw her and I must say it was also hard to say goodbye.

Why does a flight from Berlin to Montreal cost so much money???

Home

I'll be flying home in exactly one month. Finally. I haven't been home since July 2005. I haven't held my mom in my arms for one year and a half. I haven't hugged my brother for an eternity. I can't wait to party with my friends, walk down familiar streets, hear french everywhere, go for a drink with my girlfriends and confide each other our secrets into the wee hours of the morning.

Berlin has developped into home, but well.... just home away from home. I have friends here, I have a social life, a job, my studies, my bf, but... I dunno, I guess home just always stays home, you know what I mean?

The worst thing is, I know I'll probably miss Berlin while I'm over there... AH, the story of my life: always torn between two, always missing one part, always feeling bad for making some side sad/angry. AM I the only one seeing a pattern here?

blog, interrupted

real life got in the way a bit.. I will post in the near future about myself, but for now I have a very interesting post everyone should read in the context of the voting going on right now in the US. If you have time, the whole blog is interesting regarding many other subjects, but at least read the "On military bulletins" post.

Phreadom

Transnistria / Tiraspol

So, we left Odessa by bus one morning. all of the other travellers were ukrainian, russian or moldovan. We, being the only two westerners, were systematically asked to get off the bus and answer questions at each check point. At the ukrainian border, none of the officials spoke english, and we were given a declaration form to fill out. We had to choose between the form written in russian or in ukrainian (umm.. let me think!) So any ways, we kind of comunicated with the border patrol people with hands and feet (them: dreenk? us: no, no drink, no alcohol. them: smoke? us: no cigarettes!. them: droogs? us: nope, no drugs. ) So anyways, the people at the border were pretty nice and let us go without having to fill out the form written in russian. Then we crossed a little dirt bridge with tons of wild dogs on the sides, and arrived to the Transnistrian "border". The old moldovan border facilities are still intact, and the transnistrians use it. (or have occupied it??). Anyways, we had met a transnistrian girl in the night train between Cracow and Odessa, and she said that Transnistria wasn't that bad, and that all was great there, not like described in the wikitravel website. (yeah, right)

Anyways, as we approach the border, a military guy boards the bus and just tells us two to get off the bus. We follow him to a small building outside the main building. He just goes in the small room with a wooden desk, a wooden counter and nothing more. He speaks in russian to two other guards (soldiers?) and they open a drawer with bills of money in it and then close it. Then, the first soldier asks us to leave the room, comes out, locks the door and starts speaking with a friend of his who drives by, Meanwhile our bus with all of its passengers and driver are waiting for us.

He stops talking with his friend, brings us back into the small building and asks us what we want in Transnistria. As I say "tourism", he starts to laugh. I show him our Lonely Palnet Romania + Moldova, and he brings us to the main building of the customs/border office. Meanwhile, all the other passengers are waiting in line with their luggage in front of a little wooden desk with another customs officer and a huge super modern scanning machine which you normally have in airports. The guy that has our passports disappears in the building so we just get in line with our backpacks. After a few minutes, he comes back out and signals us to come to the front of the line. there, the other guy tells us to put down our backpacks and wait. he then processes a couple of other passengers, and then just randomly decides to take care of us. the scanning machine scans our backpacks and the employee working there looks sceptically at our stuff. then, at the end of a corridor, a man is waiting for us. There is a closed office. We are called in with our luggage. The man who seems to be in charge here tells me in german: "woman, stay outside". I start to panic, thinking he wants to interview us separately but after a few minutes have gone by I realize he is dealing with the bf for both of us. During this conversation he basically told the boyfriend we could either bribe him with 20 american dollars or he would make our trip (entry) hell. So we bribed the guy to let us in. We still don't get our passports back!

we have to line up again with the second guy, and he tells us we have to buy a "visa" (note that this isn't a real country, so there are no embassies and no place where we could have actually bought the "visas" in advance, as we did with our moldovan one). Note: according to the official "Website" (read: propaganda), you don't need a visa to enter the "country". (yeah right! try to explain that to the military mean looking guys! So anyways, he wants 7 hrivnas each for the visa ( about 1 american dollar) but when we say we only have american money (bad calculation and stupid move on our part), he decided finally that it was actually 7 DOLLARS per person. We negotiated it to 7 dollars for both, if I remember right (since when do you negotiate the price of a visa? LOL), got the hand written piece of paper (we don't have a clue what's written on it!), and were on our way. The bus was late on the schedule, partly because of the wait at the border crossing, partly because the driver took a one hour break to drink beer in a bar, just leaving us there (note: ukrainian people seemed to find it normal).

We finally arrive in Tiraspol, as soon as we enter the city it looks like a living museum of the soviet union(to quote either the lonely planet or wikitravel, I'm not sure). There are a couple of military trucks driving around and buildings look like this:



So , we show up at our hotel "Drushba":



At the reception, a really sweet little russian only speaking grandma explains to us that we need to "register" at the police before we can sign in, but looking at my backpack, suggests I leave it at the reception as starts rubbing my back.

We set off to the adress written in our guide book. There are different police offices, and a policeman shows us the next building. We go in, wait 15 minutes in line and finally when we come up, the women behind the window just kind of ignore us. "Hello?" Nothing. aparently they're writing really important papers. They finally tell us to go to another office. In this office, after taking our passports, they finally tell us we have to go to another office on another street, and to hurry because it closes at 4:30 Pm. I ask if it is far, or if they can point it to us on a map but apparently no one in the office knows where this other government/police office actually is. I felt like I was in "The twelve tasks of Asterix". After the long bus ride and stress at the border, I just want to get a hotel room, any room, and quiet down.

so we set off in the city. there are once again many wild dogs roaming the streets. We find in a sort of back yard the adress we have written on a torn piece of paper. We ring a bell. A voice comes out in russian, we just say "passport" and the voice hangs up. Okay. We try to walk aournd the building, a door is open, but looks like a back door to a shop. we walk in , a man says something in russian, and we show our passports. Finally, he brings us to the right room, although I think he wasn't an employee.

We get to a counter, and a little square piece of the window opens. A woman asks something in russian. we show our passports and she rolls her eyes, great. it's 4:10 PM. she holds up a pre-printed piece of paper written: "Pay 4 roubles and 70 kopeks for registration". and slams her little window shut. Uh, ok. We get the money and knock once more at her window. Exasperated, she opens again and shows us the "Kacca" (cash register?) nearby, gives us 2 pieces of paper and shuts the door again. great. we show up at the "kacca", pay the money (which turns out to more than 5 roubles per person) and ask the girl then what we have to do " fill out passport info". Great, once again, papers only in russian. The girl at the Kacca fills them out for us, that was really nice of her. Except I think she wrote down as my last name "Canadian / Canadienne" and entered as my country of residence "france" (my first name is francoise), but at this point, I don't give a shit, I just want to get the stamp and get back to the hotel. So we have to get back in line for the first counter with the exasperated woman. She asks for our passports, visas (we give 2 copies: original and carbon-copy), fills out different papers, and then holds up a paper that say "What numbers leave to Tiraspol?". Okay, now I feel like I am in a game quiz and am starting to lose my patience. We finally get that she wants to know til what date we are going to be staying, and she gives us a stamped paper and our passport and slams shut the little window. Shit. She didn't give us back our visas, and we need them to leave Transnistria. It's 4:25. After trying to explain to her that she has kept both of our copies, and that we need at least one with our passport, we get them and get to go back to the hotel. We are exhausted and I feel the tears rising in my eyes, I am ready to fall on the sidewalk from exhaustion and stress.

We finally get to our room, that looks like this:


Our bathroom WAS the shower, and pretty disgusting, but at this point I didn't give a damn about it, also that there was just a couple of squares of ukrainian toilet paper available:


We ended up having a short but nice evening and visited a couple of things:

church:


tank monument made to remember the civil war:


and the palace of the republic, which wouldn't be complete without the statue of Lenin in front of it:


The next morning we were off to Chisinau, the capital of real country Moldova, even though Transnistria has cut off all train connections. stay tuned!

Odessa

sorry for the delay, it seems as though the minute I got back from vacation work just started pouring in!

so, the night train to Odessa was a bit disappointing (we booked the most luxurious compartment we could get)

picture this: it's 33 degrees, the windows are nailed shut and smells like a mixture between horses and salami.



just when I thought things can't get worse, I feel my bladder screaming out - I have to use the washroom. yep. that is a hole in the floor. you see the tracks under you. It smells even worse than in the rest of the train.



and there's no toilet paper. As you might guess, it didn't take me very long to master the technique of peeing standing up in a moving train.

After 15 or 16 hours we arrived in Odessa



There were tons of old babushkas offering rooms or houses to rent in russian, but they were outside of town and we had no car, so we set off through the city to try and find a cheap hotel. and we did! Only first, we had to decipher the names of the streets - our travel guide, being written in english, had all street names in normal latin alphabet. Now after a smelly night dreaming of salami eating horses, try understanding if this:



means "preobrazhenskaya street" or not. yeah, I know.

so anyways, we found this hotel:


"Hotel Passage"

We had a very big room with bathroom and 4 meter high ceiling for about 20 euros a night, smack in downtown and close to the harbour. There was no hot water in the hotel, but that is relatively normal in Ukraine.

We went shopping in the beautiful shopping center next to the hotel:



they also had an air conditioned, modern one closeby, but this one just had more style.

We visited the Potemkin stairs, for those of you that have seen "Battleship Potemkin", it was filmed here.



This was also fun:


yeah, that's a real live snake.

Okay, now on to the more serious things:


The beer was good and cost about 60 cents for half a litre glass. The waitress didn't speak english and didn't understand that we wanted to pay, and just kept bringing out two more... oh well.

And, there's also something for the single traveller in Odessa:


after we took a bus to Transnistria. It is a part of Moldova that declared itself independant and had a civil war 10 years ago. There were warnings to travellers on the canadian governments website to steer clear of it, but how often do you get to set foot in an international no man's land? So we went. Stay tuned.