Berlin.

I feel like such a jet setter (read: a bit of gap yah arsehole) for popping back to mainland Europe a mere week after I made my big return to England's green and pleasant land, but Berlin is a place that deserves to be talked about, as it is up their with Helsinki as being one of the best places I've had the pleasure of visiting. That is a bold statement considering I am such a Scandophile and would do many bad things to move to Stockholm, but Berlin is completely magical, full of history, art,fashion, beer and sausages - what more do you need?

The inevitable stress that comes with flying Ryanair (honestly, why can't they allocate seats like any other normal airline) meant that a trip to a beer garden was much needed. A bit of TripAdvisor research led us to Prater Garten in Prenzlauer Berg, which seats a good few hundred people, serves a good variety of beer and wine, as well as bratwurst, pretzels and anything else vaguely German. There were so many tourists there so it probably isn't the most authentic place going, but with my horrendous German 'skills', going somewhere properly German wouldn't have been the best idea.

Day two involved a trip to the Reichstag, which was again tourist central. I'm not sure why I enjoy whinging about tourists when I've spent the last year of my life being a kind of tourist, but hey. The queues seemed pretty large if you didn't book in advance, but it's worth going to because it's free and the views are pretty wicked.

 

The afternoon was spent walking to Checkpoint Charlie, and reading the stories of people who tried to get from one side to the other, which was bizarre and also quite frightening to think that such things were happening so recently. There was also a fair bit of Russian written around there, which I always get excited about, being the nerd that I am. We then walked back towards our apartment, stopping for a brief shop, which included trips to Monki and Weekday as well as a little look at the Barbie Dreamhouse, which was, even for a tomboy like my, was nice and girly, and a little exciting.

In the evening we trekked across to neukölln to go and see Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and they were bloody brilliant. They played a set which easily lasted 2 hours, and I felt thoroughly entertained throughout. The singer also sounded so much like Ryan Gosling it was surreal, yet very nice!

Wednesday was probably the most exciting day for 2 reasons: the zoo, the most amazing burgers EVER. In fact, the burgers were so good, I'll skip the zoo part and just talk about food for a little while. So, I can hardly admit that we stumbled upon this place by accident, it was number 20 or something on TripAdvisor, but it was pretty sweet nonetheless. Burgermeister is situated under the under the train lines next to Schlesisches Tor station, and is a renovated block of public toilets - don't let that put you off!

We had a burger each, some cheese fries to share and two beers, costing a measly 2 euros. It's a really chilled place - you just order your burger, take a drink from the fridge (all drinks were 1 euro 50) and then you wait for your number to pop up on the little screen. You then eat your food either sitting on an empty crate, or perched at a high table. I went for the BBQ burger, which involved bacon, cheese and bbq sauce, and it was so tasty! I would definitely recommend if you want good yet cheap food in a relaxed atmosphere. I could have eaten more than one quite easily.

The rest of the trip was spent in museums, as Alex and I are really quite nerdy - I prefer to think we're cultured, but that probably isn't true. Another large chunk of our remaining time was spent sampling beer. We paid a visit to Haus Der 100 Biere, which was incredible! They had beers from all over the world, and I rather boringly decided to order a Baltika, but they had everything you could wish for - even Strongbow!

Now, can somebody take me back to Europe again please?!

I'm back!

Thanks to my broken laptop which I could only get repaired in Ukraine for the princely sum of 3000 hryvnia (somewhere between £200-£300) and blogging from an iPhone being the biggest faff ever, it seems that I haven't bothered to write about my oh so interesting life in just over two months. I'm sure many of you have been left absolutely gutted about this, as I can imagine people enjoy reading about my life in Odessan student halls, hanging with the cockroaches as I'm washing my pants by hand when they want to feel better about their lives. So I thought I'd treat you and write a little bit abut my final few weeks in Odessa (miss you already, O).

Now it's come to this, I think I've forgotten everything that happened, or at least the interesting parts.

I spent a large proportion of my last month in Odessa teaching. English native speakers (especially British English it seems) were like gold dust out there, and I was like bloody hot property (exaggerating a little there). My job interview went a little like this though:

"Hi, you're English, yes?"

"Yes,"

"Have you taught before?"

"A little bit, nothing formal,"

"Here are the terms and conditions of your job."

The teaching work I did out there was so diverse, thus rather challenging at times. My students ranged from a diva of a 6 year old girl, who heard me speak Russian to here nanny and subsequently refused to speak any English to me, to a group of really serious, and initially quite intimidating, lawyers. It also brought on some slightly surreal moments, like singing Wham's Last Christmas with three generations of a rather affluent family in their living room, and showing a class videos about the Essex lion.

Teaching turned out to be a whole lot more fun than I thought, and my students all really inspired me, especially those of a similar age to me, as they could all speak three languages (Russian, Ukrainian and English) to such a ridiculously high level. I now just want to try to learn more and more languages so I can go somewhere and not have to do the super embarrassing 'sorry, do you speak English?' thing, which I really don't find too cool. So yes, I'm going to be multilingual in no time, of course.

Now, I'm going to be a typically British girl and talk about the weather, because we had a bloody hurricane, which was well exciting!! I absolutely love watching a dramatic storm from the comfort and dryness of my room, and this one was the best I've ever seen. The mess it left behind, however, was not so amazing. Pavements were coming up thanks to huge tree roots which had come up, and much of the town was without light or internet for a good few days after it happened. 

Me and my shocked face.

Surprisingly, I don't think anything too ridiculous happened during my last month in Odessa. The flush broke on the toilet, and nobody seemed to know how to fix it, which we were naturally all very pleased about. I was also expected to give the halls lady my bedding back 3 nights before I was due to leave, and she seemed quite shocked when I said I'd need them as I would like a sleep sometime in the 72 hours I had remaining in that hell hole.

Since being back in England I have missed Odessa loads, but it's been fun to see people who I went for months and months without seeing. Also, being the fat pig that I am it has been so good to eat and drink like a normal person again. 

I feel that at this point it would be very apt to write a list of foods I couldn't find/were simply too expensive to buy out in Odessa, so that anybody else who may go there (or anywhere in Russia/Ukraine) can take it with them, or just have a massive binge before they have to put up with borsht and meat of questionable origin...

- Gin
75cl of Bombay Sapphire cost around £20. You could try the cans of cheap gin and tonic that are available, but they are gross, and can apparently make your skin go yellow, mmm.

- Nutella
Again, depressingly expensive, with no great alternative. 

-Peanut butter

Never found any the whole time I was away.

- Sweet Potato
I eventually found some, they were stupidly expensive, and I didn't have the means to cook them properly. 

- Fresh fruit/veg
Generally very bloody terrible, unless you like mould. Not cheap either. Mushrooms and bananas were the only things I found in consistently good condition.

- Pesto
Unless you're prepared to spend a person's average weekly wage on it, just don't bother.

- Ready meals
Unfortunately these are non-existent. I didn't have a fridge or microwave anyway...

-Eggs

Of course, you can get eggs out there, but they were always covered in chicken poo, which put me off. (I'm aware you don't eat the shell, but still, poo = NO).

- Skimmed milk
Always a controversial subject as I regularly get lolled at for drinking 'white water', but the least fatty milk was 2.5%, which made it impossible to drink large quantities of.

-Hummus 

This is getting really specific now, as hummus is hardly a kitchen staple, but I missed it so much.

- BAKED BEANS (Heinz, ofc)

WHERE WERE THE HEINZ BAKED BEANS IN ODESSA?! I go to Nottingham University, we eat the most beans out of everyone ever*, but I could just never find these little babies :( :( I could talk about beans all day (protein, fibre, filling, low in fat etc), and being without them for nearly 5 months was just too much to handle.

So yes, if anyone's going to Odessa soon for their year abroad (everybody should do it, Odessa > Russia any day) there's a list of some of the things you may struggle to get hold of, at least at a reasonable price. Everybody studying Russian should go to Odessa for a bit though, because it's generally such a happy town, and it just has a certain charm to it, and a beach, and nice weather etc...

*I had to prove this to you all!

Beware of the dog.

I'm going to be lolling as I write this post, that's for certain. Around 10 years ago Jamelia was hailed as the UK's Beyonce, and I definitely own a copy of her album (i was such a cool 11 year old), but recently all she's really done is been on buzzcocks calling Javine a slag, and other panel shows.

I kind of forgot that Jamelia even existed, but the beauty of living in Eastern Europe is that most things are a little behind, and the big news on Friday was that Jamelia was in town!! How could I say no to Jamelia?!

As well as being my first experience of a Ukrainian club, it was also my first visit to Arkadia - a part of Odessa I'd heard so much about thanks to Vice. Arkadia did not disappoint. It was so bloody tacky (think Blackpool or Skeggy but Ukrainian).

The club, Ibiza, was just completely surreal. It was basically a posh Hidatsa resort passing itself off as a nightclub. It was full of middle aged people, or people who didn't seem to be there to have fun, and just looked to dressed up and not very happy. You had to pay to sit down, and the drinks were expensive - not cool. It seems to be fairly common that in these kinds of clubs people don't really go to have a laugh, which isn't really my idea of fun!

Despite the club being a little shit Jamelia did not disappoint and got all the hits out.  She also sang to Seb and later on tweeted him, which resulted in a rather excited reaction. Overall, the night was just jokes. I finished off the fun by doing some Russian posing in front of the dodgers.

Another update.

So, I've been absolutely rubbish at writing this over the past couple of weeks, but with very good reason... My laptop kind of broke, and after a long trek to the Samsung centre and a quote of 3000 hryvnia, I decided to see the last couple of months in Odessa out without a laptop! Thank god for iPhones.

So, what's been going on since I last posted? I turned 21, and had probably the most boring birthday of my life so far, and drank gin on my own! That's ok though, as it means I can have a ridiculous celebration when I'm back (I'm thinking gin, cake and friends).

Since my terrible birthday I have met some new people, and two guys from Nottingham have arrived, so I now have some sort of a social life!! I'm not sitting in watching Girls on repeat I my phone every night now, which, although I live Girls, can only be a good thing.

I'm still sharing my abode with too many cockroaches for my liking though, and I'd give anything to move out, but it just feels so nice having money in the bank that isn't going to get wasted on rent. Yesterday I encountered two within the first fifteen minutes of me being awake, sigh.

I don't think anything more interesting than that has happened, life is calm and steady, and minus living in this hole, I'm having a nice, busy time :)

Half Marathon

I've decided that as well as using this blog to document my time in Odessa, I may as well use it to document my half marathon training, as it might help me keep a little more motivated. I've been wanting to do a half marathon for some time now, but I couldn't do one last summer as the one in my hometown has stopped and I had left for Russia before the Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham.

A couple of weeks ago I saw that the date for the Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham had been announced and that it was open for entries, so I rather impulsively filled in the form and paid the fee without giving it a second thought. Ten minutes or so later it did dawn on me that I had now in fact signed up to run further than I've ever ran before, and I did ever so slightly fill up with terror! 13.1 miles is A BLOODY LONG WAY.

Since being in Odessa I have been running 3-4 times a week, but it has mainly been aimlessly plodding around the park, simply running to burn off a few of the extra chocolate bars I've eaten. I also forgot to bring my Nike+ sports band, so I wasn't sure how long or far I had been running for.

However, the addition of a new gadget in my life has changed all of this in the last fortnight. I was lucky enough to receive a Garmin Forerunner 410 as a birthday gift from my mum, and now I have got the serious running bug back, and am running thinking about the half marathon and getting faster/fitter.

The Garmin does EVERYTHING, it is an insane piece of kit. It has GPS which means it really accurately tracks your runs and a heart rate monitor, which often just scares me as I have a freakishly high working heart rate (often I'm running at 102% of my max, which probably means I should have collapsed). It is definitely making me more motivated, and doing runs and knowing how far and fast I'm going has made me realise I have a small way to go until I get times that I will be happy with as I go to do the half marathon.

My average 5km time currently lies between 25 and 26 minutes, and I'd like to get this down to somewhere between 23 and 24 and I managed to do 10km in 53 minutes this week, which isn't too terrible. I am desperate to run the half marathon in under 2 hours - 1 hour 50 minutes would be a dream. I am going to aim to do a weekly update on here - I think it may help me feel that little bit more determined to shave a few extra seconds off and just push myself that little bit further, we shall see!