Spring?

It has got quite warm the last week. I think spring is coming. Or I hope... So all the winter stuff can go to the closet. But we will see...yesterday it was really warm and quite sunny. I went jogging in the morning. Afterwards Miguel called that they were in the neighborhood so we had lunch together at "Burritos y quesadillas". Txell and Thomas joined us and we had good laugh together. Later on I wanted to bike downtown to look for some new glasses. But when walking with T & T we stopped by one shop with glasses and guess what?!?!? I ordered new ones!! They looked quite cool and quite dark frame. Hope I won't regret buying them when I pick them up on Tuesday. T&T got some sunglasses so everybody was happy :-)
In the evening we went to eat at Zinken in Altona. This is a new favorite place run by students. They learn how to cook and run a restaurant and the concept is really great. The food is good and cheap. We went there with T&T´s friends: Ana and Tino. Then we went to "Blue Bar/House" (my 2nd time there) with great music and too good Caipirihnas.... It was one too much yesterday ;-)
We had much energy and danced a lot! It was fun! Ana took some pictures so hope I can update this blog later on with some of them.
Sunday - a lazy day. Hope I can manage to do some sports in the evening. Quite tough week is ahead. Tuesday - Moneybrother and Eskobar concert. Friday noon we are going skiing to Czech. Well....hopefully we can ski. The conditions seem quite poor but there should be at least some artificial snow. We'll see.

Double espresso...

I went to Brasov last Thursday. Left work around 15, arrived to Brasov after 01.00. Tough! Anyway, on Friday Alex and I went downtown, walked around, had lunch at Bistro del Arte (although I was sure the place name was Galeria or Piano Bar). Then we went back home, changed and went to Christer's place for a drink, and afterwards to have dinner at Casa Hirscher. It was great to see Christer again! We had some rosé wine (Christer will be leaving Romania soon so he has to empty his cupboards). We talked and laughed and then we went for a dinner. It was good we booked a table earlier! We had a good Moldavian wine (Chardonnay) as usual, good food and afterwards we ordered a bottle of Pinot Noir (Cavarelului if my spelling is right....). But since the red one was too warm, they put the "caraffe" outside. Well it was cold (and snowing like hell) but it was a good idea to chill it down.


Afterwards we decided to go to a pub I've never been to this place earlier. Nice but way too smoky...( I have to tell you that even Germany finally introduced smoking prohibition in public places). Over there we had some more drinks. It was nice!
Little bit hard on Saturday morning but since the weather was nice and sunny Alex and I went for a walk in the forest. It was great: snow and sun and some minus degrees.


You can even see this nice snow angel which I made. Later on we did some grocery shopping and I had to get my coffee at this café in the shopping mall. So I tried with my Romanian and asked for double espresso. I mean, how hard can it be??? Well, it can. I got 2 coffees. I mean espresso turned to be in a size of normal coffee. But since I asked double - I got 2 cups. And Alex doesn't drink coffee :-) I drank almost all of that so you can imagine how speeded up I was afterwards. Oh yeah! With that I had a sugar bomb - a big piece of baklava. Mums!
Anyway, the evening was dinner and some DVD movies. I left on Sunday (super weather for skiing, sun and lots of snow) and it was good that I ordered the taxi earlier. It took us more than 1,5 hr to get to Busteni (normally it takes about 45 min). The reason? - 6 policemen steering the traffic in the town. I can tell you, they only contributed to the huge traffic!!
Back in the apatment in HH at 23. Puh....
Monday, back to the grey sky and 100% humidity. Can't wait for the weekend...

Valentine's day. Alla hjärtansdag. Walentynki.

A new level of the German course has started. Now it is "mittel". Soon I can start writing here in German. NOT!
Anyway, on the picture you can see at least some of the people from the previous course. From the top left: Tamsin (New Zealand; she is continuing the course now), small Gloria (Peru), Victor (Romania), Gert (Estonia), Andre (Brasil). From the left (bottom): Gosia (Poland), Handan and me. Vit (Czech) is missig. Today we've got 4 new guys in the course: 2 from Mexico, 1 Palestinian and 1 Japanese. We are only 4 girls and 8 guys! Wow!

Tomorrow is the Valentine's day. And my dad's birthday - Tati! Wszystkiego najlepszego! 100 lat!!
And I'm flying to Romania in the afternoon. For a longer weekend. It's gonna be great!
Big hug to all of you for the V-day!

Super nice weekend

February and +15 degrees and super sunny weekend. Amazing!!! It will probably change soon but this weekend was really really nice! On Saturday - as usual training (jogging was great in this weather), groceries, cleaning, etc. Afterwards meeting Guillem who was taking a walk with little Nadia. We even ended up in Eimsbuttel market and saw some politician who will be a candidate in the Hamburg-municipality-elections. Of course we had no clue who the guy was but he was walking there surrounded by a crowd of people, giving away some roses. Well, we didn't get any...
Afterwards I met with Handan in Altona. We had big shopping plans but actually didn't buy much (not me anyway). Later in the evening we watched Babel. It was high time we saw it. A very good movie but not a fell-good-one...

On Sunday at 12 we had brunch with all "expats". Our international gang here in Hamburg. We were 13 people and 2 babies. Everybody brought some food with her/him. But as it happens in such situations everybody brings so much food that we could hardly eat all of that. But it was soooo good! You can see yourself on the pictures. It was a beautiful day with a very nice company and hopefully it will become a tradition to have such brunches at least once per month.

Första semlor i mitt liv...

Oj! Just discovered that I'm writing in Swedish... OK, tomorrow is the "semla" day. Fettisdagen. I mean normally, if I were in Sweden, I would have already eaten few of them, but since I'm in Germany I don't have this luxury :-( So I've decided to bake them. And my mom would probably say now: "Even I can have fiasco when making a yeast cake". And that means something... But I decided to give a try. And guess what???? It didn't really work!!!! Grrrr!!! I've just had a Skype discussion with Dan how I can make them grow. Cause after 35 min close to the radiator the dough was still like when I put it in the bowl. So then I decided to put it close to the oven and it grew just a little... And instead of 15 pcs like it should be, I just got 7. As on the picture. Oh well. Tomorrow I will buy some bread rolls (of course without cardammom?? kardemumma alltså) and mix mandelmassa with that. Hope it will be good. Handan, Jenny and Johan (2 other Swedes who work here) are coming tomorrow.
Have a good day everybody and have a good mumsig semla for me.
Hugs

Finally February!

It's been a while since I wrote anything here...
Did you also have this feeling that January would never end??? I mean I started working on the 6th or 7th Jan so it was actually a shorter month but it really felt like the 40-day-long one. Puffff... now it is over. Finally!!!

The week was crazy at work, and also outside of work. But now it's Friday and the weekend has started. Skönt!
The biggest event this week is that Tania and I bought flight tickets to Corsica for Easter season! We would leave some days before Easter and I'm really looking forward to this trip!!! It is gonna be fun! Beautiful nature and hopefully nice weather. Great company is already fixed!

Magnus gave some tip about upcoming concerts in Hamburg: Jens Lekman in March (too bad I cannot go - this weekend I'll go skiing to Czech Rep.) and MONEYBROTHER! Yuppi!!! They are coming here again (Handan and I went to their concert in October last year). We will try to convince some friends to come along. Jenny (another Swedish girl at our company is interested). It's gonna be fun!

Since next week is "Fettisdagen" I've decided to make "semlor". I forgot to eat some "paczki" yesterday (donuts) but semlor are much more tasty. Yummi! The Swedish connection from work is supposed to come and enjoy this good stuff.

Have a good weekend!
Karo