So, speaking of sour, on my way home from uni today I bought a 500g tub of red currants! I even got a photo of them, set against my lovely red sheets (more on that later) under a nice ray of sunshine. I'm such a sucker for berries. I guess that having lived in Adelaide for the past two and half decades has that effect on someone like me. Sure, we get strawberries -they're much harder (texturally) than the ones I find here, which are delicately on the verge of mush. And they've got a little more tang in the flavour, probably from having been picked considerably earlier. It's only a pity that so many are grown hydroponically, which is both convenient for mid-Winter strawberry cravings and inconvenient when those cravings require the strawberries to actually have some flavour. But I digress...
Before I forget, a word on the sheets: I don't know if I've already discussed this, but bed linen here seems considerably different to at home. I certainly haven't been able to find a flat sheet anyway, so it's time to either stoop to shufling through the sheets at Real, or worse, actually splashing out good money at one of the exorbitantly priced homeware-type stores around town. Evidently people are just happy to wash their quilt cover on a regular occasion? But I'm not quite sure what they do when the weather is in the mid-30s, as has been happening lately with this year's freak weather patterns. I like to sleep covered - it's something that I've always preferred, even when I was a child and we had no air-conditioning. (Hm, no wonder Summers always seemed hotter when I was a child!) So when it started to heat up here, with no fan and no airconditioning, I was forced to sleep without quilt. Needless to say, between the weather and the lack of covers, I've been sleeping pretty poorly for the past week or so. It's a little better now, but I still wake up at least once in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, and it's still awfully hard to get out of bed in the morning.
Which leads me to my next tangent: running. Because it's going to be awfully hard to get out of bed tomorrow morning. I went for a jog today, because my weight is getting to the serious point where I'm having to squeeze into my jeans. And honestly, not only do I not want to have these extra 5kg around my waist (it sure as hell hasn't gone anywhere useful, I'll tell you that!) but I don't want to have to buy new clothes. So it's about time I got off my backside and got active again. I never realised how much I'd miss my pilates and yoga at the WEA. I should send Letitia a postcard... I'll put it on my to-do list.
So, back to my rant on bed linen. Standard quilts here are actually designed to be smaller than one's bed, so as to necessitate a second when one has company. (Get stuffed, I'm not buying two quilts! And I'm a notorious quilt thief... good thing I like being single, or I'd have some serious problems.) I just find the whole system so very German. Quite proper, indeed. And let's not get me started on my overpriced pillow, which has conveniently flattened itself out, to the point where I'm actually contemplating the trip to Bielefeld Ikea in order to buy more stuffing... all this for a normal pillow as opposed to one of those European ones so large it takes up half the bed and yet so soft that it's like not using a pillow at all... oh, my.
So, my day was filled with things other than taking photos of berries that match my linen. German class was actually pretty awesome this morning. We have a substitute teacher for four days this week and I really enjoyed her teaching methods. We're learning prateritum, which she admits is boring, and yet I still managed to have more fun in one day than I've had in the last week of German classes. I'm probably going to be mildly devestated when she leaves. Plus we had a bunch of people not show up today, which meant that I actually learned something. Many things, now that I stop to think about it. I'm really not enjoying the large group. I just don't learn anything, and my attempts to study at home are absolute rubbish. It's so much easier to just learn things in class... end lament.
So, this evening I went to Marktkauf. As if I haven't given that place enough money lately! Another 20 Euros gone, simply because St told me they had soy yoghurt on sale. (They did, and believe me, I stocked up.) The amount of soymilk I've gone through lately is phenomenal. Probably also has something to do with the amount of coffee I've been drinking (hello, stovetop espresso!) and the vast amount of oats & fruit I've been eating. Today's breakfast was the standard quick-cooking oats mixed with rolled spelt grains with fruit-of-the-moment persimmons and a drizzle of honey. I probably shouldn't buy something like rolled spelt too often (let's compare nearly 1.80 for 500g to 25c for the same amount of oats) but I'm actually in love with the taste. It would go incredibly well with dark chocolate... but that's a thought to save for another occasion. One where I'm not so concerned about fitting into my jeans.
At Marktkauf I also caved in and bought another two avocados, to feed my current addiction. At this rate, I'm not going to have any money left for when my sister comes to visit... I think a 30c discount on these avocados has spun into a 30 euro addiction. Which, in that I've probably already about 8-10 of them, means I still have 5-7 avocadoes left. Good! They're not stringy for once, and they're huuuge. We'll pretend I don't eat a whole avocado every day, and we'll even overlook the fact that sometimes I just eat them with a teaspoon (not forgetting the sprinkling of salt). I'd like to curb this food obsession, but realistically, it's not going to happen. I just need to go for a jog when I get up for a stretch from reading my blog roll, instead of going to the kitchen for a cup of tea and a snack. We all have our vices... it's just that most of mine can be found in a large supermarket.
So, the point of writing this entire post was to avoid doing my German homework. Sadly, I'm a pretty fast typer, though I only wish I could keep up with my thoughts... but what that means is that I've had my fill of rambling, yet still have time to do my homework before my ridiculously early bedtime. I swear I'll eventually get around to posting my entries from Poland and the Czech Rep... eventually. Not to mention all the photos that I need to get off of my camera... and the ones that I took off my camera at Mi's house... and finding some nice ones to email to my parents... why is a day only 24 hours?! I wish it was longer so that I could actually get something done, as well as having ample time to sleep. I'll add that to my list of unrealistic daydreams and get to learning some more verbs... today I introduced the class to "schwitzen". It's good to know I'm such an over-achiever here... ha!
Sure, the composition is pretty terrible, but you have to accept that the subject matter is still pretty damn good. :)
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