Back in the EU

I arrived back to Europe last Friday. Oh, how nice was the weekend: pretty much doing useless enjoyable things like drinking an undefined number of mojitos with some beer and mad dog “side dish” and having nice company.

The city is grey, pretty depressing. At least there was snow last night so for some hours it was white and nice. Besides being grey depressing, the city is also boooring! I remember I was waiting so much to come back, I really needed a change in the scenery, but I find it quite boring here. Just as my friends who used to work in the field. However, there are notable postive aspects, such as the morning cappucino from the coffee shop at the corner, croissant, all types of cheese and yoghurt. It is also very strange: I do not miss Sudan at all.

I did not have any cultural shock. Usually the reverse cultural shock is much more “severe” but this time around I got away with it or rather without it. The only thing that really fascinates me is “beauty”. Things are decorated, some activities are done only to make something more beautiful or chic or more attractive. You could say that I care too much about the “surface”, but where I was living for the last couple of months the aestethical aspect was understandably not a priority. It is nice to rediscover “normal” life.

In the meantime I got addicted to a Norwegian band called Magrugada. This is pretty much all me: having a record on a heavy spin for two, three weeks and later not listening to it for months and months. I knew the band earlier (check the link in the right column) but now it fits so well to the cold, rainy/snowy weather, that simply cannot turn it off.

It is not much fun to travel in this kind of weather, but really looking forward to take an overnight train ride. So nice to go to the restaurant vagon with a book, order an almost undrinkable coffee and read (maybe smoke:)), or stare out the window for hours on end and watch how the landscape changes. After the coffee of course no sleeping almost all night, nevertheless when the Sun comes up you can easily peel off the tiredness and have another coffee.