Monday, June 19, 2006

Back in Holland

I told in the last post I'd probably have a big story. So here it is. And there's a lot of news in it because last week has been insane. After recording a radiocommercial on the last day of my face to face week I had little time to rest. The reason is that instead of Saturday, I had to leave on Friday evening to Croatia. It was also the first day of the world cup. So on my way to the trainstation, I passed a lot of screaming, singing and flag waving soccer fans.

Coming from this chaos and having worked without taking a break for two weeks in a row, I had to get a little used to the quiet environment of Croatia. When I finally arrived at a small Croatian village, standing at the calm water in a beautiful sunshine, I still had the feeling that I had to turn on my computer and grab my mouse to make a print ad.

But the next day I was already more at rest. There I was, on a big sailing boat with eight people I never met before and most of them only talking German. I have to say that the whole trip teached me a lot about myself. I mean, between all the crazy people in school I think most of the people consider me slightly eccentric. But on this trip I found out that outside school I'm a total nutball.

I think it had something to do with the fact that on the boat all the people were of my own age. 29 is an age where you're supposed to be at least a little mature and responsible. I showed nothing of that. When it comes down to working I'm disciplined and mature, but outside I'm losing every bit of control. It started at the airport in Croatia when I found out a bottle of whiskey cream wasn't packed in sufficiently and broke in my bag. So I had to wash half of my clothes when I was on the boat.

Later that week there was another stupid action. At one harbour, the boat was too low in comparison to the docks so we had to get on and off our boat by walking on the boat of our neighbours first. I thought: why bother? I could just jump on the boat (about 3 metres high and 2 metres distance). This jumping worked good when I was sober, but didn't work so well one night when I was drunk. Which resulted in me slipping as soon as I hit the boat and crashing on the iron platform with my right leg. It felt like somebody hit me on the leg with a baseball bat. Luckily I recovered in just two days. It was pretty stupid, but later in the week one guy in the boat surpassed this stupidness. He went 'car walking' after a night of drinking (walking over the hoods of a line of parked cars) when suddenly there was a car without a hood and he fell on his back. But even this guy thinks I am from another planet. Well, at least everybody on the boat thought I was 'special', but I'm not sure which kind*.

And about the girls: they were all good looking and very sweet, but somehow they just weren't my types. So -and this will probably surprise a lot of people- I tried with none of them. The good thing is, when there's no pressure of needing to impress somebody you feel more relaxed. And I did relax. We went by boat from one coast in Croatia to the other. We ate at restaurants, went to clubs, swam in the beautiful bright sea and ended in a gorgeous city called Dubrovnic.

By the way, during this week I heard I won a lot of prizes at school. First I heard about a golden and silver star. Both for Bild (this means our concept class teacher wasn't so crazy after all ;-). We celebrated it by drinking beer on the boat. I thought it couldn't get any better. It could. Thursday I heard I won a Top Dog for a Weetabix campaign. The Top Dog is an actual award in the shape of a dog and it is given to the best work of the whole school! All these prizes mean that me and my teampartner Dominik did pretty good this quarter (I like understatements).

My philosophy in life is that a lot of good luck goes together with a lot of bad luck, and vice versa. If you know that, you accept bad luck as inevitable and you can deal with it better. I end my story with bad luck that I actually turned into something good. In the taxi on my way to the airport I found out I lost the keys to my house. Because Emilia is now in Cannes, I couldn't get into my house in Hamburg. So when we came to the main station of Köln, I decided simply not to go to Hamburg but instead go straight to Holland. I had to make the decision within five minutes, but the decision felt good so I did it. I said goodbye to my travelling friends, bought a ticket to Amsterdam (only 48 euro) and waited on the station of Köln (which was also invaded by screaming, singing and flag waving soccer fans). I immediately sms'ed my parents and sister that I was coming two days earlier than planned. For the first time in half a year I am finally back in Holland again.

* The word 'special' has two different meanings: 1) Unique, one of a kind 2) Retarded.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey neppie,

welkom thuis voor eventjes...
ik zie je woensdag met de voetbal.

greetz ellebel

6:59 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey nutball!
goed om te lezen dat het zo leuk was. iedereen zal wel teleurgesteld zijn over de meisjes ;-) wij zijn nu in cannes in de vergane glorie van hotel atlantis met tapijt aan de muur en een bidet tussen je benen op de wc. maar we hebben al superveel gezien en ik heb dingen opgeschreven en zal foto's van print maken. ik bel je woensdag volgende week als ik thuis ben want dan kan ik de sleutel even aan je geven omdat ik maandag pas terugga en dasn wilde ook nog met ons afspreken.
tot schnell, liebe grusse die emil und der diddo
jawohl!

9:44 pm  

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