Made in Iceland

I just came across this video on Vimeo made by an Austrian girl called Klara Harden who walked this summer 25 days through Iceland.

To me personally this is quite inspiring. After the walk on the Camino in Spain I am now really up for hiking again. I loved hiking before and now that I have done the Camino I realized that this is one of my hobbies. Directly after Spain I was actually happy to come home and stop walking, but now I really feel like it again.

Anyways, at the moment I am waiting for A. and her friend J. from Finland to come here. J. just landed in Hamburg Airport and A. is picking him up. He will stay with us until Monday and hopefully we will have a great time. The funny thing is that also A's cousin T. from Canada and G. a girl also from Canada, who I met on the Camino are in the city. We will try to meet up with everybody and bring all of them together.

~M~

Always the same...

It's always the same with my university. Before I went to Spain to walk the Camino I wrote my supervisor an e-mail letting him know that I wouldn't be available for my colloquium, my presentation of the thesis, until the middle of November. Just two days into the walk I received an invitation for the colloquium two days later, which I did not read until some days after the appointment.

Anyways, this wasn't my fault that I could not attend the date. When I was back from the walk I called my supervisor and asked for an appointment for a specific period of time and he said that this shouldn't be a problem. Since I did not hear anything from him I called several times to ask for the date, but received no answer.

On Tuesday I received an invitation for my colloquium again. It was supposed to be less than 24 hours later. Since I am at the moment sick or rather fighting an upcoming cold I canceled and asked for a later appointment and also an earlier notification. I think it is incredible to receive an invitation for such an event less than 24 hours before. 

Christmas is coming!

Anyways, somehow I did not expect anything else than that from my university and can't wait for my presentation and with that my studies to be over. The invitation to the colloquium already means that I passed my thesis and am graduated if there are no big discrepancies between my thesis and my presentation. Now my supervisor "will try to reschedule for next Wednesday" and I will prepare for that day.

Nevertheless right now I am a bit annoyed and can't wait for this whole thing to be over. Maybe that also derives from the fact that I am sick and don't feel like doing anything. It's one of these sicknesses where you are too good to lie in bed, but too bad to do anything productive; bloody annoying!

Garfield came to visit!

Anyways, I will now dress and then open the windows to get some fresh air in. Now that the heating is on all the time it's really needed to change the air in the apartment every day once or twice. 

~M~

Unemployment

Since I am back from the Camino (btw. pictures are here) I am unemployed. In the beginning I was using the time to mentally come back and get used to the idea of looking for work. The first week and weekend were really nice and I enjoyed this care-free living. 

The second week I actually wanted to use to update my CV and send applications. However on the weekend I "killed" my PC and was spending the whole week to get it working again.

Now I lost one week and thought I would be motivated to search for job ads, but somehow I am not getting anywhere. I am sitting at home playing SNES and surfing the internet, since I do not know what to write in my cover letter.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being home and having all the time in the world, but somehow I start feeling useless. Problem again, that my motivation is so low, that I don't even send applications.

~M~

Check out....

At the moment I have problems with my PC. The whole last week I was trying to fix it, but it didn't really work. I am at A's PC right now and am so grateful that I can use it. Since I do not have photoshop here I can not work on my pictures and since I am trying to fix my PC I am not in the mood to write. 

However, you can check out A's blog for some updates. She is writing about most of the stuff we are doing here in Hamburg and also puts nice pictures up!

~M~

Wrap up!

For a long long time I did not post here. In the last five weeks this was mostly due to the fact that I was walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, in northern Spain. Before that there were some few things that I would like to wrap up in this post. About the experiences of and on the Camino I will write in a separate post later on.

Now to start with: I handed in my thesis one day before deadline and during my walk I received the message that my thesis was accepted and that I am invited to do my colloquium. This basically means that I am graduated if no tremendous discrepancies between my thesis and my knowledge become apparent during my oral exam. Furthermore the Finnish University has prepared my maturity test, which means, they also accepted my thesis. (Short note for better understanding: I was doing a double-degree program, my thesis is accepted as Diploma thesis in Germany and Bachelor thesis in Finland. With this I am going to receive - yes, I am pretty sure, that I will pass the last two tests - a German Diploma and a Finnish Bachelor).

Anyways, in the time before the Camino my parents visited A. and me here in Hamburg. My dad had also some work related meeting here in the city and so they extended their stay over the weekend and we were spending time together, which was very nice.

Then later also my brother came to visit. We were doing some tourist stuff, were going around the city by tour-bus and were also visiting the Miniature Wonderland, the world's biggest model railway system. It was quite impressive and also funny to see what ideas the makers had and how many details the put in. In between we were sitting by the Alster enjoying our beer and the last days of summer in the city.

Soon after that A. had her birthday and we were celebrating it here at home. A. had taken the day off and so we were enjoying the day. In the evening we had some people over and later headed out to the city.

Shortly before leaving to southern France, my starting point of the Camino, our "pet" Garfield, a cat that is living here in the neighborhood paid a visit and for the first time since we are living here came into our flat to explore it. Now it already is a habit and he regularly checks out the whole apartment.

 

For now this is all that happened before my walk. I then went to Aachen to buy the rest of the gear needed and eventually left Germany by train via Paris to the South of France to a small village called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. From there I started my walk to Santiago de Compostella. About the walk I will post later on, maybe today, maybe tomorrow or later this week, depending on how I feel!

~M~