Ballroom dancing and piggie chasing

This week was pure hard work! No, just kidding, actually I had a quite comfy week at the office. I’m really starting to get the hang of things. I was able to work most of the week quite independently. This week I only translated one document, but did a lot of project management. The work gets easier all the time, because I’m starting to understand how the project is built. What makes it complicated is the fact that different customers want that their data to be handled in different ways. This means that we need to use different kinds of programs. It helps that I’ve been working mostly with one client, so I’ve become pretty fluent with their projects. The important thing is that I really enjoy the work, and the days pass by so fast, that I barely notice.

On Tuesday I and my flat mate Miriam decided to go to a flea market in Kreutzberg. She picked me up at work but when we arrived to the place where the flea market, there was nothing there. The weather was amazing though, so we decided to have an ice cream. We went to what is about to become my favorite place, the ice cream salon tanne B. After ice cream we headed to Prenzlauer Berg to meet one of my good friends Harm. Harm works as the German representative for a Finnish flooring company and he gets around a lot. We met in Finland a bit over two years ago, and every time he comes to Tampere, we get together for dinner or drinks. We don’t see each other all that often, but we’ve become quite good friends. We started off at a wine shop/bar in Prenzlauer Berg, which is owned by the husband of a common friend of me and Harm. We had a couple of glasses of the most delicious sparkling rosé wine after which we went to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant quite close by. We ordered a round of dumplings, which I tasted for the first time. They had a various selection of dumplings, so we decided to order many different kinds and share. For those who don’t know what dumplings are: they are balls made of dough with different fillings. We had dumplings with lamb, cow, pig, veggies and shrimp, which I liked the most. They were all quite good, but I don’t think it will be my favorite thing to eat.

Dumplings Shanghai and Lamb

After stopping by at a sheesha bar we ended the evening at a bar called Graues Kloster where our common friend Gesa was playing lp’s. Graues Kloster is a very cozy little cellar bar in Prenzlauer Berg which seemed to have a quite regular clientele. There was a couple in the bar - Thomas and Katrin - that I met in Berlin in March and it turned out that they like dancing. And I’m not talking about clubbing; no they are doing ballroom dancing! They told me about a restaurant called Clärchens Ballhaus, where they have ballroom dancing, and they asked me to go with them on Thursday. I was totally in! But man, why did I leave my dancing shoes in Finland?! On Thursday I could barely wait for it to be evening. When I came to Clärchens at about 9.30 pm Thomas and Katrin were already there, along with some more of their friends. One of the guys asked me to dance and we started off with a discofox, which is a bit like the Swedish dance bugg. The atmosphere was great and I got to dance a lot of different dances including rumba, chacha, Argentinean tango (which really is different to Finnish tango), jive, quickstep, wiener waltz and slow waltz. It was a nice mix of different people on different levels, some were just beginners and some were dancing very professionally. I enjoyed it all so much that I decided to start going there every week! Thomas and Katrin also told me about some other dancing place, which apparently is outside. They said it opens on Monday and that they are going there on Tuesday, when they have standard dancing. I think I can’t help but go…

This weekend we made a house switch with Matt’s parents. They went to Plessow, where Matt lives, because they wanted to come to Berlin and we took over the animal feeding at Matt’s parents’ farm. Our plans for Saturday changed quite the bit when the two little pigs got out through the fence and ran away. We chased them around for a bit over two hours without result. Finally we got sick of the very fast pigs and made a car tour in Matt’s super cute Mini. We went to Enschede in Holland and did still have a nice afternoon. While in Holland Matt’s neighbor called and said that the pigs were on their way to the next village. We figured that whatever, they’re gone. Surprisingly this morning when Matt went to feed the animals, the pig were back on the front yard, and he even managed to get them back in the shed. He was very happy getting to tell me about it, because he got quite frustrated yesterday while chasing them around. All in all the weekend was very nice. Life on a farm can be very calming, especially when there are two oh-so-cute four-week-old puppies to play with.

Piggies on the run

Playing makes tired - especially when you're only four weeks old!

Three friends of mine are coming to Berlin on Thursday and they’re bringing me bread and chewing gum, yay! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the three of them and I’m excited! We’ll see what the week brings…