So I thought I’d run with a Shelley, Bysshe-Shelley, Byron vibe to get my blog started as I feel inspired by this thunder and lightning storm (albeit that this will be nowhere near as ground-breaking as a science-obsessed bloke creating life from nothing). In all honesty I feel generally inspired by Dortmund and my situation; I’ve lived alone before and I’ve lived in Germany before, but never in quite this way with so much freedom and a proper purpose. A friend actually suggested I do this so she could keep up-to-date with my progress but I’m doing it for myself as well; this year is going to be pretty instrumental for me, and in all probability the most important in my life so far, so I want to document it (do forgive the drama: I’ll be 22 next week and feel justified in milking the fact that I’m ‘getting on a bit’).

        My journey to Germany began somewhat eventfully in my managing to haul my 20kg+ suitcase and Grandmother from one side of London to the other, onto a coach and successfully to the wrong airport (not my finest hour). Upon doing this, for anyone who may need to know, I found that it is (without a helicopter) impossible to make one’s way from Stansted airport to Gatwick airport in one hour. Had I in fact been travelling from Stansted, this hour would have given me plenty of time to check-in and have a coffee with my dear Granny before boarding. Instead, I spent that hour online in the airport trying to find an alternative means of transport, which at £1/10 minutes, didn’t best improve my mood.

        And so, in the light of price and my schedule, I ended up travelling by coach (a prospect I did not relish) – thank goodness for Eurolines. I left at 8.30 that night (11.9.10), and after a first ever, surprisingly pleasurable ferry trip from Dover, travelled through France (sadly not a scenic or in fact particularly visible route) and into Belgium (which I made a mental note to definitely visit at some point), then on to Cologne, where we arrived at about 10am. A 13-hour trip did not initially seem a very enticing idea but turned out to be quite pleasant. I then had the delight of lugging the aforementioned suitcase from the station to my hostel and up 8 flights of stairs and tired as I was, the mere 24 hours in which to explore Cologne enticed me away from the beauty of my Ikea bed and into the city.

        As anyone who has been to Germany before will know, it’s not exactly a hub of activity on a Sunday (as virtually all shops are closed), so I wandered aimlessly, forked out an extortionate amount for a tin of soup and some bread at a railway station shop and returned to the hostel. Here, as fate would have it, my Britishness for once did me a favour and whilst pulling faces at a cup of tea which was impossible to brew with the hostel’s supply of lukewarm water, I met two other girls (entirely sympathetic towards me beverage predicament) also here as language assistants, and thus some English-speakers to cling to. Thanks to the religion that is Facebook, I found that they were also ‘friends’ with a language assistant ‘friend’ of mine and we decided to all meet up for dinner that night.

        At dinner, being as it was virtually an obligation to my host country, I had Schnitzel and chips (also a German delicacy...). Afterwards we headed back to the hostel, via a kiosk to purchase ridiculously cheap beer (and cigarettes), and thence to the gloriously continental smoking lounge. After half an hour’s chatting and drinking, one of the guys from the table next to us came to sit with us, citing his friends as boring and proclaiming himself in need of new conversation, and within five minutes they were all sat with us. In this way we came to make some new acquaintances (I’m none of us would describe any of them as friends); an Australian guy, another Brit, a New Zealander and an American, all of whom, it turned out, weren’t friends at all, just lone travellers who had met that day. Needless to say, the night wasn’t an early one and involved people being drawn on; the asking of and refusal to answer questions on bra size; people nearly falling (up and) down stairs; a second trip to the kiosk for more beer; superficially deep ‘so what’s your story..?’ questions; a 3am excursion to the Cologne Cathedral; a worryingly cheap bottle of spirits that tasted like Parma Violets and more cigarettes than should be smoked by one person in the space of a week. I think all involved would agree it was a great start to our stay in Germany, and also that an Asian-American named Jason (with his OCD theories on symmetry) should be avoided at all costs.

This is a bit of a beast already and I'm finally tired, I'll pick up where I left off tomorrow.