Wednesday, October 19, 2005
It’s the holidays!!! I am so happy!
Best thing about the holidays is not having to get up at 6am every morning. Sure, it is only for a week that I don’t have to get up that early, I have to go back to school next week, but, a week more than normal.
On Friday, straight after school we got in the car and travelled to Bispingen, which is near Hamburg. There is this place there called Center Parcs, it is like a tropical holiday resort for families. It has a swimming pool, sauna, heaps of slides, activities, everything…for little kids, but it was still fun.
There is over 500 Bungalows around the outside, then in the middle is the market Dome, with a bakery, shops, the swimming centre and little restaurants and cafés. It is pretty cool, but way too overcrowded, especially with little kids.
When we got there Nina and I took Trixie for a walk, she came along with us. Oliver and Dagmar came back with a map and some keys to our Bungalow, and they took the car and we went for a walk. We walked for ages, about 30 minutes, to our bungalow, but that is because Nina can’t read a map and I am a little child who must play on playgrounds. I swear, there is these really cool swings, about the size of those small round trampolines, they are so fun.
The Bungalow was pretty much like a little cottage. Two bedrooms, small kitchen, but with a dishwasher (Nina was excited by the kettle and toaster because we don’t have those), bathroom with bath and shower in one and nothing else, toilet connected to storage rooms, small living room and little pülastic chairs outside. Basically your normal holiday home, but with a fire.
Our bed was really hard, and my pillow was virtually non-existent. It was so small that when I woke up I was searching for it on the floor only to realise my head was still on it!
We unpacked and then got in the car, deposited it in the car park and walked to the market dome for some dinner and to buy some food. We went to the baker and ordered some bread for every morning (they come in a car and give you fresh bread every morning), went to the grocers and bought the basics…yoghurt, milk, ketchup, gurkens, mustard…beer… then went to find some dinner. We ended up eating at the most popular place, just because, well, I don’t know why, that is where we sat down. I ate pizza, but the knives were so bluint halfway thorugh cutting it up my hands were dead and the plate had a big dip in it so my pizza was always sliding off. Meh, it tasted good. We sat around for a while and then went back to the cabin, having some difficulty finding it without a map. It was really really cold and dark.
“Here, here is the butterfly that says 3”
>All walk down that way<
“What? This looks like a lake to me! I am thinking this isn’t the way to our cabin”
lol, it might not sound too funny right now, but it was hilarious when it happened.
We got back and basicallly went to sleep.
Next morning I woke up to the sound of doors screeching. Every single door in that place made a noise when opened and closed. It got really annoying, so I got up. It was 7:30am.
We got changed then ate breakfast. Two hours later we were finished and started cleaning up our dishes.
We went swimming that day. It was so cool. On the way there we found a better way, next to the lake.
We got changed, left our stuff in the lockers and went to the pool. It is so cool in there. It is like an inside tropical paradise, for those of you who haven’t seen the pictures already. There is so much to do there, and when we found a spot for our towels we went to the outside pool. It has this cool slide, it is an open slide and has all these hills and stuff, but it is really fun. The only problem is that there is too many people on it. The first day it wasn’t very fast, but the second day it was a lot faster because there was more water in it. It goes for about 100m. That was my favourite thing. There was two other slides, although they weren’t as fun.
In the middle is the wave pool, every 30 mins waves come, but they aren’t as fun as I remember at Wet ‘n’ Wild. There is this waterfall thing, and when I sat under it and closed my eyes it felt exactly like when I was at Litchfield National Park in NT.
What else? There is a lagoon to swim through, a really fast steep slide, a spa, lots of tanning areas, a childrens area, another “childrens area” and lots of plants, so it feels like an inside jungle. It is pretty cool. We were there for the whole day, we ate lunch there as well.
The spa was really nice and warm. Ahh…
I met some people from USA, there was French people and naturally a lot of Germans.
At the end of the day we went back to our Bungalow, sat aruond, ate dinner and played this great game which I am now in love with. It is called “Die Siedler von Catan.” It is very hard to explain, but when you roll the dice and a number which you have built a house on comes up, you get the type of ground you built that house on. I made the mistake of building my first two houses on really common sheep numbers. I ended up with alot alot of sheep. In the game you can trade, but no one wanted my sheep.
“I want some wood”
“What have you got”
“Hmm, let me see…sheep? Do you want some sheep?”
“Baaaaaa”
That became a lasting joke, as well as the rot weiß. “I don’t have that.” “Ahh, but you do have sheep.”
Oliver showed us a video he made from the last time they were there, Nina was 9, and I saw Oma Mimi when she wasn’t all old and decrepid. She ran! Then we went to bed.
Next day we woke up, ate brekky, normal stuff. We went for a walk, went on a tread boat on the big lake and ate lunch. Then we went back, got changed and went swimming again. Man, I love that swimming place! I took lots of pictures that day. I had the biggest headache as well.
I sat under tanning lights for the first ever time. Then we left. Just as the lights in all the pools turned on. Oh well.
We once again ate dinner out, I once again ate pizza. But this time I couldn’t eat it all. We got up and left the Market dome. That is probably the last time I will ever go in there. Anyway.
That night we played the game again. This time I not only had many sheep, but I also had a lot of earth, wheat and stone. Once again I needed wood. It was funny. One stage in the game everyone wanted wheat, and here I was sitting there with a handful of it. They asked me if I hjad any, but I always said no, just because I thought it was funny to watch them all asking each other continuously for it.
We once again watched a video, it was of me coming to Magdeburg station and of the day before. It was cool to see the video, I wanted to see it.
I had a headache and felt sick, so I went to bed.
The next morning I was the first up, I couldn’t sleep. I took Trixie for a walk and watched the sun rise over the trees and onto the lake. It was cool. I like the mornings, they are cold, but somehow pleasant.
We packed up our bags, cleaned the Bungalow, packed the car and left Center Parcs for Hamburg. I like Hamburg.
We parked our car and walked out to the lake thingo in the middle of the city. I saw the Town Hall and I saw…noithing much else except for a lot of shops.
Somehow I turned an extremely pleasant shade of white/green ish. I was apparently very pale. We stopped, ate coffe and I drank some hot chocoloate, which I felt better after. We walked around some more, saw more shops.
It is incredible that one person can manage to have such a bad sense of direction, but Nina somehow can. She made us walk so much further than we should have.
We got back into the car and drove to the Harbour. Lol. We went on the Reeperbahn, the erotic section of Hamburg. I didn’t know, until someone told me, but all of a sudden on every side was sex shops. Lol.
We got out at the harbour, had a look around and before I knew it it was 3:30 and we were getting on a boat, to cruise…the elbe, which I just so happen to canoe up and down every week. It was pretty cool, but there isn’t really much there except for a lot of container ships loading up. The one cool thing I saw was The Lion King theatre.
Hilary rang up at about 5pm, but she needed to have about 30 mins-1 hour to find the place we were at and we still needed about 3 hours to get back home. So she didn’t come, and Camy didn’t call back, so I didn’t get to see my friends. L
We got in the car, I put on my music and fell asleep for a while, then woke up and was tuned out for the rest of the time till we got back here.
It was 8pm when we got back, we ate dinner, unpacked a little bit then I went to sleep. I was so tired, it felt sooo good to sleep in a non-hard bed with a real pillow.
There was a letter waiting for me when we got back from YFU, it was about the middle year seminar. It is all in German, which is a bit of a bummer, because I can’t understand all of it, but its ok, because I know what it says anyway. The one disappointing thing is that I have to do a project and present it at the seminar. Oh well, it’ll be worth it. I want to do the media one, the Cinema one, photography, theatre, Berlin And Potsdam or the foreigners one. I really don’T know which one. I think the Media one sounds good, but it is in my school holidays, and my amily wants to go to Austria to go skiing like they do every year. And I want to miss out on some school.
This morning I woke up at 9, had a shower, ate breakfast, bummed around, wrote an email, ate lunch, listened to music, wrote more, am writing this right now in Word because my internet isn’t working and then hopefully my internet starts working soon so I can post this. Then I will be doing nothing.
Hopefully Michaela calls and I can go to Magdeburg with her tomorrow, I really want to go to Magdeburg.
That is about all, lots of love,
Vera
Vera was here at 1:33 AM
