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!