Monday 8 February 2010

I Ordered A Guitar This Week

Well I failed miserably this weekend at the not smoking thing – yes, Saturday night saw me smoking again although I have not smoked since. I am a little disappointed to be honest and this was partly the reason I wanted to not drink for a month but I couldn’t really say no to a friend’s birthday party! Next week there is a big carnival type party going on in Heppenheim but I am hoping that I will be able to get through next weekend a little better. Still, it is not a bad effort so far – if you ignore Saturday night’s indiscretion then I have now gone a full two weeks. It is important than I somehow manage to break through the barrier when drinking though as if I smoke every time I drink then I will never ever fully quit.

Last week was a little boring to be honest and not a lot really happened as I had locked myself away in an effort to avoid cigarettes as much as possible. The evenings were all spent at home with Roman and, apart from our walks, I never went out at all really. On Friday I finished at 1pm again as I had worked longer hours in the week and I had a few things to do on Friday. Steffen came to the MediaMarkt with me next to where I work so that I could try and get an internet deal sorted. I have the dongle from work but sometimes it can be a little slow.

I managed to find a pretty good deal with a fast connection. For 30€ a month I will get the internet connection, phone line connection, free calls to landlines, free calls to o2 mobile phones and I can cancel at any time by giving one month’s notice. I was also delighted to see that there was a bolt on for unlimited international calls to certain countries for just 4€ per month so I have asked them to put that on too. When you compare the price I got to the original conversion rate between pounds and Euros it works out to be about 20 quid a month for the lot so it is pretty cheap really. I think it will be a week or two before I am connected with them so I will have to stick to using the dongle for the mean time.

On Friday evening I was invited to the pub again to watch the football but I decided not to go again. It is nice to just relax on a Friday evening after the week at work. On Saturday, as always, I took Roman up to the pub to watch all the football and then we jogged home afterwards so that I could get ready to go to Domi’s birthday party. I only had about an hour to spare but that was enough time to get showered, shaved and iron some clothes to wear for the night. It turned out in the end that Domi’s party was a fancy dress party – I think Steffen had told me ages ago but I hadn’t remembered and nobody had mentioned it since. Luckily I wasn’t the only one there who was not in fancy dress so it wasn’t too bad.

I met Domi’s girlfriend for the first time on Saturday – I said to him at the time that I had been in Germany for 3 months now and was only just meeting his girlfriend now! I had never really thought about it before but he has a pretty decent social life really as he is constantly out with all the lads and he never brings his girlfriend. I guess they prefer to spend time together away from everyone else. I am not sure whether this is the norm here in Germany but most of my friends here seem to be single so there is not really a lot for me to compare them to!

Steffen rang the dog training place for me on Friday to see if there was any way I could get in there with Roman and hopefully save on some of the fees but they seemed to want him to have had his character test and suchlike done before we go to the club! It looks like I may well have to pay the full whack to keep Roman here but I am hoping to get around the permit issue as this is only in place for dogs born after the law came into place. Roman was born before but I am not sure whether there are different rules for imported dogs. I am hoping to speak with the relevant people sometime this week, probably Friday, so that I can get it sorted once and for all. I just hope it doesn’t cost me as much as I think it is going to cost!

I will also be looking for cheap flights back to the UK for April this week as I want to come back for a few days to see everyone. It looks like it will be the end of April at the moment but there are a couple of bank holidays at the start of April which would give me the same amount of time in the UK but with fewer holidays taken. I have a feeling I won’t be able to do it then but I will have to speak with Steffen first to see when he is available to look after Roman – yes, he agreed to look after him while I come back to the UK! I have fallen lucky with the friends I have made here I think.

I finally ordered a guitar last week too! It turns out that I can order things off the internet but things work a little differently here if you don’t have a debit or credit card. I had to select the pre payment option and then take the bank account details of the company with me to the bank and make a payment to them using the cash machines! It is a bit of a pain that I can’t simply make the payment online but at least now I know I can order things off the internet.

I am really looking forward to having a guitar again and can’t wait to get practising! Hopefully it might have arrived today but it is more likely I will get it tomorrow or the day after. It would probably be better if it arrived either tomorrow or Wednesday though as I need to do some cleaning tonight and if the guitar had arrived then I wouldn’t want to do it! I could also do with an early night tonight as I only got about 6 hours sleep again last night. Weekends are so bad for me…

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