Last Review

That’s it. Six months are almost over and I’m as good as on my way back home to Germany. On the one hand, I can’t believe how fast time flew by, but on the other, when I think back about all the things I’ve done and all the experiences I made, it is almost overwhelming and I can’t believe that it all happened in such a short time. It’s been an amazing time, with amazing people in an amazing country. I will miss all of this so much and I just know, that I will come back one day, rather sooner than later. I don’t know if it changed my life, or me, and if I’m a different person now? I think that’s quite hard to tell about oneself. But it has definitely enriched my life in so many different ways and I’m glade I came to Sri Lanka. A gigantic thank you to each and everyone who made it possible and who made it into the experience that it was. I hope you know who you are and I really can’t thank you enough.

To all the people that I met along the way, I’m glade I got to meet you, even if it was just for the time it took to drink a coup of coffee. I'd say let’s meet again sometime, somewhere, maybe in Sri Lanka?

Weekly Review 16

Unbelievable, another week is over. Ok, it was a short one from the last WR to this one, as I wrote the last Review a couple of days late, but nevertheless the week was over pretty fast. It’s weird that the weeks where nothing special happens seem to be over even quicker than the exciting ones, or at least almost as quickly. I spent a good deal of the weekend doing nothing, except for lying in bed, sleeping and trying to get better. I was sick, and not in a good post-alcohol kind of way, although the symptoms were quite similar. When I got up on Friday morning I fell right back into my cushions, because the whole world started spinning around me. I felt dizzy and out of balance. A very unpleasant feeling, which luckily got better after a couple of seconds, but I still felt dizzy. I thought it was because of low blood sugar and that I should eat and drink something, but nothing worked. The dizzy feeling stayed with me all day and was even worse on Saturday. So I went to the hospital on Sunday to see a doctor. He checked my blood pressure, pulse, ears, everything was fine, but he still prescribed me something. I don’t think he really had a clue why I was feeling dizzy, but didn’t want me to go home empty handed, that’s why he prescribed me something and that’s why I didn’t took it. I felt better on Sunday and it was almost alright on Monday, so I don’t think it was a mistake to not take the meds. I never the less managed to see another play on Sunday. It was ok. Not the greatest play I’ve ever seen, but not bad either.

Tuesday was football and besides that, studying and living… the usual.

Weekly Review 15

Sorry about the delay, but it was a crazy busy week, especially the last weekend. I managed to get out of Colombo, because there was a literary festival in Galle (a town in the south) and just because I had to. We spent a night in Hikkaduwa, which is a little away from Galle, but has a nice beach. The festival was interesting, although we only got to see one session with three different authors. They read excerpts from their books and answered questions. I had never heard of the authors before, but they all seemed quite interesting. I even wanted to buy one of the books, to get it signed by the author but they had already run out of stock when I wanted to buy one. Nevertheless, I’m going to put it on my Amazon-wish-list.

After the session on Saturday, we rushed back to Colombo, because there was a presentation due on Monday, which still needed some preparation. Therefore Sunday was all about Language Policies and presentations. It was fun, and the topic was quite interesting. The presentation went well, I think, but I’m glade it was the last one for this semester. Only two final exams, a term paper and a think piece (what ever that is) and my semester abroad is over… Quite a lot of work actually, but I still got two more months in Sri Lanka.

Two months to do all kinds of fun things, for example going to the theater, which is part of one of our classes. We have to watch three plays and write about one of them. The first one we saw on Monday was “Colombo, Colombo”. A play solely in Sinhala, which means, that I didn’t understand anything. The play was divided into different episodes, each showing one incident that similarly has happened in Colombo in the past. At least that’s what I was told. I hoped for a more structured storyline, which you were able to follow even without understanding a word (like figuring out who is the hero, what is his problem, why is the lead female actress in trouble, etc.), but no, the play was too complicated to understand it, without understanding anything. The next two plays are going to be in English, so I hope I get more out of them. Tuesday was one of the rare occasions where we played football. Lately we are hardly enough players to have a good match, which is quite sad, cause I really good used to playing at least once a week.

A couple of third year students decided to have dinner together on Wednesday and they invited the three of us to join them, as three of them are participating in this years exchange program from Sri Lanka to Germany. They are going to be in Germany from April to July or August, so it was nice to get to know each other and to answer the questions they had about Germany and the university.

Weekly Review 14

Woosh… and another week passed by and I got nothing to talk about. Seriously, nothing worth mentioning happened this passed couple of days, so I’m going to talk about all the other things until I run out of them, too.

We didn’t play football on Tuesday, because we couldn’t get enough players together. I had actually planed to finally take my camera with me and take some pictures, so I could write an article about it (it is about time isn’t it?), but I guess this has to wait another week. It happens quite often lately, that the football game gets cancelled, due to a lack of players, which is quite a sad thing, because it is a nice change to all the reading and work we have to do for our classes. And believe me, it is a lot. We only have three classes and not six like the rest of the fourth year students and we can hardly manage it. No idea how they do it, but I guess they are more used to it, (and probably not as lazy as we are ;-) just kidding). But classes here are different from Gießen and probably different from the whole German system, which I frankly like better. Not sure why, but I don’t think we get much more done here then in Germany, although the classes are twice as long with only a seventh of the students. But maybe that’s just a feeling. It’s hard to compare. Something I do miss however, are copying machines and powerpoint presentations.

If you want to get a text photocopied, you have to hand it to the guy at research center, fill out a form and then he will photocopy it for you. If he got time he will do it instantly, but sometimes you have to wait until the next day to pick up the copies. It’s a little strange if you are used to the Gießen way of doing it, which is copying the texts you need yourself.

I don’t want to say, that powerpoint presentations are the best thing that ever happened to teaching or that they are essential for a good course, they are definitely not, but sometimes they do help to keep a certain structure and are a nice support in terms of repeating the content of lectures, especially the theory parts. But that’s just my opinion and I accept it, that not everybody shares this perspective.

Although I have to read a lot for uni, I managed to finish the first book of Stieg Larssons Millennium Trilogy. I got “Verblendung (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) as a birthday present and started reading it on the plane back from Germany to Colombo. It was a nice ready, although I think it is a little overrated, or overhyped. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still recommend it and I liked parts of it quite much, but there were points during the reading were I thought “Get to the point! Will you!” But that’s again just my opinion. If you’ve read the book, feel free to let me know what you thought about it. Maybe we can get a little book club going? (That’s something I want to do for quite some time now, start an online book club.)

What else is there to talk about, or not to talk about but to tell anyway? I think it is quite annoying that you can’t find red peppers in this country. Ok I haven’t searched for them to that extant, but you can’t get them at the supermarket where we do most of our shopping and that’s annoying. Do you know how many really good looking recipes are out there that require red peppers? But, what to do, you can’t really find nice looking tomatoes either. I still have the idea of starting a new section about food, as I don’t have much else to talk about.

Well, enough with the rambling and complaining. I should get back to work. There is a presentation due on Monday, but I’ll tell you about that one next week.

Weekly Review 13

No, I didn’t forget about the WR, I just couldn’t get my self around to writing it. Lately, there is not much going on here in Colombo that would keep the blog going, so I struggle a little with the updating. If there is nothing happening, there is nothing to talk about.

Maybe I should think of another weekly project, now that the quiz has come to an end there is an open spot on Saturdays.... Mh...I’m thinking about something concerning food or eating… If you have any ideas, let me know.

As I said, there is actually not much to tell you what you haven’t heard before, but I atleast want to tell you about the midterm test on Tuesday. It was ok, I guess. Not sure when we will get the results, but I think I’ve passed it, not aced, but passed. We had to answer quite a lot of questions and we only got an hour for it. Ok, plus 15 minutes overtime, but still I could have used a little more time. All I can do now is wait and see, although I don’t think I’ll tell you the actual result. Keeping a little privacy, you know ;-) The midterm test dominated most of last week, but we still played football on Thursday and we spent Saturday night at a friends place were we hang out, ate pizza (by this chance we discovered a great pizza delivery service) and played games.

You see, not much going on here in Sri Lanka. So, what’s new in your life?

Weekly Review 12

The New Year has started but I’m sticking to my old habits and therefore I’m one day late on the first Weekly Review of 2011. But as I’m going to cover more then just the last week, it’s not going to be a regular WR anyway.

I left you in 2010 right before I returned to Germany for the Holidays and my birthday. I took a break from Sri Lanka, from blogging and from my everyday live here, to enjoy some time with my friends and my family, and I really did enjoy it. Christmas was really nice, I had a nice little birthday party with my family and a couple of friends and a fun New Years in Frankfurt at a friends place. I think I made the best out of the short time I spent at home, although I didn’t mage to meet up with all the people I wished to see. I wouldn’t have mind to spend another week in cold old Germany, but as Uni started again on January 3^rd I had to come back to Colombo. Leaving Germany this time, was different from my first take off in October. It wasn’t as exciting as it was back then, because I already knew what to expect. But it was nevertheless nice to see my Sri Lankan friends and to leave the snow and the cold weather behind. Having a 10 day long winter was quite nice and just the right amount of snow and cold I could stand.

Seeing my family wasn’t the only nice thing about my trip to Germany. I had almost no luggage but was allowed to take 30 kilos with me, which meant, that I could take quite a few things with me, that I missed the last three month in Sri Lanka, like chocolate, jam, salami, more chocolate, a coffee machine, etc. Yes, one could live without all that stuff, and yeah it might be a little crazy to take a coffee machine with you to a foreign country, but hey, I had an empty suitcase and I love coffee.

I arrived back in Colombo on January 3^rd in the morning, with the plan to drop off my stuff at the apartment and go straight to university. The plan was good, but turned out to be impossible as the traffic in Colombo was quite heavy and I arrived way too late for class at the apartment. Therefore I took last Monday of and used it to recover from the flight and the journey back. Well, I actually used the whole week to do this, although I went back to class on Tuesday, but I didn’t do much else last week.

This week is midterm week for the fourth year, but as we are not writing any midterm exams in our fourth year classes we had no class on Monday, the usual two hours on Tuesday and only one hour on Wednesday and today. Now we have a weekend ahead of us, but as Peter and I have to write a midterm exam in Sociolinguistics next week, we’ll spend the weekend at home studying. Or at least that’s the plan… I will let you know next week how that worked out and tell you all about the midterm test.

Weekly Review 11

We managed to get out of Colombo this past week, so I actually got something to tell you in this WR and not just ramble about the university and such, as I did in the past.

We had a long weekend ahead of us, so Peter, Felix and I decided to leave Colombo and do something useful with these free days. We wanted to climb up Adam’s Peak, a holy mountain in the south of Sri Lanka. It’s said that you can see an amazing sunrise from the top of the mountain, so one should be up there roughly before 6 o’clock in the morning. That’s why we left Colombo on Thursday at 8pm by train and it only took us a little over 7 hours to get to the foot of Adam’s Peak. When we arrived in Dalhousie, a small village from where steps lead up to the top of the mountain, we just put our stuff into the pre-booked hostel room and got going. It was 3.45h in the morning and 5200 steps uphill were waiting for us. Sunrise was supposed to be around 6.15am, so we had not even 3 hours left to conquer that mountain. It was by now the hardest thing I’ve done in Sri Lanka, and maybe in my life. You can’t imagine how tiring it is to climb up step after step after step with only more steps in front of you and no sign of an end to it.

But it was worth it. It took me more or less two hours to get on top of Adam’s Peak, so I made it in time for the really beautiful sunrise and to enjoy the view over Sri Lanka. You can find the pictures I took here: Adam’s Peak

Our journey went on from Adam’s Peak down south and to the west coast. It took us more or less 9 hours in the bus to get to Hikkaduwa, which is way more time then anybody should spent in a bus, but we were rewarded with a nice swim in the ocean and a really cool party in Unawatuna. As we had spent more time in public transportation then in beds, we were quite dead on Sunday and used the whole just to recover from the trip and to relax at the beach.

Monday started with snorkeling at some kind of coral reef in Hikkaduwa, the same one where we went snorkeling the last time, but this time the sea was much nicer. And after that we took the train back home to Colombo and to our apartment.

This was the last Weekly Review for 2010, as I’m leaving Colombo tomorrow to spend the holidays with my family and my friends in Germany. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and I hope you get a great start into the New Year.

Weekly Review 10

Another week past by and the end of the year get’s closer and closer, but that should not concern us in this post, at least not today. These posts are not about the future, they tell you about the past, the past week to be precise. And what a week it was. First of all let me say, I’m feeling much better. The Sri Lankan cold stood no chance against all the German meds I brought with me. Besides a mild cough, I’m more or less cured. And what is also worth mentioning: The rain finally stopped! It hasn't rained for the past three days! I'm pretty sure this will change again quite soon, but for now I hope the weather stays this way, so we can go on another trip this weekend.

The major theme of the week was once again university, especially one class: Stage and Performance. As I mentioned in the last WR, our first group presentation was coming up. The topic for all the groups was: Find a classic and a non-classic piece of art and try to apply concepts of Aristotle’s Poetics. My group chose music videos as the art form and therefore I had to spend quite some time browsing through youtube, looking for suitable music videos. That was the fun part of this assignment, the rest was unfortunately not that funny and I don’t want to bore you with all the dull details about setting up PowerPoint presentations, cutting videos, reading up on Aristotle, desperately trying to convince my group that we don’t have to dress up for a presentation, taking screenshots of important scenes, researching classical realism and all that stuff. Let’s just say, we managed to get our presentation done, we presented and we passed the assignment. Monday, was also Peter’s birthday, but as he was still recovering from the previous Saturday night, we did not really celebrate it. At least not yet, but I’m sure we’ll catch up on that.

Weekly Review 9

Hey folks. I know, I missed another Wednesday, but believe me, I really wanted to write the WR yesterday evening, but I wasn’t feeling to well, that’s why I postponed it to today. I still feel quite sick, I might come up with a cold, but it’s a little better than last night.

Besides there isn’t much to tell you about the past week anyway, so I will just write a quick report and then concentrate on getting better.

University is really picking up, with the first group presentation right around the corner. At least for Steven and me, it’s still ahead of us. Peter was lucky to be in the first group and therefore he and his group already presented on Wednesday. Lately I feel like our days revolve more or less around the university and the work we have to do for it. Well, actually our days revolve around the university and rain.

It has been raining every day, for the past two weeks now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change soon. It is really really annoying and probably the reason why I’m sick. You can’t leave the apartment without risking drowning in a huge puddle on the street. It’s not even a constant light rain; no, it’s a full blown waterfall out of the sky. I heard somewhere, that Sri Lanka hasn’t had so much rain in December for the past 18 years. Aren’t we lucky?

But this review should actually not be about complaining, but should inform you what’s going on here in Sri Lanka. We have a new roommate at the moment. Felix, a friend of Peters from Germany, arrived on Sunday in Sri Lanka. It’s his first stop on a tour around the world, and right now he is living with us. We actually want to show him the island and want to travel around some more, but because of the weather these plans get constantly washed away. That’s also the reason why my WRs get shorter each week. There is nothing new going on. We established some kind of daily routine, but I hope we can break out of it again, quite soon. There are much more things and places I want to see, and want to tell you about.

Weekly Review 8

And another week just flew by, didn’t it? With classes and all the other stuff I do, time seems to fly by at a rather quick pace. Let’s see if I can recall at least some of the things I did this past week. I played football on Thursday and on Tuesday, but that’s not new and there is not much to tell about it anyway, so let’s skip those days.

On Friday we had company. Julia and Annette are actually travelling through and working in India for half a year and that’s where Peter and Steven met them, but the girls decided to spend a couple of weeks in Sri Lanka, so when they told us, that they are here we invited them over for dinner at our place. We had chicken and rice and Arrack and we shared stories through out the evening.

Saturday was poker night. Seb (one of the football guys) invited us and a bunch of other people over to his house for a game of Texas Hold’em.  Let’s just say, that I didn’t lose any money, and that Cuba is a little bit more free.

Sunday was for recovery, obviously, so there isn’t much to tell about that day either, but on Monday we had our first “cooking lesson” in traditional Sri Lankan food. A friend of ours who is learning to become a chef came over and showed us how to make a more or less traditional Sri Lankan curry. It was delicious and I hope it will be as good as this when we try it on our own.

So, that’s it for this last week. Oh, I almost forgot, we went to university a couple of times as well. It’s not just fun and games anymore; most of the time we actually have to work for our classes now.

Weekly Review 7

Yeah, yeah, I know. I forgot another Wednesday, but with all the Uni stuff, I had too many other things to do. (Actually, that’s not completely true, but it sounds better than “I was just too lazy to write a post, yesterday” :-) ) But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

We spent the weekend in Kandy, which is one of the largest cities in Sri Lanka and for once not close to the beach but in the mountains. On Friday morning Peter and I once again decided to leave Colombo behind us and travel to Kandy. Steven spent the weekend somewhere else doing something else, so he missed this trip. Kandy was on our list of places to see for quite some time now, so we decided to finally go for it and for once we wanted to travel by train. We had to get up quite early on Friday morning as the train was leaving at 6.30 from the main train station, which is a 20 minute bus ride from our apartment. We managed to get up and to get to the station on time just to be told, that the train is already full… Yeah, trains in Sri Lanka get full, something that I hadn’t expected, but well, as the bus station was also close by we again went for this way of travelling. We didn’t choose the public bus, but one of the a little more expensive private busses, which have an A/C and more comfortable seats. The seats where nice and even the bus ride was ok especially because we drove into a completely new direction, but the one thing that really bothered me was, that could not regulate the A/C which meant it got freezing cold half way through the bus ride.

As Kandy is in the middle of the island, surrounded by mountains and built around a lake the climate is much nicer than in Colombo. We arrived around noon and as it is our luck it immediately started to rain right when we got out of the bus. The first thing as usual was finding a place to sleep. Lucky for us a nice guy walked straight to us and asked us if we need a place to sleep. Well, it wasn’t actual luck, as you can usually expect someone walking up to you asking you if you need a Tuk Tuk or a hotel when you get out of an intercity bus, but the guy was quite nice and offered us to drive us around the town for 200 Rs. and to show us some nice hostels. If you agree to an offer like this you can count on the fact that the first place you get to see is quite out of your budget, and that the owners are somehow related to the driver. But as the guy had agreed to show us some nice places to drive us to all the places we wanted to see the journey went to three more hostels till we finally got to a nice private family guesthouse. It was still a little out of our budget but the owner was quite nice and she agreed to give us another 150 Rs. discount. We put our bags into the room and headed for the town and to all the sights we wanted to see in Kandy. First sight we got to see was the “Temple of the Tooth”. We didn’t actually see the tooth (I’m not even sure if there really is a tooth), but we wondered through the temple and the integrated museum and all this, and the best thing is, we did it for free. We saved the 1000 Rs. entrance fee thanks to our residence visa. This nice little stamp that was so hard to get, proved itself quite useful. We managed to save quite some money and not only at the temple, but also at the botanic garden and the tea museum and hopefully it will save us a little more. The thing is with a residence visa you don’t have to pay the tourist prices but you get the local prices, which are usually 10 to 20 times lower :-)

We left rainy Kandy on Sunday at 3pm, this time by train as we had already bought out tickets on Friday. Travelling by train is so much nicer than by bus. You have a lot more space, you can walk around, you don’t have to fear for your life when the crazy bus driver overtakes two Tuk Tuks at the same time, it’s much more relaxed, although a little shaky.

Colombo is quite rainy at the moment, which really starts to bug me, especially since I forgot my umbrella on the train. I want the sunshine back and I want to go to the beach, but as we have classes during the week anyway it’s not that bad, I guess, at least it gives some time to do the reading. I’m going to write another post about Kandy and one about the University, soon. So don’t forget to come back for the pictures.

Weekly Review 6

And another Wednesday passed by and I forgot to write a weekly review. But, as I’m not entirely sure, that anyone actually reads them, I don’t mind. Nevertheless there are things to write about. Let’s start back in Unawatuna, the place where last weeks review ended. Unawatuna is quite a nice place with a beautiful beach and we will definitely come back again, although this time we had bad luck with the weather and we had to fight for our blood with an evil mosquito gang. You know, a mosquito net is a very nice invention, as long as the mosquitoes are on the one side and you are on the other. If both parties are on the same side, it can end in a night with out sleep and with blood stains on the wall. How do I know that? Well, a gang of six or seven mosquitoes decided to join us on our side of the net, the first night we spent in Unawatuna. They took us as a free buffet, we saw them as annoying vampires that had to die and therefore the war was declared and went on for several hours in the night. Finally all of them gave their lives, but not without taking a remarkable amount of blood from us.

Back in Colombo we had to fight again with another kind of vampires, the time sucking kind. We went back to the visa office for the fourth and final time. Yes, we finally got out passports back, with a residence visa till April 5^th next year. So, you can expect me back in Germany before that date, as I will not go back to that department and get another visa extension. No way! The weekend was rather unspectacular and not worth writing about, as we didn’t really do anything. But on Monday we went to university for the first time. Yes, we’ve been to the uni before, but on Monday we went there for our first classes in this semester. We are not yet sure which classes we are going to take, but that’s ok. The first week is shopping week, where you can visit all the available classes and see what they are going to be about. It’s although the time where the actual timetable is developed. Just because a class was scheduled for Monday at 8 doesn’t mean it will stay there. The entire 4^th year has about 20 students and therefore everything seems to be debatable. Besides most of the lecturers don’t agree with the scheduled times, half the time and will shift them anyway. Unfortunately for us we did not manage to get Thursdays off. Fridays are free anyway, but we would have preferred a 4 day weekend, in terms of all the traveling we still want to do.

We decided to skip the only Tuesday class, as it didn’t really fit into our field of interest and go back to university on Wednesday. Unfortunately for us, no one else decided to show up on Wednesday, because Wednesday was a holiday that we didn’t know about. And as Wednesday was off the university decided to give us off Thursday as well. Our first week of University was exactly one day long. Let’s keep the fingers crossed, that the rest of the semester follows this example.

PS: I’ve uploaded a couple of photos from Unawatuna, you can find them as usual in the Fotoalbum list at the end of the page.

Weekly Review 5

Another week passed by and a lot of things have happened. I fought with the Sri Lankan bureaucracy, went back to the Oktoberfest and right now I'm in a rainy Unawatuna.

I got an entry visa for Sri Lanka valid for one moth, back in Germany, and as I now know one month passes by quite fast. Even a little too fast, because I had only two days left to get my visa extended. Two days might seem like a lot, but not for Sri Lanka. We've been to the Immigration & Emigration Department three times by now and we still don't have our passports back. But we're working on it and maybe by the end of the week we'll be legal citizens of Sri Lanka for the next five month.

We decided to recover from our "visa trauma" with another visit to the Oktoberfest on Saturday. It was as great as the week before – the food, the music and the people, especially the people. We already got to know the band last week and we met with them this night again. It was the last night of the 10 day fair and that's why we really had to celebrate this night and we did and even parts of the next morning.

The Oktoberfest crew is although the reason why we are in Unawatuna right now. After their Oktoberfest act, they got a couple of days off to spend them at the beach in Una. As we didn't have anything better to do, and as Una was on our list of places to see for quite a while now, we decided to follow these guys down south. Right after we arrived and while we were looking for a cheap but nice accommodation it started to rain. And if I say rain I’m taking cats and dogs here. We should have checked the weather report, which says rain for the next couple of days, before we left, but now we are here and although it wasn't really sunny today, at least it didn't rain until the evening and the weather was good enough to get a nice sunburn. But I’ll tell you more about Unawatuna and our battle with the mosquitoes next week.

PS: I’m not late because I forgot, but because I wrote this text on my mobile and couldn’t upload it until today. Sorry about that.

Weekly Review 4

I’m sorry I’m a little late on the weekly review, but I totally forgot about it yesterday. No, I won’t promise that this is not going to happen again, because I’m sure it will. I know myself well enough by now, to know that sooner or later I will forget another Wednesday, but for all it matters, I’m sorry.

It was a weird week, with Bavarians, ghosts and bureaucrats. But let’s start on Thursday, a day where nothing remarkable happened… so maybe let’s go right to Bavarians. The Oktoberfest is in Colombo and if there is one thing you can be sure about, it’s that we had to check it out. We went there on Friday and got home early Saturday morning. To say it up front, we liked it quite a lot and we will visit it again. But nevertheless, it’s a very strange feeling to walk into a giant tent next to the Hilton Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka to find yourself surrounded by Bavarian music, sausages, beer and everything else that makes an Oktoberfest an Oktoberfest. If you have never heard of the Oktoberfest in Munich, you are probably an alien from space that hasn’t done its homework, so just google it to catch up with the rest of the class. For all the other people who know what I’m talking about and who might have even attended the giant fair in Munich: Colombo really tries to keep up with it. They imported a German chef, a German band and German food and it was all quite good. It was great to see so many different people and cultures dancing and drinking together to mostly German music and having a fun time together. The Oktoberfest lasts from the 28^th of October to the 6^th of November, which leaves us enough time to attend it again and to get another chance to enjoy the food.

Saturday was the night before Halloween and Louisa invited us to go with her and her boyfriend to a Halloween party at a club. We started the night at the local sports club (the same where we celebrated Steven’s birthday) and after a couple of drinks there, we went to the club. It was a fun evening and Peter even dressed up as the Joker from Batman.

We spend Sunday doing the same thing we do every Sunday… nothing and getting better from the previous nights, although the hangover wasn’t that bad.

Tuesday was football day as usual, and on Wednesday we tried for the first time to get our visas extended. I will write more about it in an extra post (in German) and in next weeks Weekly Review, but let me just say: Sri Lankan bureaucracy can be quite annoying and quite cold.

Weekly Review 3

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for my weekly review – a chance for me to reminisce about the past week. Well, the week started not in Colombo, but in a little village down in the south west of Sri Lanka called Hikkaduwa. A place famous for its beaches and surfing and basically for everything a common tourist would look for in a holiday trip to the sea. There are places to sleep back to back with places to eat all along the main road and the beach. From quite big Hotel Resorts (all of them looked like they’ve seen better days) to small Beach Hotels with four or five rooms, there is a place to sleep for everyone. We found our little hotel by pure luck and the help of a local guy. We weren’t so lucky in terms of surfing. Because the sea was quite rough, it wouldn’t have been much fun to start with it. But we will definitely come back for it. Everybody said that the sea gets better in the next couple of weeks and that the surf/beach season hasn’t really started yet. We decided to take the trip as a vacation from Colombo and to just enjoy the nice weather, the fresh air and the ocean. We arrived back in Colombo on Sunday evening. Because Peter hit his foot with a sledge hammer on Saturday evening, while we were helping the owner of our hotel to protect a palm tree from the rising tide, Monday was dedicated to a visit to the hospital, which in retrospective took only 20 minutes, including a visit to a doctor who didn’t even touch the foot and three different types of medicine from the pharmacy. Peter is fine and he can walk again, so we guess nothing is broken. It was just black and blue and we were a little concerned. On the way back home from the hospital we spotted a sign from fast food heaven: a giant yellow “M”. McDonalds was close by and we just had to go there and see if a BigMac tastes that same in Sri Lanka as in Germany… it does! However, the Chicken Burger is not as good as in Germany. Nevertheless, McDonalds: I’m lovin’ it.

Tuesday is Football Day, actually Tuesday and Thursday, but we tend to attend only on Tuesdays. Seb, one of the first guys I met in Sri Lanka, invited us to a weekly football match with a couple of other guys from town. Steven and Peter already played last week, and this week I joined them. It was quite exhausting, because the football field is inside, and there is no airflow or what so ever, but it is a lot of fun. Not so much fun was coming home to the apartment and finding that the water was out again. Imagine you come home all sweaty and exhausted and all you want to do is get into the shower and refresh… and you turn the tap and nothing… It is as frustrating as it sounds. Throw in “breaking the display of your cell phone” and you get an idea of my delightful Tuesday night. The week was of to a good start but the ending was quite sad. I’m sure the next one will be better. (Only one word: Oktoberfest)

If you’d like to see pictures from Hikkaduwa, check out the album in the “Fotoalbum” List at the end.

Weekly Review 2

My second week in Sri Lanka is over and although I didn’t write that much, many things have happened. First of all, I’m not alone at home anymore. On Friday Steven and Peter arrived in Sri Lanka and moved into the apartment. So now the trio is complete and the adventure can really take off. The first thing we did together was celebrating Stevens Birthday on Saturday. The night started at a sports club in Colombo, where we met a lot of nice people, were introduced to Arrack (a local liquor made out of the flowers of the coconut palm) and ate Stevens birthday cake, which was kindly organized by Munch. After the sports club we went to a Karaoke bar at the Hilton hotel. The only other guests there left right when we arrived. No, we had not sung a song yet, so we did not drive them out. But they would have left eventually. At the end, it was the DJ who kicked us out. Ok, officially he said that they were about to close the bar, but I’m not entirely sure about that. As we had no intention to end our journey through the Colombo night just yet, we got into the next taxi and went to a nice but rather expensive club. We stayed there until they turned on the lights. We finally had to admit, that all good things eventually come to an end.

The night was fun, but the “morning” was a bit rough for all of us. But it could have been worse considering the night. Nevertheless, we decided to take a Lazy Sunday, which also turned into a lazy Monday, where we only did a little shopping and walking around the neighbourhood.

On Tuesday Louisa decided to put us out of our misery and came by the apartment to take us out to a nice Café. Louisa participated in the same exchange program that we are currently part of, but only a year earlier and she is currently back in Sri Lanka.

I’m writing this post from Hikkaduwa. We finally managed to get out of Colombo and took the bus down south to the beach. We, that is Peter and me, cause Steven didn’t feel that well this morning and decided to stay at the apartment until he gets better. But he will join us tonight or tomorrow. We have already found a nice place to stay, met a nice guy who owns a local shop and has kindly offered us his help if we need anything or want to take a tour or something. As we are going to stay here for the rest of the week, I will definitely take a lot of pictures of the (a little rough) sea, the blue sky, the sun, the beach and the palm trees, and will upload them later in a different post.

Weekly Review 1

I have decided to do a weekly review of all the things that have happened in Sri Lanka so far, and I have decided to do it in English. This is basically going to be a summary of all the previous posts, but I’ll definitely add some new information, just for you English speaking folks :-) I hope you like it, and for pictures, just check out the previous posts, plus I added a list of all the published photo albums, at the end of my Blog under the archive ("Fotoalben").

My first week in Sri Lanka is over and it feels more like a month. I have seen and done so much that it’s hard to believe it happened in only one week. It’s a very strange feeling, but strange is the theme of these first days, anyway. I first set a foot on Sri Lankan ground last Wednesday (October 6^th), around 4am Sri Lankan time (UTC +5:30 hours). The flights (I had to transfer in Doha) were nice, although I enjoyed the first one more than the second one. Noisy people, puking kids and a touch screen that did not want to work can get really annoying during a 4 hour flight. But never the less, I made it to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. After I made it through the security and immigration checks and after I found my luggage, I was picked up by Shavi and her parents. She is a friend of mine who participated in the exchange program last semester, only the other way around. They took me and my stuff to Munch, another friend of mine, who went to Germany with Shavi in the same exchange program. Because I did not have a permanent place to stay yet, Munch and her family took me in and let me stay at their house for the first couple of days. With them by my side, I got to eat traditional Sri Lankan food, met a lot of people, took my first bus ride in Colombo and got to see how cinnamon is produced. Sri Lankan food is quite good and really spicy. I like it. Taking the bus in Colombo is an adventure in itself. Imagine the movie “Speed” but with a bomb in every bus. It seems like none of the drivers is allowed to slow down. Crazy!

But I had a great time with Manishka’s family and they helped me a lot during my first days in Sri Lanka and with my first major task: Find an Apartment!

Three guys participate in this exchange program and we decided in Germany, that the best thing to do is get an apartment together. As I am the first one who arrived in Sri Lanka, I promised Steven and Peter, that I would take care of the apartment issue and that they have a place to move in, when they arrive. It is not as easy as one might think to find a nice place, fully furnished, with three bedrooms, and close to the university, for an affordable price in Colombo. I just got to see one place and it was a take it now or risk losing it kind of thing. I had one day to show the guys some pictures and to get their consent. We took it, and it think we made a good call. Although it was our only choice, I’m sure we would have taken this place even if we had more to choose from.

So now we got a room, or to be precise, I got a room. The other two guys will arrive in Sri Lanka on Friday, which leaves me with all the basic shopping and getting the things we need. But thanks to the help of Shavi and her parents we got everything we might need by now. They helped us out with all kinds of kitchen stuff (plates, glasses, pans, pots, etc.) and sheets and pillows for the rooms and they took me to a store for all the other stuff that a household might need.

To sum it up, my first days in Sri Lanka were quite good, thanks to the people who supported me. I owe them quite a lot and I hope they know that I’m thankful for all that they have done for me.

PS: I'm having a Riddle every week where someone can win something. To participate just post your answer as a comment under the "Riddle" Post. This week you have to guess how much money is in the last picture.