I can’t believe it has been so long since i wrote anything! I apologise, it’s not really that things have been hectic, it’s just that it takes time to settle in and most evenings I am spending skyping or with other interns! So this post will be mainly about the work (as the title suggests) but Daniel came for a visit 10 days ago so I will post another update soon about that.

Well, working life! It is different from the Russian experience, let me say that straight off! Russia seems like such a long time ago already, and now that I stop to think about it I have been here for almost 6 weeks, though sometimes it feels like no time at all and sometimes I feel like it’s been so much longer!

I arrived on day one and got thrown straight into practical work, that is translations from German into English. The work is very varied, and without going into too much detail I have translated certificates, work references, job descriptions, minutes from meetings, contracts, sales pitches and an entire website! I also do native-speaker proof reading and that means I get much harder texts, much more technical texts which I wouldn’t be able to translate but I can tell if the grammar and spelling is wrong! I enjoy proof reading texts because it’s a bit of a break from translation but it does feel like a very responsible job.. i get to see the last draft of the document!!

The offices are a 2 minute walk away from where I am living, which is great as it is an 8am start. I am in an office with 6 other translators, 2 of us are native english speakers, 4 are Germans who speak English and translate into/out of both languages, and one is a french intern. It’s a nice working atmosphere and if there are ever queries or questions we all just shout out.. “does anyone happen to know what … means?” or “can someone please help with…”. It’s all very flexible and friendly. Though there is a ‘quiet’ policy so that we are able to concentrate on our work and as such there is not a whole lot of opportunity to talk German. But all the same, I am enjoying myself.

So, two weeks have passed since I arrived in Geisenhausen! My oh my, how the time has flown. But it was a bit of a shaky start …

I arrived on 1st January, having flown from Manchester on a flight full of posh snotty school children off on a skiing trip with school. The girl sat behind me was sick during landing, which was really just the icing on the cake of a rather noisy, stressful, generally rubbish plane journey. I got off the plane and pretty much managed to grab my suitcase straight away and headed out to where I thought I was supposed to be meeting Frau O. On the phone she had said to meet at the pick up point, where the taxis are so I followed signs for the taxi rank and stood waiting for 15 minutes getting more and more nervous at the lack of private cars - there were only buses and taxis. So after 15 minutes I went inside and asked whether I was waiting in the right place to be picked up privately (my first German conversation of year abroad!!) and was told I was waiting in the wrong place and to go to the entrance at the other end of the terminal, which I did, though I couldn’t see Frau O. so  i went back inside and back to the taxi rank to check she hadn’t turned up there! To make matters worse at this point, my English phone had dramatically stopped working (despite the fact I have taken it abroad numerous times and it has worked every time,) and I had no way to contact Frau O or vice versa. I was getting quite hysterical, not knowing what to do, when I asked someone else (at the official information desk this time, and in English) where the meeting point is for private pick ups and he pointed me in the direction I had been pointed in before. This time though I saw a woman with a Wohanka & Kollegen sign, thank goodness!! who turned out to be Frau O.

So panic over, I managed to get back to Geisenhausen. Unfortunately, as it was New Year’s Day nothing was open in Geisenhausen so I had no way to get my phone working and nowhere to buy any food. Frau O. very kindly brought me some spaghetti, onions, tinned tomatoes so I could survive until the shops opened on Monday.

Saturday evening was spent feeling very lonely, unpacking, watching sex and the city: the movie and getting a very early night at about 8:30!

On Sunday I decided to get up and go into Munich, in the hope that a few more places would be open and I could buy some bedding, a German phone and even perhaps internet. But after paying 30€ for a train ticket, it turned out that everywhere closes on a Sunday in Germany except for food places! So I had a little wander anyway, bought some pretzels at a bakery to get me through the day and Monday, and found an international call and internet shop where I managed to call Orange and get my phone working again at least.

So all in all a bit of a rocky first weekend! But things can only get better..

It looks like the flight is running and we will be home in time for christmas! There has been some panic and worry these last few days as to whether we will actually make it home but BA and Heathrow have confirmed that our plane is due to arrive so here’s hoping nothing changes.

Yesterday was the last full day in St Petersburg so I did a little souvenir shopping, walked the length of Nevsky Prospect, spent an hour in the Hermitage (it’s free entrance to students of russian universities, thank goodness for our russian student cards!!) and went to see a russian christmas film called “Christmas Trees”. It was a little like a Russian version of Love, Actually.

Today we finally made it to the Hermitage. We got up early to get there for opening at 10:30 to try and avoid the crowds. We wandered through the Palace Interior rooms, including the throne room, the malachite room, the dining room where the provisional antirevolutionary government were arrested in 1917… Rooms that I had seen last time but that i definitely appreciated seeing a second time. We saw some russian art, some french art and british art, some italian art including a leonardo da vinci picture of the virgin mary and baby jesus. We also saw some ancient art and an Egyptian mummy! We did some gift shopping in the shops at the Hermitage before heading over to St Issac’s Cathedral. It is an immense building, very beautiful inside. The guidebook describes it as “obscenely lavish” and that really is the truth. The Cathedral was turned into an antireligious museum during the twenties in Soviet Russia and in the thirties into a ‘memorial’ so it is no longer a working church.

After the sight seeing we had a bargain lunch along nevsky prospect and then headed home to get ready for the theatre. Hamad and I went to see The Nutcracker at the Michakovskii theatre. We had bought tickets for 500 roubles at the very back of the 3rd dress circle. But when we arrived we couldn’t find our way to the 3rd circle and asked the lady who was working at the door for the stalls who told us just to take a free seat in the stalls as the performance was going to start! So we ended up sitting in the 8th row of the stalls - seats which usually cost about 3,000 roubles (£60). The performance was wonderful and very beautifully done, much better than the version we went to see in Petrozavodsk though it is a bigger theatre and I think a bigger company. It has really got me in the mood of the christmas. Weather permitting, I will be home in two days time!

I arrived safely in St Petersburg on Sunday morning after an overnight train journey with 3 other students and an awful lot of luggage! The train had no heating so we all got given extra blankets and I wrapped myself up nice and warm and got a decent night’s sleep.Luckily my friend Hamad met me at the airport and helped me with my bags otherwise i wouldn’t have managed!

On Sunday we went to the Dostoyevsky museum and then to a market where the girls went shopping for souvenirs. In the evening we tried to go to the Hermitage but missed the opening hours by 10 minutes so ended up in a shop called Dom Knigi (house of books) where there is quite a posh cafe where we enjoyed some tasty posh cake! I cooked dinner for us all in the evening which made a lovely change from the greasy food we have all been getting from our hosts.

Yesterday we went out to Peterhof, a palace not far from the city centre. Unfortunately we didn’t realise that Monday was a day off and couldn’t get into the palace, but we wandered around the grounds which were all covered in snow and were very pretty. The grounds look out over the Gulf of Finland and as far as we could see the water was frozen. It was quite stunning, with the white snow, the white lake and the white sky all blending into one. We also met a very friendly red squirrel with tufty ears who posed for some photos for us! We had lunch in a little cafe before heading back to the centre. Unfortunately the Hermitage was closed as well so we decided to have a relaxing evening and I cooked up some goulash for everyone.

Well I am finally going to finish my reading week tour blogs! It has taken me so long because two weeks ago I had an accident on the icey pavements and tore some ligaments (or maybe just one? Unfortunately the doctor only spoke russian) and had to have a back-slab plaster cast on for 10 days making it very difficult to type! But that’s a whole different story..

So, we arrived in Vologda after a very long and tiring 10 hour bus journey. Luckily there were plenty of stops and chances to use toilets or stretch our legs and the bus was fairly empty so Gemma and I each had a couple of seats and spread ourselves out! We arrived about 5pm and were met at the bus stop by Sveta, the girl we had arranged to stay with. She is our age and has just graduated in architecture so is living at home still but luckily her parents were very friendly too.

We drank some tea - russian style - with Sveta and she took us over to her friend’s flat for blinis and a girlie night in. It was really lovely and the girls were all so nice. As were the blinis! We listened to russian music and played a game where each person writes the name of someone famous on a piece of paper, then they get mixed up and you have to pick one, stick it on your forehead and ask questions to try and guess the person. We played in russian but it was still good fun. We got home about 11 and unfortunately had a close run-in with a rather enormous spider IN the bed. Luckily Gemma was very calm and got rid of it while I was freaking out!

The next day we made our way into town alone and had a wonder around, found some old wooden houses and a monument to the Russian Civil War before meeting up with Sveta and some of her friends. They decided to take us to Spaso-Prilutsky monastery which was a short bus ride away. The weather was beautiful, very clear bright skies but very cold, so we all managed to get some rather good photos. Two of Sveta’s friends were American guys who were in Vologda teaching English, so we mainly spoke in English. We went to a little blini bar next to the monastery and had lunch for 60 roubles ( that’s about £1.20) which consisted of 2 big pancakes with condensed milk and a cup of tea each. Yummy! We got a bus back to the centre then and had a walk round the Kremlin and Sofia Cathedral.There is a very interesting story about the Kremlin in Vologda: In the time of Ivan the Terrible (mid 1500’s) Sofia Cathedral was constructed as Ivan wanted to make Vologda the new capital - it was more strategically placed towards the centre of the country. However, construction on the fortress stopped abruptly supposedly because the superstitious Ivan, while visiting the construction site, was hit on the head by a small bit of loose stone and he took it to be a bad omen!

We walked to the bus station to buy tickets back to Petrozavodsk via a catholic church which has been converted into a restaurant - it was quite offensive really, but you just have to accept it as the way things go in Russia. During dinner we had a power cut which lasted 30 minutes or so, then spent the rest of the evening watching russian and english childhood tv programmes.

The next day Gemma and I went into town alone to look around some of the museums - the museum of forgotten things (a little house with all sorts of lovely things in it) and the Vologda lace museum - Vologda Lace is quite famous. It was a really interesting museum and I particularly liked the soviet lace room! After the museums we had some lunch and then met Sveta and 2 of her friends (one of them the american guy who speaks fluent russian too) and went to an outdoor museum, similar to Kizhi, which is a collection of wooden houses. It was quite interesting, as they were all set up as if someone were living there and in each one there was a lady who told us a little about how the family would have lived in there. It was useful having Sveta’s friend to interpret as it was quite difficult to understand! As we’d arrived quite late we couldn’t stay long because the houses were closing so we had some tea on the steps of the church and some sweets, then got the bus back to Vologda. Our last night was spent packing and relaxing.