It is now for REAL! I lost it! somewhere in Sydney…. there are three places of possiblities. First when I had brunch with Alvin and Aldrich in PCP, second when I had lunch with Mom in Spice I am, third when I was on the way from Spice I am to Paddys Market (that’s all on the same day). I only wear my glasses in the morning, afterwards I was wearing my sunglasses, supposedly my glasses was always in my bag or in the hotel (although it’s less likely….)
Continued… picked my Mom up from Central Station, took a Taxi to Ibis, proceed to Spice I Am Thai’s resto, walked to Paddys Market then meeting with Betsy. When Betsy and I were inside, I wanted to see the Menu that was on the wall, this is the moment where I want to change from sunglasses to real glasses…. hmmmm where is it? it’s not on my bag, didn’t pay attention if my bag’s zipper closed completely or not. Anyway didn’t think much of it, thought it could be on my room somewhere.
Back to Ibis, glasses is nowhere to find, ok it’s missing, I’m positive about it, went back to PCP asked if someone see that or if it’s in the toilet, 0 squared. Reported it to my friends, not sure if they are happy that this time it’s gone for real as they were the one who actively sought my glasses last time hihi
I was quite dysfunctional on my last two days in Sydney, relying only with sunglasses, need to go back before dark, I’m not Alicia Sierra who wore sunglasses in the evening #fanatic fans of La Casa de Papel
Good bye my Marc by Marc Jacob’s glasses, wait! it’s not mine from the first place, it was Aggy’s haha she gave it to me back then couldn’t remember when, I guess in year 2018 or 2019. Aggy worked previously in a glasses shop, sorry Aggy I lost it. But I did have a good adventure of 4+ years with your glasses from Shanghai to Dortmund also any places in between 🙂
It’s time for me to move on to a German Brand, Mister Spex! Chose a 4 modes to test it at home:
Do the eye test, waited for one week delivery #believe me for German standard it’s already fast.
From 30.03.2023 on, me and my Lisa-Marie Schiffner will have a new adventure!
I wanted to have a Rosa Farbe for some reason plus pair it with Gold is not bad hey 😉 I realized it’s the same color as my Kaiya’s tumbler, we both wear cardigan too #matchingggg
Missing my niece, at this moment she’s currently sick, get well soon baby K #hugs and love from Germany XX
When online meet offline, what? what is this and who I’m meeting with? It’s a he and he is our Grammar-Guru when I took my online German class 🙂 Ahmed from Egypt!
Originally we supposed to meet with Leon too but due to heavy rain disruption and a rainy day, we kept postponing our trip, in the end only me and Ahmed that can do it. I’m still happy we made it!
I insist to go on Saturday because Münster have Wochenmarkt and I specifically need to eat Reibekuchen. It is nothing more than an oily potato haha! Nothing worth to mention here. But! This Wochenmarkt is located in the city center, where the main attractions are.
I really like Münster Cathedral or also called St. Paulus-Dom and Ich muss unbedingt the Astrological counter-clockwise clock and “Paradise” (a hall lined with larger than life-sized status of Jesus and the 12 Apostles) finden. Okay, church visit started! Ahmed is Muslim so he doesn’t know the story and all the characters, me on the other hand is Christian so I know it or I supposed to know.
We walk inside the church and kept counting the statues because it has to be 12! but it always either 10 or 14! rrrrrr And it is written “larger than life” statue…..so….. it should be bigger than a normal person but I only see one statue that is bigger than Ahmed with a baby on his shoulder and Ahmed ask me “is it Jesus?” I said “No, Jesus doesn’t look like that, I don’t know who is this child maybe a baby Jesus, but Jesus is in the middle” I pointed to the one in the middle of the altar and we counted the statue surrounding Him, it’s also not 12 and we tried to guess maybe the small gold statue down there? but then it’s not a larger than life sized and Ahmed pointed on a 12 circles on the back of the church and ask me if those are the Apostles? and I said “no, Apostles is a person” Hmmmmm cannot find it….
I saw in the corner a “free-tour” and I always caught the word “free” 🙂 we had a very beautiful lady from Spain named Nuria and she explained us everything about the church from the very beginning, turns out Ahmed is not all wrong!
Okay, so the paradise is the place where we just got in which is a small “hall” before the main church I’d say. Why is called a paradise? Because all the statue on the wall is representing animals and plants. And yeah indeed it is, didn’t pay attention before so this is the whole Paradise things I’ve been looking for. Yes, found it!
Next is the larger than life statue and where is it? exactly on the entrance door to the main church! I counted…. “Nuria, it’s only 10?” and she said yes because the other 2 were lost, aaaaaaaaa haha who would have known?!?! and she said no one can recognize who is who unless for one Apostle called Bartolomeus because he wore a shoes, ahaaa can’t unsee it now!
Then, we went inside the main church, we started from the back side where we have 12 circles on the wall and she said “it’s representated the 12 Apostles” ahaha Ahmed was right and she turned to the very giant statue and a baby on his shoulder, the one that I forgot his name hmm…. can’t remember it but I knew this story, anyway…
So he is a very strong Saint, the one that always help people to cross the river….any clue about his name? hmmm… okay, let’s continue, one day there is a child that want to cross the river, he hold his child on his shoulder but the child is very very very very heavy, he made it to the other side still but then he asked the child “you are so heavy” (something like that, maybe not too direct) and the child said “you just carried the weight of the world on your shoulder” and that child is a baby Jesus.
P.s Marlyn was right 😉
Moving on to the astrological clock, at 12:00 they have some “show” where the devil rang the bell 3 times and of course I forgot what happens later but I got it on a video 🙂
For some reason I really thought the clock will ticking haha! Naja… Anyway the church visit need to end now because they will start the ceremony. But both of us were so happy to get this tour from Nuria.
Then, we went to Aasee, we don’t walk around the whole Aasee but we arrived there! The distance for all main attractions here is only 15 minutes to everywhere. We also went to Schloss Münster but it is on renovation, so skip it! let’s walk again. At some point we got hungry and we decided to have a food at Frauenstrasse. The moment we sat on the chair, we got somewhat a revelation that we were Kaputt! We have been walking for 4,5 hours! I’m immediately attached to the chair. But something pushes us, we remembered Nuria said the church closed at 5PM and there is still one more church that we haven’t visit- Lamberti Kirche- it’s famous because it has cages on top of it. We really really force ourselves and we hope there will be a tour but unfortunately they don’t have it. Nevertheless, I’m glad that we haben es geschafft! instead of keep staying in the restaurant 🙂
This mark the last Sehenswürdigkeiten for us in Münster before we headed to Hbf, we need some sugar intake so we bought a doughnut which I’m sure can caused us diabetes, chocolates everywhere haha anyway, imo, Münster is good! I like it!
Our physic was dead tired but there was one more mental examination for both of us! The journey is not over yet haha. Ahmed train were 5 minutes earlier. Mine was RB 89 but the train on my Gleis is written RB 69 I thought it will move and my train will come but 3 mins prior my departure time this RB 69 still there okay so I asked the passenger inside if this train will stop at Hamm as I have to change there and take other train from Hamm to Dortmund, they said yes hmmm then the name on the screen and on my App was wrong, naja egal, this RB 69 will take me to Hamm anyway.
I reached Hamm as planned, then I saw on the screen it’s my RB to Dortmund and the train already in the Gleis. I saw den Schaffner outside but I didn’t bother to ask, I jumped right in and so was he. He asked me to show my ticket, I did it and he said that I need to buy a new ticket because this one is invalid but why? Because the train that I took was an IC train! He was so angry and said “my colleague will come and you must buy a new one, you can ask me before but you just jump in” Oh gosh relax! it’s not that I rode without a ticket yo! and I asked him if this train go to Dortmund? and he didn’t reply, damn! I didn’t see any Dortmund on the screen and I don’t want to go to meet other passenger because I was waiting for his colleague, I don’t want he to think “oh this Asian lady is a free-rider blablabla”
What makes me more nervous is my battery already 18% and I texted Ahmed to find out where this train will takes me! I felt that my train was getting slower at least 3 times but it didn’t stop! And Ahmed cannot find my IC train from the Apps, perhaps it’s gone from Berlin or somewhere so he cannot track it anymore. I was total total total nervous, I don’t want to go to other direction on Saturday and how can I find the right train without my phone und so weiter und so forth!
It was only 10 minutes but it feels like an ewigkeit! haha When the trains really getting slow and I saw people started to stand up then I got ready to go out and tell Ahmed what is the name of the station and when I saw “Dortmund Hbf” oh my all the stress were dropped hahaha! Even Ahmed was stressed too hahaha
Thank you Ahmed for not only joining my Münster Trip that broke our feet apart haha but also joining my mental panic attack 🙂
Have a good time back in Egypt and see you when you come back to Germany again! Next trip is waiting!
Next, I embraced myself to a city that took 3 hours away from Dortmund which is called Koblenz and why is that? Because Moni has a cousin there, she said “my cousin will be so happy to meet you, you will fit for each other” okay then, say no more! I’m omw 😀
Her cousin name is Aleja and she looks exactly like Moni haha! btw I’m not the only one, Moni’s boyfriends JP also said the same, he told me if I go to Mexico and meet all the relatives of Moni they all looks the same haha
The transportation in small city like Koblenz is not convenient, if I miss the bus then I will have to wait for 30 mins P.S this is for morning, in the not so evening which is after 18:00 bus will only come every hour that is why I have to walk more than 5km from Hbf to her place and I have to pass der Friedhof iiiiii spooky but I manned up! managed to reach her home and had a low connection video call with Moni and JP because they were on the beach! while we were on a rainy cold German summer >.<
I have never slept like a baby before, I think one of the reason is Ale’s curtain is the black out type that block all the sunshine haha I didn’t even realized it was raining outside so I wait until the rain is acceptable to take the bus and explore the city!
The city is so small and all tourist attractions are located next to each other, what a definition of perfectooo 🙂 I like the Alte Burg, Jesuitenplatz and churces.
And of course the main main main attractions is the Deutsches Eck! where Rhine and Mosselle river meets in the middle.
Not so far from the German Corner, there is a Biergarten, church and a cable car to one of the castle and of course I took it! On the way back I chose to sit on cable car number 17 because they have a part in the middle which made from glass so I can see what’s under me…. which is obviously the river 🙂
During my visit to the castle, rain starts to pour down but it didn’t stop me from enjoying it, I visited the museum for child. This museum is really really interesting, there are games, stamps collection station and was full of colors! Of course there’s a lot of kids but I don’t care, I have a traumatic childhood, they need to wait for me until I finish the game and collect those 8 stamps!
I had so much fun, I even don’t bother to check if it still rained or not and when it stops, this is the time for me to go out and finish my castle’s tour 🙂 The Deutsches Eck view from top of the castle is amazing! Mir gefällt es!
After my whole day tour, I reunited again with Aleja and her friends, Paula and Pamela, we had a Mexican dinner, ice cream, meet a funny statue and walk around in the city center.
Only Pamela came around one month ago while Aleja and Paula came almost the same time with me, maybe a few months earlier. So we all came during Corona time and travel was a bit hard back then but now I know they haven’t been to Dortmund yet, why not next time they stay with me 🙂 must be so much fun for us to travel together, I make sure I have my Indonesian chili sauce for Pamela 🙂
Koblenz definitely got a Marlynapproved stamp! I like it, it’s such a cute small city even they have a statue for #thumbs up! cool, eh?!
When Hollywood produced “Me Before You”, Marlynshood produce and keep producing “Me After You” me after who? who is you? is me after my vaccine 🙂 The rule in here is from the date of my second shot + 14 days later then I belongs to the category of fully vaccinated and are allowed to travel without PCR or Rapid test.
However, I am still not confidence to go outside of Germany because the list of “dangerous country” from Germans Authority keeps changing every day and I don’t want to risk it. Therefore I decided to start small by taking a one hour train to a neighbor city, Düsseldorf 🙂
I stayed over the night there haha when I told the Germans that I am staying in a hotel in Düs they all were laughing because the distance between Düs and Dortmund is soooooo close, yes I don’t want to go back on the train the same day, I’d rather chill a bit there, I have all the time in the world 😀
It’s all really big compare to Dortmund, Königsalle shopping district (not that I’m shopping btw), Old Town and Rhine Promenade seems to be the highlight of this city. It is so big that leads me to a confusion… like where am I? I am already in the area? Seems so, let’s walk around.
The city itself is not so interesting imo, it’s a big city with many options, nichts besonders…. at least until I went to Kaiserswerth area. It is like their own small city and I like it more 😀
It’s basically a ruined castle, so the main attraction is only it but it’s located in such a quiet and peaceful area. I met a very nice lady with her dog, I think she knows I’m a bit confused about the place and she told me there is a very very very small alley and they have trees next to each other, it sounds very normal but the alley is indeed small and to me it looks cute!
I am not a big fan of visiting a museum, but I will be when it’s rain 🙂 I visit Neanderthal Museum, it’s a museum about human evolution, located I think in the far end of Düs because it took me almost one hour to get there. It is interesting though and a good place to be when you are waiting for the rain to pass 🙂
I also went to a Castle that unfortunately closed but I like the building it’s pink!! Then I went to Hofgarten where I found out there are more ducks than people and I don’t even dare to cross them so I went back mwahaha.
All in all, Düs is just OK, good for an “execursion” outside Dortmund but what I really like about it is the FOOD! oopps I meant the Japanese Food there! Yes, Düs got another name and it’s “The Little Tokyo” Immermanstraße and Carl Platz are just amazing!! Next time if I want to eat Japanese food, I’d rather to take a train and go to Düs other than eat in Dortmund 🙂 it is just that good! #drooling!
Thanks, Düsseldorf, time to move on to the next one!
FYI, there’s nothing to do with Justin Bieber’ song or tribute for Belieber 😉
At first, I always say “Never take an online class, I will have zero motivation, it won’t be good and I will not like it, ever!” But the fact say otherwise, Covid case is not showing any sign of going down and they prolong the home-schooling time therefore a language institute is not allowed to have a student in their school, so my second German class is online as well pfff. I was hesitate at first but compare to doing nothing, in addition that it was still winter time in Germany, staying indoor and keep myself sane by doing online class seems not a bad option.
Okay so my class starts on 7th Januar until 25th Februar, still have a hope that they will lower the restrictions maybe by Feb and change to Präsenz class? Yes of course, keep positive and optimistic!
Yes people I keep doing a screenshot, it is important for me just to keep some memories. Hope you don’t mind!
Leon, Saurabh, Ramina and Ava were my classmates in my previous class but the others are new to me. On my previous class all of us are living in Germany, but for this we have Emily that is living in England, Silvia in France (but later in Dortmund), Firdaouss in Morocco and Ahmed in….. for the whole time I thought he is in Dortmund but I only knew he wasn’t up to the end of the class and I still vergessen of where he is haha! And the rest of the classmates like Ramina, Saurabh, Marina, Nenad, Andrez, Rachana are in Dortmund only Leon in Dülmen and Ava in Wuppertal.
Nevertheless, these people give me like some kind of “inspiration” or “motivation” or whatever words that fits for that (Emily you are the only native speaker, help me in this haha) to keep learning wherever you are, now we are more and more borderless. They really open my minds to show that the benefits of online is people outside one country can learn if they really want to. I know it sounds very not important but for some reason when I know where they wohnen it’s really inspiring and something inside of me was triggered to also keep learning and don’t let the place limited yourself. Turns out online class is not that bad after all.
We had a little bit of “drama” for this class, due to some organizational stuff, Frau Ziyadli asked if it’s possible to have a class on Friday? I mean, it’s that even a question? No way in hell I’m gonna study on Friday, I’m not a machine, I need to relax or else I would explode! But my answer wasn’t satisfying for the institute, of course I can it’s just I don’t want too, therefore I really thank to Nenad and Ramina as someone who has a child it is really hard to have a class on Friday so we keep our class the way it is unfortunately we need to let her go and Julia come to substitute her. Its hard for us to suddenly have a new teacher, we were very dramatic but on the other hand I believe it must be so hard for her too to suddenly get involved in the middle of the class but she is doing a really good job! I think she fits perfectly to us and to me it doesn’t seems that she’s a substitute teacher, seems like she knows us from the start and her method of teaching is really fits us… well, not sure about us but fits me for sure 🙂
The class keep rolling with our first teacher Frau Brzezina for Montag und Donnerstag and with Julia for Dienstag und Mittwoch… until the exam! None of us realize that exam is just around the corner, we are far and I meant faaarrrr from being ready for exam and yet we have a very good “drama” (spoiler: it’s really not a drama at all that’s why I have the quotes) with the coming back of Silvia! Our crazy Krankenschwester! she went for a week of class in the beginning and goneee for the rest of the class until one fine day on the weekend she texted us in the group.
We got our senior Krankenschwester back! I never met her in real life but you don’t need to do that to know that she’s such a crazy person 🙂 I know I will love her to death but I won’t give myself up to be treated with her haha there are many people in the class that have Krankenschwester as their Traumberuf, zum Beispiel Leon, Firdaouss, Emily and Ava and for some reason I feel safer to know they will be my Krankenschwester just in case I’m sick haha my trust issue is high, with Silvia I think she will make a “salad” for me “hmmm… yes ein bisschen this Medikamente, ein bisschen das, oh with this liquid, that must be good!” haha I’m more looking forward to meet you though 😉
Ok back to the exam, we have writing on Montag and speaking on Dienstag. For speaking I was with Leon. I need to have with my laptop and my Handy because my camera on Laptop is broken! I am so glad that the writing exam is over! and then we have another proper picture it was such an anstrenged 3 hours time of my life! Here we are after the exam 🙂
Andrez added a short comment about our group picture and it was really funny!
One thing I took for myself after this class is I will never be an online teacher! haha I know I said never say never but this I know it for sure, I have zero patient if I have student like Andrez that keep asking “which page?” thank you so much that we have Frau Brzezina and Julia that has the patient as long as Nil river if it’s up to me I would rather say “pay the Goddamn attention! it’s UNO UNO NUEVE!” haha
Fortunately we all passed! So here we all again on our online-certification day, this time we have Julia with us.
I like my classmates though, Ahmed the King of Grammar luckily he’s not frustrated because all of us not strong at it, Ava die Wahrsagerin that makes me want to go to Wuppertal and have my Kaffeesatz lessen, maybe you should pursue it 🙂 Andrez the architektur, Nenad the sporty father, Saurabh is always the one that surprise me sometimes he’s there and sometimes he’s not, Ramina and Rachana the one that keep motivating me to do homework, Marina the wonderful mom that homeschooled her two sons #crazy! Silvia, the one that I could feel she is larger than life, Firdaouss the amazing 18 years of age that is already fluent and somehow I thought when she read something it almost like a native German speaker! Leon, the same with Firdaouss amazing 19 years of age that’s very independent and strong, I know you two will be a good Krankenschwester, I’m glad I’m 10 years older than you so I will be safe when I’m old and sick to have you as my Krankenschwester 🙂 And Emily! the future Queen of England not because she’s drinking tee every afternoon but because of her voice is so soft and always so nice when for one day I got my camera back she said “Marlyn, du bist zuruck” and that voice is so soothing and calming the kind of voice that I would never have, bow to the queen! I am happy with my ex or no ex teacher, Frau Ziyadli, Frau Brzezina and Julia thank you for all the lessons, I know online class is hard for you as teachers too. Nevertheless, you successfully transfer all knowledge that we need, now is time for us.
Here are us once again in one edited picture 🙂
Thank you for all, hope you all healthy and wish you all the best in whatever things you pursue. Good luck in our German language journey and hope to see you in person when the circumstances allow to do so.
Since there is no sign of Covid-19 going down in Germany, more restrictions has been applied, but the ground has always been “avoid crowds”, every meeting professionally or casually are shifting to online. To me it seems like when you try to call customer service and the machine is the one who pick it up and you just want to scream “Operator, operator, I need to talk to a human!” It is really hard to get a human contact for the past 2 months, apart from my workplace, I still need to see another human being so I enrolled to a German class at night after work. I was carefully look for the one that is not online because I”m just sick of it. And I’m glad I found one!
My class runs from Monday to Thursday from 17:15-20:15 this is pretty something especially I always come after work, there are some moments where I completely dysfunctional but my classmates are the one who motivates me to keep going. Who are they? We have 9 real persons mwahaha (including me) and 3 online students. Ramina and Fateemah from Iran; Saurabh, Vishnu, Reddy (not ready), Kovid (not Covid), Prasana, Tiramdasu (not Tiramisu) Varun from India; Tatsiana from White Russia; Leon from Zambia and Onur from Turkey.
They are all really funny, Onur-the smartest guy in class, he always leave at 8PM due to he need to catch his train to Bochum. Saurabh never came on-time and Frau Petra always ask where he is. Fateemah always not-on, she talks when she’s not supposed to but yeah maybe because she’s online so it’s hard to keep up what we are doing. Vishnu, my first friend, my table mates, never get his $h!t together 😉 haha but in the end he got his $h!t better than mine, I was very dilligent in front but towards the end I’m a bit loose. Tatsiana and I are the only students who are working in the day time so we don’t really know or do some efforts of the homework. Varun is a crazy Indian that always wear short-sleeves, what is wrong with you? it’s like 2 degree man! Prasanna the coin guy who always have 50 Cents that I need to wash my clothes, Kovid surprisingly understand Genitiv really good, Reddy always laugh whenever Frau Petra corrected our pronunciation about “Welche”, “Zeit” anything that has W or Z because we all sucks in it. Seems the only students that consistent with our homework is Leon and Ramina.
They are very unified too, I had an idea to give our teachers a small Christmas gift as I like them so much and my classmates also willing to participate. It is funny when Onur write on the card “Danke fuer seine hilfe” and Reddy realized it “Man, who are you thanking to? It’s thank you for his help? who’s helping you?” haha Onur, the smartest guy in class can also make mistake 😉 Of course the teacher will know that we are using google translate to write this long sentence because no way in hell we came up with these sentence all by ourselves.
One teacher, Frau Petra was really like her presents, she knows by 8PM Onur will leave the class so before it, she ask to have a picture with us. And the best phone we have so far is Onur’s, he’s having iPhone 12! Man, you are so update!
These people make me feel that my weekday is very productive with studying and and without my consent, it’s already Pruefung time, seems I don’t even learn anything! haha This is we when we are waiting our turns for our speaking test.
Of course I don’t believe a language institute would failed you. For me the real Pruefung is not the score that is written on a piece of paper but rather the daily speaking in German so I don’t really stressed myself so much. Just like Vishnu “No man, I never stressed, I always ready” read: he’s not even prepared haha
The second day is our writing test and the day after is our Certificate day haha our lovely teacher Frau Marina and Frau Petra brought some cakes and chocolates and some Christmas decorations just for the purpose of the pictures. But we can’t do selfie this time so Kovid asked one of his friends to help us take the picture…but… he only got one job! which is take the whole pics of us including the online students, I guess this was too hard for him haha see how many times we tried, he always doesn’t get a full pictures groarr!
In the end, here is the more or less acceptable picture 🙂
There it is, the day is over. Me and Tatsiana will go to the next class starting in January, perhaps Leon too, but the others will go on March. Thank you all, it was a really fun time to be your classmates and hopefully we all can have our metamorphosis to have a German level that a German could understand #no need to be fluent, I’m a realistic person 😉
Since I’m going to the next class without Vishnu and Onur, well… at least I got their pen with me 😉
