Paris - the City of Love!

Woow.. what a great weekend that is just over (oke, now that I will publish the post, "just" is probably the wrong word" ;)) - let me start my summary by telling the probably most funny story:

Today (29.3) in the morning on the way back home from Amsterdam to Groningen, I took the Metro to Amsterdam Zuid. As I am well-raised I of course bought a ticket (€ 2,30) for only 5 metro-stations. When I arrived at Amsterdam Zuid, I could not get out of the train station, as the barriers did not open somehow.. there I also realized that my ticket stated: 28th of March ? So I got a little paniced, went up to the platform again, looked for another automat (wanted to buy one more ticket, to get somehow out of the station) but there was no automat (of course.. because if you would enter the platform at this station, you would have bought it already before, outstide the barriers, so no need for a automat).. so I was then desperately asking a guy with this yellow neon-coats, to realize that they do not working for the metro, but that he is just a cleaning guy. Okay, now I was really desperate (I had only 10 more minutes, until my train to Groningen would leave), as I was prisoned in the Amsterdamer Metro-Station. Next try was pressing the "I-wanna-talk-with-the-information-desk"-button directly in front of the barriers.. after a minute of loud noise finally a guy responded.. I explained in englisch to him my situation.. and he responed: "okay you can go!" - aha.. where should I go when the barrieres are still closed? haha, I tried the card again.. no change: red light.. soo.. enough of this stupid games.. I just waited until the next person went in, and just ran through the barriere and escaped xD - nice :)

Okey, but now chronologically: Friday, after work, I went to Amsterdam, watched the disappointing loss against Belgium and then went to a "kill all Hippsters"-Party, that did not cost much entry but a lot of money for the cab go there and going home afterwards... Coming home, we had some pasta and approx. 30 minutes of sleep before we left again for the Eurolines-bus heading to Paris.

Going out in Amsterdam

I really felt multiculturally as I as an Half-Iranian-Half-Austrian sit in a bus from Netherlands via Belgium to France, together with a Romanian girl, a Bulgarian girl and a guy from South Africa. That's a nice lifestyle especially if the people are so cool, as my companions :)

Iran/Austria - Bulgaria - Romania - Sout Africa

 

2 days in Paris were definetly too short.. the consequence was that our sightseeing-programm was really bloody( lol - only 2 people will understand this joke ;))-sharp planned and exhausting in order to do everything during the weekend. But we did awesome and saw: Eifel Tower, Sacre-coer, Montmartre, Notre Dame, Seine, Jardin du Luxembourg, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre and some other places I already forgot.. :) On the otherside it was so exhausting that we did not manage to go out in Paris (unless you count a pizzeria)..

Some facts about Paris/France:
- dont drive a car in paris at abt. 5-7 o'clock in the afternoon - too many other ppl have the some idea
- french people can not speak englisch, because at school every subject gets multiplied by a coefficient: important courses like Maths/French are multiplied by x15, where as englisch is x2.. therefore ppl can never repeat the year because of a bad mark in englisch, and so nobody cares about that..
- there are a lot of stairs in Paris
- the city is quite dirty
- a lot of immigrants life there
- I realize that concerning getting around, I have already fallen in love with Groningen, because ppl waste so much time with metro's and trains.. fietsing is in!
- it is not a city I must necessarily visit again.. kinda like Rome..
- the highlight was definetely being on top of the Arc de Triomphe (this is free like the Louvre for people <25), where you have an amazing view over Paris!!

Anyway, besides Paris I also got a roundtrip through Brussels with the bus, where I almost took a picture of the Atomium - unfortunately the bus was too fast :/

Monday, just before midnight we got back to Amsterdam, perfectly in time to go to the regularly monday-drinking-hot-spot for exchange students - so that I went out two times this weekend in Amsterdam but not even once in Paris ;).. yeah after some hours of sleep, you already know the story about my metro-ticket on Tuesday morning :D, I came back to Groningen Tue. at noon and directly biked to my office, to work half a day.

Okay, last but not least thanks a lot to Raluca and Diana, for hosting me 2 nights in Amsterdam - and to Julia for hosting us in her appartment-building in Paris as well as for showing us around :)

Dadj

BTW: I learned that there is a differnence between "smashed potatoes" and "mashed potatoes" as well as between "chimneys" and "kidneys" ;)

railroad crossings, friendships, worldwide Sales and a crazy world

Hoiii!
Just a short (oke it became longer than expected) update from my life...starting with a "funny" story: For people who havent been in Groningen, there are several railroad crossings in the city, and every day, on my way to work and back I pass by one when riding my bike. And I have always wondered when will be the first time, that I am exactly on the rails when the "alarm/signal", that warns for a train, starts. Well, in 2.5 months it has never happened to me when riding the bike, but has happened as well last week when I was jogging as well as today. Exactly when I was running over the rail, the alarm started xD. People that know me better (eg. Bojan ;)) know that I can be very easy scared/affrighted, and therefore I immediately started sprinting away from the railroad crossing :D

Besides that, today is a wonderful day, sun is shining, I am wearing shorts for the first time this year.
Here in Groningen I am starting to miss my friends from Vienna, especially for spending some time on the weekend, going out or just hanging around. I am realizing, also when I chose the pictures for my picture wall, that, well my best friends, are of course not people I know only for a few months. Most of the people I either already know for years or I have spend a lot of time with them during the last years (like my Fh-crew). Allthough there are so many cool people here in Groningen, it is just not that easy to replace such friendships, as I had probably expected when I came here - Well I am just a little bit impatient I guess.

Two pictures from my photo wall:

Spring Jam 2010:

Schneeberg 2009 (?)

 btw: why do Dutch people not want to take group pictures?? xD

Anyway, if I take a look at the current newspages, I guess there are much more horrible things going on in this crazy world...
- thousands of people died or are dying in Japan due to a (impossible to avoid?) natural disaster
- some thousands might follow due to a possible (avoidable) nuclear catastrophe (btw: I heard that Austria is one of the few countries in Europe that do not have any nuclear power stations, I thought most of European countries were smart enough to do so...)
- people will die in Libya due to (a probably avoidable) war that just started
- a crazy Austrian politician demanded 100.000 Euro per year for lobbying in the EU parlament and has unbelievable lame excusses afterwards - lol stupid idiot
- etc...


Next week I am going to Amsterdam and Paris, so probably my next blog will be written in French... haha.. NOT

k&h Dadj

BTW: I wish all of you a great start to/in (?) Spring and also a happy New Year (Iranian calendar) tomorrow :)

Girls in Netherlands

Alright, I am now following a special request from some friends and focus on Dutch girls in this blog... But I have to state right from the beginning, that as some Dutch girls might read this, I wont go very much in detail here.. ;) My comments will stay very superficial.. Some people from Vienna already got some insight information via Skype, so if you are interested in details, you can demand them via a private-facebook msg, and you will see if you are elected to get more information ^^

So what to say besides the obvious? Dutch girls are blonder than Austrians and definetly taller. As they are very blond I would say that they are at least as beautiful as girls from Austria probably even more beautiful... but thats very difficult to judge.
By now, I have not met my soulmate here in Netherlands, but for 2 months that would be really really demanding. It seems like the girls here are not very open for flirts. I have more the impression that they are superficially interested in talking but that it's more difficult to get closer to them. This can of course very much be influenced by my lack of Dutch skills (although I already added it to my facebook-languages ;)). Before I came to Netherlands, I also heard that Dutch girls are very direct and straight-forward. I have to say that I have not realized this attitude until today, but probably I just use too little gel in my hair to attract any of the girls here :D (I forgot to mention that almost every Dutch guy uses a lot of hair-gel/spray/wax, when I talked about some stereotypes in Netherlands ... some posts earlier)

Together with a friend from my floor in the student house, I calculated the following:
if I would have one girl every night I stay here (approx. 365),
with approx. 50.000 students in the city,
~ 25.000 female students,
~ 12.500 single female students
~365 girls that I hook up with
this would be 2.92%.
So imagine, lining up all the single student girls in Groningen, only every 34th girl would have to kiss me, to make that happen. This would be comparable to a school class in a only-single-girls-school, and I would have to get one girl per class (yes of course they would be too young for me, I just state that as an comparison - dont get nervous... ;))
Please take in consideration that there are of course taken-student-girls in Groningen, that would might be willing to kiss me as well, changing the ratio probably to something like: every 36th girl! (In "The Game" Neil Strauss even mentions that it is probably easier to pick up taken-girls, so the ratio could be even higher ;) )

Anyway, I am afraid I wont make this happen anymore, there were too many days so far without any girl, and I am not interested in kissing 15 girls a day to make up this deficit...

As a final statement concerning girls in Netherland write now, I will just enter "most famous supermodel Netherlands" in Google pictures and add it to this post:

haha it would be a picture of Vogue-Korea, so let's try something different xD

Supermodels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dutch_people#Supermodels)

• Azra Akın, (born 1981)
• Wilhelmina Cooper (1940–1980)
• Daniella van Graas, (born 1975)
• Rianne ten Haken, (born 1986)
• Querelle Jansen, (born 1985)
• Doutzen Kroes, (born 1985)
• Karen Mulder, (born 1970)
• Marcus Schenkenberg, (born 1968)
• Lara Stone, (born 1983)
• Yfke Sturm, (born 1981)
• Mark Vanderloo, (born 1968)
• Frederique van der Wal, (born 1967)

So here is a picture of Rianne ten Haken. Why her? Because she is only one year older than me ;)

So, to also tell you something interesting that does not stay in context with any girls: Sunday I was jogging for abt. 50 minutes, and now I consider participating at the "Nacht von Groningen" on the 2nd June for 7 or 14 kms :)

Xx (as they do it here in Netherlands) Dadj


Oh yeah.. and btw: Netherlands, you better watch out 24th -30th of April some really crazy Austrians will rock the country x)

the latest fairy tale: "Prince Dadjaddin" :)

Prince Dadjaddin

Once upon a time there was a little prince called "Dadjaddin". The young men was living in a tiny little city called Greeningen somewhere close to the smurfs. On a weekend he decided to make a trip with some friends to the South to the crazy city Maastrichter. To get there the little prince had to take a train and on the way to the train he had to make his first difficult decision. As he had too much stuff to carry he left his best campanion "Daschella" at home.
In the train he met the giant Harming, whose name does not reflect his nature, as with his silent attitude he can not harm a fly. Already in the train, the prince had this strange feeling, he felt that something was changing within his body, something was becoming different. During the long trip through a whole country prince Dadjaddin met two more companions: Evy the fairy and Davide the magician who was still drunk from his magic potion from the night before. When prince Dadjaddin realized the alcohol level of his friend he got envy... the prince had not drunken alcohol for more than a week - was this the reason why something changed in his body - why his legs were becoming green? Was this a punishment of god Heneken for not drinking alcohol?? 
When they arrived Maastrichter, the group also meet their other friends: Pepsi the king,  Marja the queen, Mirel the duchess, Marlies the beauty, Samantha the mermaid and Nils Holgerson.
But prince Dadjaddin could not really spend time with his friends as he had other problems: The green legs were not the only thing that transformed. Just a few minutes after he arrived in Maastrichter he totally turned green, the eyes increased and he started only jumping around.. suddenly he knew: Prince Dadjaddin was becoming a Frog!!!!!!!!!! God Heneken has punished him.

- Prince Dadjaddin during the process of transformation -

All of his companions were trying to help him, trying to wipe off the green colour in his face, but unfortunately this had the wrong effect: all of his friends were turning into frogs as well...
The drama was complete.. the friends were mad about Dadjaddin, only because he hadn't had alcohol for some time, god Heneken punished him and thereby also them. Dadjaddin was desperate and looking for a solution, and then he saw it.. he saw a lovely little pub at the side of the street waiting for him with the sign: "free beer". It didnt take him long to figure out a plan, luckily he could convince his frog-friends to follow him, and start drinking beer. In the pub there were so many other people, that also got transformed in the strangest animals or humans... But the next problem was just about to come. Suddenly there were so loud music in the pub that everybody had to run outside in the city, within this process Dadjaddin lost his friends, only Samantha was with him and a lot of strange other creatures..The new formed group didnt believe that alcohol would be the solution to transform back, people tried other approaches, like hugging policemen, swimming in the maast, eating mayo with fries, carrying old ladies over the street or even lying on the ground. Luckily Prince Dadjaddin was able to convince the people about the beer-necessity and after a certain period all the pubs were visited. 
During the night a lot of beer was drunk and Dadjaddin also most his companions from Greeningen again.

- Dadjaddin and his friends from Greeningen trying to get retransformed -

They were not mad with Dadjaddin anymore as they started feeling better. Also the prince started to feeling cured as well, especially after beating King Pepsi several times in rock-paper-scissors. The highlight was when a hot blonde swedisch princess, looking very much like Heidi Klum, came to the prince and kissed him shortly. Obviously she thought she could transform him this way...
The next day Dadjaddin was cured,the green colour was gone and all of his friends were feeling fine again and started their way back home to Greeningen and they all lived happily ever after...


Btw. the moral of the story: If you feel bad or feel like transforming in to something else, you can solve it by drinking alcohol, not by kissing a girl, even if she is a hot swedisch princess ;)