My job

As many of you know, I have a job by now. It's been nearly a month now and I can tell you a bit more than only the fact that I work in McDonalds.
I work as a cleaner, which means that I have to make sure that in our lobby all the tables are clean for customers and that everything is nice and neat. I have to sort the garbage (mostly it's paper), clean the floors, empty the ashtrays and in the evening I have to wash the floors.
The beginning was painful. The first couple of weeks I came home with my feet killing me- you see, I have no time to sit except my 30min break which is fitted somewhere between 8,5hour working day. Besides my feet hurting, my hands were in a pretty bad state- we have to use chemicals and have no gloves. So when I have tiny wounds on my hands, then there's no possibility of them healing. So, at some point when my fingers started to swell up, I asked whether I could buy myself latex gloves and use them. I was allowed to do so, which means that my hands are all fine by now :)
My work is intense, I walk at least 5-10km per day because of my work. By now my feet have gotten used to it so I can actually come home and do sth else. I am starting to be more energetic on my free time, which is great!
I have often shifts that last until 24:00. That means I get home at about 20 past 12 at night. Going to sleep takes still some time, so I manage that usually by 02:00. My sleeping rhythm is a bit messed up because of my work and it affects Hannes as well. Not too happy about it. I now understand why in a normal country the shops close at 19:00 latest. The people want to go home as well! I would, at least.
As I work in the train station, there's a lot going on. We have to call police nearly every day for a guy who is probably homeless, comes into our place and falls asleep. He's not even drunk. He just doesn't get up any more. Every time he's taken away with ambulance. And couple of hours later, he's back.
I've met Estonians in our McDonalds- from the band Defrage. There was about 6 of them. When I met the first 3 of them, I managed to somewhat shock them- a random person in McDonalds starts to talk to them in Estonian, out of nowhere. You guys should have seen those faces! :) Besides, Estonians, I meet many interesting people and also annoying people. For my first two weeks there was a black guy coming to McDonalds every day- first day he asked my name and whether I am single. Then he started talking that he likes girls who don't look like anorexics and that have something to grab. I'm still not sure whether to take it as a compliment or not. Anyway, he started coming to me every day, just to watch me working. As it made me feel extremely uncomfortable, I told him I will call the security or police because he is harrassing me. He started apologizing and saying that he's a Christian and Maria is a sacred name blah blah. The result: he still comes sometimes, doesn't talk to me, just observes, sometimes says hello. I ignore him as much as possible.
Then I have interesting gypsy-style people who come and try to steal stuff from the trays (the things that are under the burgers). Once a whole bag of compost was gone. I guess someone had a really huge unhealthy meal...... I've seen once a Turkish guy trying to eat food out of my compost bin. As it's not allowed, I threatened again with security. That guy is in the station every day as well- I think he's got mental health problems, because he talks to himself, puts some weird gloves on his hands and off and does strange movements with his hands.
So in general, I see a lot of stuff at my work. And I eat a lot of burgers. At the moment I'm still a bit tight with money, so I use the discounts I can have at work and eat cheap (I have to pay 30% of the original price), usually with less than 1€- a cheeseburger, apple pie and fruit salad- 90 cents :) But as soon as I have more money, I will eat a bit more expensive, I think. Even though I run off all the burgers I eat, it's still not too healthy to have them every day.

Besides my work I've been busy with meeting people, cooking and christmas stuff. I gave Hannes a 50-minute massage as a christmas present and he already had it. And he loved it! He has a bad back because of office-work, so it helped him a bit. :) Yesterday I had the Bee-guy and Judith over at my place for a lovely christmas dinner with sauerkraut, black pudding and kotletid :) And mince pies and gingerbread. Nearly all of the stuff was made by me and Hannes. Delicious.
On the day before (Monday), we went to a christmas dinner at another Estonians' place, so we had 3 Estonian girls and 3 Austrian (sort of) guys. Was  a nice evening!  And the day before that we had lunch at one of Hannes's friends place. So indeed busy.

I went to donate plasma for the first time yesterday. I earned 25€ in one hour! The plasma donation centre gives money for each donation so it's a nice way to earn some (at the moment, as I'm a bit tight). You can donate max 50x per year. I don't think I'll manage to reach that limit but we'll see. Anyway, I had given my blood samples in the plasma center previously, to be tested. All was fine and yesterday, after going through the doctor's examination, I was put on a special bed and was connected to a needle. From the needle went the blood into a huge machine, which separated plasma and other blood cells and then pumped the blood cells back into my body. In the end it pumped nearly a liter of salt water also into my veins to make up the plasma I gave. The machine is really interesting, it's hard to describe, but it's cool. You can see your own blood being sorted to parts. Plasma itself is some yellowish-orange kind of liquid. Looks ugly to me. But what matters is the fact that I get to help people and earn money at the same time! Brilliant!

By now that's about it for the things I've been doing. Most of the time I've been too tired to do anything (because of work). I might get another job in January but as I have still no contract, it's not certain yet. It would be 1:1 work with children with autism- basically giving families free time from their children. I hope it will all work out and I can work more with that and have  a part-time job in McDonalds and part time with the autism-association.

Sheepy and his adventures!

I haven't posted into my blog for a long time. It's probably because I've been too lazy, haven't really had anything too interesting going on etc. Actually I was just lazy.
Anyway, now I want to make it up a bit, as I've got some news. And one of my lovely friends decided to be active and participate in everything interesting I do. So say hy to Sheepy!

Name: Sheepy McDonalds
Born: Oct 2011, in Scotland, Edinburgh
Nationality: Scottish
Marital status: single and looking
Race: fluffy and hairy
Type: Lamb - not eatable
Interests: Travelling, concerts, living life to it's fullest
Loves: being cute
Current location: Graz, Austria
Has lived: Scotland, England, Estonia
Has travelled: look above+ Riga
How we met: on a trip to Scotland,  I met Sheepy in a tourism office and couldn't leave him there. Ever since that time we have developed a true friendship.
Favourite food: dandelions
Food he hates: haggis
Nationalities he likes: Welsh and Scottish (many sheep over there, maybe even a possible partner?)
What he sees, when he looks into the sky:souls of sheep flying around and waiting to get into heaven
Superpower: can fit into a pocket and hide himself very well

So, Sheepy travelled around with me a lot, but now he decided to reveal himself. He is too brilliant to live in my shadow. So, he decided to join me and Hannes to see his fellow mates- Biffy Clyro. He loves the fact that they come from the same country as he does :)

Sheepy loved the concert a lot. Besides hearing the lovely Scottish dialects (well, his owner doesn't speak with any Scottish accents, but with some weird Eeeeenglish.....), he loved the songs. He had heard them often and knew nearly all the lyrics by heart.  He jumped around like mad, tried to stay alive in the middle of crazy guys playing pingpong with each other and was extremely sweaty in the end. His owner did a good job protecting him from the worst- so his owner, that lovely lady, has a really bad blueprint on her elbow now, that will stay probably for couple of weeks. Also, his owner managed to piss off many people who jumped into her by hitting them with elbows, putting her fingers into their ribs and hitting them into their arses with knees (one of them came to yell at her after the concert). But Sheepy was all safe. The fans in the concert were truly brilliant, singing along, jumping along. The band and the fans were all sweating like pigs! During "Stingin' Belle" the whole crowd lowered themselves during a calm part of the song and then jumped up when song got loud again. Yeah, it was beautiful. For Sheepy it was definetely the best concert he has ever been to. His owner says that for her it was top three!

Sheepy got home on the following day, being really tired and sleepy. When his owners went to a quiz in the evening, then Sheepy took a long nap in the backpack.

Sheepy had a great time!
So did Hannes and Maria.

Some nice pictures from my language course

What happens when you try to teach an American girl the word "dich"?

To start off this post, I have to tell a really good joke we witnessed today in our language course. We have a girl there, who's from USA and she is not too good with pronouncing "ch". Instead of "ch", she pronounces "ck". So today, we were learning Reflekzivpronomen and the word "dich" came up. So we decided to ask her to pronounce that. Just for practice. At some point someone asked her to pronounce "Ich liebe dich". She did, and then we all started laughing...... I had to explain why it was so funny. But yeah, "Sie liebt dic(k)h".


Anyway, my language course is halfway through right now and I can say I have learnt quite some things If I could improve my vocabulary as well, it would be ok. I still have a problem with Akkusativ and Dativ and personalpronomen and präpositionen, but I'm getting there. Slowly. I enjoy my language course- we have a nice group put together and we have a lot of fun during the class every day. It's just normal. Thanks to the language course I know words such as "Stritzi", "Oachkatzlschwoaf", "Wutchl", "Mostschädln", "Schnaggal" etc. Yeah, I won't give you the translations, I can only tell that our teacher is 33 years old and single (took a while for us to get that information from him). Oh, also, we went to Schlossberg with our team and I realized  can actually see my house from the mountain (Schlossberg is in the middle of the city and is more than 400 m high, fyi).


My life here has been damn busy. And to be honest, I've been lazy as well. To do a blog post. Anyway, last week, me and the bee guy went to look at his bees. Besides that, I could harvest some good ripe grapes and apples and even walnuts. So I had a whole week when I ate a bunch of grapes every day. Eco. How lush can life be?


Last week we didn't go out often with Hannes. He was ill and the German course drains my brains which means that by the end of the week I'm somewhat brain-dead. But....this week that just ended was a bit different. On Thursday we went to a dinner to Judith's place and on Saturday to a indoors "barbecue". Both of the evenings were really lovely. I met some new people, had to try to speak some German and had just lots of fun. Then yesterday evening the other Estonian girl and her boyfriend came over to our place for a dinner. We were joined by our landlord and her boyfriend as well. So it was many people, lots of food and ice cream and a really lovely evening. I think I already told you that the Estonian girl is really great, didnt I? Well, I'm happy that she's here. Her bf is also great. And we all get along perfectly. So it seems I already have some really nice friends here :) That makes me happy. I haven't missed Estonia here so far, maybe sometimes some of my friends, but in general I'm fine. If I had a job as well, I'd be even better! I'm still looking....


Oh also, time for random facts: the women are not allowed to go to strip clubs here (they are rivals, you know).  Sour cream over here is thick like kohupiimakreem and doesn't taste good. There's a place in Austria, that's called Fuking (or sth like that). The snow came down in Tirol which is the country next to Steiermark, where I live. A touristic city is called Kurort (like Estonian kuurort) and "ort" means a place. Steiermark really loves pumpkin and pumpkinseed oil, you can even get a kebab here with that taste (will try it soon).


Talking about Kebabs- I still haven't tasted the best kebab here. Have tried 4, but they still weren't UK level. I'm on my way though- heard of a really good place in Turkish district. This will be my next kebab, I think. Also, the one with pumpkinseed oil.


Oh, also, I found Viennetta ice cream cake that I loved in England, in a supermarket here. (supermarkets here are weird- they don't have baskets and the cashiers till has too short lint to put things on and later to put them to your bag, also, you have to insert 1€ coin to a shopping cart to be capable of using it. You get it back later. )

We'll probably go to South-Tyrol in 2 weeks time with Hannes. He has elections there. I already voted for my municipality in Estonia. Hannes just looked and was surprised how easy it was.  The thing with the elections in Tallinn- I think we have our own Berlusconi in charge of Tallinn......

Tea, tea and once more tea

For a person who has just moved to another country, I have an extremely busy social life. That's why I even have difficulties writing things here, into my blog. But now I've snapped some time from my German study materials and just give another update.
So, what does the tea tea tea mean? I have met many people during the last weekend I had.
My first full week here involved a lot of stay-at home housewife work- cooking cleaning, watching TV and that's about it. Looking for a job as well, of course. I also started to make a carpet myself. With crochet' needle. It still takes some time 'til I finish it, but as soon as it's done, I will upload it here :)
I was also looking for a job and went to EURES office which is almost like unemployement office, but for immigrants. I found out that I need to speak German. Everybody keeps saying that Austrians are picky when it comes to education, language skills, country of origin etc. There's no specific criteria, but finding a job depends on luck and the amount of CV's I send out. Nice. I found out I could work in the post office in the morning from 5-7am, sorting the mail or I could be the mail-delivery guy or milkman. Or the street cleaner. Hmmh. Exactly what I came looking for. Because of this information, Hannes signed me up for an intense language course that actually started today. It lasts for a month, but it's around 25hrs per week + homework. I started it today, I'm in te A1.1 level as I don't know much about grammar. The first class was easy for me, though. Way too easy- I know how to introduce myself and pronounce letters. Fortunately, the lady who's our teacher, told me that it will be like this for 3-4 days and then it will get better.
Going back to the meeting loads of people topic, my weekend was over the top busy. On Saturday we went to visit Judith with Hannes. She just got back here and we went to say hy to her. That was really lovely. We drank lots of tea and just gossiped. We're going on a dinner to her place on Thursday and promised to make a cake. :P After seeing Judith, we hurried back home, where a friend of Hannes was waiting already for us (behind the door as we were a bit late ourselves..... I need to get better at planning my time). We introduced her to Estonia by showing many videos and photos. She loved them. She had just been to Israel so she told about her trip. We drank tea and ate tiramisu that she brought to us.  Oh, I nearly forgot. On Saturday I got my city-bike from another friend of Hannes - she left the country and gave it to us for free. It's a really good and fast bike and in a good state as well. So I'm happy! I got two bikes here now! A proper city-bitch and a normal long-distance bike.
On Sunday we went to meet another Estonian girl who just moved to Graz. She is really nice and lovely! I'm so happy there's such a nice Estonian here with whom I'm sure I will communicate a lot and will become good friends. She is really smart, obsessed with Graz and Austria and knows a lot about this country. She had been here many times before as Erasmus student and also as EVS. She has graduated  from Treffner, so she is a good person to talk to and we have many things in common and know the same kind of people. I'm really happy and left her place with such a good mood. Hannes liked her as well!

So for the next 4 weeks I will be extremely busy with language school and will try to look for a job as well. I am also going to meet some more new people- some all by myself and some are Hannes's friends. And we'll have many dinners with other people. So it seems I won't get bored, which is good. Therefore, I have to apologize if I will lack of blog posts- they will be once a week or so and I won't be talking to people in Skype too often either. But you can still start the conversation with me and I will reply and tell whether I got time or we'll have to talk later.

Besides all the social part outside home, I have to say that so far I'm still all happy and satisfied with over the fact I moved to Graz to live together with Hannes. We can manage and it's not such a lack of privacy that I thought I would have when moving together with a boyfriend. Hannes has to work and go to school and I have school. And we still do our own things in the computer. It's like living with my previous flatmates. Almost. It's just got some more benefits. If you know what I mean ;)

About living together- right now it's still just the beginning of it.... We'll see how it will be in 2-3 months time.

For now I'm happy and active and have to say I don't miss Estonia at all (maybe my friends but not work, for sure not work).

Graz- a city with too much trust and interesting ways to welcome you. And some Turkish shops and Russki magazin and Italian ice-cream.

 So, I've finally somewhat settled down here in my new home in Graz. I live quite close to the central of Graz (10min walking) and 5 minutes from the Hauptbahnhof (train station). My flat is lush- the best looking flat I've ever lived in- well, it's new. So it's pretty. And we have our own basement-cell where I keep my bike (which Hannes put back together and fixed a bit).


My arrival to Austria was quick and without any problems. I got off the plane, got my luggage (some of it got stuck on the lint but no problemo in general), got into the car of one of the friends of Hannes and then drove to Graz.


On the first day (Thursday afternoon), Hannes made me a tiny tour around the closer area- where the shops are located and where I can get Turkish and maybe Estonian food. Firstly, they are located close to me, so I'm happy. I can get good Turkish bread and halva and coffee from nearby places. Then here's a Russian shop as well. And guess what I found there? Pelmeenid, präänik, condensed milk, sprotid, Rollton chicken-flavoured noodles, Baltika beer, Krakow sausage, Russian candies and most of all- some weird looking Russian Kohuke that actually tastes really good. I'd say that only Estonian beer is missing now :) Hannes also showed me a local ice-cream place which is owned by Italians and where they sell freshly-made ice cream. Well, you can imagine how good that tastes!

On the second day, me and Hannes went around in the city a bit, met again with the guy who drove us to Graz and had another ice-cream with him in that Italian place. This time for free, because they just renovated the street it was located in and for the opening of the street the ice cream was gratis (free). Not bad at all for first couple of days in Graz.

On Saturday we put together my bike with Hannes and fixed it.Also, we promised to help a gay-association to sell their stuff for couple of hours on the street that was freshly opened- because they had a fair over there. A funny incident as well- a lady came to us, told that the stuff we sell should just be chucked into garbage (sort of Flea Market stuff) but was a bit looking at the table where we had the rainbow-coloured things. Then she asked whether we have those....welll those.....those..... and asked whether she could look for them in the gay association house that was behind us. Hannes went there with her and the lady saw the bowl with condoms. She told that her son is gay and well, when he's like that then he should at least be protected and she worries about his healty and then took a bunch of condoms. Oh, but she chose condoms- they were all the same, just different texts on them, but she told that oh, those ones are better than the others. She was a nice fussy lady. Funny.


On Sunday, we went to botanic gardens with Hannes and that friend of his (let's call him the bee guy, will explain soon, why such codename).  They had a free-entrance there so we took a look. Well, botanic gardens as everywhere else, basically.



On that day I found out sth weird about Graz- they have public gardens where everybody can go and plant their things and grow them there and everybody can go and take them for free. E.g., I could go and take tomatoes from there for free. It's extremely weird to me- people trust each other so much here  that they aren't afraid of thugs coming and breaking the garden or stealing everything from there. This system has worked here for 5 years. I could go there myself and start growing plants. Weird. I still think I will do that on the balcony of our flat.... Even though one of those gardens is 5min walk from our flat. Still, the bee-guy who keeps 3 hives of his bees in that garden, told that we can go there whenever we wanted. I don't feel comfortable with such stuff- I don't grow anything there so I won't go and take anything from there- that's fair, I would say. Hannes agrees with me. Me as a typical Estonian can't just imagine such a level of trust actually working out. But it does.

 

Anyay, Graz is a weird place (in some ways) to live in.

I love the fact that they have tiny family-shops in the streets, though. Reminds me of England a bit.


Oh,and by the way, after I registered myself as the citizen of Austria, I got a welcome-package with many maps and booklets about Graz. Also a memory-stick with 2 movies about Graz on it.

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Viljandi Folk Festival and some other pictures from the time Hannes was here in July