-my blog is on hold-

What I miss about Vienna...

I miss:

- the Prater
- a game of poker with the Ziehrer Creek
- a good sunday lunch at my mother's place
- the Iranian restaurant Pars
- the smell of the U1
- stuyding philosophy at the Hautpuni
- a good Kebap at Schwedensplatz
- a good round of Werwolf
- a game's night
- playing PES/Fifa
- crazy Aiesec-nights at QOI
- chilling in the MQ
- being everywhere in Vienna in approx. 30-45 minutes
- making fun about the Wiener Linien
- going jogging around the Schönbrunn-Castle
- driving the Skoda through the city
- special offers at Hofer
- the smell of the DickMacks
- a great reggae night @Volksgarten
- the Wiener dialect (only partly)
- the "Krügerl"
- Dosenbier
- good internet connection
- understanding every statement during a discussion (languagewise - not the content ;))
- the best drinking water in the world
- the Austrian charme
- a hangover lunch at "zum Sternzeichen"
- winning at Super Mario Kart N64
- the bamboo's
- the Donauinselfest
- and much more other things that I cant think about right now...

What would you do?

What would you do when...

- you are buying a water bottle before entering the train, you put the water bottle on the small table next to the window in the train, you have a long trip ahead of you so you close your eyes trying to sleep, half an hour later you open your eyes and see that the girl, which sits opposite of you (her boyfriend sits next to her, and her mother next to you) is trying to open your bottle with her teeths and starts drinking from it? What would you do?


- you go out in the city, you get drunk, you flirt with a girl in a pub, you finally take all your courage and kiss the girl and as lucky as you are, she kisses you back, a few minutes later you suddenly get water shot at you from the barkeeper and the whole bar is looking at you kissing the girl singing a random song of which you dont understand the lyrics? What would you do?

- you are invited to a party with the theme "24 - but still drama like in high school" and you have to dress according to the theme? What would you do?

Me & Giuseppe at the Aiesec reception weekend on the island "Ameland"

My lamest blog post ever..

Well.. long time since I last wrote something in my blog. Not that I really forgot my blog, but I just had so many ideas in the last weeks that I couldn't decide what to write..
So instead of writing nothing, I just make a short summary of the last days and those that are coming...

Not too many spectacular things have happened, I had two calm weekends in Groningen, one time having had great visitors from Eastern Europe here :)
To get a little more pep (dunno if you can say that in Englisch), it seems that I will go to Amerland (an island in the North of the Netherlands) the following weekend. The theme will be: "If you are not invited, you just invite yourself" ;)

Besides that, tomorrow I will start dancing Salsa..haha.. or I will at least try it - I guess thats one of the few things I would never do in Vienna, but well - when you are abroad, you just do more "stupid" things... ;) It's anyway jsut a try-session, so let's see...

I also started to watch 13h - it's awesome, but of course it can not compete with Dawsons Creek!!! Still thanks Hanna for recommending it to me. Speaking about Hanna, only a little bit more than a month until I get my next visitors from Vienna.. :) Zoo in Emmen + my birthday will be the programm for this July-weekend.

Well... moreover I am glad that the world is still standing, for some hours I thought the crazy American who said the world would end, two weekend ago was right..but no he was not :) Still, as I was almost facing death, I decided I have to enjoy my life as much as possible.. So I wanna go Indoor skydiving: http://www.indoorskydive.com/ in June and maybe one day paragliding.. must be awesome - flying like a bird...

Last week I also participated first time in a pub quiz.. well we sucked, haha.. but nevermind, there will be more pub quizes to come... time for revenge..

Thursday I will run 14km at the Nacht von Groningen. yaaay..

oke, this really is the lamest post I ever made (NOT EVEN A PICTURE), if I made you smile one time - I am already surprised :)

x Darius

Batavarienrace 2011 - and this time I really met the love of my life :D

And again.. another weekend not at home, travelling through the Netherlands, using my second last Kruidvat-train-ticket on the way back home on Sunday, but well yeah.. maybe I better start my blog with Friday :)

Friday night after work I left for Nijmegen where the Batavierenrace began. Just a short explanation: The Batavierenrace is a running-competition. It is a relay where every team consists of 25 people. The race starts at midnight with a night-Group (approx. 8 runners) then a morning group (also 8 runners) and a day group (also 8 runners - I know its only 24, but no idea which group consists of 9 people ;)).

 Start at Nijmegen

There are always 2 people of the team on the track, one is running and one is accompaning on the bike. The distances are varying (from 3 km to 11 km) and in total its about 160 km from Nijmegen to Enschede.
So the run started in the night from Friday to Saturday and I was in the morning group which gave me approx. 3 hours sleep at the Aiesec office in Nijmegen before we (the morning group) had to leave to our starting point in Ulft.
As I was one of the last runners in my group I started at ca. 10am my run for 7.8 km. As the sun was really burning like hell, one of my teammembers already got kind of a sun-collapse just before me and I wanted to enjoy the party later on, I tried to not over do my running (otherwise I would have been much, much faster ;P). So it took me 41:05 minutes for the distance, which is quite okay, but I would have liked to be under 40 minutes.

The afternoon I spend with building up the Party-tent, which at the end turned out to become my sleeping place - haha - and with getting at least one hour of sleep back.

my awesome bed :)

Oh yeah btw.. just to explain: the finish of the race was in Enschede at the University Campus... the campus was also used as a camp-site. Although I almost never go to any music festivals, I guess it was kind of the same atmosphere there ^^
In the evening there was a really awesome barbecue, organised by the Aiesecers of Enschede, directly in one of the studenthouses at the Campus in front of a nice "lake". It was so nice chilling there, having good food and beer and talking with all different kind of Aiesecers :)
From the barbecue we (well there were about 50 Aiesecers, I would say) which split up in several groups (.. I would have liked to take a group picture, but well..was not possible to gather all the people ;)) went to the Batavarien-Party, which is supposed to be the biggest student-party in Europe (dont know if thats true?).
Party was nice and better then expected (some people from my student house warned me that there would only be ugly guys.. that would be because Enschede is famous for the Technical University, so there are a lot of nerds there ;)), but that was not really the case..

party @ the Batavierenfeestje

Anyway, party was nice and ... yeah... as I stated in the headline of the blog: I met the love of my life:

A little bit annoyed of the music ("..das ist prima, prima Colognia, wir lieben die Liebe, das Leben und die Lust... lala") I went outside of one of the party tents where I met an Aiesecer from Nijmegen. We were talking for 2 minutes until he asked me if I would go back with him to the tent. I - a little bit drunk and emotional - said that I would wait here outside on the side of the curbstone for 3 minutes and if a girl comes and talks to me, she is the love of my life! :)
So guess what? Exactly after 2:59 (oke, thats not totally proven) a girl came and said "hello" - Wow, there she was, the future Ms. Djabbari, approx. 1,67 tall, brown hair and a quite lovely smile. Unfortunately she could not handle the pressure of being my love of the life (I told her that she would be, in the 2nd sentence or so ;)- good pick-up line? I am not sure :D), so I just found out that her name is Anna and she probably also told me what she is studying (DrunkenDadj forgot :/). After 3 minutes the conversation ended as her friends went somewhere else, and with a nice smile and the knowledge that we just missed out our soulmates both of us just walked in different directions.. what a sad story :(

Sunday I went back from Enschede Drienerio via Hengelo, Deventer, Zwolle, Assen to Groningen: Yes, I had to switch train/bus 4 (!!) times - well Dutch trainsystem :P

Right now, I am really looking forward to calm next weekend in Groningen, just a little bit shopping, hairdresser and going out in the city, but not travelling around :)

Roadtrip 2k11 pt. 3/3: Amsterdam - the place where I met Wukki! :)

Friday, a headache and an invitation for breakfast (it kinda became a bulgarian/romanian-brunch) woke us up quite early so that the roadtrip-gang arrived in Amsterdam at ~2pm. After the just mentioned brunch, we went with our awesome hosts for a boadtrip through the city :)
Boattrip was fun, eventhough we were 12 people on a boat designed for 6, which made it almost impossible to stand up without make at least one person on the other side of the boat wet (okay - that's a little bit exaggerating ;)) anyway.. the trip lasted a little bit long (~4 hours) - I guess half of the time would have been enough to see the Grachten and to get pleasent anticipation for the Queensday.

The highlights: Seeing the first Coffee-Shop ever build, illegally deboarding at the Hardrock-Cafe and Paul's new green pants which became dirty at least 5 times with different materials xD.

great picture in one of the canals in Amsterdam

On the way back to our house (for changing and preparing for going out) we - at least in my opinion - had the best dinner this week: turkisch food at a Restaurant, quite similar to Iranian stuff actually. The downside: at latest after eating, we all felt the lack of energy due to the last nights.
Anyhow, this did of course not stop us from going out another night, as the calendar said: It's Queensnight! We entered the city at approx 00.30 and the atmosphere at Leidseplein was already kind of aggressive, people were very drunk shouting and screaming. So also our party at "Dansen bij Jansen" (the music their did not improve our mood) turned out to be not that successful as some of ous were just too tired, some of us were on other levels and some of us had other priorities that night - to put it in a delicat way ;)

The Roadtrip Crew -> dansen bij jansen ;)

The less energy-level of the last day continued at the beginning of the next day: Saturday - Queensday! All kind of crazy plans came up (Waterpark@Den Haag, Queensday@Groningen, Chilling@Home), until I decided (yeah, I know - I am sooo Alpha! :)) that we have to go to the city - I am in Netherlands for 1 year, so I can not miss out Queensday, especially not now, that I am in Amsterdam :)
So quite late, at approximately 4 pm we finally reached the Wertheimpark, hoping to have some chilled afternoon in a park with some Live-Music... well.. we had to change our plans after seeing the Queue at the entrance :/ Even more frustrated, we at least got some coffee at a Snack-Bar next to the zoo to gather some new ideas.

Despite all instinct, the decision we made there was probably the best one we could have made: We went to the Museumsplein. In the next 1-2 hours walking through the city, we really saw what Queensday means. Orange people on the street and especially on boats in the canals, singing, dancing, screaming and partying - all in a very positive atmosphere. Although it of course was quite crowded I never felt that there are too many people.. Also at the Museumsplein, of course there will loads of people, but as we had enough space to dance and we only needed 5 minutes to go to the toilet or for buying beer - we enjoyed it there :)
There I also accidentally (I know that is almost impossible) met Giuseppe - another trainee from Groningen - and Jenny (oke this was on purpose) - another trainee from London :)

One of us, even sat half-naked on the shoulders of somebody else (crazy guy..^^), so the mood had definetly improved (maybe also due to the beers in the afternoon :))

Queensday in Amsterdam :)

As the stages closed (approx. 9pm, after a performance of the most or second-most expensive DJ of the world - still dont know his name) the group split up and a crazy night began :)
My personal highlight of the whole roadtrip was chilling with Sevi & Martin at a canal drinking 12 beer and philosophizing about life before entering the city: Direction -> Heinekenplein.

At Heinekenplein, it finally was the moment of love... I met Wukki! She was lying at a couch in a small Pub... all by herself, scared and afraid - but we took care of her and made her have the best day of her life :)

Me & Wukki

Wukki was drinking sooo much

Well, so Wukki was all the night along with us, when we scared strangers (or Snack-Bar owners ^^) and ran through the city to rejoin with the rest of the group until we went in Rock-Pub to have a nice last night.

Sunday it was time to say good-bye, as my friends left for Vienna, while I took a train back home to Groningen (with Wukki! btw. she is already a good friend of Franky, who also joined me now here in Groningen - I guess I will write an own blog about Franky one day.. ^^).

All in all:
It was a great week; seeing my best friends definetly gave me new energy and also made me realize that I have to enjoy my time here in Groningen as much as possible, as time flies by so fast (already 4 months since I arrived..).
Hereby also thanks to everybody who hosted us and who we met during this week :)

Roadtrip 2k11 pt. 2/3: Utrecht - I never ever had a party like that, or had I ? ;)

...after awesome Hamburgers on Wed. noon, for me, the real roadtrip started, although you can not really count a 2h hours ride to Utrecht as a roadtrip, can you? ^^

In Utrecht, our awesome host Martin guided us around through a park in the suburbs of the city. During this walk we used all our psychological finesse to convince padraig jumping over a approx 3 m long stream:

Padraig estimating if he can jump or not

As one of our (not public) videos proves, he did of course not manage and so was then wet prisoned on the other side - haha, so typical! :D
After getting his stuff dry and arranging everything for the evening we finally watched El Classico (a little bit disapointed that Barcelona was provocating all the time, that during the game we kind of switched from beeing pro-Barca to pro-Madrid) before going out to the city. At the Pakhuis we (at least some of us) were partying til early. Thanks Larissa for giving us a place to sleep direct in the city centre and for introducing "the world's best Club-Sandwich" to us the next day for lunch :)

Thursday we were busy with shopping (finally new flipflops and new pursue - only sunglasses still needed, any recommendations?? :)) and congratulating Martin to finishing the first part of his studies. It was an awesome graduation party at 4pm together with the families of the other graduates x) Some Fifa-games later, at night we finally had a reunion with Mathijs and Famke, two companions from our roadtrip in Spain.

It was great seeing you again: Mathijs & Famke! :)

We again had awesome Hamburgers (you cant eat them often enough - right?) and played some rounds of Kings Cup (better ending than in Spain ;)) and Pyramide to get the evening started. But, most awesome was definetly our last drinking game: "I never ever" where we found out, who of us has never taken any drugs, who had sex in a train yet, how you can make a girl squirt and much more nasty things ^^

Thursday was also the, as we all decided, best party night of the roadtrip at the Tivoli in Utrecht. Atmosphere, people and especially the music there was awesome and I think every 10 minutes one of us came with a tray of 8 new beers :)

That night Paul again fall in love with bicycling (you can see from his new profile pic ^^) and we finally managed to have some unnecessary drunken drama when going home, thanks to some stupid idiots screaming stupid things (not like me.. I was only shouting how awesome Vienna is..haha.. this video also stays private ;))

Getting home totally wasted at 5am was the perfect preperation for the Queens Night the following night, which turned out to be kind of a flop (especially compared to the Tivoli) but read more about that in part 3 :)