Messages + Frankfurt, Germany

I just wanted to let you all know I am alive and well, though many of you who keep up with my Facebook, Twitter and DeviantArt pages already knew that!

Adventures lately have been few, but I will recap as best as I can.

First I'd just like to make a point or two.

The most important being the tea count. I might have to cancel the 1000 cups of tea challenge, only for the fact that I seem to have a caffeine allergy of some sort, which I think I developed by drinking energy drinks so much while working on the Prince of Persia costumes back in 2008. Every time I seem to have a cup of tea with caffeine (so, the regular kind, earl grey, etc) I get heart palpitations. I could do this challenge with just fruit and peppermint tea, but I think I'd honestly get extremely sick of 650 more cups of that before September hits. So I will continue the count, but don't expect me to reach the goal. It's sad, I know, but I can't do anything to help it!

I'm working very hard to update Insane Yeti Squirrel as best I can. Time allows me to update twice a week while letting me do things in between, like play games or do other projects or explore. I need to stick to a strict updating regime if I hope to gain any sort of following. I know I can do it.

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Currently I am in Frankfurt, Germany visiting Eren. I arrived here on March 20th, after Kody and Caz dropped me off at the Edinburgh airport. (Thanks guys!) Edinburgh airport is pretty tiny and was surprisingly fast to get through security and everything, so I had a couple hours to kill before I boarded the plane. Ended up drawing in the new sketchbook I bought just an hour previous and enjoying a cinnamon latte from Costa Coffee along the way (it was free! Woo hoo!)

When I got to Frankfurt, it wasn't very tough getting through security at all. Eren was waiting for me on the other side, and we went straight to the train station. There are a LOT of train lines in Frankfurt. If you thought London was confusing, you should see Frankfurt's train system, holllyyyyy smokes, and Frankfurt isn't even close to being as big as London is! We met up with his friends at the Tower Cafe, where I had a ginger ale with an orange slice in it (starting with the 0.2 L or 0.3L servings again, I remember this from Czech Republic!) and a VERY tasty chicken ceasar salad. We hung out there for a couple hours and went to go karaoke after. I wanted to drop all of my belongings off at Eren's beforehand, so we went to his house to meet up with them later. Except as luck would have it... Eren had lost all of his keys. :( Couldn't get in or buzz any of the neighbours since he didn't even have his flat key. So while I went to karaoke with his friends with all of my bags still weighing down my back, Eren went back to all the places he was that day to try to retrieve them - with no luck. Very upsetting indeed. So after everything, karaoke was completed super late, and we took a cab to Eren's friend Phil's house for the night, where he graciously offered us the use of his attic to sleep in. (It had 2 single beds and a cool, very low, slanted ceiling!)

I won't get into details about running around trying to figure out how to break into Eren's flat, but eventually we managed, buzzing countless German neighbours and trying to communicate and a locksmith later. Needless to say, since Eren didn't have the front building key replaced (would have taken 2 weeks and expensive to replace and he was moving anyway) I had to be under "house arrest" (meaning I couldn't leave the house because I wouldn't be able to get back in) so I could let Eren back in at the end of the day. This went on for a week and a bit. Had to rely on Eren to bring back foods from the corner store. I managed to go to the store once on my own, but I got a little nervous, not knowing what to do if I was asked questions in German. Most of the time I just say "Sorry I don't understand" or just mumble incoherently and ignore. Only because so far I've come to realize that most the German people I've come into contact with are not very nice people. I'm sure there are lots of lovely German folk, but so far I have not felt welcome in this country from the moment I've stepped into it's borders. I've been greeted with scoffs, rudeness, ignoring, patronizing, probably only because I don't speak German, or they are scared of an alternative looking individual like me. Whatever the reason is, I'm sorry to be on the receiving end of such bad treatment.

Eren's move to his new flat generally went okay. Since he didn't have a friend with a car to help him move, we went back and forth carrying many large, heavy bags on the train and walking long distances. Needless to say, my back was EXTREMELY sore, my arms were tired, and I was cranky a lot of the time. We even made an Ikea trip that was really fun, we even got Swedish Meatballs, lingonberry jam and potatoes (missed this from Sweden!), but we still had to carry home all the heavy spoils. His new flat is much better than his old one. It's in a tall building, he lives on the 9th floor, and has a balcony view of the direction of the sunset and a view of Frankfurt city. It's quite astounding! I'll post a picture.

So since I've been in his new flat, I've built most of his Ikea furniture (the bed, the bookshelf, the TV entertainment stand, and the computer desk) I am a freakin' LUMBERJACK but it made me have sore thumbs and palms from screwdriving by hand so much. We've experimented with the little food we buy at a time, we've watched all of Glee, played Kings Quest 4 and 5 and have started 6, and are playing it on the 40 inch LCD TV he bought for his new flat, I've tried out Final Fantasy XIII (it's kinda boring, music is a bit drab, characters are annoying), watched Amelie and Moulin Rouge, playing Heavy Rain, BlazBlue... etc etc etc. I've been trying to draw lots too. Sometimes all it takes is a little inspiration and free time. Which I got lots of at the moment! I also watched the entire 74 episode series of Monster, which was incredible, and very appropriate to watch in Germany, since the entire thing takes place in Germany and Czech Republic!

His friend had a Musicals and Fajitas night, where we watched Jesus Christ Superstar and most of Mamma Mia! while eating very tasty fajitas and drinking delicious wine. It was great fun!

I haven't seen much of Frankfurt yet, but we hope to take a day trip to Heidelberg, which is a gorgeous little town with a castle nestled in the nearby forest brush. To get to the main town you go over an enormous, stone bridge. If you can, look up a picture. I'm very excited to visit this beautiful German town!

My Dad wants me to go to Berlin and I would love to, but I might not have time as I have to go back to Scotland sometime soon so I can prepare for friends visiting when it gets warmer. Also, didn't think I'd say this, but prefer the atmosphere of more friendly Glaswegians than Germans, it seems! Hahahaha! Well, maybe Berlin another time, another adventure. We shall see! Maybe another time I'll do both Berlin and Amsterdam.

We did go to Venice, which was an epic trip. Next post will be about Venice! Yay!

Me at karaoke with my €6.50 bottle of Fanta and Tambourine

Singing "Viva Forever" with Phil

Typical German dinner. Wurst and apfelwine!

Sunset out of Eren's Balcony

PLANE ADVENTURES and HELLO SWEDEN!

Long time no talk!

So I was in Irvine for 2 weeks visiting my friend Leslie, who's also an awesome artist! She has a 2 year old boy named Aiden and a husband, Brian. It was quite nice to visit with her and talk with her, even though we were tired a lot from looking after Aiden! She's also pregnant again as well, so we got some art in, as well as a Fushigi Yuugi marathon and I showed her all of Hetalia!

Unfortunately, on my last week there I got really sick. I got tonsillitis with a little bit of a fever, so I was confined to the house for a good little while! I managed to get to the doctors after coughing up some blood and got myself some antibiotics. I'm all okay now! :D

Also I read this totally awesome book called "Skinny Bitch" which is basically like a no nonsense book about the truths of eating meat and non-organic foods, and how much our government lies about the garbage we put in our mouths. Also had some really scary horror stories about what goes on in slaughterhouses. Makes me want to give up meat for the most part. D: So needless to say we had a lot of great vegetarian dishes. :D

Leslie's mom lives in a Caravan park half of the year during the summer. I think it would be so fun to have one of these. It's just like a larger, wider motorhome amongst other Caravans. We visited it once at night time and it was directly opposite this large abandoned brick building which is HAUNTED! Apparently paranormal investigators confirmed hauntings there, like slamming doors and weird noises! I wasn't allowed to go in there though. Poo. :{

Also, on a really windy day, we went to the beach where there's a bit of a walkway that goes in between the crashing waves. There's no barrier on either side though so you could totally fall in, and it's only about 5 feet wide across. So because of the gale-ish winds, we were being pushed back from going forward to the very end of this walkway, with the waves crashing all around us. I actually took a video of it. Bluetooth's not working right now so you can get it later.

After the 2 week vacation there, I went back to Kody's for a couple of days. During that time I hung out with my old coworker Alan, because he's originally from Glasgow and he came home the same time I was in Scotland. So we shopped around and hung out, and we also went to this amazing Scottish restaurant called the Bothy, which had great food and a great atmosphere. The whole place was decorated like a beautiful tavern/inn with lots of foliage decor that was christmas themed, and all the seats were big and cushy, and everything was made of wood pretty much. I had this Chicken Bonnie Lass or something.. and it was chicken with a bacon mushroom wine sauce with potatoes and other veggies. Soooo good. *___*

So you might have noticed I am keeping up with my tea counts... it's been tough because sometimes I don't have access to tea, and being sick drinking hot drinks hurt. However, I've been keeping up since I've arrived in...

SWEDEN!!!!

That's right. My super awesome online artist buddy Linnéa, better known to others as Mirre, is letting me stay with her and her family for 3 weeks in Umeå, Sweden. Getting here was a whole different story..

I took a plane from Glasgow to London, which was fine. I got to London at 9pm and my string of 2 flights to get to Umeå was at 7am the next morning. I was going to spend the night at the Heathrow airport, but Chris texted me and gave me the option of spending the night at his place and getting up very early to catch a tube into Heathrow, because it was not very far away at all. After much debating with myself, I decided to stay at his place overnight so I could park my stuff and get some sleep.

After getting up at 5am and getting myself out the door, I walked briskly to the tube station and waited there for a good 35 minutes before I realized that there was no train coming, and when I went upstairs to the main area there was a sign that said "Trains not running to Heathrow, signal failure."

>:|

Unfortunately for me, stress levels then skyrocketed, as I frantically went around trying to find a cash machine so I could take out some pounds to pay for a cab to take me to the airport as "fast as he could" (which was less than the normal speed limit...) Long story short, I ended up getting to the airport through the doors to my check in counter at 6:30 am, 30 minutes before my flight, and they stopped taking bags at 6:15.

*sigh*

After almost breaking down in front of hundreds of people, I made my way to the SAS counter to buy myself another ticket on the next flight, which luckily was the same day at 2:05pm. However, 250 pounds later.. I had to wait around for almost 8 hours uncomfortably at the airport, starving and not wanting to leave my stuff. My 3 flights into Umeå. started from London, then to Copenhagen, then to Stockholm, then to Umeå. Copenhagen Airport in Denmark is a really pretty airport. Everything was dark wood decorated and it was very easy to find my next gate. Stockholm was a maze and it was too big. My flight to Umeå was pretty cool. I sat beside a huge muscular guy probably about my age who was a thai kickboxer I think.. or UFC style fighting? Anyway he won the Austria championship for his division and he was going to Umeå for his next round. How cool. He couldn't speak much english, but we communicated enough to talk for a bit. We were in the very last seats of the plane squished together, it was pretty funny. He liked my artwork. :}

So Linnéa was waiting for me in Umeå at the baggage roundabout! I gave her a big hug, it was great! :D After getting my stuff and driving back to her house and remarking how they drive on the RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD *cough*ukfail*cough* I came to her awesome house, and met her parents and her brother, Torkel. We had "Fika" which is like teatime, had some delicious tea I've never even smelt/tried before, with some banana cake Linnéa made and gingersnaps. They even decorated my room, it looks so cool in here! It's cozy, I have a couch, a bed, a leather armchair, a tv, with lots of really moody lighting and christmas decorations!

Speaking of Christmas Decorations, everyone in Sweden seems to have those light up paper stars in their window, or a 7 candle electric candelabra. It looks really magical, way less tacky then millions of colors of Christmas lights and weird decorations on lawns! It's super cool to see a huge apartment building on the horizon over the water and see every window with one of these!

The sun sets early because of how far North we are in the world, so it sets around 1:30pm. We don't get much sun, however it just means we get sunrise/sunset for the most part! 2 days ago, Linnéa and I went clothes shopping and I got a few things for myself since a few articles of clothing I bought didn't suit the weather conditions. We also had a really nice lunch at a café, and I tried "Portello" which is a soft drink kind of like cream soda. For dinner, we had a traditional Swedish dinner called 'pytt-i-panna', which had chopped up ham and potato, fried egg and pickled beets (which weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be, ahha) with some strong cheese on flat unleavened bread on the side. Later that night during Fika, I got to try glögg for the first time. It's like a hot mulled spiced wine that you drink with almonds or raisins in it with a tiny little spoon for scooping them out with. We also had Saffron buns, which is another Swedish christmas/Jul tradition with more Gingersnaps.

Yesterday, Linnéa and I went to a Swedish Christmas Market which was held at a farm. It was great fun, there were shetland ponies and pigs that we saw, and there were lots of stalls were people were selling crafts, homemade baking, jewelry, socks, candy etc. I bought a big jar of honey and took some great pictures. The way to walk around was lit with these large candles on the ground. It was so very pretty! After we looked around for a couple of hours, we went back home and had dinner (homemade pizza!)

Afterwards, Linnéa's best friend Åsa came over and we went disco bowling! Many lulz and awesome photos were had. Afterwards we went to a huge candy store and loaded up, went home and played some mega-yahtzee (with 6 dice) and card games, and chatted til about 2:00am when we decided to call it a night..

Today Linnéa and I have been baking Gingerbread cookies! I made an army of little piggies. Mwahahaahha!

So that's it so far. I'll update more because I'm sure we'll be doing lots of fun festive things. It's about -5 degrees and it snowed a bit!

ENJOY SOME PHOTOS AND BYE FOR NOW!

Linnéa and I are the best bowlers.

MAKIN' PIGGIES!

Outside! IT'S SNOWING!

Beautiful sunset! Oh yeah it's like... not even 2pm here.

Candy at the Christmas Market! Yummm.

BRADFORD + HELLO SCOTLAND!

HI I'M DAISY! Okay not really... but that reminds me of a really clever puzzle!

Again with the long delay in postage.. just didn't have a heck of a lot to report! I've gone from Cheltenham, to Bradford, and now I'm in Glasgow!

But for now let me catch you up on all the delicious happenings..

Last Sunday, one of my new friends Rowan hosted an incredibly great, and incredibly geeky party at her house. The theme was a "World Conference Party" a la Axis Powers Hetalia (the new anime my friends got me into) , and we all had to bring a different dish depending on which country we were dressing up as. I got England, since no one wanted to be their own country - which is okay, because all I did was buy a large chippy and a flat of pear cider and I was set! :D I also bought a white collared shirt and camo green jogging pants - along with Troy's Dalek tie and drawn on enormous eyebrows, I completed the look. The party itself was a blast, full of drinking and delicious food from everywhere. Jack dressed up as Canada, and I taught him how to make proper canadian pancakes and bacon! He took it to the next level and made bacon-infused pancakes! I was so proud of him. *Sniff*

All the pictures from the party you can see if you follow this link below!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157622767701234/

Sarah came back from where she's originally from in Plymouth and her, Sabine, Troy and I went and braved the outside for a bit of a walk, and I introduced them to GEOCACHING! Except I didn't have a GPS so we pretty much did it via clues and Google Satellite. We managed to find one, and the other one was a bit lost to us (it told us to search near a rock under a shrubbery - there were a lot of those in the area we had to look!) Troy planted some Toy Soldier propaganda and a Warhammer 40k pin. The scenery was gorgeous. After getting up to some Blockbuster shenanigans, Sabine, Sarah and I watched the Prestige and hung out and drew for a bit (I drew Sarah a picture of her and the Doctor and she wrote me some really awesome poems in return!)

Sadly, I had to leave Cheltenham on Wednesday and say goodbye to all my sweet newfound friends. :{ They threatened to break my legs many times if I didn't return so I will MOST DEFINITELY return sometime next year, because I sure to love the use of my legs!

So a £61.50 ticket later, I was on the train to Leeds to visit my dad's cousin, Shirley, who I've only seen in pictures! She actually lives in Bradford, but she came to pick me up after I got there. After not knowing what I was doing to actually get out into the train station (that's what the tickets are for.. ohhhh) we drove to her awesomely cute house and ordered chinese food.

After getting accustomed to her place and settling into my nice clean room (WITH A BED!!! A BED!! YESSSSS!) I quickly learned that her cat, Frith, doesn't like being locked out of any room in the house with a person inside. So the next few nights of Bradford involved me waking up every hour to the sound of frantically scrambling claws trying to get into my room. :||||||| I had some earplugs but they fell out in the middle of the night quite frequently.. It was tough as well because I'm severely allergic to cats, so I constantly had my inhaler in my mouth, and popping Claritin trying not to die.

Oh well, SURVIVAL MODE ON, Shirley took me into town where we went to an old building that got turned into an art gallery and bookstore/diner. The guy who owns all the art posted around looks like he learned to draw from a 3 year old, but they had lots of really cool art supplies and books, and I bought a pink Copic sparkly writing pen. :D After looking at lots of cool books and having an Earl Grey, we went back home where we walked to a really tiny, tacky empty pub called the Blue Boar, run by a tiny old lady and her husband. Met up with Shirley's girlfriend, Lee, who is a freakin' gas. We had some drinks, and stumbled into a posh curry restaurant where we had great curry! Finally, some decent UK curry!

Unfortunately I've been having some problems with my electrical stuff, ever since my hard drive failed, the left side of my $100 headphones is busted and won't work properly, and the S key of my Macbook decided to stop working half the time (which I have since fixed, yay me!) and I'm always scared that the converter adaptor for my electrical stuff is going to blow up...

The next day, we went into a small town about 30 mins drive through countryside away to visit an Abbey in the middle of a tiny town. It had a huge graveyard outside with enormous gravestones, and it was all ruins. It was just gorgeous, really. There was a part of the church that was still functioning though, and I got some great pictures inside of it. There was ominous male choral music playing in the background.. like the Halo opening. It was kind of awesome.

We visited a couple of the pubs in the area where the locals hang out. The first one we had a drink at, two old men made a comment about my violently lime green tights and army boots. I said the tights were so that people could see me from miles away in case I got lost.. and they bought it! :D They liked my army boots too. They were just darling old men.

The next pub we went to had FOOD! And a great atmosphere, it was partly in a BARN that was converted into this dining hall, and it had a huge fireplace! And the old guy who ran it was really nice, and I got smoked salmon creamy penne and it was delicious! They also had this game in the pub where you had to swing a metal ring tied to a rope and try to hook it on a hook that was coming out from one of the ceiling bars. I failed harsh. :{ After finishing my "lemonade" (which is what British people call Sprite) we finished driving through the countryside back home!

That night we went to Shirley and Lee's coworkers birthday party at an Irish Club (not a typical "club" but a "Club" like the YMCA, somewhere where you'd host a really lame work party) and went to party with a bunch of drunk doctors, who were considerably less fun than I had anticipated. Humongous sigh. :{ Thanks to my salmon pasta earlier that day, every drink I had that night, including the double shot of vodka I had at the bar, was all for naught, and I wasn't even tipsy. However, they played Scissor Sisters and Lee and I got up and had to dance to that jazz.

The next day, Shirley had to go into another town to meet with her friend Pam, where I had 2 more cuppas at the beer and wine bar (I feel so lame not drinking beer..) and delicious cookies. It was POURING rain, and while everyone was scrambling around in hoodies and umbrellas trying to get out of the rain, I was the only one open faced into the air receiving the heaven's tears on my face :D Everyone must have thought I was insane..
Shirley got her hair cut, and we drove through some freaking awesome countryside where the rain had cleared and we got a DOUBLE AWESOME RAINBOW spread over the countryside!!!!!!!!!! It was so bright, the pictures don't do it justice! It was magical!

The next day involved rush hour traffic and almost missing my train into Glasgow, but we INDIANA JONES'D that noise, and got there just in the nick of time. Thank you Shirley and Bradford for letting me stay for a few days and showing me a great time. :D

So from Leeds to York, and York to Glasgow Central!

The train ride was fun and a half. 4 hours of screaming kids and obnoxious pikeys (those are hoodlums) , my non working headphones, Hetalia, talking to a sweet girl from London, a Wispa gold, and writing in my sexy new diary.

After a small mix up, I was met at the train station by Kody, Troy and Jack's friend, and his lovely girlfriend Carly. :D They proceeded to walk me back to Kody's where the BEST LASAGNA I've EVER HAD was waiting for me, and while we were eating, right outside of Kody's apartment in Glasgow center they had FIREWORKS! It's like they knew I was coming! And they were awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. Sparkly goodtimes.

Today was a rainy day and consisted of Kody showing me around town and the shops, and Glasgow Uni, and the museum where the Doctor Who exhibit I'm going to visit is (YEEEEE) . I got some strawberry marshmallow candy from this huge Candy shop where a thing of orange Koolaid imported from the states is £4.50 and a small box of Lucky Charms is £8.00!!! D: Dear god. Times that by almost two and you have that in Canadian prices.

I also got the COOLEST THING EVER... IT'S A RACING SNAIL WIND UP TOY!!!!



:D

After visiting the museum for a bit, Kody took me to a chippy place where we had chips and DEEP. FRIED. HAGGIS!!!!

The best part is..

IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes that's right my opinionated friends. Haggis is no more disgusting than a regular breakfast sausage. So if you'd eat that, you'd eat haggis which technically is just... a sheep sausage instead of a pork one. Honestly. It's not that bad. Tasty shite, man. Jak approves.

Excitement and joy of joys, my pretties. I will update again soon with more Glasgow-ness once the weather is better, it was spitting like mad today.

Love and-o peace!

Shirley's road in Bradford

Shirley (on left) and Lee (on right) in the Pub in the countryside :D

RAINBOW

View from underneath an archway at the Abbey

The Bolton Abbey and some gravestones

The Church inside the Abbey

SHEEP! You have pink on your butt.

View from Kody's balcony

"Hooray! Molly's here! Rejoice!"