Little victories

So I just found this in my drafts and apparently I never actually had the confidence to post it! So I am posting it now, over a year later. Better late than never eh!

It's actually fairly apt, as the last few days have been difficult. I think it is mainly just a delayed reaction to moving abroad again, but I spent most of Tuesday not very well. My vision was totally messed up and I couldn't concentrate or focus, my stomach hurt and I had heartburn and I had constant tears all day. An absolute mess! J was ever so lovely and kind though and kept making sure I was drinking plenty of water.

Back to the original post:


So this is a little bit of a different post this time!

People that are close to me will know that I've lived with anxiety for a long time. Less of you will know that that this month (July 2014) I can happily say I have been self-harm free for 4 years. I keep retweeting all these Time to Change things, yet I feel I've never really been that open myself. I made a pledge to stop the stigma, so now it's time I keep it. (You can make your pledge here). For now, I am sharing with you that although anxiety is something I have to live with, I am coping and I'm probably the healthiest now than I've been in a long time!

So, here are the the victories during the Year Abroad that have kept me going.

• being spontaneous and deciding to go to Munich
• being direct and making the first moves with friendships
• coping quickly with what could have become a full blown panic attack in Vienna
• not always being intimidated or anxious about making dinner in the communal kitchen in Paris
• learning to control my temper (because I am dealing with anxiety better, I am dealing with anger better too)
• being able to get dressed nearly every morning without becoming hysterical
• that time where I stayed out and missed the RER home and didn't panic (this was obviously after the time on my birthday where I, well, panicked)
• Although I barely slept the night before, I managed a presentation in French and didn't panic
• I survived for 3 and a bit months without seeing my mum, which I think has really, really toughened me up, and on dark days reminds me I can manage
• going online and putting myself out there to meet Tandem Partners
• dealing with triggering thoughts and feelings, and not giving in
• filling out CBT forms on a regular basis, so now I can do them in my head when a situation comes up
• going to Poland for the day, proving to myself that my anxiety won't stop me living´
• Dealing with the whole tooth issue without having a breakdown
• actually posting this post without editing it a hundred times and worrying what everyone will think

Though maybe trivial to some people, I'm proud of these little things. It all counts towards being more positive and able to cope!


There'll be a proper update soon.

Tschau xxxx

My Top Ten Moments

This was quite difficult to compile, but here it is. I can't even decide on an order, so it's bullet points instead!

• Watching Germany win the World Cup at the Kulturbrauerei

Machine

• Hearing and seeing the Blue Danube at a dinner show in Vienna

• Experiencing the gorgeous Christmas markets in Strasbourg

• Playing the Mind Maze in Prague with Sia and Sarah

Happy defeat

• Exploring Plitvice National Park in Croatia

Just call me Kirsty Two-Pairs

• Spending my 21st birthday in Paris with my best friend

Possibly my favourite picture of us ever

• Going to the fashion show at Galeries Lafayette with Elinor

Yeah I don't have any pictures of the actual show, soz, have this beautiful tree

• making Stollen with Niamh and Joe

It turned out wonderfully

• Seeing a Lippizaner perform a Levade in Vienna

The Lippizaner's saddles

• Having a 3 course meal in an empty restaurant with a view of the Alps

Pie in the sky

Oh and going up the Eiffel Tower at night with my sister!

Up in the fog

Is there any wool?

I'm currently on my last bus journey of my little adventure, heading back to Berlin. It feels weird to be going back as it already feels like I've left. Tomorrow will consist of packing, last minute souvenir shopping (how many Ritter Sports can I squeeze in my suitcase?), going to the bank and having a wander around soaking up the city. I'm definitely going to cry!

Anyway, Sia and I made it to Vienna and headed straight to the McDonalds near her flat. We just chilled out and watched tv, as we suddenly realised that Croatia had been quite stressful.

Wednesday was really relaxed. We stopped by the art school that Hitler was rejected from, twice. It was just so odd to stand there and think, wow, even mentalists like him had dreams once.

Then we went to the Haus der Musik, which was entertaining and interesting, albeit quite bizarre. We composed a song by throwing dice (for which I bought the certificate because it was a real achievement) and learnt some very interesting facts about Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (he lived in 68 flats in Vienna because he was an awful tenant and also wrote one of the most well-known love letters?) and Schubert (who died at 32 from typhus).


For lunch, we went to Naschmarkt which didn't feel like Vienna at all!

Look at the size of em!

We had a Chinese there and then headed to the Hofburg Palace again to find the Papyrus Museum. We found it on our second attempt - we were actually in the right building the first time, we just didn't realise it was there... Anyway, that was really interesting and, as usual, I yabbered on about Ancient Egypt for about an hour. The ticket we bought was also for the Globe Museum and the Esperanto Museum... obviously we went. We have now got some very obscure facts under our belt for future quizzes. Do you know what graticules are? Do you know who the most prominent globe maker in the 16th century was? No? Should have gone to the globe museum.

The Esperanto museum was really small but I loved it. I didn't really know anything about it but I'm basically fluent now. Vi telefonas?

Dinner was at Vapiano, followed by coffee and cake at Cafe Central. I've just realised I didn't eat a single Sachertorte this time!

Today, we headed straight to the Spanish Riding School where we had a ticket to watch the morning exercises. Those horses are beautiful, and we were lucky enough to see one horse do a 'levade', where the horse rests on just its hind legs for 5 seconds. It can only be seen with the Lippizaners in Vienna, and I saw it even though I didn't go to a performance! You can't take pictures of any of it when the horses are around, because obviously it upsets them. Sad, but I have some lovely postcards. We watched for a couple of hours, then headed to lunch at one of the most famous restaurants in Vienna. After that we paid a visit to the old library in the palace.

My camera really didn't do this place justice, as usual

I want it!

I spent most of it whining about how unfair it was that I didn't have one. It was unreal. Beauty, eat your heart out.

Then it was back to the Spanish Riding School for our guided tour. It was excellent, and we got to go in the stables, inches away from these incredible horses! A question for all the horse riders out there: Is wool usually used in the soil stuff in a training centre? A woman was surprised that there was none there?

The indoor riding area, with the royal box

Our next stop was the Imperial Crypt, of course, where we saw the tombs of Franz Josef, Sisi and Rudolf. I may elaborate on this at some point but I'm tired and well aware that my Blackberry keyboard is horrendously loud so I need to end soon...

We had more coffee and cake at Demal, which is another famous cafe, stopped at Spar to buy Mozartkuegeln (amazing dark chocolate marzipan and pistachio balls) for my mum and then chilled at home until it was time to drop me off.

I'm glad I came back to Vienna again, and I reckon it's not the last time. As Billy Joel once said "Vienna waits for you."

See ya in Berlin
Xxx

Zany Zagreb

Onto today! This morning, we went down for breakfast to find out that the woman at the desk had no idea we had ordered one, and offered to go to the shop! We told her not to worry, and went to a cafe she recommended for breakfast. Stuffed on chocolate and strawberry pancakes, we walked to the Kaptol to catch the tourist bus, but the next one was at 12, so we went into the cathedral and explored more of the old town.

The main square

We also went to the Museum of Broken Relationships, which Sia had read about but had no idea it was in Zagreb! It was actually a really interesting concept; people donate items from a finished relationship along with their story to the museum, for closure and release. Some of it was quite funny, and others quite sad. What I liked the most is that it didn't just focus on romantic relationships, rather on friendship and family too. One of my favourite ones was a burger dog toy with the caption "His dog left more traces behind than he did."

I'm still chuckling

We went back to the bus stop to find there were no seats left, so walked through the market to buy souvenirs and then stumbled on a lovely art stall, but Sia had to pay for her poster inside. Then I decided to buy 4 rhino pictures (they were really cute okay, and I became an art expert in Potsdam, remember?). We were there for some time, as the adorable old man wrapped up our pictures and then took us to the office, where Sia had to work the pin machine for him!

We are both now proud owners of naive art.

Lunch was at the same chain that we'd been to for breakfast, before we walked back to the hostel to get our bags. We had to wait for like 15 minutes for the tram and were getting a bit worried about time, but we made it to the bus station fine. We thought we had to check in so went up to the counter with our tickets, but the man said to just go straight to the bus, so we did. However, it was never going to be easy because that's our life, and the driver told us to get off and wait to see if there were spaces available! As you can imagine, I was not a happy bunny and prepared for war, but luck was on our side and we managed to get seats... We're sitting apart but we are on the bus to Vienna and currently sitting at the border of Slovenia, waiting to be checked.

Lunch, but what am I doing with my hands?

It's been a brilliant few days, but I'm looking forward to a MacDonalds and crashing in Sia's room.
Next update when I'm on my way back to Berlin, can't believe how fast it's all gone!

Laters
Xxxx

One lone Muskeeter

So I'm pretty much getting ready to leave Berlin now! I'm pretty much packed for the next 3 weeks, and my big suitcase has been shipped back to England already. (Mum just text me to say she has it, relieeeef). Finishing up at work has been sad, but my boss gave me a glowing reference and I can safely say that I'm really proud of the last 6 months! Can't believe Thursday is my last day there. I really enjoy it and would quite happily stay if, well you know, I didn't have a degree to finish.

Last week, Sophie and I went for dinner on Tuesday evening at an Italian place that Hilary kept telling me to go to! It was definitely worth all of her hype and we were very impressed.

On Wednesday, it was Sophie's leaving thing and we all got pizza and sat in the Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which was really relaxed and lovely. Then we all headed to Seemanderstrasse for cocktails, obviously, and Sophie had her last falafel in Berlin. It was sad times. Got even sadder when Guy and I had to wait 30 minutes for a bus back to Kotti, then I had to get another bus back to Hermannplatz and walk home from there. Oh well!

I don't think anything else exciting has happened at all! I went for a nice walk along the canals on Saturday and sat in a cafe for 3 hours reading. I really should have contacted Lionel over the weekend, but no use crying about that now. I might see if I can meet him tomorrow evening.

Monday I was off work because, well, quite frankly, I couldn't stop vomiting everywhere. So I spent most of the day  watching True Blood and getting a bit too hooked.

And so we come to today, and my netbook is home again. For how long, I dare not even estimate. You may or not hear from me before I jet off to Spain on Friday!

Oh yes, and the teeth are sorted! I fully recommend German dentistry, seriously. Aside from the fact it's 1000% more intimidating, it was overall a rather okay experience, and I'm happy as larry with the result! (Let's just hope it's a while before I have to do anything else to them, hmm)

HELLO HOLLYWOOD

Off to have pizza, wine and tv with the flatmates now. Only got two more days left with them!

Bis bald (hopefully)

xxx

One Musketeer down

I meant to update this before I went away for the weekend but unfortunately my latpop is back at the repair shop, because apparently it just does not like me or anything I try and do with it. Ugh.

Let's get some boring updates out of the way first: I still don't have a bridge! I have to wear this plastic one until Thursday 24th (I've had it now for a week). As long as it's sorted by August, I guess it's ok. Secondly, I managed to get the pill here, even though it cost 36 €!

So the Saturday before last was nice, I met up with Sophie and Hilary in Charlottenburg, where we wandered around the gardens and took in some scenery. Then we went back to Hilary's for tea (and pistachios) before heading onto Bergmanstraße for dinner. There was a very peculiar parade going on, as in people in extremely bizarre outfits shouting to what sounded a bit like the Sex Pistols. We met up with Hilary's Belgian friend at a Vietnamese and sat nattering away for hours.

Hilary's mad photo skills

On Sunday, I was actually quite productive. I woke up at 9 (I know, maybe I'm not well), did some yoga and updated my CV. Then I spent the afternoon watching Endeavour with my flatmates and having to explain some very British phrases. It was time for the World Cup final that night! We met up and went to the Kulturbrauerei, after having our faces painted with the German flag by Kate. It was such a good atmosphere and when Götze scored in extra time, the place just went mental. There were showers of beers and fireworks, flags in people's faces, shouting and chanting. Basically, it was superb. After we watched Angie hug her boys, we started home. People were gathered in the streets, everyone on the U-Bahn was shouting and when I got into bed I could still hear fireworks.

So sieht Sieger aus! (Sophie's picture)

Looking like a right chubster, but rather happy to be alive

Merkel hugging her boys

On Tuesday evening, I met the girls at the Tränenpalast after work. I'd been planning to go for some time, since Sia recommended it to me. I will now recommend it too! Tränenpalast literally means 'Palace of tears', and it's what the locals came to call this building as it was a check point, and obviously many miserable memories happened here. I think one of the most interesting things there was some newsreel footage about the 1953 uprising. They had footage from both the West and the East and it was incredible how differently they spun the stories. I also read some documents chronicling the movements of an author as he regularly went East and it was horrible. There were photos of him, just labelled with 'Objekt' and a number. If you ever find yourself with an hour to spare on Friedrichstraße, you should go.

We had dinner together and sat talking for hours, my favourite type of evening!

On Wednesday evening, I met up with Lionel, for the first time since May! It was really nice to see him again. Obviously we went to Italo for coffee and cake, and he told me all about his holiday and his new job. I told him about my series of unfortunate events. I also think my French was okay, considering I hadn't spoken it in so long, but for whatever reason, my language was co-operating with me!

I did however tell a woman that she was on her way to Neukölln, when she was in fact, not. I was too busy reading to notice I was on the wrong side of the platform. I hope she made it wherever she was going. Oops.

Thursday night was Hilary's leaving meal :( We had dinner at White Trash near Schlessi, and it was a really good night, you know, aside from the fact I won't see Hilary for a while! I'm planning to go to Edinburgh in their freshers week and harrass them all, so it won't be long really. We've had some exellent times in Berlin together though, some good friendships have been made! (These are yet more of Hilary's photos!)

On Friday, Sophie, Guy and some other people went to the Freiluftkino in Friedrichshain Volkspark and it was great fun! The film boasted a rather tasty main character and we all understood enough to laugh along with everybody else, which was obviously great.

The open air cinema, excuse the stupid speaker in the way



And then I went away for the weekend, but I'll write about that when I get my laptop back, otherwise there will be no pictures at all! 

Tonight is Sophie's last night, boo! We're all going to chill in Volkspark Friedrichshain with pizza and beers. It should be good.

Something about the weather to finish? BERLIN IS A SAUNA.

Tschau! 

xxx

p.s yes I posted this at work, but I wrote it on my phone last night and did the pictures on my break, don't tell on me

Me, myself, and my sister

It's been nearly 2 weeks since my sister visited so I reckon I should probably pull my finger out and write a blog post about it! I left work early to fetch her from the airport and found out her flight was delayed which was a fabulous start, but we were soon reunited with a bear hug and headed straight to my place for a cuppa. I gave her the tour of my flat and then we headed off to our hotel-weirdly opposite the place I was taking my language classes. Weirder still was that our room directly faced it!

The room was gorgeous and although we were both tired, we headed to Kotti for a burger. It was really strange sitting opposite my sister at the same table I'd sat with Sophie a few weeks ago. We decided we'd get some sweets at the supermarket and chill back at the hotel and talk into the small hours, which we did, and it was so lovely to have some sister time again.


The next day was sightseeing, but a lot less strenuous than mum's visit. We walked to the Brandenburg Gate, saw the Reichstag and couldn't really see the Tiergarten properly because of the Fanmeile.

Then the walk to Potsdamer Platz and the Jewish and Homosexual memorials on the way. We stopped for some baked goods, before setting off again and saw the remains of the wall at Topography of Terror. Joy was horrified by it all and couldn't believe that she was 8 when the wall fell. She just couldn't get her head around it! Then we walked on towards Checkpoint Charlie and stopped at the old-fashioned photo booth to get our photos done. I did this with mum and it is adorable! It costs 2 euros for 4 photos, they're black and white and like the old photo booths where you could change your pose every picture. We did it twice so we could each have a strip, then realised a queue was forming and the photos took like 10 minutes to develop. Ooops.

The paps caught me

After Checkpoint Charlie, I showed Joy the currywurst museum where we got samples to try, then declared it was time for coffee so we sat outside Coffeefellows for like 2 hours, putting the world to rights and nattering away. Then we took a walk down Unter den Linden, seeing the Berliner Dom, before going to the Nikolai Quarter. We wandered around for a bit, and I acquired a new friend! Thank you Joy!

Meet Müller (after the footballer, NOT the yoghurt. Joy, I am looking at you!)

We sat and had a beer, then we had dinner at a nice little restaurant, and thought the food was nice, but the guy on the table next to us was, quite frankly, a complete tit and shouted the place down about how awfuk his schnitzel was. He even called the waiter a 'fucking idiot'. What confused me though was that when he was ordering he asked what 'Kalb' was (it's veal) and then after the whole incident we heard him say to his friend that he'd been coming to Germany since he was 3 and that was the worst schnitzel he'd ever had... well, how did he not know what Kalbschnitzel was then?! In the succint words of Rik Mayall, he was an "utter, utter bastard".







After that, we headed to Alexander Platz (by the end of her visit, Joy was also calling it 'Alex' and I am very proud). We were up there a couple of hours, enjoying the views as the sun went down. I tried my best to look for where I live, but just couldn't spot it, even with the binocular things. It was a bit cloudy on the horizon so we'll blame that. We took a stroll home, going past several prositutes very suddenly, and finished off our sweets in the hotel.

Elephant selfie!

We allowed ourselves a bit of a lie in on Saturday and we toddled off to the zoo at about 11. The Zoologischer Garten is home to the most exotic species in the world, and, because there is more than one zoo in the city, Berlin has the most zoo animals in the world. I know right? It was pretty awesome. We saw an Asian elephant rub her eye with her trunk, a baby elephant, POLAR BEARS, grizzly bears, hippos, Melmans (giraffes), lots and lots of monkeys, wolves... I could go on and on. We went into the lion house and were horrified though. One lioness was outside and the other lioness and lion were inside. They were boiling hot- the lion was pacing and panting, and the lioness was sitting on her haunches scratching the hell out of the door. It was horrible. Then all of a sudden, they began to growl and whine. I have never heard a lion make a noise before, and it was pretty insane. The whole building was just echoing with these poor lions. I probably would have wet myself if they had actually roared... We tried to put it behind us, but it definitely made us uncomfortable. We sat for a bit at the restaurant and then went to the aquarium which was fun-I've never seen so many jellyfish!

Sorry but I love this

This was just too adorable not to post.

I tried to grow up once. It failed.

That night I took Joysie to the Oberbaumbrücke and East Side Gallery briefly, before we headed to the Mexican that Joe and I had been too before. It was better than I remembered. Mainly because we were watching the Brazil-Chile game, we had cocktails, and then a strange ruccus happened outside with a man and his bike. He was shouting all up the street and at one point threw his bike in the middle of the road. a lady got out of her car to move it, it was in her way, and the man shouted 'no you leave my fucking bike there'.  Sorry, what?  The police turned up and he eventually sidled away, with his bike in tow. Odd.

Next day was our last day sadly. We checked out of the hotel and headed to mine, where we had lots of baked goods and tea for breakfast. We spent the day looking at my photos and watching YouTube videos. It was good to just hang out! Time went too fast as usual, and suddenly we were back at the airport. We had a coffee together and then about 30 million hugs. There was a girl saying goodbye to her mum there, and we figured she might be a Year Abroader as well, which was making me well up!

This is me and the Bear outside Rathaus Neukölln

And my favourite selfie 

All in all, it was so lovely having Joy here, and I'm glad I got her the chance to show her this brilliant city. Everyone that has visited has said I am less stressed and more comfortable which is great to hear, since I've informed them all that I will be returning at some point!

Tschau xx