Hard work...

My adventure out today was to get some utensils for our apartment. Turns out that ‘furnished’ means two pieces of each of basic cutlery and crockery… Nichts on the peeler, spatula, grater etc front… Hi ho, off to IKEA, I go… it seemed like an adventure at first- taking the tram, walking through new bits of the city….

After IKEA, my next big job was to find a supermarket. We had been unsuccessful on Saturday and consequently had bread for dinner last night as the shops were all shut on Sun and Mon. Turns out that there are heaps of supermarkets around, they just tend to be hidden in basements with little exterior signage. Anyhow, managed to cobble together enough food to look like it could feed us for a day or two, as well as avert the toilet paper / dirty clothes crisis…

Now I’m exhausted. And this is the main point of this blog. 4 hours out trying to negotiate a new city in a foreign language has knackered me. I only understood the teeniest smidgen of what was happening around me and I found myself constantly trying to figure out what was going on. Not only that, but the sheer act of working out whether the food I was buying was anything that I actually wanted was almost more than I could take.

So. I’m back in our room and have planned to work on my research proposal this avo. I’m kinda relieved to have something to do in English but to tell the truth, really feel like I need a nana-nap!!! Oh yeah, and it’s snowing again.

View from our window again:




Looking over the Elbe: