Running.

Running is awesome when it goes well. Like yesterday. Running has always been my way to clear my head. Last week was a very bad week for me somehow, maybe that made my run yesterday so good. I ran one and a half rounds around the Alster and could have kept going! Only thing was that my knee got sore, and is still today. But it`ll be fine tomorrow. Then I`ll do it again.

*a*

Full moon.

Under you see Mönckebergstrasse when I came out from work today. There was a big full moon lighting the road.

I apologize for the bad quality, but I don't usually have my camera with me on working days, and I haven't switched to the smartphone era yet. I have a old Nokia that I don't even know the name of. Nova or something.

*a*

Slalom running.

I haven't ran for some time since it has been so cold, but today I thought I'd just dare the cold and go. It was definitely worth it and I am surprised it was such a good and easy run in this temperature. (Sun and about -5c). As I wrote yesterday, the Alster is packed on a beautiful Sunday, as was the case today too. But the run was awesome and I feel very happy and refreshed!

Also it is quite funny, that the run was that good since we yesterday had a poker night and had some drinks until morning hours. Sometimes it just works.

*a*

Poker night!

On the way to our poker night we stopped to take a picture of the beautiful night view of Hamburg. 

15 sec exposure time. 

Then we biked to our friends and the poker night began.

Miss Monopoly didn't find us pipes, which was the original plan, but she brought us moustaches instead! That was the best idea and we had so much fun in our roles for the night.

Look, I even won a lot!

It was a great evening and we ended up in the corner pub playing games and having a good time. Until the kneipe closed and we had to bike home in the record cold night for this year (-15c). That was COLD! 

But a funny night :)

*a*

Hamburg 4th of February

We had a nice walk over two hours today around the Aussenalster and Binnenalster. They are both covered with ice and snow but everywhere it is informed that the ice is not strong enough yet to carry people. Still there were some bold ones out on the ice. There was a police helicopter checking the situation on the Alster from time to time. I just read that 99 % of the Elbe is covered in ice and the ice breakers are on duty. Maybe we'll go have a look at them tomorrow.

M taking pictures.

M. and his camera.

Police helicopter checking the Alster

Binnenalster

Just picture yourself how this have looked at the time it happened. hahahaa!

There are tents on the other side. Bridge between Aussenalster and Binnenalster.

Ice.

Now we are heading for a poker and pipe night to Eppendorf!

Bis dann!

*a*

Sun.

The weather is amazing, the sun is shining from a blue sky here in Hamburg and we have a couple of minus degrees. I will be out as much as possible today! I am thinking of going for a run around the Alster, but it will be completely crowded there today. It always is on days like these. Sundays are the worst. Why can't the Alster be my little secret on a sunny weekend?

*a*

Cafè Paris

After work today I met up with B, a girl who I met when I came to Hamburg the first time, for my job interview. We didn't meet since, which is a shame! 

We met up at Cafè Paris, a beautiful café close to Rathaus markt. It is a French cafe with a high ceiling, painted artfully and looking like a vault. Again I was served partly in French, partly in German (like on Sunday). The staff is very professional, and the coffee good. I know from a earlier visit that also the French toast (sweet warm toast with cream and jam, "fattiga riddare" in Swedish") are very tasty and definitely worth trying. 

Café Paris is kind of fancy but a nice treat in the working week.

Nearly all tables were reserved when we came there, right after 17 o'clock on a Tuesday. I guess this states some quality?

*a*

mornings.

It is so nice to bike to work in the mornings since the sun is already rising over the city by the time I am out, and I don't need to bike to work in the dark anymore. 

I really should start taking the camera with me on my way to work because the Alster is so beautiful in the mornings, and the last couple of days the weather go so cold that the Alster is freezing! 

(And so are my gears on the bike as well as a matter of fact)

*a*

Afternoon at Caffe 42.

We went to Caffe 42 on Mühlenkamp for a afternoon coffee. It is a very nice, small bistro with a variety of wines, of coffees and cakes. The guests were mostly closer to their middle age and the atmosphere is a bit sophisticated, but not too much so that we wouldn't fit in. We spent the time enjoying the calm atmosphere and reading Hamburger Abendblatt (Hamburg newspaper) and the German version of ELLE. The waiter was apparently French, serving us saying "oui!" and "merci!".

*a*

Hamburg yesterday.

Yesterday we met up with a couple in the evening. They were a bit late and were still sitting in a restaurant when we were supposed to meet up, so M and I were looking for a bar to go have a drink while they were dining. We were down by Landungsbrücken in the Portugiesenviertel, the Portuguese quarter/block here in Hamburg. There are plenty of restaurants and bistros so we went into Restaurant Porto to sit by the bar to have a beer. It smelled so nice from the food, so we decided to have a tapas teller (tapas plate) with the beer. I have to say it was very nice and gemütlich, cozy.

After a while our friends came and joined in for a drink. Afterwards we walked up the hill and to the Empire Riverside Hotel to have a drink in the 20Up Skybar on the 20th floor, where the view over Hamburg is breath taking. I didn't take any pictures of the view so you may click here to see their homepage.

It was very full but I cannot do anything else than recommend it for their location and incredibly (pricy) tasty cocktails!

We were lucky to get a table pretty soon, but a table might be ideal to reserve in advance.

After the cocktail we still continued to Hörsaal on Reeperbahn, nice place with a DJ who looked like someone we know!

*a*

Hamburg today.

It is a winter day with fresh air in Hamburg.

*a*

Heart.

Did you ever think of that you need to train your heart?

 I thought about it in the context of obese people needing to exercise not to get an heart attack, but other than that not. 

I have always had some heart palpitations (is this actually the right word? I mean when your heart beats a bit faster and/or unevenly sometimes), nothing strange about that. I started getting them again, and one day at work my colleague (who studied sports somehow) said that it is normal when the heart is growing. Or shrinking for that matter. We came to the conclusion that for me it is growing because of training. 

Suddenly I realized that I have just thought of training as in training the muscles and perhaps my lungs. But of course you also train for your heart to be able to beat you trough your days and challenges! 

So obvious but forgotten.

*a*

ahja, note to the last one.

Today I am perfectly fine! I just came back from my run. Marathon training is going pretty well. :)

*a*

My first migraine. At least I hope so.

Yesterday during dinner I suddenly started having some strange dots in my vision and something that looked like spectrumes. Then it was like a half circle up on the right corner of my vision. Later I was looking at my right hand and only saw my thumb, pointer and the tips of the other fingers but the hand was gone. I was pretty scared since I have never experienced anything like this before and the ones who knows me know that I am very careful when there is anything with my eyes. 

I just went to bed to calm down.

This is how it looked for me, but only on the right upper side. Scary.
It is called migraine aura.

Here is the link to the picture, animated (I didn't read the text on the page, only looked at the picture).

Rest of the evening I had a headache, my eyes were hurting, my body was heavy and I just fell asleep and slept like a stone.

I didn't have a clue what it was, but this morning it hit me it was probably migraine. At least I hope so, because that is a rather "unserious" option. 

Do you have any experiences with migraine? Please let me know anything about it, I have never put my mind into it before and actually thought it was only a bad headache.

Now I know better.

*a*

The Lion King

This was my first real comercial big musical made with a proper budget. It was amazing! The songs, the costumes, the scenery (it that is the right word..)...the lot. It was a package of joy, beautiful art and imagination. 

Personally I was incredibly fascinated of the costumes and masks. For the Lion King (who dies) and Skaa (the evil one who is  a bad king for a while) they were made so, that when the actor is standing the mask is on top of his head, balancing there somehow, and when the actor leans forward the mask falls to the front illustrating the gesture a lion makes (at least in animations) when it leans forward to smell or look. Or in Disney movies when the animated creature leans forward to say something very important or whisper something scary. 

Not sure this text or description made any sense right now, but at least you know i really liked the masks. 

Thank you M for my birthday gift! puss! 

And thank you for making a very very nice lunch before the show.

*a*

Musical Saturday

Today I start the day with a run. We got up on time since M is going to his Swedish class. This is good, I have more free time being awake than sleeping, and therefore more time to do things. So today's to do is:

• vacuum clean
• run
• hopefully make it shopping
• use my Birthday gift from 2011, two musical tickets for König der Löwen! (The Lion King)

The Lion King has been in Hamburg for over 10 years already, and the extended it since it is such a success. Still today it is good to book the tickets three months in advance to get good places. 

I guess the musical has its own unique flair here in Hamburg too, since the musical is on the other side of  the Elbe, in the harbor, and you need to take a ferry to go over. 

Here you can listen to some of the songs. And under a clip from the musical. Enjoy!

As I am writing it started to snow/slush/rain. The weather has been very gray the past week. January. Therefore we also wanted to see the musical now. :)

Have a good weekend you all!

*a*

Food, food and matinè

M's parents were visiting us this weekend. We had dinner at a Italian restaurant around the corner on Friday and on Saturday we enjoyed a good dinner at our place, cooked by M's mum. 

After M's parents left we wanted to play a game, and since we don't have any we just took the card game and started playing memory.

Today we went to a matinè to watch "Verblendung", in English called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, based on the first book in the trilogy by Stieg Larsson. We got the invitation to work, and the invitation was from the Scandic Hotel Emporio, Visit Sweden, Stockholm's Visitors board and Deutsche Bahn (who actually didn't have that much to do with it at all). We had something to eat and drink before the movie and then enjoyed the movie.

Afterwards we were walking in the brilliant weather and had real Hamburger Hamburgers in Jim Block. They are in a totally different league than Mc Donalds (which just tastes like crap.)

On the way home we still saw the sun setting over the city...

Also Garfield came by, and he is nowadays quite cuddly!

Now I'll prepare myself for a new week...take care all!

*a*

Einkauf.

I have been looking for a tea pot for for some time and today I found one. It is nearly perfect, I would actually like it to be yellow or red, or dark blue. But white is also good :)

*a*

Training program.

I found a training program for how to train for a marathon and will use it as a guideline. I'll let you know it later, when I have modified it a bit and made it suitable for me. There will be a lot of running on this blog until April.

*a*

The Italian woman.

At my German course I met this Italian woman. For only having one course in German earlier, and being in Germany for only two months she spoke very good German. I asked her why she was here, she answered "to learn German". She speaks so happily and is so motivated. She is one of the people who makes you happy with her energy and being so outgoing. She explained that she has no future in Italy right now, especially not with her degree (Masters in Philosophy). I asked her why she specifically wanted to come to Germany and why she chose to study German and no other language. She answered that one of her biggest dreams is to read philosophers' texts in the original language, like Kant for instance. 

She just one day decided to leave Italy and has no clue how long she will be here, for now she will just learn the language.

Her spontaneity got me. And the lust of life, even when having no other possibility than leaving your own country for having a decent life.

*a*

My note to self.

Firstly I have to say that luckily I had a very nice and filling breakfast on Saturday:

After the nice breakfast I went out running around the Alster as training for the Hamburg Marathon. I took a key with me and kissed M bye, he was to go to help our landlord somewhere else. 

I ran through the terrible "Hamburger schietwetter" ("hamburg shitty weather" meaning rain, wind, grayness) and was soaked and sweaty when I came back home on our front yard. That's when I noticed I took the wrong key with me. I brought my work key for a Saturday run. 

*face palm and a deep sigh*

I went for a short run trying to figure out what to do since I didn't have a phone and had no clue when M was to be home again. 

I decided to try to get into our house and borrow someone's telephone and call our landlord, since I don't know M's number by heart. ( bad girlfriend I know.) 

So I rang the bell for my first choice neighbor- not home, 

second choice- not home, 

third choice - home. 

He opened the door and I explained myself in German. He says he doesn't have our landlord's phone number. (AS IF). (I anyway did not like them, now even less). 

I walked up knocking on every door in our house and finally one nice neighbor was home and lent me her iPhone (not that nice to lend to someone who is completely sweaty, so it was an extremely nice gesture from her). 

It showed M was to be gone still for 45 minutes and as a joke he said "just run one more round". I spoke with the nice neighbor a bit more, thanked her and went down to outweigh what to do. I would't sit in our staircase for nearly an hour. Outdoor I would be cold if I walked...so I decided to run one more round.

So for all of you wondering how to finish 20 km on a Saturday, just forget the key or take your work key with you. Worked for me! 

Ahja, and the note:

*a*

And it was.

Legendary. Our pizza evening that is. My favorite-ex (flatmate) and the Danish girl I have met in my German class came over for our pizza evening. My favorite-ex (flatmate) brought the dough and red wine, while M and I bought the filling and white wine. The Danish girl brought us a rose in a small pot. That was very cute!

We made three pizzas, here we started eating the second one.

After 2,5 pizzas also my favorite ex's current flatmate came over. 

The evening was not only about pizza and friends. We also wanted to eat all the chocolate decorations we had on our Christmas three!

After some hanging around we played some Mariokart on my Supernintendo. This made the evening even more legendary. It is very amusing to see people play it the first time in their lives! *kihihiiiii*

Later on we found my small four in a row game. The Danish girl became unbeatable.

The evening was incredibly nice and we are lucky to have found beautiful people like my favorite ex and the Danish girl here. 

 I hope we have more of these evenings in the future!

*a*

Thursday.

Good day at work and I am in a good mood. Even if the weather s*cks outside. I still bike to work. :)

Tomorrow is Friday- Pizza Friday with my Favourite Ex and the Dane R. It will be legendary.

*a*

I am so bad in writing during holidays.

And I can`t even catch up after the holidays. I am so sorry! It feels like there has been so much going on during our visit in Finland, then we came home and I went straight to work and then there was New Year and celebrations and hanging out with good people and the first day of the year 2012 had to be a "resting day" after being a bit (well quite) funny- as M put it.

Now it feels so nice to lie here in our newish sofa, with my legs in M's lap, under his warm laptop and listen to good music and read blogs. Not a bad option to German class, which I thought was today but as a happy surprise the doors to the building were closed when I went there.

Under a some pictures from our Christmas in Finland visiting my family and friends. I know it was last year and I am late- I AM SO SORRY!!

Ekenäs. It looks more pretty when you don't live there.

This was the only beautiful sunny and snow coated day. And we enjoyed it. After this we went to the woods to get a Christmas three.

Not bad pictures taken from a car drivin over a bumpy road.

I did not even need to work on these pictures (partly I haven't had time). 

Also M was enjoying it.

Mum finally taught me how to bake karelian pierogies.

This is how they ended up. I found they were good and not tooo ugly for a first timer. Mum was not happy with the rise filling (that she made)

Traditional Christmas Breakfast: Milk rice or rice pudding or milk-rice pudding. How ever you wish to call it.

Loads of good food, of course!

Christmas Eve 

Here one of my nieces is opening her Christmas gift from us: a small can with a mussel in it and a pearl growing in the mussel. She had to open it and take the pearl out to be able to put it in a necklace. A girl her age is quite fun to watch doing that, heheheeee

I am a bit speechless and happy about my Christmas gift.

There was also a storm, that blew a huge pine in our garden. Like 20 cm from the garage, talk about luck!

I was actually also helping in the kitchen. At least a little bit.

M is playing with the kids. 

It was a wonderful Christmas. Now I'll watch some Desperate Housewives dubbed to German.

Talk to you later!

*a*