One Year On

Hello everyone, I'm back!

It's been over a year since my last post but within it I mentioned I would be looking for internships in Germany after finishing my degree at Southampton, having fallen in love with the people, the landscape and the way of life during my year abroad. People who know me personally will know I actually managed to find one a few months back and, in a spooky deja vu from two years ago, I am now once more readying myself to move abroad to Germany!

I will be working for a company in Hamburg (so, er, a rather far away from last year, see below) as a translation intern. The internship is 6 months long, after which I will probably take it easy for a few months and stay in Germany as a waitress/barmaid etc, before looking for a career-type job.

Distance between the old and new cities: roughly 550km.

Last year I enjoyed writing my blog so much I've decided to continue it, with some new things to explore:

• A new city! Hamburg, the second largest city in Germany, home to 1.8 million people (Trier has just over 100,000) and far in the north of the country, where the accents are less pronounced but (perhaps) the people a little too slick?
• The expat working experience and, more importantly, the intern experience in a large, multinational company.
• And most frighteningly...what is it like to move abroad to work, without the support of your university and the British Council?

So why Hamburg?

Well a number of reasons.

Firstly I wanted the big city experience, somewhere where I knew that, having got to grips with the 9-5 grind for essentially the first time (opening up/closing down the café a few days a week when I was 19 definitely doesn't count), I would have many Unternehmungsmöglichkeiten* (aka things to do) in the evenings and weekends. People who know me will confirm I take being an extrovert to dizzying new levels and quite frankly the thought of not having many opportunities to get out there and meet people caused me to break out in a sweat.

Hamburg Fischmarkt, which, I'm told, is an partying spot from 5am on Sunday mornings.

Can't wait to find out.

Secondly, I know some people in Hamburg. More specifically, one of the loveliest people I've met since my last post is Diana, a student at Hamburg uni who came to Southampton for a semester to study via Erasmus. We'd both signed up to have an Erasmus buddy and chance would have it, ended up lumbered with each other.

Showing the love in Edinburgh (Me left, Diana right)

I joke, it was actually one of the most fortuitous moments of my life, as we got on like a house on fire (I realise that's a slightly awkward turn of phrase in my case) and before either of us quite noticed we were hanging out all the time, often with a group of other international students that she'd introduced me to. More on that in my next post (tentatively entitled How to do Anything Other than Study in your Final Year).

Anyway, when starting my search for a job in Germany I thought why not at least start my search in places I had existing friends, and widen if no jobs sauntered into view? Seemed like a good a plan as any and luckily it worked. Diana and I have already made Tatort-watching plans for my first evening in Hamburg, success.

Finally, it's a new area of Germany! Somewhere new to explore and, I'm sorry Trier, but considerably easier to access by well, any form of public transport or by air.

I will miss the quirky accents of the Rhineland/Saarland though.


P.S Do you like the new look blog? I gave it a bit of a makeover to reflect my new location and purpose; to explain the background, anchors are a symbol of Hamburg and it's ports.






*Weirdly, one of the first words I learnt in German in yr 9. Was für Unternehmungsmöglichkeiten gibt es? What is there do to? Faced with that behemoth aged 13, its a wonder I continued learning German at all.