GO PINK / Friends will be Friends / Pro Europe

Time passed fast since my last blog entry and much has happened. I moved to Innsbruck (not into the apartment I told ya before as I couldn't come to an agreement with the landlord 'bout the furniture) into a shared apartment in an old villa near the old town.
When I look out of the window of my room I can see the Nordkette with it's snow covered mountain tops. My flatmate is Italian. I don't see him that often 'cause he works all day during the week and I work at the weekends.
I painted the walls of my room pink! Looove it and always wanted to have pink walls. Did I ever tell you that my catamaran is pink too? During my schooldays I was bullied for having pink things and liking them so I stopped buying clothes and stuff in pink and used other colors instead. Today everyone knows that I'm a little crazy, so I can do/wear/have whatever I want and people just think 'Oh, the freaky girl with the pink boat' and I don't give a fuck. GO PINK!

We still have a free room, but I hope that this nice girl from London moves in so we would be a pretty international community!
Speaking 'bout international communities I should mention CouchSurfing as a great (if not the best) way to make new friends. After I left my sister's place and arrived in Innsbruck, I had no apartment and paying for a hotel room when you've just quit your shitty job isn't really something you wanna do so I stayed with a couchsurfer for three days 'til I could move into the apartment. He took me to the Irish Pub at Maria-Theresien-Straße (Limerick Bill's ) where he introduced me to his friend Susi who became my best friend here. Due to the fact that we both like beer, we discovered an even better Irish Pub in Innsbruck called The Galway Bay. Since I came to Innsbruck I've never been alone. I met tons of new people, all nice, spontaneous and special in their own way.
I sometimes miss my friends from Dortmund though. We're connected via Facebook but that's not the same as a phone call or a meeting for coffee. Will my friends still be my friends when I go back to Dortmund someday? Sometimes I feel like I lost many of them when I decided to leave last year.

After a month I ran out of money. Innsbruck is beautiful but also very expensive, so I did some funny jobs to survive. Packed boxes at a warehouse, worked as a barista several times, played guitar in the streets and worked as a German and Physics tutor until I found an interesting job at a security service where I can work at night and on the weekends, which is perfect for me 'cause I can take classes at University. I started studying law. Not only to get a degree and maybe start a career as a lawyer or something, but simply to not get completely dumb (which is easy here because you can go out and get wasted every night...)

As summer is slowly approaching (I'm sitting at the University's library right now in a short skirt and T-shirt and it's warm and sunny outside) I miss sailing a lot! Next weekend I'll bring my catamaran to Prien am Chiemsee in Bavaria. The lake is just a 1 hour car ride away so I can go sailing whenever I have time on the weekends. Still I miss the Adriatic. I will visit Rovinj/Croatia for SpringBreak Europe. Next year, when Croatia hopefully will finally join the EU spending more time there will be easier! I feel more European than German by now. For people like me who are traveling a lot the EU makes it easy to feel at home everywhere within it. We can go wherever we want, live, learn, study and work wherever we want and pay with the currency we're used to almost everywhere. There are practically no language barriers as in my generation (and every following) everyone speaks English and if you live in a foreign country, you learn their language pretty fast.
One should thing it's great to have such opportunities! But in these days the EU critics get more and more support by dissatisfied EU residents. The financial crisis within the Euro-Zone caused not only trouble in Greece, it also brings questions about the future of the European Union itself.
Greece is insolvent, we all've been knowing that since 2001, but now that their neighbors within the EU are forced to give more and more money for a country whose government was widely known for bad economic management for ages and lets their people now pay for it, people get the dangerous idea that we would be better off without the EU. One could say the danger of nationalism is slowly rising (even if that might seem a little over the top...). People are naturally egoistic. They believe themselves as a part of a nation. Of course they care for those around, but only as long as they don't feel they would maybe carry a loss off. They don't wanna give up a bit of their sovereignty to support the European Parliament so that they would have more power to act while having to deal with issues like one country's financial problems.

As always we'll see what happens...I should go back to my public law studies. That's why I came to the library today...note to myself: learn! Exams are coming!

Would you set a job over your right of personal privacy?

Anyone who'd be asked this would automatically say "Of course not!"
But in many cases this just isn't true. I myself thought that giving up my right of privacy for a short amount of time was surely worth the money I could earn on the job I was offered.
It should've only taken two month to realize just how mistaken this thought was!

I worked (as you already know if you've read my blog before) at a hotel and - as I can tell - one of the good ones. This high class four star superior gave me a room in their staff accommodation. Unfortunately I had to share this small room with one of my colleagues. In the summer during my time at the sailing school in Northern Germany I shared a room with three other girls so I thought that sharing a room with just one other girl couldn't be that hard, but other than at the sailing school, where we all got along very well, at the hotel (which is somewhere in the middle of nowhere) this particular colleague I had to share the room with turned out to be pretty annoying.
She wasn't interested in anything but stupid TV shows, always left the toilet lid up, for some crazy reason only she knew she hid the toilet paper and the trash bags in her wardrobe (which I had no right to open - not even for toilet paper - because it was her private wardrobe), she never removed the drops of her liquid make up from the sink and always put the empty toilet paper rolls on my part of the bathroom shelf.
At some point I decided to refuse to clean up. From that moment on, living there was pure horror!
She didn't talk to me except phrases like "Did you clean up?" and "You have to clean up, I won't do it!" and sharing a room with someone who never talks to you makes you feel really uncomfortable.
She watched everything I did but never said a word.
One evening the argumentation about the cleaning reached its peak.
"Clean up or I'll go and tell our boss!" was what she said. Pardon? How childish is she??? And I was like "Yo, if you think it's dirty, clean up yourself."
On this night she disappeared from our room and I, knowing that she was gone, finally could clean up the room and the bathroom first thing in the morning.
I should have known that this wasn't the end. Of course she came back. Not talking, not showing any sign of expression on her face. She talked to our boss, threatened her with quitting the job and I was forced to leave the room and take a room (which I would have had to pay for) somewhere else.
I quit the job, packed my bags, moved out, went to the city, got a new job right on the same day and next weekend I'll move into my brand new, full furnished apartment in the city center.

I will never again take a job where I have to share my room with someone. I can play guitar, watch TV, talk on the phone and take a shower whenever I want without being spied on by someone who never talks and I'll never again find drops of liquid make up in my bathroom!
Right now I'm sitting at the Café Frauentor in Weimar/Germany where I visit my sister and I'm asking myself how I could ever take this job at the hotel.
No money in the world could ever be worth giving up my right of privacy. Life isn't only about working for a living. It should also be about living, fun, friends, loving, music and all the stuff that makes you feel comfortable, 'cause this life is the only one we have.

You set your imaginary STANDARD but we're not POOR

And that's exactly how it is! Did yall follow the latest news about the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded France and Austria?

When S&P downgraded two previously AAA rated European countries last Friday, the whole eurozone was shocked. Along with 7 other European countries France and Austria, two of the currency zone's six triple A rated countries, lost their top grade. This led to a downgrade of the rescue fund EFSF this afternoon. To obtain future independence from further ratings the eurozone countries try to launch  the permanent rescue fund ESM till the middle of 2012 which would have a basic capital of 100 billions of €.

Not only I have to agree with the statement France's finance minister François Baroin made when he said that "It's not the rating agencies that dictate the policies of France." It aren't the rating agencies that should dictate the policies of Europe either!
The credit rating agency Standard & Poor's is at least - like the other two big rating agencies Moody's and Fitch - an American company and even if they proclaim not to do it they all stick to the only financial system they know best: the American financial system with it's all-power-to-the-bank policy. One should think that someday, even they will learn that they can't force everyone else to adapt their political views. S&P's attack on European politics is seen as a big affront by most Europeans including myself.
So people, what do you think? Please let me know!

2012 - The view is great!

A great view and a good coffee. What else could I want? This photo was taken at the Café 360°. I think I told you about that café before, hm? Been there yesterday after a long discussion at the university regarding my school certificate.
This year began with much work and even more snow.

In Fiss everything is white. I had to work on New Years Eve so I couldn't celebrate like everyone else. After my work shift ended, my colleague Karin and I went to Hackls, an apres ski bar in the center of Fiss, where we spent the rest of the night. I came back home the next morning - completely wasted.
For me the new year started like the last year ended: lousy.
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, drunk, fell on my ass on the way home and came to the conclusion that life sucks!
The last year was a disaster. I quit my job for sailing, went to Croatia and later back to Germany. I had no money. I decided to leave Germany for a winter job in Austria and came here. I loved and lost - again! The guy I met at the end of summer season (remember?) left me for no reason... well... at least no real reason. Said something like "I don't have feelings for you any more" blahblah... we didn't even see each other again after he left me in Glücksburg. Sometimes I think that maybe I never find someone who likes me enough to stay. Maybe I'll be alone for the rest of my life.
Christmas came and I was also alone. Had to work and couldn't see my family and friends.
And this year didn't start any better. A few days ago I had to find out that one of my nice lovely colleagues told our supervisor that I took a 40 minutes lunch break but only wrote 20 minutes into the work time report. Should I ever find out who that was... I'd definitely be the less nicest version of me.

I'll just wait and see what's coming next so I must be right saying that the view on 2012 is great: It can only get better.