As I’m nearing the end of my year abroad it’s becoming slightly harder to bring myself round to writing these blogs. I’ll only have a couple more and then it’ll all be over 😥 But in the meantime I’ll just enjoy the rest of my time in what’s now sunny, hot Hamburg and update you on what I’ve been up to in the past month.
Start of July I took a trip back to my lil town in France for a long weekend. How I managed to fly from Hamburg to Frankfurt to Lyon and back again without having my passport checked I do not know. Talk about being hot on international security!! Pretty much doesn’t exist in European airports, but France are right on it at the Italian border on the trains as I remember. Another shocking part of this trip – there’s still snow on top of the mountains in JULY!! I’d never been to the Alps in summer so that was quite unexpected. Twas a lovely lovely weekend anyway.
Snow 😀
A week later my family were all abroad. The parents and sister jetted off to Mexico without me!! But I had an amazing weekend with my nan and aunties in Hammy B. I think the sun affected us slightly when doing a load of sightseeing in on bus and on boat with a whole load of containers (private joke) coz we had some rather hilarious moments and perhaps a couple inappropriate quotes worth noting:
1) “The eagles have landed” – probs shouldn’t have said that one in Germany
2) After whipping out another pair of glasses – “They’re my sightseeing glasses”
3) “If there was a war tomorrow, oops probably shouldn’t mention that here” – strike 2
4) “I saw Nelson Mandela in Bedford outside Debenhams 20 years ago” – what a classic from my nan 😀
All round we had a nonstop weekend of laughter and I got my yearly dose of sunburn 😀
Work-wise I have had a very exciting month of cinema film previews. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to say some of the titles or write anything about them because I had to sign something saying I couldn’t until they are released or it’s close to release date. However I shall explain my incidents with airport security at the cinema. Yet again quite a shock. Normally it’s just the “Please turn off mobile phones”, but this one week was rather progressively getting more and more extreme.
Monday – unnameable film – bag check & metal detector over the body
Tuesday – Smurfs 2 – hand in electronic equipment, bag check & body scanner
Wednesday – Camille redouble – nothing (the French are quite easygoing as ever)
Thursday – Das kleine Gespenst – no problem just a kids film
Friday – Wolverine – hand in all belongings & airport body scanner
Preview 😛
Wolverine was one week before the official release and in this cinema called the Savoy, so when I read the location I already thought this is gonna be quite plush. When I arrived we had to hand in everything, go through a body scanner and then decide where to sit in this theatre-like cinema with seats that when you sit in your feet unexpectedly go up and you go flying back! Someone else sat down next to me and I saw that her feet were higher than mine so obviously I tried to look for some form of recliner/push back in my seat without looking incredibly weird bashing on a chair. To no avail I gave up and waited for the film to start in my comfy indoor sunlounger. Just before the film started, however, a couple of americans were behind me and they were also discussing the feet-in-the-air-thing. Two seconds later I went flying backwards and my feet shot up!! Turns out there was some form of table behind my chair that had created a kind of wedge. Well now in complete comfort after the adrenalin rush disappeared the film started and I love Hugh Jackman even more now.
So a couple other films which I can name and I totally recommend are “Behind The Candelabra” and “Turbo”. Now I know “Turbo” is an animation film about snails, but literally it was so good. I had fun and was laughing a lot. It became even more hilarious when I wrote a review about it and was basically adding snail into any word going. It’s even better in German when so many adjectives and words begin with ‘S’ and you can just add ‘Schnecke’ onto the front. “Ein spannendes Schneckenabenteuer auf dem Weg zu Selbstschneckenentdeckung” – an exciting snail adventure on the path to self-snail-discovery.
I’ve also been printed in the magazine again for my interview I did with Nick Reynolds.
My interview!!
And this week I was at a very plush hotel at a press conference for the series “Borgia” doing joint interviews with one of the girls from work with the author and one of the main actors Mark Ryder who refers to uni as Shottingham. A little reminder of ’home’.
After our interview with Mark Ryder 😀
I’ve now become a regular at my local coffee shop – they remember my order!! They may not be alcoholic drinks but I still have a local. I seem to remember being told in the pre-departure meetings to get a local. That’s a tick next to that box.
Another couple of lovely things that have happened to end on: I was in town doing a little bit of shopping to feed my cravings I’d been having for so long and the World Triathletes cycled past me – Great Britain was in the lead 😀 I don’t know how it ended but that was quite cool. And lastly we’ve just had our summer work party which was at a very nice restaurant outside in the lovely summer heat. I could definitely get used to this 😀
Anyways that’s all for this month. Tschüss mwah xx
Funtimegal Abroad 