Our beloved friends,

we apologise for not updating the blog in ages!

This post is going to be a very brief one, but we hope it shall evoke some pleasant anticipation on your part - we are definitely very much looking forward to seeing you all again so soon!

We're going to be in Germany for two weeks, so we are positive we shall see you all at some point before we go back to Britain for New Year's!

If you're free, it would be fab to see you all at Ulen this Friday!!!

Always yours,

Mike and Nick

Christmas is approaching, and on this like on the continental side of the Channel, shops are flooded with gifts, Santa Claus hats and christmas sweets.

Nick's housemate Cat was nice enough to buy him a chocolate advent calendar:

A spring of joy on first sight, the gift transformed into an object of contempt upon further inspection. Exhibit A:

Found it? It's in the centre of the picture: "25 festive milk chocolate shapes"

TWENTY - F I V E ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !*

How unfair is that?!? Every single year of their rain-swept lives, British kids (and full-grown choc addicts alike) get one piece of chocolate more than their German peers!

May they choke on their undeserved choc abundance or get fat and ugly! How!

(*Did you really just count whether that's 25 exclamation marks? You sicko!)

B-Day

Dear friends and family,

please grab a firm hold of a solid object within your reach and prepare yourselves for a painful moment.

This is to officially announce that Michael Morawski, who we all love and appreciate as an entertaining and caring young lad, has ceased to be exactly that: young.

Only very slowly did this frightening insight dawn onto the ex-whippersnapper on the fateful night earlier this week, but when it arrived, it freaked the sh*t out of him

while Nick looks pretty glad to still have quite some months to go until the day that will see the materialisation of Blink 182's statement on old age for him as well.

Is if by an unvisible hand, Embrace Club fittingly played Blink 182's "What's My Age Again", and there it came, in the chorus: "Nobody likes you when you're 23."

'-( '-( '-(

Krissi offered a consolation prize that was bound to cheer the jubilarian up again

so we ended up having a really good night out with Mike's housemates as well us some of the people we've become friends with in the last couple of months.

A little reminder to those angels of death who called to congratulate Mike one hour before his actual birthday began: it's supposed to bring ill luck. Just in case you didn't know.

It goes without saying that you guys were very much missed on that night - like on every night out here.

We are very, very much looking forward to seeing you all again in a few weeks. On that note, let us clarify that there is absolutely no excuse from hitting Ulen with us on Friday, the 18th of December. To make this perfectly clear - we intend to catch up on a huge number of nights out we didn't spend with you guys in the last months, so yes, it's gonna be wild...

One week after our Manchester trip, we again fled Sheffield, this time to Stratford-upon-Avon, better known as the great William Shakespeare's place of birth. We were joined on the trip by Nick's mum and two German girls we met in Sheffield, Julia and Eleonora.

The presence of a grown-up as well as two people we didn't know that well yet didn't keep us from

doing all kinds of schabernack and kokolores - at least the four brave soldiers who had to endure whole days of solid shit talk in Mallorca know exactly what we're talking about here.

However, Nick's mum hasn't disinherited him yet, and the girls still spend time with us, and, above all, you guys are still our friends - provided you haven't found cooler people in Giessen in the meantime, but, I mean, haha, please...!? - so we can't have been all that bad after all:-P

In Stratford as well as during our own little after-trip party at The Old House, an amazing bar in Sheffield (music like at Ulen on Mondays, but more varied), there were things that...

1) ...we didn't understand

2) ...we would never have thought

3) ...had to be done

Starting with 1), can someone please explain to us why

smoking should be prohibited in a gift shop?

Moving on to category no. 2), Things We Would Never Have Thought, please have a close look at the following picture:

We still haven't figured out how this, we're sure, extremely interesting and varied game works. That must be due to a lack of imaginative power, for we also found something else hard to do that the Brits had no trouble doing whatsoever, namely trusting that the flutist on the next picture did already play the flute outside that window on the day little baby William was born.

Another thing we wouldn't have thought is the fact that the pun on the following picture was actually made in the master's hometown:

(Note Mike's smashing performance as the leading role of The Barkeeper in Shakespeare's most famous play, "As You Shake It".)

The last entry in category no. 2) is a contribution by Nick's mum, for until that day we had kind of thought there was a certain age people stopped imitating statues at. Will wonders never cease!

Proceeding to category no. 3), Things That Had to Be Done, her full reintegration into youth and folly followed later that day at The Old House and has been documented by means of a Bravo Photo Story:

Nick teaches his Mum

the most important

gesture in popular

culture: the high-five.

Mike is angry

because his beanie

was nicked

by Nick!

All is well again.

Last weekend, we finally made it to another city for a couple of days and put our manly chests on the train to Manchester.

Sorry.

That one was bad.

So we got to Manchester (can't stop thinking about that incredibly witty pun up there? - Same here) Friday night and went to a house party with the girl Mike knows from school and who we were staying with, plus her friend and housemates. The party was officially the smallest house party we've been to, but, as if for compensation, the place was a great attraction in itself. With a Maserati outside the door, we were expecting to see some luxury indeed, but still were surprised once we got inside.

The house had pretty much everything you'd expect in a yuppie place: a humongous screen instead of a regular TV, a fish tank embedded into the wall

an illuminated shoe rack

and, of course, flat screen TVs everywhere. We spotted five of them, but there may have been more (didn't check under the bed or in the oven, for instance).

Saving the best thing for last, though: the guy had a smoke machine in his living room. That's right: a smoke machine! Unsurprisingly, the smoke in his living room was no less annoying than it is in clubs. Plus, the guy had cherry flavour added to it, which didn't quite make it better. But somehow matched his pink t-shirt:-P

To all this openly displayed wealth we preferred the comfy dosses at Birte's place

On Saturday we went downtown to find out Manchester is a much more urban and truly big city in contrast to the rather provinical Sheffield. Our trip around the city centre confronted us with a number of peculiarities: firstly, a German shoe shop

and secondly, a rather off-mainstream shopping centre with, let's say, rather curious policies towards shoplifters.

sign on 1st floor:

sign on 2nd floor:

(We don't know about the 3rd floor. Didn't dare go upstairs:-P)

Just returned from a night started at the Erasmus social and finished in a club named Plug, a supplement can be added to the previous post - boys' dressing down (which is not an uncommon sight in clubs at all):

However, the main purpose of the night, rather than taking pics of body painted guys, was offering an appropriate welcome to our guest Sonja, who enjoyed the pre drinking next to an old factory building with us and Nils:

It's about time the topic of fashion gets a blog entry of its own.

The word most characteristic of in how far people here dress differently than the way we're used to is probably the word "less". Sometimes you can't help suspecting there is an unwritten and unspoken law saying that it is every Brit's duty to wear the smallest possible number of clothes. Or is there another way of explaining why

• loads of girls combine a short top with tights (or -->jeggings) and boots but leave the skirt at home and
• virtually nobody puts on a coat on nights out (yes, we're still in England, and no, despite global warming it is not warm hereabouts, especially not at night)?

Definition #11: jeggings: leggings that look like denim trousers. And look horrible.

But probably the most irritating "less" reveals itself in the length of dresses. You have to feel blessed if both of a girl's bum cheeks are covered. Because often enough they aren't. A girl in an average length dress for a night out in Sheffield would probably be classified as "naked" in Germany, just to give you a rough idea of what we're talking here.

Another remarkable difference is the amount of fancy dress going on.

Definition #12: fancy dress: dressing up based on a particular theme, eg. sports, super heroes, film stars etc. (= Mottoparty)

While you and we have come to know fancy dress parties as events that sometimes take place in shared flats, effectively every organised meeting at night in Sheffield is a fancy dress meeting: socials of sports and other societies, birthday parties etc.

With the additional disparity, however, that all these events are scheduled to move to one of the night clubs after the kick-off in a pub or bar, leading to a wild mixture of action heroes (like spiderman or super mario), monsters (like Frankenstein and zombies) and all sorts of other fashion outrages on the dancefloor.

Last night's volleyball social was themed "professions". After some time of fruitless hard thinking we had simply popped into the pound shop hoping for inspiration to descend onto us. Ten minutes later, arguably the cheapest fancy dress ever had been born: for a pound each, we bought multi-purpose overalls as well as sets of goggles and gas masks facilitating our and Nick's housemate Cat's metamorphosis into nuclear reactor workers:

At least that's what we hoped we looked like. - Most people thought we're chemists or something:-P

The other socials had come down handsomely as well, so amongst others, the smurfs were present, too:

Summing up, the normal thing to do for a night out here is either fancy dress or dress up. The latter of which, as explained above, rather means "dress less". The only unnormal thing to do: wearing normal clothes...

Definition #10: Rocktoberfest: British rip-off of the famous Bavarian feast, featuring a "crazy German oom-pah troupe" named The Bavarian Stompers playing IRISH SONGS (!) and a rather semi-cool Kings of Leon tribute band semi-creatively named Kins of Leon.

A truly British day was experienced on Saturday. It started out with our first visit to a British football arena. We went to see the local second division club Sheffield United playing Cardiff. With over 25,000 supporters attending (in second division!), the match did not fail to entertain us, ending 3-4, with another 2 goals disallowed for offside and the first four goals scored within 5 minutes.

After the football, we - as becomes a group of proper Englishmen - made our way to a pub, where we hung out for the first part of the night, before we set off to reunite with the very first people we had met in Sheffield. Having hosted us as couchsurfers for our first two nights, they were now hosts of their very own "festival":

Meeting these people again was nice, but also made us realise that five weeks have already passed since we arrived in Sheffield. Which is a long time and a short time at once; long because it's already quite a substantial proportion of our time in the UK and there's still so many places and things to discover, and short because it's hard to believe so much has happened in only 35 days. We have become at home here quite much and know our way around things (most of the time, anyway;-)). We're already approaching -->reading week.

Definition #11: reading week: a week in the middle of the semester in which most classes don't take place so students have time to finally (do what they've been (doing the whole way through anyway but still) looking forward to: party party party!) catch up on their reading.

Motion #1: All German universities are hereby requested to adopt this practice immediately, including an increased amount of student parties during this week.

Reasoning: According to BIER, article no. 15a, no application of double standards is permitted between universities in different countries (principle of egalitarianism).

Explanation #1: BIER = Book of International Educational Rules

If you ever get the chance to see Franz Ferdinand perform - go for it!

Once started, the drummer's right foot didn't stop stomping his bass drum until the end of the concert, keeping the audience firmly in line throughout an impressive 90 minutes of d-i-s-c-o.

All you Scara lovers out there would have felt more at home than ever during the last minutes of the show, as Franz Ferdinand, after serving the audience with their success singles such as Take Me Out and Dark of the Matinee, proceeded to give a sweeping account of their dancefloor touch with 20 minutes of electronic excellence. Closing your eyes could take you into Scara's dwellings at 3 in the morning, kept upright only by the ever-rolling beat and lead through multiple trances by uncountable ever so slight alterations of the synthesiser's mazes.

On Monday, the international party people (2 Finns, 1 Swede, 1 Indian, 3 Germans, 1 Zonenkind:-P) gathered at Mike's place, before giving "Sheffield's biggest & best student night" at Leadmill Club a go. Rather disappointed by the music featured on the two floors, we left even before closing time (which is unfamiliarly early at most establishments in Sheffield, the average being 2.30am).

Our anxiety turned out to be unfounded: rather than packed with hooligans, the bar we went to to watch the match was - almost empty. A possible hint at the English dislike for the Germans having transformed into indifference? Would be a start;)

It turned out volleyball teams, besides drinking, do also play volleyball (if only to justify the name of the society), so the team made its way up to the grim north to play Durham University. It turned out their supply of people taking an interest in volleyball was even worse than at Sheffield Uni, resulting in their team average height being around 5'9" and their 2-3 defeat by the Sheffield team.

Definition #5: volleyball: ball game for guys who lack the BALLS for real sports like mass punch-ups (aka rugby) or football (the national sanctuary) and are therefore to be regarded as girly or...

Insight #5: ...gay: apparently the worst fate that can befall a guy in England

Clarification (by way of anecdote): wearing a vest (see below for definitions) for the car ride to Durham, Nick was immediately confronted with the s-or-g question, and subsequently instructed never-ever-and-under-no-circumstances-whatsoever to wear a vest around the city centre as this was highly probable to get you beaten up. Surprised clothing was supposed to identify an individual as to their sexual orientation, and shocked one of these was likely to engage violent attention from English yobs, Nick went home to commit another lethal sin: as bike offers on ebay were rare, he darted for the first available bike, namely a Raleigh ladies' bike. While not uncommon in Germany, a bloke riding a ladies' bike in England seems to be a major offence to manhood - and therefore, according to Nick's housemate, another reason to get beaten up in the city centre.

Definition #6: vest: British term denoting a sleeveless shirt, tanktop

Definition #7: s-or-g question, the: asking someone whether they are straight or gay

Definition #8: yob: [chiefly British slang] A rowdy, aggressive, or violent young man

Still hoping for these predictions to be exaggerated, and the English not being as homophobic as assessed, the next sunny day is going to see Nick riding his ladies' bike around the city centre. Wearing a vest. Check this blog for a report and candid camera pics.

Not going to happen today, though. Ain't gonna waste tickets to see FRANZ FERDINAND perform at the O2 Academy tonight! It's gonna be legen- [wait for it and I hope you're not lactose-intolerant because the next word is] - da(i)ry!

Speaking of legendary, we have a visitor! Arriving last night, Krissi has joined the Sheffielders for the whole of one week! Awesome.

We'll see if, while introducing her to Sheffield's night life, we'll be confronted with further surprises of the kind we experienced last Monday. Entering "Sheffield's only superclub" (self promotion of the club) Embrace and expecting a roaring party, we were a little disappointed when still able to speak to each other without screaming at each other. It took us a couple of minutes to realise we'd entered a silent party.

Definition #9: silent party: party where guests wear headphones, no music being emitted via the speakers

We'd like to conclude today's entry with something we should have done a loooong time ago, namely immediately after our arrival:

we hereby thank all you guys who composed an entry into our superb friendship book!

We enjoyed reading your lovely messages and are very happy to always have our friends around! Thank you all a lot!

(Was wir auf einen Feenball mitnehmen würden, wissen wir allerdings immer noch nicht:-P )

It is only now that Nick realises how perfect an accessory this book is for his will-they-beat-me-up experiment. Riding around the pedestrian area, wearing a vest and holding a pink book in his hands - it's bound to attract the yobs:-D

Despite having been killed an estimated two billion times during laser tag, we are miraculously able to continue this blog. Mick didn't perform all that badly at his laser tag premiere, finishing 5th out of 9 on our team, which means he did hit quite a decent amount of the laser tag nerds running around the arena. The only thing Nick managed to hit was his shoulder - against a wall in the pitch-black arena...

Speaking of accidents, here's another one: the chair in Nick's room had been sort of wobbly from the beginning, awe-inspiringly leaning to either side. Nick's housemate Cat, however, wouldn't trust his assessment of the seat without having sat on it herself. Well...

Transition transition transition err eeerrrrrr whatever

Football. Since England's World Cup qualifying match against Ukraine won't be on free tv here, Sheffield's pubs will end up showing the match of the day, which is [wait for it] Russia playing Germany! Meaning, we'll be watching Germany playing Russia in an English pub, probably in the midst of English hooligans-become-furious-supporters-of-Russia-simply-because-they-are-playing-Germany.

Shifting from the most popular ball game in the country to one of the less popular takes us to volleyball. As there is a society for virtually everything at Sheffield Uni - including Walking Society and, yes, Chocolate Society - there is also a Volleyball Society, of which Nick has become a member. The idea of sports societies in general seems to be to make sure the ambitioned athletes don't forget about what they think really matters in life, for which purpose they organise weekly socials in bars or clubs.

One such social took place last Wednesday, involving amongst many other hilarious things the beautification of faces by means of glow paint.

No, Nick didn't want to look like that.

Yes, we do know glow paint on guys' faces is nowhere close to cool.

No, Nick was not aware at the time of his teeth being blue as well.

Yes, the paint on Adam's forehead does say "TWAT".

No, he does not look this way when he is coaching us during team practice.

Yes, volleyball socials are fun.

Remember the apparently paradoxical church banner on a picture from a previous post? "A church for people who don't go to church"? Well, here's another one: a business strategy for businessmen who don't want to succeed as businessmen.

Mick seems to be confused. He just can't seem to find the smartass idea hidden somewhere behind this offer.

And he just can't find Nick when he's looking around his room, for Nick finally brought his house hunting to a successful close: a nice house shared with two law students, Cat and Katie, who are the ideal housemates as they are laid back and like to party;-)

The room is pretty small, but then again there's not much stuff to store away, anyway.

It even has a device for airing trainers after volleyball practice:-P

With both of us having found our home for the time in Sheffield, we can now enable you to quench your long-endured thirst to bombard us with lovely old-school pieces of long-distance communication, in short: letters.

Mick

3 Mowbray St

Sheffield, S3 8EN

United Kingdom

(beware of writing anything Mick might not like - he does boxing!)

Nick

112 Crookes

Sheffield, S10 1UH

United Kingdom

(write whatever you like, Nick can't defend himself - only does table tennis and volleyball)

Seriously: don't feel pressed to write us a letter. Electronic professions of sympathy are equally welcome:-P

Today the day has come which will finally see us give Barney Stinson's favourite recreation a go: L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-LASER TAAAAG!!!

Provided Luke Skywalker doesn't pop in to make mincemeat of us by means of his laser sword, and we'll both still be alive by tonight despite the student union's beautiful laser tag motto Come along and shoot your friends!, we'll see you guys soon on this blog!;-)

After a blasting three days, we had to see Jan and Max off again. (Btw: they slept in the two unoccupied attic rooms and we also had a cosy How I Met Your Mother night up there. You name it: nobody cares anyway.) We took farewell photos, picturing both the grandiosity of their stay and the tragedy of parting:

As the picture on the right already hints at, the worst pain came down on Mick, and unforgotten shall be the very first words to leave his mouth the next morning. -

Quote of the day: Mick: "My liver hurts."

On Tuesday, we went to a huge bike fair outside our beloved Student Union. Our thirst for a bicycle, rendering us independent of the city's public transport system which continues to be a mystery to us, would finally be quenched. Had we read this blog before, we might have lowered our expectations by some grades:

Definition #5: bike fair, huge: [definition through visual representation]

And yet another award-winning Sheffield peculiarity: the world's smallest bike fair.

PLUS: they didn't even sell bikes. They only repaired them. But how, we wondered, are people supposed to have their bike repaired when it's virtually impossible to obtain one?! We'll probably have to ask our next visitors from good old Germany to bring some along. "I'd like to transport these two means of transport by means of your plane but I wouldn't like to pay an extra fee for them." We're sure the generous Ryanair personnel will understand and not object:-P

We've started checking out some of the sports and activities being offered here, namely boxing (Mick) and table tennis as well as volleyball (Nick). We also plan to have a go at badminton once the rush of freshers has settled down.

Additionally, Nick rather spontaneously and just-for-fun-ish went to yesterday's audition for the uni's musical group's upcoming piece, "Footloose". Having sucked sooo bad at the dancing/choreo part, it must have been singing or acting that made them call Nick later last night and give him a part in the piece.

Insight #4: Britain is an ideal place to holiday in autumn.

Clarification: Since our arrival, the total amount of rain descended on Sheffield adds up to an estimated two tea cups. If at all.

When a gentle dribble set in last night during ManUnited's defeating Wolfsburg, it was announced by our British neighbours at table that this was the end of sunshine and the beginning of a very wet hardship (any "Casablanca" fans around?;-)). This morning, however, the British sun imperturbably continues to shine onto our transitory home, facilitating photos like the following one

and having us ask ourselves if we maybe got on the wrong plane and ended up in an old British colony somewhere in the South Seas.

As aforementioned, Sheffield is doing a great job welcoming new students. The weather is uncommonly fair and everybody's trying to make it easy for us to like the city. And it works. There's also things, however, that we don't understand. Maybe our command of the English language is insufficient... - but does the following statement make sense to you?

If we find the time, we might pop in and demand clarification:-P

Apropos time: since we hadn't had the time to explore the city due to uni stuff that had to be taken care of, it was our first visit to the city just as much as it was Jan and Max' first one when we went to the city centre yesterday. There are lots of nice buildings and beautiful places to hang out. It's all a large mish mash of Victorian and modern architecture, but it's kind of charming at that...

Definition #4: hen night, British: see German hen night. With the difference that drinking is prohibited in the streets of the city centre, which, however, doesn't keep British hens from wearing pink cowboy hats and behaving just as nuts as their German sister hens

Our first visit to a Sheffield pub was quite typically British as we popped in around 5pm.

Insight #3: comparing a pub in Britain to a pub in Germany is like comparing Usain Bolt to a disabled turtle. You can do it. But it doesn't make sense.

Clarification: We were the first guests of the day, but it didn't take more than a few minutes until the place was starting to fill with professionals who came to the pub after work. They didn't even bother to sit down - with music being turned louder every other minute, eventually blaring almost as loud as in a club, they were standing around, shouting anything that came to their mind and made the whole thing seem rather like a full-grown party. At half five!

Definition #5: half xy (with xy being a variable for any one- or two-digit number from 1 to 12), eg. half five: half past xy (half past five). No point showing up at "halb fünf" cause you'll be waiting for a full hour.

This town sure is a place to have fun. Imagining to be studying here is quite difficult, though - uni is starting tomorrow...

The last days've been crazy crazy crazy. Don't even know where to start really.

Uni's keeping us busy with signing up for modules. For the last two days we've been running around all sorts of buildings trying to find people who supposedly work there, but apparently lunch time begins at 10am and doesn't end till 3pm which seems to be the time people leave office anyway, so we pretty much haven't talked to people who know anything really but we already know our way around couple of places here;)

Thus unprepared, module enrolment today was sheer chaos. And while everything else about SheffUni is extremely modern and up-to-date, the way enrolment is done is, politely put, medieval. ALL Erasmus students ambush one huge hall where teachers from all departments sit behind desks to tell those who have somehow made it to the front of the queue they can't get on the courses they selected b/c these are either

• not designed for Erasmus students

• designed for Erasmus students but full

• non-existent.

We somehow managed to be the first ones arriving at the hall (90 mins early) and the last ones to leave:-D

Hope registration (Einschreibung) on Thursday isn't gonna be as chaotic.

Definition #2: enrolment: supposedly important gathering designed to pack as many freshers as possible into one place in order to prevent →freshers' flu from spreading any more than is absolutely unavoidable

Definition #3: freshers' flu: flu caught by students in their second year or higher due to a uniquely heterogenous mixture of germs flying around uni resulting from international students' bringing their national germs with them which you can't possibly all be resistent to

(Ahmed told us about it, and he's usually right about such things. Or he isn't. But it's funny either way.)

Something that's surprising is the prices for all kinds of things you need to buy. Shops are flooded with vouchers, buy-one-get-one-frees, and discount signs stick out from every other shelf at least.

Shopping list (extract):

lightbulb

cushion

quilt

Exactly. What would you crazy guys need that kinda stuff for?

To cut a long story short, we're living in a really crazy place right now. As some of you guys probably know, Mike had made a reservation for a room in a village park. While that had seemed a good choice from far away, we quickly learned it was fairly far away from the city centre and especially uni. However, it was possible to exchange this for a room in a house that's much closer to both of these and that's cheaper by 85 quid pm on top. So this is where we're staying at the minute (haven't had the time to go house hunting for Nick yet – uni's taken its toll on us).

By now, we feel fairly safe here and have begun to make ourselves at home. It felt very, very different, though, when we reached the house on Monday. There was no lock on the room. Lie – there was one. But it was lying on the desk and hat obviously been kicked out. Of the two lamps one didn't have a working lightbulb. Couldn't have happened to the other lamp cause it didn't have a lightbulb in the first place. We stole one from the lamp in the staircase and noone seems to care:-D

While light is something that you can do without if necessary, a quilt and a cushion are hard to do without. Don't think anybody in Krautland would dare renting a furnished room without beddings. Seems to be quite normal here, though.

We asked the other people in the house whether a broken lock and missing beddings should get us nervous. The answer was no, but we were already pretty wrecked, to be honest. However, we were still fairly far away from the end of the flagstick. With the lock broken, we had no way of realising our plan to go to freshers' party at student union. Or so we thought. Eventually we did go, but there's other things to tell you guys first. Calling the landlord was futile cos office hours were over. Facing an evening at home protecting our precious belongings instead of hitting the dancefloor and meeting new people, we tried to figure out a solution. We didn't dare trusting all we had to people we'd just even met. Eventually, we remembered one of the guys, Ahmed, had got a key to one of the living rooms, so we got it from him and put our laptops and other treasures in there. They found themselves in good company of about five TV sets, the largest being about 130cm in size. No idea where he gets those from, but then we figured, if he feels he can leave his stuff in the house, we should be able to leave the few expensive things we own in it, too.

So we could indeed get on our way to freshers' party. Oh yeah, it's pretty windy here at times...

The party was in a pretty fancy location inside student union (the only respect this corresponds to Giessen's studentenwerk in is the name – it's no less than an entertainment centre, featuring a cinema, about 5 cafés and bars, a two-dancefloor club and a couple of stores and help desks where people actually want to be of help to you. And during intro week they have a DJ outside the building all day long from 10pm. The music's actually so loud it's hard to have a conversation with the union staff holding their “I'm here to help“ signs. Pretty much every aspect of Sheffield's Student Union is award-winning and has been rated top 3 in the country. Best Student Union, second-best student café, rated #3 for service and so forth. Guess they even won an award for the frickin paint on they buildings.), and drinks are incredibly cheap there on Mondays. Examples: shots and pints of coke 1£, gin tonic or pint of beer 1.25£.

Feeling good and laid back as we were, chilling outside the club with Ahmed and his mate, a phone call Ahmed received got us back to earth. One of the girls had lost their frontdoor key. In a matter of seconds, we were back on this-can't-be-real-these-people-are-trying-to-munk-us mode, affirmed by Ahmed's informing us that the house had been broken into a couple of months ago (that's when the lock on the door was kicked out as well). However, when we got home all our stuff was still in its place. The next morning, we called the landlord and had both locks (frontdoor and our room) fixed in a matter of an hour.

By now, we've had dinner, partied, and walked thorugh town with people from the house and they all seem really cool, so anxiety is being replaced by trust and this place is becoming our home base.

The light coming from the naked lightbulb is kind of cold, though, so we'll probably steal a shade from the staircase – no lightbulb in it anymore, anyway. And besides – noone cares:-D

With everything sorted out (not) and us knowing our way around the whole city (not), we're more than ready for our first visitors, Jan and Max, who'll be arriving on Friday. Don't know where we'll have them sleep yet. Probably going to steal the double bed from the unlocked room upstairs. You name it – noone cares anyway.

We'd found out about a really amazing activity offered by the union, namely laser tag. We really wanted to go – how could we not, given we're How I Met Your Mother addicts and virtually first class members of Barney Stinson's Barney's Riot Organisation (BRO)? Hope they'll be offering it again, cos we were so powerless after enrolment today we'd benn laser-killed in a matter of seconds, so we went for a late lunch instead.

Uni really has a lot to offer here: more activities than anyone can possibly partake in, support with every possible issue, and you also learn a lot. And it's important things you learn, things you didn't know before, not somethings you already know how to do.

With everybody being so ready to support you, we figure nothing can go wrong, really. We just hope for things to settle down a bit soon, but that's improbable to happen before sometime next week...

It is humbly, but also proudly that we declare we have become full members of the University of Sheffield today.

We checked out Activities Fair today, which was as loud as a German club, as packed as a pub on Friday night, and as various as the colours in a rainbow. There's nothing you could think of there wouldn't be a society for at SheffUni: philosophy society, belly dance society, laser tag society (yes, we DID join that one), save-the-environment society, alternative music society as well as heaps and heaps and heaps of other things.

Last night we went out for the second time in Sheffield. A club called The Plug was hosting a huge freshers' night which was, as we learned, SOLD OUT. You guys ever heard of a club being sold out in Giessen? Well, neither have we, so it was all the happier that we found you could still purchase tix from a par downtown. When we got to the bar they were still closed, and a queue started forming. A queue of people lining up in front of a closed bar, looking for tickets that, eventually, the bar was unable to sell since they'd all been gone.

The only chance left to us was going for the tix to be sold at the door of The Plug itself. So we queued up quite early with a German guy called Nils whom we'd met earlier that day and got inside fairly quickly. It's a fairly safe bet there will be more nights at The Plug in the future. With 3 floors, a huge outside area and cheap drinks it's no less than the perfect place for a legendary night.
And they have a number you can send text messages to which will then appear on huge screens all over the place. There's so many things German clubs could learn from Sheffield's night life establishments.

One thing Sheffield could learn from German cities, though, is their way of dealing with ambitioned young people heading for a sophisticated night of cultural entertainment. Well, to be honest, the story's this: we were having a beer at a bus stop on our way to The Plug when a police car pulled up next to us and kindly invited us to turn our open beer cans upside down and thrust them into a bin afterwards as drinking is not allowed in Sheffield city centre. Oh, please!

Police are definitely not sitting on their butts around here. You'll hear sirens blaring every ten minutes at least. Doesn't make you feel all too safe, actually...

Hello there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have arrived safely and happily (though tired) in the United Kingdom!

First new insight: couchsurfing for the first couple of nights was the best idea we had in a long time. Clarification: Our hosts Chris and John are just awesome (as are the many friends of them we've met), the couches are sufficiently comfy and we are having a wonderful time.


Second new insight: England sure knows how to extend a warm welcome.
Clarification: we were able to spend the whole day in the park. Outside! In Britain! In September!


So we pretty much did what we're best at: hang out and talk shit:-P

Having returned from the park we sat down around a little fire in "our" backyard (quote of the day #1: N: "I already feel at home here." - M: "But we don't even have a home yet." - "N: Exactly!") and met some more friends and neighbours and a third couchsurfer from France, all of them really, really nice and also very funny people.

Quote of the day #2: M: "There's a German joke..." - Chris: "No, there isn't." We were practically laughing our heads of on that one.

Definition of the day #1: Beer jacket: the sensation of not being cold despite low outside temperature as a consequence of beer consumption

Today's been such a wonderful first day in Sheffield that we didn't do anything like looking for a flatshare, checking out where uni is or the like^^. Which means we're in beertween couchsurfing and proper accomodation.