16 April 2015

Es beginnt... the first weeks in Kiel

Kiel: the First Days

Allow me to break from the Ecuador updates for a brief post on my current digs. Fast forward one month from the Ecuadorian tropics, leap northwards fifty-five degrees and eastwards a continent, and shed the sandals and sunblock for a coat and thermals. Here is Kiel, Germany, a small university town sitting on the toe of the Baltic Sea: my home for the next four months.



Kiel is situated on the windy eastern coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state in Germany. It has seagulls and wild changes of weather, for which four years in Scotland have amply prepared me, and it feels calm and tranquil. My arrival to Kiel, however was anything but calm and tranquil.

Imagine: you arrive to a new city short your credit cards and all your socks (I'm really not sure about that one), without a key for your new apartment because the administrative office is closed due to a holiday that you really ought to have remembered since you've celebrated it nearly every year (it's Easter), and also everything is in a language that you really, really, REALLY don't know.

Go.

No really, GO. This was my challenge as I arrived to Kiel. From South America, I had flown to Madrid, where some sneaky fingers nabbed my wallet, and then onwards to Hamburg. By the time I arrived in Kiel, I had already figured out/realized/remembered that it was Easter weekend, and with that came the dawning realization that the office that could give me the key to my apartment would be closed. A few frantic emails confirmed this.

So, a few more hasty emails and requests, and couches materialized for the weekend: a few nights with a patient and wonderful classmate who had been clever and foresightful and had arrived before the Easter weekend, a few nights with a couchsurfing host who went out of his way to show me Kiel and the classic German breakfast of bread, cheese and spreads, and voilà: I had my keys.

At some point during all this, the little sack in my luggage that contained my socks vanished. I really can't say anything more than that. I'm very perplexed, and I don't have any socks now, except the ones I was wearing when the Great Sock Disappearance occurred.

Despite this dramatic entrance, Kiel has been a welcome new home. My dormitory, a four-person apartment, is comfortable and my housemates warm and open. The campus is easily walkable, the buses are free for students, and bikes rule the streets.



On top of that, classes look amazing: this is the semester of fieldtrips. More on that later. Meanwhile, HELLO THERE KIEL.

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