What's wrong with naked?

Seriously, take a minute and think about that question. Does anything immediately come to your mind? Because nothing came to mine.

After searching and stretching my imagination I come up with lame answers like 'it could be cold' or 'it could be embarrassing if other people are around'.

Ok, new question. Why is it embarrassing? Why SHOULD it be embarrassing?

The most obvious response is because it's not perfect. But neither is the rest of you, and are you embarrassed to go out in public and open your mouth and share your ideas, opinions, views, jokes, nonsense? Or maybe it is 'perfect'. So then what's your excuse for being ashamed of it? And who defines the 'perfect' body anyways?

Culture. This post is about culture, not about me becoming a raging nudist.

One of the things I'm really enjoying in Germany is the culture surrounding the human body. In truth, I didn't enjoy it at first, I found it awkward and uncomfortable and abnormal. But now I feel liberated and more comfortable with my body than before, even with my extra travel pounds attached.

Here, it's just not a big deal to be naked. I mean it's not like people sit around and watch a movie or discuss politics in the buff, that'd be ridiculous, but when there are situations where there's a room full of naked people, it's just normal, there's nothing weird about it at all. It's like, wearing a ski jacket at a ski hill...you don't even think twice about it.

When the hell are there situations where there are a room full of naked people?! I just read your mind didn't I. Let me tell you about my first public nudity experience. I actually got a 'Congratulations on your public nudity' from Janani, and I was so proud of myself.

I've played sports all my life, so changing in front of people has been easy for a very very long time, but even so I was never one to expose anything a bikini would hide. I was so shy about it. You always see a few old people naked in the showers at public pools, or sometimes people showering in the communal showers at the gym, but I would never ever even think about doing that. Here all you hockey guys can go 'what's the big deal there?'... I dunno, I just don't ever see it in Canada really.

At the gym I go to here there's a sauna in the change room. And you go in naked. The first time I went I felt incredibly self conscious as I was stripping off my gym clothes, I was incredibly hesitant, but decided to power through. Once inside I was only uncomfortable for about 20 more seconds. Believe me, it would have been even more awkward to be sitting there with any sorts of clothing on at all. Now I don't think twice about it, or about showering in the buff at the gym.

The only people we see naked or mostly naked on a regular basis in society are the people in magazines and on TV, and everybody knows they all have bodies that rank at least an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. My experiences at the gym are a reality check, because everybody has a normal body. You've got your love handles, your fat asses, your jelly bellies, all that good stuff right out there on display, and it's like, oh ya...that's what normal people look like. I'm a normal person. Alles gut.

The next step is to visit the famous 'textile-free' baths here. It's basically a spa with lots of pools and hot tubs, but it's mandatory to be naked. This is the next step because it's mixed, men, women, naked, everywhere. I'm really not so sure I can do that, but then again a few months ago I never thought I'd be able to do what I do today at the gym.

Barcelona - the trip of my life!

I've been thoroughly pestered for this post for the last two weeks. Here it is folks, the latest and greatest outside-of-Germany-adventure for the books.

This was undoubtedly the best trip of my life. Five whole days of total, complete, utter awesomeness that I won't be forgetting for a very very looooonng time.

I don't even really have anything very interesting to write about... I went to the beach, I saw some crazy Gaudi architecture, partied a lot, took some siestas to make up for the partying a lot, met a ton of super fun cool crazy people.... You get the idea.

I met more cool/crazy/fun people than I knew what to do with. The Kabul hostel was the best.. The atmosphere was like no other place. It had it's own bar with cheap beer served in liter sized plastic cups, free breakfast and dinner... People just chilled and sat at the tables and got to know each other (in some cases even a little too much), played cards and drinking games, usually until the hostel bar closed at 2ish and headed out to a club.

Most clubs don't even open until 1 or 2 in the morning in Spain.

When we arrived we walked down Las Ramblas, the most famous street in Barcelona where there is never a dull moment. There are a ton of cool little shops, street performers everywhere, I saw Michael Jackson (or what he'd look like if he were still black) and watched a crazy man swallow a sword. We stopped at a restaurant and had some tapas, which are basically appetizers, but are really popular there to just sit around and eat. I had squid and something called a bikini and some sangria, which I promptly spilled all over my shirt. Then we walked along the harbour until we found the beach.

There were some super big waves going on, surfers everywhere.

The Mediterranean was COLD. I tried to take one of those pictures standing in the water with the waves washing around my feet. But because it's my life, after a couple of nice gentle waves a big one came out of nowhere and washed right over me, completely taking me by surprise.

Alright so then I had to go in, I was already wet right? The waves totally kicked my ass, twice knocking me on my face and washing me up on the beach. I had to spend some time getting all the sand out of my bikini, that day was just not my day to be graceful and beautiful.

That evening we napped from midnight until one and then got up, got a drink at the pub and headed to a place called catwalk. I've never been a nap person, but I think we did our best to totally immerse ourselves in the Spanish culture for the 5 days we were there. I napped every day and partied until the early hours of the morning every night. By early hours of the morning I'm talking like, 5 or 6 or so.

Catwalk was hip hop upstairs and house downstairs and amazing! Cover was 15 euros but it included a drink. Mixed drinks in Spain are STRONG, they don't mess around. At least half alcohol. This place was a total sausagefest however. I couldn't walk from one side of the bar to the other without somebody taking hold of my hand and trying to dance with me. One guy made me a paper flower out of the napkin. It was fun, but I was well aware that I was only a hot item because the ratio was probably somewhere around 10:1.

We stayed out until 5 that night.

Next day, Saturday. We did some sight-seeing, mostly Gaudi architecture, which is phenomenal. First stop, La Sagrada Familia, or something like that. It's a church they've been building for over a hundred years already, and isn't due for completion until 2026. I climbed 350 stairs resembling the inside of a sectioned seashell to the top for a view of the city.

We also went to the hospital where Gaudi died. He was throwing himself into his work so much that he looked pretty disheveled, so when he got hit by a bus nobody recognized him and he went to the 'poor person's' hospital where he died 3 days later. Another architect designed 8 little buildings here, and they were just too cute. Crazy shapes, beautiful mosaics everywhere.... there's really nothing like the architecture in Spain.

Ate some paellas, which is a popular rice and seafood dish. I even tried some that is mixed with black squid ink. I didn't even know you could eat squid ink.

Tried lobster for my first time ever here.

Saturday night is where my social life really took off. There's a pub crawl that comes through the hostel to pick people up and it was ridiculous. They took us to 4 bars and 1 club out on the docks on the Mediterranean. It was 15 euros which included entrance at all the places, a free drink at each place, and free beer or sangria for the first hour at the first bar we went to. I met so many people that night, and had more fun than I care to elaborate on right now.

Sunday when we made it out of bed we went to Park Guell which was designed by Gaudi. It was pretty gorgeous, and the longest bench in the world is here. How intensely exciting is that? We checked out another one of his crazy casa's where the walls were all wavy and the chimneys on the roof were all crazy twisted statues. We finished the day off with another walk along the harbour and the beach.

Sunday night began with short game of Kings followed by a long, all revealing game of 'Never have I ever...' with a couple of Australians, some Brits, Americans, Canadians, and at least one Polish girl. After the bar closed we moved to a new one and hit up the wicked club on the pier again. Minimal sleeping occurred.

Monday, I woke up late, the Spanish way, and went to the beach with 3 other cool Canadians I just met. FUN. I fell asleep on the beach, got a nice little burn. Happy hour started at 6:30, more Kings with the Canadians, a couple of Croatians, and another Australian. I spilled my chicken swarma all over my sweater, and one of the Canadians pulled out his Tide bleach pen and saved my life. I also won the beer lottery that night. At the hostel you bought a ticket for everything at this machine, then took it to the bar to get your drink or food or whatever. I put in a 20 and got 17 euros in change in DIMES. This crazy machine was spitting out money for 5 minutes straight while everybody cheered. The people at the bar gave me a cup for my winnings.

Apparently Monday is the one night in Spain when the night life is not hopping. We tried to find a bar but they were mostly all closed, and I'm exhausted from my many days of mega partying and minimal sleeping. I chilled with Australia and 2 Brits who looked like Sam and Pippen (hobbits) and a Canadian we just called 'Corn Nuts'.

Tuesday Morning we miss our flight, buy a shiny new expensive one to Cologne, chill there and in Bonn with Michelle, and then took an expensive train home to Stuttgart. We were also lucky enough to fly with a pilot who'd never flown a plane in his life and almost crashed this one. That was fun.

So this post is a little dry, I realize that. But this trip actually felt like a proper vacation. Palm trees, the beach, partying... I can really only try so hard to make that interesting, and I don't think it's going to happen today.

Blogger.com is being dumb and not letting me upload pics, but check them out here, you can see how much fun I had :)

The halfway point

It's the halfway mark for my little adventure in Europe. Scratch that, it's a pretty big adventure. The other three girls all packed up, deregistered from the city, took care of all those things to do with life and living in Germany, and planning to go back to school, and I just watched. In fact pretty much all of my friends have either gone back to school or home for the summer. I’m actually staying in one place for 8 months, doing the same thing, for 8 months, and it’s crazy.

It’s been a reaaallyy long time since I spent more than 4 months in the same spot. I moved out as soon as I graduated highschool, spent the summer at a friend’s house working in a restaurant and have been bouncing around Ontario/The World every 4 months since. So for once, I'm not bouncing anywhere, I'm staying here. And it's weird.

So I’m halfway through. How do I feel about everything? Weird and Wonderful. It’s weird to see everybody going back to school but me. But it’s wonderful to be staying in Europe. When I think back to four months before I moved to Germany, only 8 months ago, and I look at my life and think about what I was expecting my life to evolve into in the short term, in the next 4 months, this wasn’t it. I think of where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, and what my expectations were, and nothing that’s happening now was anywhere close to being in the forecast.

It’s weird how things can become normal to you, that in fact are completely NOT normal. You know what’s become normal for me? Everything that seemed so foreign and unbelievable 8 months ago. A normal week for me goes like this: I spend the last few days planning and packing. I spend the weekend, and sometimes a couple more days flying to another country, walking around outside all day seeing the sights, experiencing the culture, and then I spend the first few days of my week recovering, doing laundry, catching up on sleep…

That is SO not normal. The only other people I know of who fly to a new country every weekend are the other students I’m living and working with here. But it’s normal for me. I just had a weekend off, and I stayed at home doing things that would be normal for me if I were anywhere else, and it was weird. Sleeping in was weird, making my own lunch was weird, watching a movie was weird. The whole weekend just felt like a brief pause, it felt like I was waiting for it to be over, waiting for my ‘normal’ life to resume.

I never imagined for a second that my life would be like what it is now. When Pet first got the IBM Germany job I was sooo excited for her, and I imagined how cool it would be if I had the same opportunity. But it was one of those daydreams that you know the whole time will never ever happen, it’s just fun to think about. Then I saw the job posting come up a couple months later and I thought, ok, I’ll apply. But I didn’t have any of the skills, and knew I wouldn’t get it. Then I got the interview and I was blown away. My next thoughts were, wow, this is awesome. But I knew it was only because I had a friend in the position currently who pointed out my resume, and that I still didn’t have the skills, and I’d never get the position. Then I got the offer. Only in my wildest dreams did I anticipate this… It was a big decision to make. I’d have to switch streams, leave the country for 8 months, leave my boyfriend, my friends, may family, who are very very important to me, and I wouldn’t be making any money after living and travel expenses. Out front, I considered it, I thought about it, I weighed my options. Inside, there was never a doubt in my mind about whether I’d go.

I’ve yet to regret my decision. While at first I really only wanted to come for 4 months, now, at the midpoint and the would-be end of my experience I realize that I’m not at all ready to leave. Four months is not long enough, there’s still so much to see, so much to do….i’m not yet satisfied.

Will I be at the end, in another four months? Here’s what I anticipate. I’m going to be incredibly sad to leave Germany, and incredibly happy to return to Canada. Experiences like these teach you a lot about yourself and about the things that are important to you, and one of the happy realizations I’ve had about myself is that I’m always looking forward. I’m looking forward to the next four months, I’m looking forward to tomorrow. While I’ll be sad to leave Europe and everything related to it behind, I’m looking forward to going back home, to hugging my family at the airport, to spending a week at home by the lake, to returning to waterloo and to donning, to learning more in school, to laughing with my friends, to everything I’m expecting my life to be like, from here until as far as I can imagine it.

But by now I’ve realized that you can only plan your life so far ahead and the unexpected takes over anyways. Keeps things interesting I think. And it also doesn’t make me feel so bad, so guilty, so agitated/nervous/antsy/worried about not knowing exactly where I want my life to go after I graduate. Ten years down the road I have no idea where I’ll be, but I feel confident that it’ll be a happy place, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Amsterdam part 2 - the forgotten

I read the blog of another person who went on this trip with me, and his was more chronological with what we did, and I realized that despite the length of my first post I missed a few things worth mentioning.

An experience I would recommend to all Amsterdam travelers is the Heineken Experience. It was supposed to be a 1 hour stop that turned into a 3 hour tour. The building is where Heineken used to be brewed but now it's just a big interactive museum type thing. There are brew kettles, some exhibits on the Heineken history, a ride/video which allowed me to experience what it's like to be a beer bottle from the factory to the bar...lots to entertain us. For the 10 Euro entrance fee we each got 3 small beers and a 'gift' which turned out to be a nifty bottle opener worth 5 Euros at the gift shop. It's the only museum I've ever been to that pretty much pays for itself.

We also checked out the Van Gogh museum which had an incredibly long line for entrance, but was worth it. That guy was crazy, and you can see it as you view his paintings in chronological order. He was usually all messed up on absinthe when he painted, suffered from horrible depression, and eventually went out into a field and shot himself in the chest

The last 'must see' on my list was the Anne Frank house. I went inside and explored the actual house where Anne and her family hid from the occupying Nazi's for two years. It's been partially restored with items from the house, and her original diary is on display. For all the fun and merriment in Amsterdam, it didn't take long for this to put me in a very somber mood. I almost cried.