With everything on my back

I can't find the time to sit down for a second and tell you about the last few weeks. I have been extremely busy and expect some more weeks just as busy. There are several reasons for it. Some are good like a visit of a friend that I had for a few days. Although I had not much time to show him the city around, he came with a different purpose so he kept busy himself. Then I spent four days in Berlin visiting another friend and ex-colleague from Oxford. I had some excellent days there, enjoying the city, the area where he lives, visiting some museums and a culture centre and attending to one of the main gay events in Europe. Then I have re-taken the basketball training and the German lessons after the summer break, which is good and I was already starting to miss both. But the main reasons why I am so busy are: work and flat-hunting.

Things at work are fine but we are working a lot in order to finish a huge project. There are still some more weeks and we will probably working long days until the last minute. The good new is that I've got a pay rise, although it is not related to working harder. It's something that has happened to everyone in my agency. The other new is that, as I said on the previous entry, we've moved to another office. It is pretty cool and I am working now on the 10th floor of a tower in a business district very close to the airport. The office has windows everywhere and so the daylight is always present. Besides, the views are really beautiful (the forest on one side, the city on the other) and we can see the planes approaching the airport to land every few minutes. We just hope they know well where to land because the fly really close to our building! The bad thing is the connections to the city: there are less options and it takes longer than from the previous office (so it is some time wasted every day just waiting for the train -and it is definitely too far away to walk).

The flat-hunting has been intense for a few days but eventually successful: I've got already my own place!! I got the keys last Tuesday and I have already started to bring stuff. I hope to move there by the end of this month (well, or as soon as I've got an internet connection there). It is right in the city centre, almost impossible to be more central. As many places in the centre of a medium-big city, it has three characteristics: small, expensive and noisy. What would you expect? But I love it. It's a tiny studio with separate kitchen and bathroom. I don't really mind the noise of the traffic; the only bad thing are the ambulances and police, which are noisier in this country than anywhere else I think. But that's also something that I had to suffer where I am at the moment, so I will survive... It is in excellent conditions and in a very neat building. Anyway, not only it took some time to find it, but now it comes the not-more-relaxing task of buying everything I need to live there: from a bed to the toilet paper. This is stressful obviously because I need to be careful with every euro I spend (I've had to pay a lot of money as a deposit and also to the agency who found it) and because I do not have time to check what the best deal is due to the overtime...

I am doing it slow by slow and I am so looking forward to both finish the project and settle in my new place. I will hopefully spend there a long time. Well, at least longer than in any of my previous places in the UK and the Persian Gulf. It's been good to move so much and see so many places but I am tired of packing, unpacking and carrying everything with me so often. This time I am staying if nothing too bad or too good happens.