Happy Birthday to me

Well I’m sitting here watching the Rangers lose right now, so I’m not sure how coherent this whole post will sound - but I’m frustrated with they way they are playing and need to get my mind off of a possible playoff meltdown.  So anyways - I’ve had an unbelievably eventful last two weeks and now I’m back in Hamburg where I feel so comfortable.  How did I get back here to the city that I left two weeks ago, you ask? - well let me explain to you what I’ve been up to.

I left Hamburg on the 24th of September and went to Asturias, Spain to visit the friends that I made here in Hamburg.  I had a free weekend with nowhere really to stay and so I thought it would be a good chance to visit the friends that I had a great time in Hamburg with.  They picked me up in Santander, showed me a LITTLE bit of that city and then took me to a city called Llanes where we took a few cool pictures of the coast in North Spain.

As you can tell from this picture - I was the only one happy to be there haha.  Anyways, they showed me Llanes, the scenery, and bulls of the area.  It really is a beautiful area with the escalating hillside, mountains and ocean all so close to each other.  That night they took me to Oviedo which from what I understand is the capital of Asturias.  We ate at a place that was an all you can eat and drink for €10 and ya, that was pretty amazing.  The next day Sara (tan jacket above) had us all over for a lunch-ish meal with a bunch of her family over and it was a good time.  That night we went out in their city and I was up early to catch a train to Madrid the next morning.  From Madrid I took a flight to Frankfurt where I got in at about 2 in the morning and found a hostel to crash the night at.  I spent the night in a room with 10 other people and was up last to eat breakfast and off to the airport to catch a flight to Ireland to meet up my dad and my uncle Ray.

I got into Dublin and took a bus to finally see a family member, and it was so good to see my Dad again.  We got to the B&B and I said a quick hello to my uncle before changing and going out for some dinner and my first Guinness in Ireland.  Let me just go off on a tangent really quick.  Guinness in Dublin (where it is brewed) is about 110% better than anywhere else in the world.  I am not a fan of Guinness back home, but I could not get enough of the Guinness here in Ireland.  A bartender told us that Guinness does not travel well and the farther away you are from Dublin, the worse the taste of Guinness is.  

Anyways, we got up the next morning and headed off to south Ireland (around Cork) where we checked into another B&B and went off to play at Old Head Golf Links - I really can’t even explain how amazing of a course this was, but maybe if you click that link and look at some of my pictures, it will give you an idea of just how incredible it was. 

Now I hadn’t played golf in the two months since I left home, and I was feeling pretty good about my game before I took off for Europe - but those first few swings felt so weird, and all the mental aspects of the game that I had memorized before every swing - well, I had forgotten everything haha.  So yes, my first day was to go out and play a course that is on a peninsula - suffice to say, my golfing was terrible.  BUT, I honestly could care-less.  I told myself, ‘Lance, just look around and try to take in the place that you’re playing at right now, there is no way you can even begin to get upset.’  So, I didn’t.  It was sad to finish the round that day, but we went back into town and had an incredible dinner complete with some Lamb and bottles of Wine, and went to sleep happily. 

Before, I talk about us leaving the city, I’m going to go on tangent #2 and talk about how I needed to find some slacks to play golf in.  Well, we asked the hotel clerk where I could buy some slacks - he said that we probably couldn’t find a place in the city that sold slacks and that there was only one place that sold pants of any kind.  So, we walked around the city and stopped at two more clothing stores that looked like they would sell pants, but no - each one said that there was only one place that sold pants.  Anyways, we went to the ONLY pants store in the whole city and guess how many different types of pants they had…. 3.  The only pants store in the city had 3 different types of pants.  So the ones that you see me wearing above were one of 3 different pants sold in the entire city.  Haha, unbelievable.

OK, so that was that.  The next day we got up and went to play Portmarnock just outside of Dublin.  They play the Irish Open here and the course was definitely pretty difficult.  There was a ridiculous amount of wind, but I played better that day and even par’d the #1 Handicap hole.  I thought I could just be finished after that, but we had a long day of golf ahead of us.  It was really a fun day and after another night of Guinness testing, we got up the next morning to go and play The European Club.  There was honestly not one other person that was playing on the course that day, and it really was another beautiful day.  We did get a few minutes of some legit Ireland rain, but hey, you can’t expect to play golf Ireland without some rain.  Both of these courses were supposedly rated in the top 5 courses in Ireland, and I definitely have never played such awesome courses in my life. 

That was that.  We had another day where we toured around the Jameson distillery in Dublin, and then I had to get up at 4 the next morning to catch a plane to Frankfurt.  I got to Frankfurt, picked up my luggage, bought a train ticket and went off to Detmold, Germany.  I got into Detmold exhausted and didn’t do too much before going to sleep excited about starting a job the next day.  (yes, I know this post is incredibly long, but hopefully you have nothing else to do today than to read about my life)

I got up the next day to start my month long training at Jowat without any idea of what my job would consist of.  Well, I found out soon enough.  I got to work and was shown up to the sales floor, introduced to a few people, and sat down in an office to talk to an employee for what I thought was going to be a few minutes.  Well, an hour later of him talking in German about what his job consist of, I thought to myself - ok, so when is he going to tell me what I am going to be doing.  Well 3 more hours passed by of him showing me all about his job and the things that he does in German and in English.  Lunch came and I thought to myself, what the heck is going on right now??  Well, I spent the next 3 hours after lunch with another person who explained to me what HE did.  I finally asked, ‘So is this what i am going to be doing everyday?’ - and basically he said yes, my job would be to watch 2 people everyday and try and learn what they did.  So my job was to sit for 7 hours a day and try to figure out what these people were saying in German and English haha.

My birthday was on Wednesday and I honestly felt so so alone for the first time since I’ve been here in Germany.  I really just had no idea what to do, and I was completely dreading the next 4 weeks that I would have these unimaginably boring days. By this time, the employees had given up speaking to me in German and began speaking in only English.  I saw no purpose in the rest of my time here, sitting for 7 hours a day and listening to someone talk in English.. in Germany.   I called my Dad on Skype and well, in case you didn’t know, I have the best Dad in the world - and he told me that I could go back to Hamburg to study until the middle of December.  That had to be the best Birthday present that anyone could have given me. 

The people of Detmold were nice, and so was the city.  I took a few pictures of the two famous landmarks they have, and I think I would have actually enjoyed my time there if the job would have been ANY different..

So anyways.  I booked my ticket for Friday, packed up again - and took off for Hamburg to go and stay with a friend for the weekend before I moved into my apartment again.  My friends spent the weekend trying to make it seem like I was celebrating my birthday and I really did have an awesome time back in Hamburg in this huge city that I’ve become to feel so comfortable in.  There has been amazing weather since I’ve been back and I have yet to see a cloud in the sky.  Today me and Stephanie went to the Altona Rathaus Platz and sat on the grass, enjoyed some sun and I continued to read ‘The Pillars of the Earth’, which I just started and can not put down. 

Ok - so tomorrow I will go and begin classes again, and I’m hoping that another two and half more months of Hamburg German classes will be good for me.  I have a tentative plan for the rest of my time here in Europe, but like I’ve told so many people - you can try and plan out how you want your life to go - but God is the only person who really knows what will happen in your life.  So with that, I hope I have some good things to blog about later this week, and again thanks for reading this short novel that I’ve written.  Until next time, God Bless!

10 October 2010 · Comments