You Can Call Me El

This evening I finally watched The Theory of Everything , the film starring the adorably freckled (and now Oscar-winning) Eddie Redmayne in the role of Professor Stephen Hawking. I'd been putting it off for a while for two reasons: firstly, because I wanted to have the time to be able to appreciate it properly, and secondly, because I knew I would cry a lot throughout the film, partly due to Eddie Redmayne of course, but mostly due to the utterly tragic nature of motor neurone disease, and it therefore had to be watched on an unemotional day. Stephen Hawking's astonishing intellect, global fame, and incredible defeat of predictions made about his life expectancy all combine to make him a truly intriguing person. In terms of his disease, t he concept of the body physically degenerating while the mind remains intact is simultaneously horribly fascinating and the most terrifying thing imaginable. This of course makes him an even more compelling person, as people are who have fac...

Good day to you, dear readers! I hope the weather where you are is better than it is here - pelting rain with a spot of thunder and lightning at frequent intervals. (Although I am actually very much enjoying it as only a warm, safe person who doesn't have to leave the comfort of a roof over their heads again that day can.) Anyway, t his weekend's trip to the Saxon Switzerland with the delightful Sarah was one of the best I've spent in Germany. Let me tell you all about it!! Pirna Our first stop was Pirna, a small town just outside Dresden that's very close to the Saxon Switzerland. Let me state now that I don't know whether it's the Saxon Switzerland or just Saxon Switzerland. The German is no help, and on top of that is much harder to say: Sächsische Schweiz [ zekzisher shv-eye-tz ]. Pirna main square Pirna was tiny and adorable and sunny and full of conveniently located cafes selling ice cream. After a stop to revive ourselves with iced coffee/iced cho...

This week it was unusually difficult to force myself to sit down and start writing a blog post. I think the reluctance stems from the busyness of the last few days, which have involved  a large amount of Things That Have To Be Done But Are Absolutely Boring. Unlike nearly all of the time, therefore, I found myself having to actually stop messing around on the internet and start being a productive member of society. None of the things are at all interesting to blog about, but fortunately last weekend I went on a trip to Magdeburg and Erfurt with Zoe, so there is still stuff to say after all. I have, by the way, resolved to reduce the length of my posts. Not having a word limit means I can merrily ramble for pages and pages, making them marathons for you poor (but, I can only assume, dedicated) readers. So from now on: no longer than 800 words! A challenge. Magdeburg In my German class at the Volkshochschule there was a really nice guy who had lived in Magdeburg before com...

Hello friends! Welcome to my post-Easter holiday blog, in which I will mainly enumerate ways in which I have been incompetent and unwilling to accept the bleak realities of life. I got back to Chemnitz at 1 this morning, which is the first instance of my lax attitude to responsibility. Having booked several weeks ago to come back on Saturday, I somehow convinced myself that I had in fact booked the flight for Sunday, almost certainly because I wanted to believe I had an extra day at home. Despite the fact that Ryanair does not fly to Leipzig on Sundays or Mondays, hence the need to come back on Saturday, this pretence lasted until Sunday afternoon when I checked my boarding pass on the Ryanair app (would recommend, by the way - no more extortionate printing fees from the public library to print out boarding passes), and it said 'flights done'. Ah. Fortunately, this was before we had left to go to the airport, and even more fortunately, I had no lessons on Monday and only one ...

A few days ago I was asked to write an A4 page about myself for the school. I couldn't work out if it's for the magazine or some other kind of brochure or just to mock and judge my choice of picture of myself, but either way I resented it. Despite this being a very normal thing to be asked to do it is never fun or easy to write about yourself like that, and while I can't get enough of it here on my blog, on my own terms , enforced self-obsession is not quite the same. I combated this problem by making it Fun, just really incredibly Super Fun, and incorporating as many song lyrics as possible into the text. I thought I'd post it here, as I'm not doing a proper blog this week; I came home for Easter, so I'll be spending all my time praising the good lord, eating chocolate eggs, and having eight portions of every meal because I didn't have to cook it for myself. Enjoy, and Happy Chocolate Day! Hi, I’m Eleanor and I’m the English Language Assistant at Agric...

This weekend, other than counting down the very few days left until Going Home For Easter, I went to my tandem partner's house. Having accidentally followed the advice of year abroad people and formed a real friendship with a German, Katrin and I now do actual friend stuff like play games and watch films and bake together. Amazing!! Katrin had threatened when we planned the weekend that we would go on a bike ride, at which my heart filled with dread; my bike in Chemnitz is the heaviest and most uncomfortable that I have ever ridden. This is of course still five thousand times better than having no bike at all, so I try to keep the complaining to a minimum, but the thought of going on a bike ride with Katrin who did a cycling marathon of ONE HUNDRED KILOMETRES last weekend and didn't even feel achey the next day was just too mortifying to contemplate. Quick note about German here: as far as I am aware, we don't have a word to describe the ache in your muscles the day aft...

This week has been an odd one, made odder and more horrible for people all over the world by the Germanwings plane crash a few days ago. Despite all the horrors happening every day, something so needless and violent and obvious  strikes a different sort of chord. There is nothing about the crash that is not truly, tragically heartbreaking, which makes it difficult to talk and write about. Suffice to say, it makes us feel a little less safe, and a little more aware of our own mortality, followed by a horrified awareness of our own selfishness - 150 people died, yet here we are thinking about ourselves. I know I'm not the only person to feel like this, but ultimately it's not about that. It's about mourning the victims and helping the grief-stricken left behind. Due to all this, I didn't feel like writing a blog post about myself this week. Nothing particularly noteworthy happened, it had its ups and downs like any other week, and I am just another insignificant speck...